The new CD, Live from Pittsburgh, by Mindy Simmons, is due soon.

Mindy's album release -- Live from Pittsburgh -- is on hold while Wilma takes aim on Mindy's hood

Hold onto your hat, dear friends of Southwestern Florida. Photo shows us together after she played a gig in 2003 at the Green Tree Swim Pool.

Mindy Simmons is about to release a new album, recorded while she performed in Pittsburgh. But first things first. Wilma is taking aim -- right at them.

American Eagle Outfitters

Pittsburgh Laurels & Lances - PittsburghLIVE.com On the 'Watch List' II: The American Eagle move. The big clothes retailer, now based in Marshall, plans to relocate its headquarters and hundreds of workers to Pittsburgh's SouthSide Works. It's great news for the new development; details are expected today. That said, a critical question is how much, if anything, this will cost the public? If taxpayers are being asked to help pay to move a company from one part of Allegheny County to another, it might not be the great deal that everyone is touting it to be."

Good to watch this now -- when it is too late. How about we watch a little sooner on the uptake.

The river park that is being talked about over near the AEO and REI is worthy of some serious considerations -- NOW.

RCAC hosts breakfast with Team 88's leader -- Swann -- on Monday

RCAC: "Eggs and Issues

An Event sponsored by Jan Rea

Featured Speaker: Lynn Swann
Monday, October 24th, 8am

The Rivers Club, One Oxford Centre

Cost is $35 for RCAC Members/$50 for all others.

To reserve a seat, please call RCAC at 412-281-9748 or email info@rcac.net"

County Candidates

Mark Purcell, Democrat

Wants to take politics out of property assessments by putting county controller in charge of valuations. Favors adding assessors in the field to improve accuracy.

We should take politics out of valuations of property. The best way to do that is to only tax the land. Then formulas on square foot of land can be applied to the various land footprints.

We used to have county assessers. But, they became, how should we say, shady -- from time to time. We really should have been better at protections for whistle-blowers and keeping the county assessment department above reproach. They were good, so I've come to understand. But, they needed to be excellent. And, the three county commissioners had a way of fussing with property values.

I would be in favor of county employees as assessors.

We could also make a change in the county charter to allow for an elected assessor. We don't need a register of wills to be elected. We could use an elected assessor. If the assessments are not square -- then the people toss the person out of office.

---

Matt Drozd, Republican.

Vows to vote against any tax increase. Wants to institute voter referendums for all tax increases and major spending items. Says county needs greater focus on job creation.

Yes, let's start to have some real democracy. Let's put more voter referendums into the landscape and vote if we should give American Eagle Outfitters more than $5-million.

Yes, let's not make tax increases. We are already taxed enough.

However, I'm not too sure what he means about the county needing to put a greater focus on job creation. The private sector makes jobs. Government has a poor record with job creation. No thanks. Perhaps I'll visit his web site to see what he means by that short statement.

---

Edward J. Kress, Republican.

Wants to create economic opportunity to reverse tide of young people leaving Allegheny County. Favors finding alternate sources of county government revenue by selling naming rights to parks, other county facilities.

The "alternative funding" efforts are fine, as per Les Ludwig's ideas. Bring them on. We should have never sold the naming rights to the Civic Arena to the Penguins. The Pens want to tear down the Civic Arena now.

However, I wonder what is up with the econimic opportunity efforts. Does he want to create more TIFs for young people that are not here? Or, does he want to help in the sponsoring of a YOUTH TECHNOLOGY SUMMIT as an annual event at the Convention Center so our kids, academics, parents, foundations, schools and volunteers can mingle with businesses?

---

James R. Burn, Republican

Favors assessment plan adopted by Allegheny County Council, but says county must work toward annual assessments to gain accuracy. Says he will bring financial stability and economic growth.

Great to hear that someone is against the current trend of freezes on assessments. We used to freeze property assessments and that leads to trouble.

Yes, we need financial stability, and yes, we need economic growth -- but how and where?

---

Michael J. Finnerty, Democrat -- no web site. Welcome to 2005. Sounds like an old fart.

Wants to create jobs and economic development. Favors incentives for building and development, especially in area near Pittsburgh International Airport. Seeks more consolidation of services such as purchasing with city, but would go slow with mergers of major offices.

