And the award winners are …
Drum roll, please … as we announce these very special awards, based on items recently in the news. Knuckleheaded Idea Award: To Republican gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann, whose property tax “reform” plan would freeze assessments on a property until it is sold. Under this harebrained scheme, the longer you could afford to hold onto your property, the sweeter of a deal you would get. It has nothing to do with fairness and surely would have a tough time passing constitutional muster. It has everything to do with appealing to Pennsylvania’s elderly voters. Football analogy note to Lynn: You’re running out of bounds on this.
New And Improved Legislator Award: To state Rep. Peter J. Daley II, D-California, who voted for the pay raise 10 months ago, took it immediately as unvouchered expenses, justified taking the money by saying he was using it to buy food vouchers for senior citizens – and who now wraps himself in the robe of reform. Yes, that’s right: Daley plans to introduce five pieces of legislation under his “Daylight Initiative.”
Daley wants to downsize the legislature, restrict its hours of debate and voting to 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., require a public referendum on legislative pay raises that exceed the yearly cost-of-living increases, change the rules for distributing Community Revitalization Program grant money and prohibit using property tax to fund basic education after 2012. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And we’ve all seen this “tell ’em what they want to hear” game before, so I remain skeptical. Anyone want to make a bet that Daley plans to retire by 2012?
You’re Doing Just What We Wanted Award: To all the clergy and religious faithful who’ve risen to the bait and made the controversial “The Da Vinci Code” movie a must-see film. This type of knee-jerk reaction happens all the time, whenever Hollywood trots out any movie dealing with any aspect of Christianity. All the producers of these movies care about, of course, is generating enough “buzz” so that everyone gets talking about the flick – and that a good many of those people will flock to the theater.
Wouldn’t it be great to see these same groups get all riled up about something more meaningful to everyday life, like economic or trade policy, tax reform or immigration? But those topics are a lot tougher to stake out a position on without ruffling some political feathers.
Knock It Off, Already Award: Leave it to the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Urban Land Institute to come up with yet another disparaging study on the Mon-Fayette Expressway and Southern Beltway projects, this time pointing out that a $3.5 billion funding shortfall exists. There seems to be no dearth of urban-area groups ready to periodically jump into the fray, trying to throw up yet another roadblock to completion of the modern and much-needed Pittsburgh-to-Morgantown highway. If Rome wasn’t built in a day, how do they expect a project of this magnitude to be?
It reminds me of the time years ago when a south-of-Uniontown stretch of the expressway was being threatened with holdup because someone found a rat with a longer-than-average tail, which environmentalists argued might be a subspecies. State Sen. Richard A. Kasunic, D-Dunbar, wasn’t buying that argument, and essentially told decision-makers, “This is the same rat that, if you found it in the garage of your house in the suburbs, you’d kill it with a shovel.”
Or maybe he referenced a baseball bat. But in any case, Kasunic was right on, in terms of principle. Most if not all of these “urban” and “suburban” institutes and planners live in areas that were bulldozed a long time ago. Always remember this: Anyone can commission a “study” that will inevitably tell you what the people commissioning the study want to hear.
John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award: This is a real award (no kidding), bestowed on U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, for speaking out against the direction of the war in Iraq. It is most deserved.
Paul Sunyak is Herald-Standard editorial page editor. Reach him at 724-439-7577 or psunyak@heraldstandard.com