The Monday Reader

We read the news in Pittsburgh so you don’t have to.

Office of the Night Life Czar, coming right up
So, the answer to the “night life problems” of the South Side isn’t for on-duty cops to enforce parking. The answer, according  to the head of the Fraternal Order of Police, is for bar owners there to kick in to a special fund that would be used to pay off-duty cops to provide security.

Is it me, or do they call that a shakedown in some neighborhoods?

Get First Amendment Uppity
There’s a proposal to weaken Pennsylvanian’s access to public information by allowing governments to charge you to see it.

Just to frame this up for you — your state elected leaders can’t find the stones to slap even a nominal tax on the gas drilling companies that are going to get rich fracking your neighborhoods, but they are moving along a proposal in which they have no trouble billing you to look at public documents, especially documents about the companies getting rich off fracking natural gas out of your neighborhoods.

As usual, Gene Stilp puts a fine point on it. He tells Brad Bumsted, “I’m going to run up a million-dollar bill and see if someone wants to try and collect that.”

The Thursday Reader

We read the news in Pittsburgh so you don’t have to.

Why Pennsylvania is a mess: A mystery no more
We’ve got an unemployment rate of  8.8 percent, the state homeland security department is wasting money by outsourcing the trampling of our rights and there’s still no tax to get anything for the state in exchange for the drilling of massive reserves of natural gas here.

But by all means, let’s have a fight over the moving of a statue in Harrisburg.

Ladies love the Steelers
Behind the Steel Curtain’s Momma Rollet noticed the same thing the Reader has seen for years. The most rabid and devoted Steelers fans we know are chicks.

The Wednesday Reader

We read the news in Pittsburgh so you don’t have to.

A very long off-season on the horizon
Admit it, you’ve been distracting yourself with the Roethlisberger suspension and the awesomeness of the defense as a means of denying that there is not going to be NFL football next year.

Is it too much to ask that the Pirates step it up and play long into the fall to bridge the gap between baseball and hockey season so we miss the Steelers less?

Democrats in PA are like New Directions at regionals
Mr. Schuester, Matt Morrison, is coming to town Saturday to stump for statewide Democratic candidates.

Not sure whether to believe this is for real, considering Morrison’s imdb page says he is from southern California and seems to have no ties to PA or the Democratic party. Maybe someone told him Dan Onorato and Joe Sestak are the Rachel and Finn of Pennsylvania.

The Tuesday Reader

We read the news in Pittsburgh so you don’t have to.

Parking brake
When I first spotted this Rich Lord story I wondered if they were overplaying their hand with the headline “City cries wolf in state takeover of pension plan?” But I was wrong.

The mayor has sold his plan to lease the city’s parking system to a private vendor as a solution to a $500 million emergency. The city has to come with that much money for its underfunded pension plan or risk a state takeover, we’ve been told for months now.

But Lord writes “James B. Allen, secretary of the Pennsylvania Municipal Retirement System, said that what has been billed as a state takeover wouldn’t be as hostile as it sounds. Sure, the city would have to increase the amount of money it puts away to cover pensions, he said — but likely not until 2015.  The city would not lose control over benefits, he said. And the city would get less expensive administration of its pension investments from the state system, which handles some 900 smaller pension funds.”

Pittsburgh, fourth-best town for babies
Just in time for all the Snowpocalypse babies.

The Monday Reader

We read the news in Pittsburgh so you don’t have to.

No parking zone
This is not good news, though at least someone is digging into  the suiters for Pittsburgh’s parking lease.

Joe Smydo writes: “The fluid nature of these business relationships hasn’t raised many eyebrows in Pittsburgh, but it’s reportedly raised a red flag in Los Angeles, one of the cities now considering a parking lease.”

The deal with this group has not gone well in Chicago, either for downtown parkers or for the city.

Strike zone
One wonders if the firing of Pirates GM John Russell is necessary but insufficient to save the woeful Pirates next year. We might have an answer in the way the firing was handled today.

Former piratesreport.com writer John Perotto tweeted that Pirates owner Bob Nutting had his “clubhouse spy” Charles Jarvis listen in on the conference call to announce  Russell’s dismissal.

Perotto says, “Charles Jarvis is Nutting’s regional editor for Ogden papers and had no legitimate reason on call other than monitor for Nutting.”

The Monday Reader

We read the news in Pittsburgh so you don’t have to.

Homeland security absurdity
So it’s not that it was an abuse of authority, it’s that it was a redundant and wasteful abuse of authority?

Also, this is the first mention I’ve seen that the contractors monitoring suspicious potential terrorists in Pennsylvania were sending out alerts on the Tea Party.

Hey, governor
Instead of saying “… I accept the responsibility for this error in judgment” how is James Powers not saying ” … I accept the responsibility for this error in judgment and I understand why you’re firing me.”?

Still pushing the story forward
Chris Potter, who hasn’t gotten the credit he deserves for breaking this story in the Western part of the state, is questioning who else contracted with these yahoos to gather “intelligence” on dangerous dissenting groups like lesbians and animal-rights activists.