I'd like to work against this type of thinking. I don't want to create jobs and econimic development by the airport and kill the city. If people want to buy that land -- let them do it on their own. We have an urban decay that needs more attention than development on greenfields by an airport that has few flights.

---

Doug Price, Republican. It breaks my heart to find out that Doug does not have a web site. But, at least he has a record to stand upon. He's been on council and you know what you're getting.

Seeks continued reform of county government by transforming treasurer and sheriff from elected to appointed positions. Favors developing the airport corridor by funding a new water treatment plant to serve two major development sites there.

Okay, I'm okay with a water treatment plant by the airport. That is a public infrastructure investment. That's great. We could do some 'green' development with better treatment of water sources, etc.

I've always liked Doug's approach to reform. I hope he keeps his seat.

---

Geneva McKee, Republican -- no web site, sadly.

Says assessments need to be made more fair so lower-priced properties do not subsidize underassessed properties. Favors cutting taxes overall to try to create jobs and keep people in the region.

---

Charles Martoni, Democrat -- no web site.

Favors economic development to keep young people in the area. Wants to develop brownfields. Favors government free of partisan rancor.

His web site is free of rancor -- and void of ideas. I don't mind a little rancor from time to time as democracy is messy. Martoni is no saint either. How we should develop brownfields is not understood. To put in big-box developers at tax-payers' expense isn't okay. Martoni has approved tiffs.

---

Your comments are welcomed too.

The other Pittsburgh mayoral candidates protest

Bob and Joe don't have a monopoly on the good ideas for fixing Pittsburgh.

A show-down will occur on Sunday morning at the TV studios as some other candidates will appear and expect to be put onto the telivision for the debates.

Furthmore, Bob O'Connor has said that he won't debate unless all the candidates are invited. Bob O'Connor knows that 100% of the people, with the lone exception of a few television executives who must not live in the city, want to see all the candidates on the debate stage. Bob knows he'll loose massive volumes of respect if he is going to debate without inclusion.

Bob wants to get a new group of people together to talk about equal opportunities for women and minorities and youth. Humm. He better walk the talk and go out of his way to appear on the public airways (TV stations get airway rights from public-controlled spectum) and be inclusive.

Furthermore, Bob O'Connor is going to get beat by Joe Weinroth in a head-to-head debate. Bob isn't good in one-on-one debates. This is why Bob wasn't mayor in 2001. Bob went on the air in 1-on-1 debates to Tom Murphy and lost the election.

Bob O'Connor would have won all the debates by a landslide in 2001 -- and would have been elected as the Democratic nominee in 2001's mayor race -- if Bob would have only insisted upon going into the five debates along with Leroy Hodge and Josh Pollock.

Bob fumbled them. We'll know in a few hours what Bob does in 2005.

2 Pittsburgh mayoral candidates protest Two candidates for Pittsburgh mayor protested their exclusion from televised debates yesterday.

Independent David Tessitor and Green Party candidate Titus North said they were not invited to debates to be taped tomorrow by PCNC and Nov. 4 by WTAE-TV. Only Democrat Bob O'Connor and Republican Joe Weinroth were invited.

Mr. Tessitor said the exclusion of candidates that are on the ballot amounts to 'silencing alternative points of view' and a 'breach of trust by the media.'

Mr. North said the media's view that small-party candidates can't win is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

All five candidates on the ballot have been invited to a debate to be taped by PCTV Channel 21 on Wednesday and untelevised forums on Tuesday and Nov. 3.

The other mayoral candidate on the Nov. 8 ballot is Jay M. Ressler of the Socialist Workers Party."

Mom goes to college swim meet and cheers for two sons -- at different teams

CollegeSwimming.com Barbara Farnham's alternate screams of 'Go, Daniel!' and 'Go, Adam!' at tomorrow's swim meet against the University of Tennessee are certain to echo in the ears of nearby fans.

Farnham is the mother of the All-American UK senior Daniel Farnham and UT sophomore Adam Farnham - two brothers, two rival swim teams.

Maryland editorial about PA politics and access to ballot

editorial

Pennsy shouldn't make third-party runs so tough

It's no surprise that America's two main political parties don't want to make it easy for a third or even a fourth party to muscle in on their turf.

