Memorial Day 2010

Today's Americans stand on the shoulders of those who strove before them, beneficiaries of centuries of ingenuity, sacrifice, intrepidity, investment and effort throughout the world.

For most Americans, Memorial Day is a day of leisure earned by the sacrifice of others.

More than one million persons have accepted active duty in the military service of today's United States of America. All have been volunteers, pushed by patriotism, practicality and perhaps other factors in varying measures.

Millions of others have completed their service. Some enlisted, some were conscripted. Some pursued danger, some had no choice other than to confront it. Some accomplished great missions, some were sent on fools' errands, some were issued immoral orders. Some were required to overcome not only the enemy but also the ignorance and bigotry of their peers or superiors. Nearly all have distinguished themselves, whatever their orders, by simply doing their duty.

Some returned as heroes, some (including heroes) returned to a society that treated them like dirt. Some returned in caskets, some never returned.

More than one million persons have died in the military service of the United States. At a technical level, Memorial Day honors the dead and Veterans Day honors the living. All, however, deserve a moment of reflection, a kind thought, a measure of gratitude today.

One Trillion Dollars, Down The Drain

Seven years after George W. Bush declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq, the United States' misadventure in that country -- and Afghanistan, and Pakistan (and likely Iran, if the ideologically unhinged regain control) -- reached a reality-based milestone this morning: One trillion dollars.

Despite the spectacular, counterproductive failure associated with the United States' decision to invade the wrong country, most Americans have been insulated from the costs. Iraq, not Pennsylvania, was thrown into murderous chaos. Afghan civilians, not Pittsburghers, have been killed and dismembered by poorly aimed weapons. Pakistani children, not ours, must wonder whether drone-delivered explosives will shatter their lives today.

By lowering taxes while air-dropping cash by the pallet into Iraq (literally; the pallets in the photograph, left, hold $100 bills, part of more than 350 tons of cash delivered in a single operation), the United States' political leaders also enabled American taxpayers to avoid defer financial reckoning.

The per-capita tab exceeds $3,000. Because that figure includes infants, it is more meaningful to examine a family-of-four figure -- $12,000 -- or to consider that a family with above-average income is liable for $20,000 or more. Plus interest, thanks to the Bush tax cuts.

More than 5,000 Americans have been killed, and many more injured, while fighting in this mess. (Many more Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis -- far too many of them noncombatants, including children -- have died or been maimed.) These losses have been felt primarily in disadvantaged neighborhoods, almost exclusively in military families.

These failures, these wrongs, these outrages have been conducted in the name of every citizen of the United States, on our dime. We may have been able to dodge the cost -- so far -- but we can not avoid responsibility. This blood is on our hands.

Infinonytune: One Trillion Dollars, Anti-Flag (from G20 soundtrack)

Sunday Reading: Thinking Cap Edition

Medicine cabinet: What were they thinking?

Italy: A new way of thinking?

Salt shaker: An obsolete way of thinking.

Alabama: Are they capable of thinking?

Welcome To Infinonymous, Mr. President!

This site attracts many distinguished visitors, drawn by a remarkable range of search engine inquiries, but this appears to be a first:

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Does this mean Doug Shields is being considered for a fancy federal appointment?

Or has President Obama joined the mob of Froot Loops ranting about that treehouse, putting the Shields homestead in the crosshairs for an F-22 Raptor strike?

Infinonytune: Hail To The Chief, Chicago saxophone dude

Souder: Another Spiteful, Sanctimonious Hypocrite Revealed, Eight Terms Too Late

The sight of another family values phony shuffling out of office, philandering pants around sanctimonious ankles, does not merit much mention these days. But as Mark Souder departs Congress after eight terms -- and after admitting an affair involving the employee with whom he recorded commercials (for Christian media audiences) promoting right-wing family values, in particular abstinence -- he deserves a special dose of opprobrium.

Souder, an aggressive evangelical Christian, came to Washington -- with Newt Gingrich, John Ensign, Mark Foley and Mark Sanford -- among the Republican Class of '94, which proposed to turn American toward a righteous path. Souder became known as author of the Souder Law, which prevented persons convicted of drug possession from obtaining student loans.

