April 13, 2008
The Nerve of Some People!
I wish Barack Obama would stop saying things that make people uncomfortable:
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them.
What's he talking about? Duquesne, Monessen, Charleroi, Jeannette, McKeesport, where the good-paying jobs left 25 years ago and nothing's replaced them?
Why, you take that back, Barack Obama!
And it's not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Is he trying to imply that white flight to the suburbs has left the Mon Valley more segregated than ever before, where communities like McKeesport have a minority population above 20 percent, while neighboring Port Vue and Liberty each have about 1 percent?
Is he trying to imply that protectionism and anti-immigration politics play well here, or that politicians have encouraged us to look for scapegoats for 20 years, or that fear has motivated many of us to buy guns or embrace churches that preach apocalyptic end-times scenarios?
As a gun-owning church-going Pennsylvanian, I resent Barack Obama's decision to point out the obvious!
Pennsylvania has a tradition to uphold as a parochial, territorial place, hostile to foreigners and other outsiders.
Without clinging to our past and ignoring the problems we face, it will be difficult for us to keep out new ideas and people, and to maintain the outward flow of young Pennsylvanians that has made us a leader in national population loss for the past 20 years.
Look at the great presidents we've had over the last 16 years or so. Remember their moving platitudes, like "I feel your pain" and "compassionate conservatism"?
They didn't try to make us confront reality. They didn't ask us to make any sacrifices or hard decisions. They sure didn't try to make us think. They told us that we could have it all --- increased government spending
and lower taxes, war
and peace.
Obama should just wear a flag pin and talk about abstract concepts like "creating jobs" and "freedom" and "the American dream." That's what Hillary Clinton and John McCain do.
Let's hope Sens. Clinton and McCain win their parties' nominations, so that we can bring an end to Obama's hate-filled, divisive, reality-based politics. I look forward to hearing both candidates talk fondly this fall about patriotism, children, democracy, rainbows and soft, fuzzy puppies.
And thank goodness for the brave men and women of cable TV and syndicated talk radio, who we can count on to attack Obama's insistence on talking about issues.
If I didn't have Tim Russert, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Chris Matthews to tell me how bad Obama's comments were, I might have to pay attention to the facts.
April 11, 2008
This Just In
West Mifflin Council then ruled that Clinton was subject to the borough's amusement tax and assessed her $2 million. (
Rimshot.)
KDKA-TV has
video here.
April 10, 2008
God Bless Chimerica
The first rule of shopping in dollar stores:
The larger the image of the "stars and stripes" on the package, the more likely that the product was made in China.
The corollary to the first rule:
If the flag has the wrong number of stars and/or stripes, the likelihood approaches 100 percent.
The second rule of shopping in dollar stores:
Brand names are meaningless. Most brand names are now slapped on junk indiscriminately.
. . .
Man, if you really want to get depressed about the U.S. economy --- and you probably already are --- wheel through one of the Mon Valley's many, many dollar stores.
It's not just the fact that so many of the products are made in China, it's that they're so appallingly, obviously cheap --- and people are still buying them.
And I'm going to guess that most of the people buying dollar-store shampoo or school supplies aren't doing it because they want to. They have to.
. . .
Now, I've long been an advocate of buying certain things from the dollar store. Wrapping paper at Christmas, for instance, or tablecloths for picnics.
Why spend big money for something that only has to look pretty for 10 minutes, and which is designed to be thrown away?
But dollar-store kitchen utensils, towels, shower curtains, kids' clothes and toys just feel and look awful in ways that even stuff from Kmart and Wal-Mart doesn't approach.
There was a
story in the Detroit News last month claiming that "people in mink coats and Ralph Lauren wind breakers" are evidence of an increasingly "upscale" clientele at dollar stores. I'm sure that dollar stores do have a sort of "reverse snob appeal" to some people.
But I think that's a small subset of people. If you walk into fifth grade wearing a shirt from Dollar General, you might as well have a name tag that says "I'm poor!"