But should it be impossible for third-party candidates to get on the ballot?

We say no, especially in the state of Pennsylvania, which some would argue was the cradle of the American political system.

Well, unless you're a Republican or a Democrat, the Keystone State's laws make it mighty difficult for any political movement in its infancy to survive.

The Associated Press reported that when Ken Krawchuk ran as the Libertarian Party candidate for governor in 2002, he needed to collect about 32,000 signatures from registered voters to get on the ballot.

About 21,000 of those were required by law, but the Krawchuk campaign obtained 11,000 more to ensure that the campaign wouldn't go bust if a significant number of signatures were challenged.

There is a good reason to be careful. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review this week reported that Pennsylvania's 1995 motor-voter law, which allows people to register when they renew a driver's license, has caused problems. It's a good idea in theory, but in practice election officials say it makes it difficult to purge from the rolls voters who have left the state.

But the state's difficulties in keeping track of who is registered and who isn't shouldn't have any bearing on how difficult it is to for third-party candidates to get on the ballot.

For example, the aforementioned Krawchuk, who said he might try a U.S. Senate bid in 2006, would need to gather 100,000 signatures to ensure himself a spot on the ballot.

The required number of signatures is 67,000. The rest would cover the campaign in case many signatures are successfully challenged.

How was the 67,000 figure arrived at? Pennsylvania law says that candidates need 2 percent of the number of votes cast for the highest vote getter in the last statewide election.

It's Krawchuk's bad luck that in the 2004 election, Robert P. Casey Jr. amassed a total of 3.4 million votes in his race for state treasurer.

Does it make sense that circumstances beyond a candidate's control should dictate the number of signatures, or that Krawchuk be required to obtain four times as many names as third-party candidates in 2004?

No, this law does not make any sense. It should be changed so that prospective candidates would need to gather signatures from a certain fixed percentage of the state's registered voters.

If that total is difficult to ascertain, election officials have to go with their best estimates, remembering that it is they - and not the candidates - who are charged with keeping track of such things.

Write to cure the pain. That's what this blog is all about!

Susan Barnhorst of the Nuin Center sent this along about "healing." Humm... The writing effort I put into this blog is to "heal" -- as in HEAL our City. There is a half-hour lecture called writing as therapy might blend well with blogging. If you'd like to heal our city, you can write to me and we'll get your ideas onto this blog. Then we'll talk about those ideas and see if they make sense and really work. Ours is about tough love medicine that aims to heal so we all can soar and live freely.

Festival of Healing at the Nuin Center, 5655 Bryant St. in Highland Park, free, on Saturday, October 29th from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm. Healing lectures
every half hour, demonstrations, health advice, prizes, organic food. Meet
our practitioners from bodywork, psychotherapy, and complementary and
alternative medicine. 412.661.6108 or nuincenter.com for more information.

Lectures are as follows:
11:00 am Massage Therapy for Chronic Pain and Injury
11:30 am Fibromyalgia Workshop-Natural Solutions
Noon Overcoming Anxiety and Fear Response
12:30 pm Acupuncture for Chronic Pain
1:00 pm Bringing Your Higher Self into Everyday Life (Meditation)
1:30 pm Easy Antidotes, For Everyday Aches
2:00 pm Writing as Therapy2:30 pm
Preventing and Treating Arthritis Through Proper Nutrition

PNC will boost city -- OR -- PNC robs the taxpayers with lots of corporate welfare.

Here comes santa clause -- with more corporate welfare. To take money for a private development is wrong.

PNC will boost city - PittsburghLIVE.com PNC Financial Services Group is expected to unveil plans in coming weeks to redevelop properties it owns on Fifth Avenue near its headquarters Downtown, giving a private boost to stumbling public attempts to breathe new life into the moribund city center.

But the effort won't come without a further infusion of taxpayers' money.

Gov. Ed Rendell hinted Friday he would be in Pittsburgh sometime around Thanksgiving to serve up a heaping helping of state subsidies for the latest redevelopment effort in the Fifth and Forbes corridor.