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The Thursday Reader

We read the news in Pittsburgh so you don’t have to.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever did this
Dirt bags tied up a 93-year-old man in New Castle man while they robbed his house.

Channel 11 tells us: They waited until I opened the door to tape my hands. They frisked me down. I said, ‘Don’t worry boys. I ain’t going to fight ya,” said Isaac. “I’m glad to be alive. I’m 93. I gotta make 100 you know.”

Drilling dollars
WDUQ dug through the latest campaign finance filings for the gubernatorial candidates.

Among Scott Detrow’s findings was “Both candidates received money from companies drilling for gas in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale formation: Cabot Oil and Gas, who has been fined by the Department of Environmental Protection for serious violations, gave 10-thousand dollars to Corbett, while Range Resources donated 55-hundred to Onorato.”

The Tuesday Reader

We read the news in Pittsburgh so you don’t have to.

Time for scrutiny of parking deal is right now
Stop debating whether the city should lease the parking operations. Start digging in to any available info on the bidders.

The mayor is dazzled by the figures being tossed in his face and clearly isn’t scrutinizing the players here, including top contender LAZ, which runs parking operations in 99 other cities, and its partner JP Morgan.

Joe Smydo writes today: “Mr. Ravenstahl said he wasn’t sure when LAZ teamed with J.P. Morgan.”

LAZ runs the operation in Chicago too, where a similar lease deal last year led to underachieving revenues. And months after the 75-year parking meter lease deal there was signed, it was discovered that the investment group that won the bid wasn’t so much run by Morgan Stanley as the government of Abu Dhabi.

“The city signed the now-controversial, $1.15 billion lease with a new company called Chicago Parking Meters LLC in February, and city officials said two funds of the Morgan Stanley investment fund made up 99 percent of the new company, with “several other entities” sharing the remaining 1 percent.”In fact, a Chicago News Cooperative investigation has found that investment arms of the oil-rich Abu Dhabi government hold more than a 25 percent stake in the company that privatized the city’s 36,000 parking meters. German financial company Allianz also has a large minority interest, and the remaining 50.1 percent is held by partnerships assembled by Morgan Stanley.”

Black and gold crazy
The way Pittsburgh obsesses over the Steelers is really one of its finest qualities. It’s hard to appreciate unless you’ve lived somewhere else — somewhere where people undoubtedly think they love their sports team more than anyone else. But then you’ll have to smile and say, “No, no you don’t.”

At dinnertime Tuesday the five most emailed stories on the Post-Gazette website were four stories about the Steelers and one about the governor’s race.

And we dare you to read that thing PittGirl does every week with the game photos and not laugh your ass off. That cheezburger guy has nothing on this.

The Monday Reader

We read the news in Pittsburgh so you don’t have to.

Get First Amendment Uppity
It’s six weeks until election day and we suggest that news organizations considering who they’re going to endorse should not only consider their editorial board’s political agenda and the good of their readers when they pick a candidate. Don’t be afraid to consider your own self interest and support candidates whom you can reasonably expect to be accessible and respect the First Amendment.

On Twitter today, Scott Detrow of  Pennsylvania Public Radio  had this trio of tweets that are telling about the Senate candidates:

– “Toomey cuts press off after two questions. Gets in car and speeds away.”
– “Typical post-event Sestak gaggle, on the other hand, seems to never end. ”
– “So here in PA we have a candiate who holds 45 min press avails, and one who doesn’t let you ask more than one question.”

And consider that Tom Corbett is making himself inaccessible even as he’s running for governor.

It’s not about blue or red. It’s about who returns your calls and respects what you do.

Don’t call it a content mill
It’s just a breakout on a fall fashion story about what to wear in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We get it. But since when is ehow.com an acceptable source for anything that goes in a general audience newspaper?

Setting journalistic objections aside, remember we have fashion week coming up.

The Friday Quotes

We read the news in Pittsburgh so you don’t have to.

But the pierogi kid’s got job security, right?
“Nobody’s job is absolutely safe.”
Pirates President Frank Coonelly, talking about the coaching staff, which is under evaluation after the team is set to finish more than 50 games under .500. This is the staff that includes general manager Neal Huntington and manager John Russell,  who got contract extensions a year ago that were kept secret for eight months.

Homeland insecurity
“Am I on a list somewhere… were images of me captured at Frick Park along with 600 other of my neighbors who went to see Gasland?”
Pittsburgh City Councilman Doug Shields, demanding more information about the surveillance of people who attended hearings and other events related to the Marcellus Shale drilling issue. One of the events monitored by the state department of homeland security, apparently, was a city council hearing.

Jamie Oliver should come to Brackenridge next
“These kids were absolutely crying that they were starving when they got out of school.”
Marlene Granger, whose daughter was served macaroni and cheese and one chicken tender at lunch at Fairmont Elementary School in Brackenridge.
The children are accustomed to getting at least two chicken tenders and no mac and cheese. They can take as much fruit as they like, though the food service director at the nutrition-award-winning school says they rarely take any and eat even less than they take.