January 10, 2008

Wake Me Nov. 5

I saw my first "Ron Paul for President" sign in the Mon Valley the other day.

Made of plywood and lettered with spray paint and hardware-store stencils, it's been plunked down on the corner of Buttermilk Hollow and Thompson Run roads in West Mifflin.

"NO MORE IRS, CFR," it says, "RON PAUL 2008." I'm not sure, but it's about a half-mile from the house that sports the "NO KIDS NO SCHOOL TAXES" sign, so perhaps the same person erected it.

I'm assuming "CFR" refers to the "Council on Foreign Relations," not the "Code of Federal Regulations," but I suppose it could be "campaign finance reform" or the "Canadian Finals Rodeo."

. . .

Whenever I hear Ron Paul speak, he sounds perfectly reasonable and rational at first (calling the Patriot Act, for instance, "constitutionally offensive," or arguing that the Iraq war was a massive foreign policy blunder), and I find myself nodding my head in agreement.

Then he uncorks some truly whack-job statement that brings me back to Earth.

For instance, Rep. Paul, who's a favorite of "alternative medicine" practitioners, wants to stop the FDA and FTC from regulating vitamins and dietary supplements and their advertising. (Think about that the next time you give your kid a Flintstones vitamin.)

Or take Dr. Paul's insistence (please!) that the Civil War was a bad idea, and that slavery should have been "gradually" phased out.

. . .

So I'm sure glad that Maria from 2 Political Junkies wrote this takedown of the politician-physician. It saves me a lot of trouble.

I want to like Ron Paul. But I'm reminded of Barry Goldwater's campaign slogan --- "In your heart, you know he's right" --- and LBJ's rejoinder: "In your guts, you know he's nuts."

As a friend of mine puts it: "I'd like Ron Paul better if I didn't keep seeing his bumper stickers next to ones that say 'DUMP ISRAEL' and 'GET US OUT OF THE U.N.'"

(And actually, I kind of admire Barry Goldwater, and not just because of this.)

. . .

A complete libertarian philosophy is wonderful in principle, except that I like the FDA regulating my food, and I like NHTSA telling me my car's not a death-trap, and I like the EPA ensuring that my water and air are reasonably clean.

We can argue about the merits of individual regulation, and "how much regulation is too much," but personally, I'd rather pay taxes to support the FDIC and SEC than "pays my money and takes my chances" with unregulated banks and stockbrokers. Wouldn't you?

. . .

The presidential candidate I like best so far is apparently planning to drop out --- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. He combines excellent federal government experience (as U.S. Secretary of Energy) with foreign-policy experience (as a special presidential emissary) and executive leadership (as a governor since 2002).

And he's funny. I remember hearing him interviewed by NPR in the waning days of the Clinton Administration, and at times I was laughing so hard, I was crying.

It would be nice to have a president who's a wit; we haven't had one since Reagan, or maybe Kennedy, and most of their material was crafted by their speech writers.

Alas, the governor can't help the fact that he looks like an unmade bed.

He's a little schlumpy, and bears an unfortunate resemblance to another very funny man, Lou Costello. In the last Democratic debate, I kept waiting for him to jam a hat down over his eyes and say, "I'm a ba-a-a-a-ad boy."

. . .

Happily, there seems to be a bunch of good candidates on both tickets. Even Mike Huckabee isn't completely objectionable, although I sure wouldn't vote for him. (Which is fine with Huckabee, since I'm a heathen Mary-worshipper.)

But Ron Paul? Sorry. I don't care if he is "a Green Tree native," and I don't care how vocal his grass-roots supporters are. That doesn't convince me at all. Every cause --- no matter how stupid --- has a few passionate grass-roots supporters.

OK, maybe not the Wal-Mart in North Huntingdon. But just about everything else.

Posted at 12:00 am by Jason Togyer
Filed Under: Politics | seven comments | Link To This Entry

January 09, 2008

News You May Have Missed

This isn't local, but I love this story (and a tip o' the Tube City hard hat to Nancy Nall):

An armed and bullying motorist found he picked on the wrong driver Saturday when he was subdued by a retired St. Tammany Parish sheriff's deputy, according to Slidell Police.

Armed only with a walking cane and quick reflexes, Richard Singletary, 73, fought off a gun-wielding motorist who had been driving aggressively and threatening him as he drove on Old Spanish Trail in Slidell ...

Singletary, who retired as a Sheriff's Office lieutenant in 1987 after more than 26 years with the department, uses a cane because he has two bad knees and a heart problem, Foltz said. (New Orleans Times-Picayune)

Two bad knees and a heart problem, and he still whupped the other guy, who was packing a .357 Magnum. They build 'em tough in Loosiana, they do.

. . .

The Inevitable Mon-Yough Area Connection, Part I: Whenever a scandal breaks, I cross my fingers and mumble, "Please don't have a connection to the Mon-Yough area, please don't have a connection to the Mon-Yough area."

You heard about the female gym teacher at Moon Area High School who's accused of having sex with a 14-year-old male student? She's from Scott Township. I was really hoping we dodged a bullet, but no, because according to Bobbi Mercandante of the Beaver County Times, her husband is coach of the men's basketball team at Penn State Greater Allegheny.

. . .

The Inevitable Mon-Yough Area Connection, Part II: The boyfriend of the poor woman whose body was found in a trash bin in Charleroi is now the prime suspect in her murder. Yeah, he's from McKeesport, according to Scott Beveridge in the Observer-Reporter. Oh, and she's from West Mifflin. And she was related to the woman whose remains were found over a hillside in Clairton a few weeks ago.