. . .
Despite this, or maybe because of it, dollar stores are one of the fastest growing segments of retailing. Although Family Dollar's sales are
down 4.4 percent, it's still a
Fortune 500 company (number 359).
Dollar General is
No. 273 on the same list, ahead of Nordstrom's, Dillard's and Saks Fifth Avenue.
In a lot of ways, dollar stores are just a refinement of the old five-and-10 stores. There was nothing particularly upscale about Murphy's, Woolworth's or H.L. Green's, and the "fashions" those stores sold were often pretty awful, just like the stuff dollar stores sell.
On the other hand, those stores carried more of a variety (which is why they called themselves "variety stores") and usually offered better-quality brands alongside the bargain-basement stuff. You could get the Murphy's brand hammer, or you could buy a Stanley.
At dollar stores, you get one variety of an item --- chintzy.
. . .
And the old five-and-10s put a premium on --- for lack of a better word --- showmanship. The displays (especially the endcap features) were fun to look at. Let's face it, they put the puppies and tropical fish at the back of the store so that kids would drag their parents past the other stuff.
But dollar store merchandise seems like it's thrown onto the shelves. Sometimes the packing cartons double as the "displays."
I don't know what shopping in the Soviet Union was like, but I have a feeling the experience was similar to, say, Dollar Tree. ("In Russia, dollar store shops you!")
There can be some unintentional comedy at times, too. Though the chain stores are dreary and look pretty much the same, up at Olympia Shopping Center, in the old G.C. Murphy Co. store, there's a store called Warehouse Outlet. It used to be located at Eastland Mall.
. . .
Warehouse Outlet carries a lot of the same imported stuff as the big dollar stores --- bolts that don't quite fit the nuts, misshapen serving spoons, questionable extension cords.
But it also buys up closeouts from defunct retailers. That means Warehouse Outlet could supply auto-body touch-up paint to most of the Tri-State area. Unfortunately, it's mostly in '70s colors like orange and lemon yellow.
If you've got a 1974 Dodge van and need avocado paint, well, they're your go-to guys.
They've got an entire endcap that's stocked with toy trucks emblazoned with the Pitt Panthers' logos ... to be more specific, the
disliked, discontinued logos from 10 years ago. They're labeled "LIMITED EDITION ... 1 of 5,000." By my count, about 4,975 are still available, so act now.
Also in the toy department: A stack of helicopters in New York Giants colors. Yeah, if you want your kid to get a beating from the children of Steelers fans, buy him one of
those.
. . .
As of Saturday, back in the paperback book department, they still had plenty of copies of Bill Clinton's "
Plan for America's Future" for $1. There were also guides to operating MS-DOS, and the TV department was well-stocked with prerecorded VHS tapes of public-domain cartoons.
The stationery department was offering great prices on Memorex five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy discs and line-feed labels for dot-matrix printers.
At some point, I suspect that it's more expensive to store (and dust) this stuff than to just throw it away. But it's got great entertainment value, if you're a little bit sick, like me.
. . .
Still, it's pretty depressing to look at a shelf full of paper products labeled "Made in China" and realize that it's apparently cheaper to ship even bulky items like paper napkins and notebook fillers from overseas than to make them here.
When we can't even crank out toilet paper profitably, there isn't much left for us to do.
Sometimes I wonder what they sell in the dollar stores in China. (Or do they call them "
yuan stores"?) Maybe there's some guy wandering around those saying, "Why do they keep shipping this 'Made in the U.S.A.' crap over here?"
If you're that guy, email me. I can get you a great deal on touch-up paint and toy trucks in the Pitt Panthers' 1997 colors.
Posted at 07:54 am by Jason Togyer
Filed Under: default, Local Businesses, Pointless Digressions | two comments | Link To This Entry
April 08, 2008
I Heart the Internet
Just a quick note to mention that I love the Interweb tubes.
