And sometimes politics is so local that it crash lands on my front porch on a snow covered morning before I even had a chance to put the coffee on. Which happened a few years ago when a car came tobogganing down the hill in front of my house, took out the porch railings and came to a rest on top of the gas meter.
Luckily, no one was hurt. Fire and EMS showed up in case the gas line that was broken open decided to misbehave and blow my house to bits. The cops showed up to create the accident report and to act as spectators because, if it wasn't my house that had a car where it didn't belong, it was quite the sight to behold.
All of the public safety types were on their radios telling dispatch to send a salt truck immediately because the firetruck was unable to get anywhere near the house or the hydrant that is directly across the street from me. This was at 9am. The salt truck did not come through the neighborhood until about 2pm which was well after everything had settled and the scene was cleared.
The lone police officer that spoke to me, and actually treated me as a human being, advised me to call the city's 311 number to tell them what happened so they could send a crew out to put a guardrail in front of the house. That was over three years ago and there is still no guardrail in front of my house. I have left messages and emails at the offices of the mayor and my city council person, Anthony Coghill, all to no avail.
Since then, I've gotten myself a new porch and the gas meter has been moved out of the line of fire. My neighbor ended up getting himself a new porch when a car lost its brakes in the middle of summer. There have also been several near misses with other cars over the past three years. We've both got work orders with the city to have a guardrail put in but the city hasn't bothered to show up to put the thing in the ground.
Once the chemically induced antics of the late Toronto mayor, Rob Ford, became public knowledge, everyone wondered how he kept getting elected to various public offices. Rob Ford kept getting elected because if a constituent called his office with a problem he'd go visit the person to get a better handle on the issue and then he would see to it personally that the problem was fixed.
The point I'm trying to make in this long winded tale is that I would much rather have the crack addled ghost of Rob Ford representing me than Bill Peduto or Anthony Coghill. Fuck it, I'll take the crack addled ghost of Marion Barry at this point. Barry and Ford may have had their problems with extracurricular substances but at least they seemed to care about the people they represented.
Bill Peduto is a corporate shill that's gentrifying his way across the city. He's too busy counting his campaign donations from real estate developers to try to figure out where everyone will live once housing costs have surpassed far beyond the incomes of Pittsburgh's residents. His campaign slogan may as well be “Fuck The Poor.”
Peduto's indifference toward the less affluent citizens of Pittsburgh shows that he represents the worst of this current crop of “liberal” politicians. He shows more concern over luring corporations to the city with tax giveaways than the actual functions of a city government. And that's not even taking into consideration his inability to prevent his police officers from tear gassing and macing peaceful protestors.
The current mayor's reluctance to stand up to the police union shows that he really has no power when it comes to the functions of the city's “law enforcement.” He'll supposedly makes some sort of decree which is completely ignored and then the buck is passed back and forth until the news cycle stops caring about the controversy and then it's back to the usual business of cracking skulls and violating the rights of the citizenry.
Anthony Coghill is a different ball of weirdness. He reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld where George got a job for a company and had no idea what he was supposed to do so he pretended like he was busy all the time and hoped no one would notice how incompetent he was. That seems to be Coghill's approach to being on city council.
It feels like Coghill is a throwback to the public servants of the 1980s who didn't do anything noticeable for the communities they represented but still somehow managed to get reelected for some reason. The few times that he did manage to get my attention was during the social upheaval of 2020 when he said some spectacularly dumb things about why police funding couldn't be diverted into other, more necessary, parts of the city's budget.
The councilman said something along the lines of having friends that were police officers so the budget shouldn't be lowered. I have relatives that were city police officers and I can say without equivocation that they fell into the category of “Fucking Assholes” on more than one occasion over the years.
Coghill also said that there were a lot of hills in his district so we in fact would need more police. As someone that lives precariously perched on the side of a mountain in Beechview, I am not disputing that there are hills in the city's fourth district but I fail to realize how more police are the answer to any possible issue that the topography of my neighborhood may present. I'm not a civil engineer, nor do I play one on television, but I don't think that tanks, teargas and rubber bullets would stop the flash floods on Route 51.
The other thing about Coghill that bothers me is that all of the houses in my neighborhood that had (or still have) T*ump signs in their yards a few months ago now have signs supporting Coghill. I don't know what that's saying but it's definitely saying something that I want nothing to do with.
If you're looking for a mayoral candidate to vote for, check out Ed Gainey. He seems to be willing to give some attention to neighborhoods that have been cut off from the city by highways, sports stadiums and casinos such as the Hill District and the North Side. Hopefully, he'll be able to stem the tide of gentrification that's been brought on by the tech boom in neighborhoods like East Liberty and Lawrenceville. And maybe some sort of assistance can be given to the citizens of neighborhoods like Beltzhoover that seem to have been completely forgotten about over the past several decades.
If you live in the South Hills, please consider Bethani Cameron to replace Coghill on city council. She's worked as a staffer for a few council people over the years as well as environmental groups.
Their websites can be found here and here, if you'd like more information.
Keep an eye out for the handful of questions on the ballot as well. The Republicans in our state legislature want to rewrite Pennsylvania's state constitution to give themselves more power over emergency declarations. As if having a dumb fuck like Daryl Metcalfe in charge of making decisions more important than what he should have for lunch would be a good idea.
There's a ballot measure to ban no knock warrants in the city and another to ban solitary confinement at the Allegheny County Jail. Getting both of those over the hump would be steps in the right direction.
There are dirtbags in both political parties trying to drag their stinking hides all over us. Electoral politics does present itself as a steaming heap but the only way to keep the pigfuckers at bay is to vote against them. So let's get the bastards.