"If you are going to get subsidized loans," drug warrior Souder said, "you shouldn't be convicted of a drug crime."

A straightforward sentiment, one that cost hundreds of thousands of young Americans an opportunity to better themselves with a college education, and one with an important corollary:

If you are going to lecture Americans on morality, and deny education to those who don't fit your right-wing evangelical mold, your walk with the Lord should not travel through the private parts of the hypocritical harlot from your family values commercials.

Beware The Campaign Criticism Boomerang

While introducing his running mate by e-mail yesterday, Dan Onorato told Pennsylvanians they "can't afford to elect Tom Corbett" because the attorney general "politicized his office and misused his power."

Mr. Onorato has highlighted a worthy point. Public acts designed with campaign ends and political friends in mind are a substantial problem in Pennsylvania. For example:

The Victorian brick manse at 5325 Wilkins Avenue in Pittsburgh contains six bedrooms and seven bathrooms among its 6,500 feet of living space on three-quarters of a high-end landscaped acre in the city's East End. Its current owner paid $1.2 million dollars for the property, but pays taxes on an assessed value of $625,000. This inaccuracy -- declared unconstitutional by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, immoral by anyone with a conscience -- saves the owner nearly $3,000 each year in county property taxes, perhaps another $12,000 annually in school and municipal taxes.

The current occupant? A substantial supporter of a county executive who manipulated assessments for political reasons in a manner that provides a five-figure benefit to just one of his political supporters each year.

One should not jump to conclusions about favoritism, however.
Bishop Zubik, leading by example, recently chose humbler quarters, ending the tradition of a sumptuous bishop's residence (left) in the relevant neighborhood (underassessment: at least $500,000), but this neighborhood nonetheless appears to be a blessed one -- at least, for those able to afford to live there.

The residents of Braddock and Duquesne and Clairton who subsidize the underassessment of million-dollar properties, meanwhile, are left to pray for deliverance in the form of a county executive who doesn't politicize his office and misuse his power.

Unsolicited Advice Series: Doug Shields

Doug Shields' city-supplied Intertubes apparatus must be shrieking and overheating from a barrage of evil-eye messages concerning a plan concept for a memorial treehouse at Frick Park.

It is tempting to crack that nothing could be worse than the decision-making system that has been guiding InsolvenCity affairs -- as Bill Peduto aptly observes, however, "People get the government they elect, and this is what they wanted" -- but this controversy might have stumbled on something to top Ravenstahl, Zober & Regan's Traveling Three-Clown Circus.

Most of the people sending messages to councilor Shields have no idea whether placement of a treehouse at a particular Frick Park location would be good, bad or inconsequential, and this is so no matter how many times they type "awesome" or "amazing" or "freakin' jagoff" or "effin' loser," even if they use all caps, underlines and emoticons.

Long-term public judgments should not be controlled by the number of people a blog or two can incite to emotional lather.

Councilor Shields: Please follow standard procedures, along a normal schedule. Consider differing views, regardless of whether they include "OMG!!!" and "amazing!!!!" and other indicia of 14-year-olds' excitement. Ascribe appropriate weight to expert (or, at least, informed) opinion. Use judgment, not an electron-weighing device. Do not ignore flaming pitchforks -- dodge, not catch, seems the better course -- but don't let them control you.

Infinonytune: Minority, Green Day (child-friendly version)

Pittsburgh Pension Deficit Grows By $16 Million

The City of Pittsburgh's pension plan went $16 million deeper into the hole during the first quarter of this year.

The plan's funding percentage, reported to be 32 percent at the close of 2009, has fallen below 30 percent. The deficit approximates $700,000,000.

It could get worse for InsolvenCity -- and will, if city council permits the city administration to conduct a parking garage sale.

City Council: Insist On An Ethics Waiver

The recent nomination of Adam Ravenstahl for an Alcosan board position occurs at the confluence of several problems.

• The mayor prefers nepotism and cronyism.

• When Bill Peduto terms the legal opinion of the mayor's new lapdog the new city solicitor (left) "half-assed," he is being too kind.

• The current city administration neither understands nor respects the rules.