Yesterday, I concocted this convoluted analogy between the city-county merger and the Studebaker-Packard merger in 1954, and I figured that everyone was going to roll their eyes and think, "Well, grandpa's off his meds again."
Needless to say, instead Alert Reader Vince and I got into a long discussion of postwar Packard arcana.
(Before the Internet, people like us would have had to get a life.)
And then, who should post a comment but the owner of the nifty Studebaker Lark that sparked my article in the first place?
Writes Alert Reader J.R.K.: "That is my car, and yes it makes a decent commuter car, 17 mpg in Oakland traffic isn't bad for a 40-something-year-old car. It's fun, a little slow but who cares when you sit on Bates for an hour or two everyday any way?"
You're a man after my own heart, J. I wrote here three years ago about my unrequited lust for either a Rambler convertible or a Studebaker Lark Wagonaire. When I was taking the pictures, I must have had a big cheese-eating grin, because the guys who run the parking lot started teasing me: "You wanna marry it? You look like you wanna go on a date."
I showed the pictures around the office, and my supervisor also fell in love with your Lark ... and she's not a car buff. "That car's cute!" she said. "I want one!"
Alas, I have made a vow that no more cars are going to follow me home until I get this beast running:
I put a new electronic ignition on her, and now she runs worse than before. I think the timing is messed up.
My goal this summer is to get her street legal again, and then I'll drive her into work and we'll park next to you, J.
Maybe your coolness will rub off on us, but I some how doubt it.
. . .
In Other Business: I was prowling around last weekend, looking for a new image for the
Tube City Online home page. With the warm weather we've been having, the
snowy shot of the Carnegie Library just wasn't making it.
Unfortunately, nothing was blooming yet at Renzie Park or the riverfront, and the public works crews hadn't finished setting up the docks at the marina.
I wound up poking around down at the RIDC Industrial Park. I know it seems like that site's been empty forever, but there's a lot of activity going on under our noses.
Steel City Products, which distributes auto parts, cleansers and hardwares to stores throughout the mid-Atlantic states, is adding a new wing onto their building, and work should be underway soon on a new "flyover" ramp to carry traffic from Lysle Boulevard over the CSX Railroad tracks.
Next to
Huckestein Mechanical Services' new headquarters, there's this nifty speculative building that's suitable for offices or light manufacturing:
Do you know any entrepreneurs who need a building? There's one ready to go in McKeesport.
Yeah, it's not as cool as a Studebaker Lark, but it'll hold more passengers.
April 07, 2008
City-County Merger? It's No Lark
Last week, someone who parks in the same lot that I use started driving to work in a 1962 Studebaker Lark.
Hey, if you have to drive in Oakland traffic, there are worse ways than in a Studebaker Lark.
It's a cute little car. With a six-cylinder engine and standard shift, it probably gets reasonable mileage, too. Pity it's an orphan.
Four years after this early compact rolled off the factory in South Bend, Ind., the Studebaker Corp. exited the car business.
. . .
Also last week, Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato and Pittsburgh Mayor Opie "Luke" Ravenstahl announced their support for a merger between the two governing bodies.
When they did, I couldn't help but think of a semi-famous joke involving Studebaker. It was
a very sick company when it was acquired by another faltering automaker, Packard Motor Car Corp.
One Wall Street analyst supposedly cracked, "It's like a man swimming in shark-infested waters, being rescued by a man in a leaky raft."
. . .
What was wrong at Studebaker? Well, Studebaker management refused to take a strike, instead giving their unions everything they wanted.
Executives made bad product-planning decisions, saddling their dealers with slow-selling cars the public didn't want.
And management was famously short-sighted. Instead of investing in a modern factory, they used their profits to
pay themselves fat dividends and acquire non-automotive companies.
Like Studebaker, Detroit-based Packard had an expensive work force and a rundown plant. It also had a lot of dowdy, unpopular cars. But Packard had money in the bank.
When the Eisenhower administration hinted that it would be willing to send defense work to Studebaker, Packard
purchased the Indiana company.
