Wednesday, March 31, 2010

List-Makers Mayor Invites Council To Exclusive -- And Expensive -- "Afternoon Of Illusion" Show

As Pittsburgh city council members await a top-secret magic show (at which professional illusionists will conduct a one-card monte exhibition, then appear to transform a pothole into a pot of gold), they should ponder whether stories like this could signal a local cascade of stories such as this one. (Song for the next decade? "The Funny Bone's connected to the law firm . . . the law firm's connected to the accounting firm . . . the accounting firm's connected to the headquarters . . . and who said it's hard to find a place to park downtown?")

If decision-makers pass a tipping point with respect to cost-to-value and city-vs.-suburbs ratios, the disappearance of a downtown business district could be no illusion.

As a gesture of charity for the less fortunate, promoters will permit a group of stagehands, ticket-takers and other endangered species to attend the exclusive and magical performance.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you really think you know more than the pros at this? Do you have a better plan to stop the state from TAKING OVER our pension plans? Do you have any ideas or just more complaining.

Give it a rest already

Infinonymous said...

Nice work! [clicks stopwatch] Less than hour to respond.

It only snow could be shoveled, or a dying citizen rescued, so quickly . . .

Anonymous said...

all you got is cheap shots

go to hell

Bram Reichbaum said...

I like Lamb's plan if it's legal and, if necessary, acceptable (those are still question marks) and want to see the numbers on the Harris plan. Seems like that would accomplish exactly what our investors would be doing, except we'd be eliminating the middleman.

I'm also curious what would happen if we incorporated the assets and floated between 55 and 80% of the S-shares on the open market. If the stock survives and makes gains and we're happy with the service we can sell again.

Anonymous said...

Do you really think you know more than the pros at this? Do you have a better plan to stop the state from TAKING OVER our pension plans?

Pros? Pros at what exactly?

There have been several suggestions that make more sense the proposed fleecing, uh, I mean leasing of public assets Morgan Stanley.

1. The Dowd/Lamb plan - transfer of parking assets to the pension fund. The only legal opinions the city has provided against this option were written by those who stand to benefit from the deal with Morgan Stanley.
2. The council president's plan - float bonds and use the additional revenue from increased parking rates, fines, tickets, commuter fees, etc to pay them off.

Both are simple solutions that don't involve the need for the mayor to hold secret, closed door meetings where the public doesn't get to see how the mayor and his handlers really operate.

InsideAgitator said...

a coupla things: I'm not so sure I wanna glimpse into lukie's pension/power parlor. Sort of like watching the popular jock-type getting all tripped up during the big accounting exam. MS is not the smart kid but the smeared-up cheat sheet found on the boys' lockerroom floor!

Chicanery is as chicanery does, baby. Go check out Cassabill Estates, connect some dots, round and round we go.

Really, what I wanna know is this: Why do the guys get all the good speaking roles? Why do the bad boys have all the fun?