Meanwhile, Jen Reeger of the Tribune-Review reports that the victim in the Charleroi slaying was charged with assault by Clairton police on the very day her body was found; she allegedly was found by police kicking her boyfriend, who was passed out in the street, apparently from an heroin overdose.

As we wrote this Almanac, the cops were looking for 28-year-old Joseph Natale, who is on parole from a September 2006 drug arrest in Clairton. If you have any information, call the Charleroi police at (724) 483-8010 or state police at the Belle Vernon barracks at (724) 929-6262.

. . .

Sing along with Tom Lehrer: "Oh, yes indeed, the people there are just plain folks, in my home town ..."

. . .

Meanwhile: Woodland Hills School District Superintendent Ros Wilson has announced her retirement. Her decision to step down comes after complaints that the school district was too slow to respond to discipline problems at the high school in Churchill, and at Junior High West in Swissvale.

Those complaints were fanned into white-hot heat by KDKA-TV "investigative" "reporter" Marty Griffin, who hammered Wilson relentlessly on his daily KDKA radio talk show for weeks at a time in November and December.

Griffin, you'll recall, also hectored a Ben Avon church pastor over his purchases of (legal) pornography at the dirty bookstore near the Mansfield Bridge (note the inevitable Mon Valley connection!) until the man killed himself in a Mercer County motel room.

Do you think Marty actually attaches the scalps to his belt?

Or does he just stamp a skull-and-crossbones on the side of a KDKA mobile unit, like the Red Baron?

Posted at 12:00 am by Jason Togyer
Filed Under: Mon Valley Miscellany, Our Far-Flung National Correspondents, Politics | No comments | Link To This Entry

January 08, 2008

A Shot and a Beer

Posted at 12:00 am by Jason Togyer
Filed Under: Cartoons, Local Businesses, Mon Valley Miscellany | two comments | Link To This Entry

January 07, 2008

Race Against Time

A friend and Alert Reader from the Turtle Creek area emailed me last week in disbelief.

He was doing some research on "the Valley" when he ran across the above map of what used to be "Patton Township" --- present-day Monroeville.

It seems to be company-owned housing for African-American employees of Wilmerding's Westinghouse Air Brake Company.

The area illustrated is across from the entrance of Good Shepherd Cemetery, which is quite a walk from the WABCO plant, in what was then a very rural area. (Talk about segregation!)

The map is from 1928 --- four generations ago.

"The word they actually used had worse connotations," said my friend. "I didn't think that s--- happened here. Not so overtly, anyway."

. . .

Well, I can remember my grandfather telling me that in McKeesport before the Great Depression, African-Americans weren't allowed to use the sidewalks Downtown. If they did, the cops would hassle them.

In the 1920s --- or so I was told --- when black diners were served at one of the city's main restaurants, the busboy would bring a garbage can to their table when they finished eating and smash their plates into it, to demonstrate that they weren't welcome to return.

On an updated version of that Patton Township map from 1948, the "Negro" section still exists, but the word "Reservation" has been scratched out. That means African-American WABCO employees were still being segregated from the rest of Wilmerding in the 1940s.

That's three generations ago.

. . .

Speaking of McKeesport restaurants, if you were a kid in the '40s and '50s, you probably remember the swank second-floor dining-room at G.C. Murphy Co.'s "Store No. 1" on Fifth Avenue.

If you were a white kid, that is. Because black kids weren't allowed upstairs. They had to eat at the lunch counter downstairs. That persisted until the mid 1950s.

The mid-1950s, you'll recall, is also when Kennywood closed its swimming pool for fear that they would have to "integrate." Park management mumbled excuses about the filtration system leaking.

Sure. Yet it couldn't have been leaking too badly, because Kennywood temporarily used the pool for a "boat ride" feature. It eventually reopened to black and white swimmers.

That was just about two generations ago.

. . .

In their 1996 documentary "Struggles in Steel," Tony Buba and Ray Henderson show how many African-Americans were lured North in the 1920s by promises of better-paying jobs and freedom from subsistence farming.

But they were also imported by steel mills and other factories (like the "Air Brake") to help break labor unions run by white, European immigrants. No one told the African-American workers that, of course. They found out the hard way.

The resentments lasted a long time. Black steelworkers were confined to low-paying laborer positions and didn't get better-paying skilled-trades jobs until the 1970s.

That was about one generation ago.

. . .

Over the holidays, I attended several parties with family and friends.

More than once I heard someone uncork a ripe opinion or nasty joke about one ethnic group or another, and how they're ruining their neighborhood or their country, and blah blah blah.

That's my generation.

What did I do? I gritted my teeth and said nothing.

And that's called "cowardice."

. . .

My mother taught me better. She always speaks up whenever someone tosses out an ignorant racial or ethnic opinion.

Today's her birthday. It's also a new year. In honor of both, I'm going to start speaking up whenever someone starts in about "those people" --- whether they be white, black, Asian, Hispanic.

It's a small start. But maybe you want to make it your resolution, too.

Oh, and try not to feel too superior to "hicks" and "hillbillies" down South. The Mon Valley's record on race relations is pretty poor.

Sure, we don't have "Negro reservations" in Monroeville any more. But it wasn't that long ago. And we still have a hell of a long way to go.

Posted at 12:00 am by Jason Togyer
Filed Under: General Nonsense, Mon Valley Miscellany | twelve comments | Link To This Entry