. . .
The joke about Packard and Studebaker was prophetic. The weaker company
dragged the stronger company to a watery grave.
The defense contracts never arrived. The unions refused to accept concessions. Banks cut off Studebaker-Packard's credit. The country entered a recession.
In 1958, the company
stopped making Packards and closed the Detroit plant. Five years later, the plant in South Bend closed, too. In 1966, the last Studebaker cars left a Canadian assembly line.
. . .
Like Packard, Allegheny County is in marginally sound financial shape. But like Packard, it owns a lot of old infrastructure, it's laden with debt, and it's saddled with terrible union contracts, especially at Port Authority transit.
And like Studebaker, the City of Pittsburgh is far worse off.
As a homeowner in Allegheny County, I don't want to see the City of Pittsburgh fall to pieces.
But as a taxpayer in Allegheny County, I also don't want my money used to rescue Pittsburgh when our own life raft is shipping water.
. . .
Yes, the Studebaker analogy is apt in a lot of ways. Pittsburgh's seven decades of one-party rule have discouraged it from taking risks.
Instead of accepting painful short-term cuts for long-term benefits, the city's so-called leaders have treated its payroll like a full employment program for Democratic voters.
They've paid themselves fat salaries and larded the budget with perks for themselves and their cronies.
They've spent millions of dollars to introduce slow-selling products --- like the Lazarus and Lord & Taylor stores downtown --- that the public didn't buy, while their infrastructure has suffered from lack of investment.*
. . .
Merger proponents promise that the city would be placed in a separate "asset district," and that county tax revenue wouldn't be used to bail out Pittsburgh.
I have a hard time seeing how that would be legal. On its face, it violates the equal protection clauses of the state and U.S. constitutions.
I also remember how we voted not to use public tax money to fund stadium construction ... and they went ahead and did it anyway. So make me no promises, Pittsburgh Democrats.
. . .
Before the county helps the city onto its leaky life raft, I'd like to see the city make good faith efforts to get its house in order.
First, Pittsburgh doesn't need nine people on city council. Westmoreland County, with twice the population, has three commissioners. Cut six councilmen and their staffs. That should save several million dollars annually.
Second, take immediate steps to end duplication of services:
- Fold the city's redevelopment authority into the county's.
- Merge the city and county parks and recreation departments; most people consider Schenley and Frick parks to be regional assets anyway.
- Merge the public works departments.
- Combine the city police with the county police --- and the transit police and the housing authority police, too.
. . .
Prove to us, Pittsburgh, that you're willing to cut patronage jobs and give up some of your fiefdoms.
Prove to us that this isn't just a power grab by the same Pittsburgh politicians who have driven their city into receivership over the past 70 years.
Otherwise, I'll be damned if I'll vote for any merger with the City of Pittsburgh.
. . .
Maybe I'm cynical, but I wonder if Onorato and Ravenstahl want this plan to fail. After all, phasing in joint operations of departments like public works could be accomplished without going to the voters. And smaller cooperative efforts would prove that a bigger merger could work.
But the voters reject an "all or nothing" plan, Pittsburgh's old ward heelers can sit back and say, "See? We told you the public doesn't want a merger."
And the political power structure will remain in place, hoping that someone else bails out the city.
. . .
Generally, I'm all for municipal cooperation. Merge Port Vue, Liberty and Lincoln, for crying out loud. Combine East McKeesport, Wall and Wilmerding into North Versailles. There should be wedding bells ringing for White Oak, South Versailles and Versailles, too.
They're small communities that share borders and school districts. They're relatively free of debt and have few serious long-term problems.
I'm not in favor of rescuing Pittsburgh's back-slapping old boys' club from its own foolishness. They made the mess. Let them start fixing it, and then we'll talk.
Otherwise, this sure looks to me like we're being offered a used Studebaker, and we're being told it's a cherry Ferrari.
Sorry, Dan and Luke. The Mon Valley has enough old clunkers of its own. We don't need yours.
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