• The current city administration is disingenuous. (Unless Don Walko and his precedessor and his predecessor's predecessor served on the Alcosan board, the arguments advanced by the mayor's mouthpiece to explain this nomination disintegrate into the customary baseless mush.)

City council could serve its constituents, and begin to address some of these problems, by conditioning approval of this nomination upon receipt of an ethics waiver.

A more aggressive approach -- arranging judicial review of the issue of whether a mayor can lawfully appoint his brother to an authority board -- also would work. (A long-term solution -- arranging council's access to reliable, independent legal advice -- is imperative, but that fight is for another day.)

Also: The Slagger is right about the manipulation of board positions.

Warring, Armed Street Mobs Or Pitt Students; Which Would Mayor Ravenstahl Attack First?

Against the background of the uprecedented, fierce firepower unleashed on students walking along Oakland's campus sidewalks by InsolvenCity Mayor Luke Ravenstahl during the G-20 event last autumn -- never-before-used-on-civilians, military-issue sonic cannons; rubber bullets; tear gas grenades; battle-hardened, imported riot police -- the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police reports that reveal the weaponry used today against a violent North Side mob battling in the streets with knives, bats, razor blades, and pepper spray should be fascinating.

Proportionality predictions should incorporate the mayor's experience with rowdy North Siders' confrontations with police, which could have influenced today's decision-making.

'Ben, Like, Didn't Get Me Drunk, Did Not Follow Me Into The Bathroom, Totally Wouldn't Expose Himself (Unless I Asked) -- Just A Great Guy'

Professional golfer Natalie Gulbis (showing what makes her an attraction on the LPGA Tour, left), answering reporters' questions after a Laurel Valley round with suspended Steelers quarterback and "great guy" Ben Roethlisberger, admitted that she (a) couldn't beat a male amateur on the golf course and (b) judges putts better than character.

Infinonytune: Squeeze Box, The Who

Ride Hard And Proud, PittGirl, But Ride Smart

PittGirl -- saddled, sassy and spurs jangling -- has undertaken another for-the-children crusade, apparently without recalling that its predecessor eventually revealed the weaknesses of an emotion-trumps-reason approach to complex issues.

PittGirl (far left, with McMutrie sisters of Haiti-to-Pittsburgh fame) and her fellow crusaders mean well, and the woman proposing the project seems reasonable, but the information and opinions of InsolvenCity councilor Doug Shields and Frick Park's neighbors should be considered before any conclusions concerning the propriety of a proposed memorial treehouse could be considered reliable.

Kraus Knows It Wasn't Raining On That South Side Resident's Property -- Does D.A. Zappala?

InsolvenCity councilor Bruce Kraus recognizes a piss-poor decision when he sees it.

No apparent comment -- let alone a media release or press conference (left, the district attorney outlines for reporters and cameras his plans for economic development in Braddock) -- from the district attorney yet.

Too busy investigating the G-20 police misconduct, Mr. Zappala? Preoccupied by the inquiry concerning how an innocent, unarmed honor student had hair ripped from his scalp while being beaten by police officers on an InsolvenCity sidewalk? Still looking into the Liberty and Lamar billboard irregularities?

Thank Goodness For Our Miss Germanskys

Nearly everyone -- at least, nearly everyone who amounts to anything worthwhile -- can remember every homeroom teacher from elementary school. Some teachers at Pittsburgh Schaeffer K-8, for reasons identified in this story, illustrate why good teachers become indelible memories. (Pink Floyd described why bad teachers are unforgettable.)

Sixty or seventy years from now, one of today's first-grade students at Schaeffer will think of "Miss Germansky" (right) and smile.

(Ed Dunlap, subsidizer of fundraisers at LeMont for just about every substandard pol in town -- all is forgiven.

Well, maybe one exception.)

UPDATE: The Post-Gazette apparently pulled the photograph that accompanied this message. It depicted a first-grade teacher, Andrea Germansky, helping other volunteers wrestle a child's new mattress into place.

Isn't This Special? Some 20th District Voters (Reportedly) Wrote In "Abolish This District"

Informal advisory from the Elections Division: "Abolish This District" received write-in votes in the special election in which special-needs candidate Adam Ravenstahl was elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly.

Infinonytune: From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come), Dave Edmunds