More meetings: Gaming Task Force

Oct 24 - 6:30-8:30, Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild
Nov 1 - 6:30-8:30, Goodwill Industries of Pgh Cafeteria
Nov 16 - 6:30-8:30, Regional Enterprise Tower 31st Floor

Crossing guard with red flag, white gloves and orange vest and hat. Crossing guards are a fixture at big cities, such as in Chengdu, China. They work for everyone's sake, not just school kids. Often at big intersections, there are four or more crossing guards at each corner.

I walk my kids to our neighborhood school.

Murphy's budget rejected - PittsburghLIVE.com

Guess who gets the short end of the stick, again and again? ....

The children.

Murphy's budget rejected by ICA (oversight board) A solution also has not been reached on paying for the city's school crossing guards.

For the past few years, the city and Pittsburgh Public Schools have split the cost of school crossing guards. The mayor included $1.75 million to pay crossing guards for half a year.
The district, however, informed the city that because of its own financial problems, it will no longer pay half of the cost.

The cost of the crossing guards should have never been transfered over to the budget of the Pgh Public Schools. The crossing guards work the streets and the functions are much like the police force. Crossing guards help motorist, private school children, college students, elderly, and the police.

We could protect our kids by giving them all their own cars -- or build more elevated sidewalks above the streets -- or have them walk with some supervision in the most dangerous intersections with crossing guards. The crossing guards could either write tickets and be employed by the police department or else they might be school employees who can't even slap motorist with a chewing gum on the nose punishment.

Sign-up now for Local Government Academy course on Excellence

..:: ABC Signup.com ::.. Date: 11/10/2005
Registration Ends: 11/4/2005 6:00 PM (ET)

Register Now - Individual Registration
Program: 2005 Road to Excellence Conference: Form Follows Function
Date: November 10, 2005
Time: 9:00 AM - 3:30 PM (Registration at 8:30 AM)

When it rains, it pours. No school to day at Chartiers Valley - but what about Bill's talk?

No school on Friday, today, at CV. But, Bill is slated to speak. Sorry.

Chartiers Valley High School graduate and Pittsburgh City Councilman Bill Peduto will be feature presenter today at the eighth annual Business Information and Government Career Cluster, featuring 300 students from his alma mater and seven neighboring high schools.

These alumni will be featured presenters: Bill Diffenderfer, crim inal attorney; Herb Higginbotham, vice president of Michael Baker Corp. and former director of Pittsburgh International Airport; and Alan Hertzberg, Allegheny County Common Pleas judge and former city councilman.

Clusters are offered throughout the year to provide students with information about career opportunities.

Conference attendees will be from Chartiers Valley, Bethel Park, Canon-McMillan, Mt. Lebanon, Peters Township, South Fayette, South Park and Upper St. Clair high schools.

The districts will host career clusters on a rotating basis. Chartiers Valley and South Park share the hosting duties for the business information and government career cluster. Other clusters held throughout the year are engineering, industrial systems and trades; arts and humanities; and health and human services.

The career cluster program is primarily for sophomores and juniors.

Perhaps it is time for Bill to start speaking again about campaign finance reform, now that the election cycle is about to end. We ended our work on the campaign finance reform task force -- but nothing was done about it -- yet. Leadership is expected, welcomed and the holding pattern is nothing but a delay.

Speaking of delays, this weeks city council meeting must have had nearly a dozen instances where those at the table said, "Hold for one week." They have been holding many bits of legislation. Humm. Some might say that the delays and do nothingness is better policy than what we've been getting. At least they are not putting additional hurts on the city.

Let's see if this trend continues. We'll be holding for the next mayor soon enough. And then he'll be holding for the next thought to enter the scene. Then we'll hold until we get the blessings of the overloards.

Before you know it, our kids will grow up and leave the area, for another with less water main breaks.

The Pitt News - Ludwig refuses to leave race

Les got some nice ink in the Pitt News. Great article.

The Pitt News - Ludwig refuses to leave race Ludwig refuses to leave race

Les Ludwig has become a "household look" for those in attendance at Pittsburgh City Council meetings.
The 2005 mayoral candidate's signature yellow shirt, black pants and consistent attendance can't be missed, said friend and Editor in Chief of Conscience newsletter, David Adams.

Furthermore, the one article about Tuesday's debate says that all six candidates will be attending. That must mean that Les has been invited too. Only five are on the official ballot. Ludwig is running as a write-in candidate.

To be fair with the slant in the article, Les has updated his wardrobe. I knocked him a bit for his fleece jacket in the past. In the past months, Less has been wearing some suits and looks like a million bucks these days -- along with his car that I've shown in this blog in the past. But, here is another look at his new wheels.
Les updated with new wheels to go with new threads.

What are you giving out for your trick-or-treaters this year? I'm doing CDs with OpenOffice

Trick-or-treat fun is right around the corner.

Come to trick or treat at our house, 108 South 12th Street, on the historic South Side, and you'll get a CD with OpenOffice 2.0.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Is Here

20 October, 2005

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the productivity suite that individuals, governments, and corporations around the world have been expecting for the last two years. Easy to use and fluidly interoperable with every major office suite, OpenOffice.org 2.0 realises the potential of open source. Besides a powerful new database module and advanced XML capabilities, OpenOffice.org natively supports the internationally standardised OpenDocument format, which several countries, as well as the U.S. state of Massachusetts, have established as the default for office documents. More than any other suite, OpenOffice.org 2.0 gives users around the globe the tools to be engaged and productive members of their society.

Available in 36 languages, with more on the way, and able to run natively on Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X (X11) and several other platforms, OpenOffice.org banishes software segregation and isolation and dramatically levels the playing field. And, with its support for the OASIS standard OpenDocument format, OpenOffice.org eliminates the fear of vendor lock in or format obsolescence. The OpenDocument format can be used by any office application, ensuring that documents can be viewed, edited and printed for generations to come. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is a breath of hope for small economies that can now have a local language office suite well adapted to their needs and to their economical possibilities, reducing their dependency on the interests of proprietary software vendors.

"OpenOffice.org is on a path toward being the most popular office suite the world has ever seen and is providing users with safety, choice, and an opportunity to participate in one of the broadest community efforts the Internet has ever seen. As a member of that community, I'd like to offer my heartiest congratulations." - Jonathan Schwartz - President and CEO of Sun Microsystems.

Built by a community including Sun Microsystems, its primary sponsor and contributor, Novell, Red Hat, Debian, Propylon, Intel, as well as independent programmers, translators, writers, and marketers; OpenOffice.org 2.0 demonstrates the success, dedication and proficiency of the open source software community.

That community now includes the City of Vienna, which recently started deploying OpenOffice.org throughout. "We are very happy about the functionality and quality of the OpenOffice.org software. We are confident that OpenOffice.org will be made available to all of our 18,000 workstation users." - Brigitte Lutz, City of Vienna.

Louis Suárez-Potts, OpenOffice.org Community Manager, commented that "OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the culmination of a collaborative process involving thousands working in dozens of languages everywhere in the world. It shows that open source can produce software of the highest quality and assure the robustness, usability and security that users expect in their office suite."

In addition to the OpenDocument format, the redesigned user interface and a new database module, OpenOffice.org 2.0 also adds improved PDF support, a superior spreadsheet module, enhanced desktop integration and several other features that take advantage of its advanced XML capabilities, such as the ability to easily create, edit and use XForms.

For more detailed information regarding OpenOffice.org 2.0, please refer to the Press Kit at http://www.openoffice.org/press/2.0/index.html .

Congratulations All,

The OpenOffice.org Community

Debate gets all participants in Mayor's race. See ya on Tuesday night.

To organize a debate is a lot of work. Hats off to the these fine citizens for the opportunities to improve our discussions and make smarter voter decisions. We need debates more frequently. Come out and support this event if you can.

Urban League Young Professionals -- Pittsburgh and PUMP are sponsoring a Mayoral Candidate Debate on Tuesday, October 25 from 6:00 - 8:00pm at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, 5941 Penn Avenue in East Liberty. Six mayoral candidates have confirmed attendance. Duquesne University Law Professor, Joseph Sabino Mistick will moderate the debate.

Come and hear the candidates debate issues important to our community such as: urban development, transportation, public education, community relations with law enforcement, municipal consolidation, and fiscal issues.

Local candidates are encouraged to bring their campaign literature.

Debate organizer and recent campaign manager, K.B.
One of the debate organizers is a green party activist, Katrina B, recent campaign manager at Elect.Rauterkus.com.