Alabama bayou getting some expert advice on Katrina rebuilding

Alabama bayou getting some expert advice on Katrina rebuilding BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. A panel of experts whose Hurricane Katrina rebuilding advice upset some New Orleanians will focus on Bayou La Batre's storm recovery in a weeklong visit.

Arriving tomorrow (Sunday) night, a 10-member panel from the Washington, DC-based Urban Land Institute brings a range of expertise, including developers, architects, market analysts, and urban planners.

The panel includes former Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy and former U-L-I Chairman Smedes York of Raleigh, North Carolina.

The panelists will interview about 70 people on Tuesday about the bayou's future and rebuilding efforts before spending Wednesday and Thursday preparing their presentation for delivery Friday morning at Bayou La Batre Community Center.

OMG. Run.

Talk about being irresponsible...

Blip.tv and some Rauterkus videos and Panda images

Check out the first videos to my new BLIP.TV site. My Profile - blip.tv (beta) Rauterkus' video blog

More is on the way. I've got other videos at YouTube.com/rauterkus. But the YouTube has a 100 meg limit per upload. The Panda photo slide thingie -- no audio -- was too large for there, but fit at Blip.TV.

Reactions welcomed.

Transit hearings on possible fare increases shift into reverse

Don't do today what can be put off until tomorrow. Create a real crisis at the last minute. No sense in planning for one in advance. What was delayed with last-minute band-aids in the past year(s) can wait again for more band-aids.

Transit hearings on possible fare increases shift into reverse State and Allegheny County officials have asked the Port Authority to hold off on public hearings on a possible fare increase and service cuts until a state commission finishes its report on long-term transportation funding.

Don't you hate it when you see the county executive say -- "Wait until after the election." Or, where the exact words, "What's the rush? We've got to break ground on the twin tunnels first, then pull the rug out from under the poor?"

"Public hearings.... how old fashioned!"

Free Wiki for teachers

Folks, if you are NOT a teacher, then go to our Platform.For-Pgh.org/wiki/ and start to edit and insert your content there.

If you are a teacher and want to use the wiki space in your teaching and classroom, enjoy the tool and technology with the link above.

Governor Rendell's health good

Catherine Baker Knoll, Lt. Gov, has been adn will continue to be one short step away from being governor. Furthermore, Ed Rendell has aspirations of being on the Dem ticket for 2008's race for President. He might need to bolt from PA in the future, and would be giving us CBK as the state's top leader.

Governor Rendell's health good
Gov. Ed Rendell is slightly overweight and takes Zocor to lower his cholesterol, but overall he's a 'healthy, 62-year-old man,'' doctors say.

The results of his annual physical were released yesterday by his campaign. He took the exam July 17.

Mr. Rendell, who is known around the Capitol and in his hometown of Philadelphia as someone who loves to eat, weighs 257 pounds, which is seven more than when he was elected in 2002. His height is 5 feet 11 inches.

To control his weight he exercises 30 to 35 minutes a day on a treadmill and rides a stationary bike, said campaign spokesman Dan Fee.

Diversity Calls

The Future of White Boy clubs at FactoryCity The Future of White Boy clubs

LEAP -- counter on the drug war with editorial wonks

blog.myspace.com/leapspeakers National Conference of Editorial Writers Annual Convention, Pittsburgh, PA

Newspaper editorial writers are getting a dose of reality when they wander thru the exhibit area at their annual convention this wk, when they round the corner and encounter the LEAP exhibition booth, staffed by the savvy experts HOWARD WOOLDRIDGE and STEVE HEATH. Howard, is, of course, a co-founder of LEAP and a member of the e-board while Steve is a longtime activist focusing on media, OpEd efforts and Letters to the Editor. Steve's wife Doreen is helping out at this very important conference, too. Rarely do newspaper editorial boards write an opinion on drug war efficacy--and hardly ever do they write about the idea of ending drug prohibition--but mostly that is due to the fact that people fm the criminal justice system have approached them to advocate ending the War on Drugs. That's how it is done: editorial staffs host politicians, public health specialists, single issue advocates and others into their offices to pitch to them their views. After grilling the guests and studying the issue they usually come out with an opinion piece under the masthead of the paper so this is a unique opportunity for them to meet LEAP, hear our pitch and then we'll work to set up interviews around the country. Which begs the question:

have you ever called or written to your editorial board about Drug War efficacy? It's an easy bit of activism that everyone can perform. Look at your paper today...find the editorial/opinion section (like this ONE) and find out who the people are behind the opinions. Get the contact information and send it to me AFTER you have first attempted to reach them yourself.

Editorial Blog in OR - merging with Pgh -- and not about Luke

Editorial Blog - StatesmanJournal.com: "A politician who's not afraid to speak his mind

Oregon has puny politicians compared with some in the East.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell says what he thinks. That’s refreshing – especially for a candidate seeking re-election.

Rendell, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, spoke to the National Conference of Editorial Writers yesterday in Pittsburgh. He didn’t mince words – about either his fellow Democrats or about the Bush administrations.

Democrats, he said, are afraid to take a stand. Democratic politicians are worried about getting elected, or re-elected, instead of fighting for what they believe in. (Sound familiar, Oregonians?)"

Others in the editorial biz are blogging from Pittsburgh too, so they say.

Arraignment date set for lawmaker's aide - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Arraignment date set for lawmaker's aide - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Debora Romaniello, state Rep. Michael Diven's chief of staff, is scheduled to be arraigned Dec. 6 on charges stemming from an accusation that she provided false signatures -- including at least five of dead people -- on the Brookline Republican's nominating petitions.

Paddle on Lake Erie, three day recap of a Sojourn Event

Sounded like fun.

Re-cap document Paddlers Congregate on Lake Erie’s Shoreline

Photo from our two-week camp in Canada, Chikopi, with Ak-o-mak on 'water day.' This photo was taken as the kids (all swimmers) were about to start a 400-meter canoe race. Dozens of other boats were streaming to the start as well. Few would finish as a massive dunking rage was about to unfold!
Fun and not much of a 'sojourn.' (Click image for larger view.)

Lots of Lots

Last weekend I went to the Sprout Fund event called an Idea Roundup. It was worth the $10 entry fee, for sure. Small groups worked in many classrooms and I was happy to be with old GZ (Ground Zero) pals, Jon and Christine, now both in State College for academic work.

One of the strong ideas that surfaced in our group came from them and dealt with vacant land. Plenty of properties are not being used within the city.

Another group also worked on the same concept and used a clever, "Lots of Lots" handle.

Vacant land fix-up is a worthy action. But the plans run into some serious hurdles, such as ownership. And, when you look at the bigger situations, we should be moving those bits of ground to private ownership and taxable property. Philly had this attitude in the past but it has done an about face.

August Incentive Taxation — Center for the Study of Economics We're Pretty Vacant...And We Don't Care

That used to be the sad song of the City of Philadelphia and its assessment arm, the Bureau of Revision of Taxes.

About 40,000 vacant parcels of land sat for years, revalued when there was a sale, otherwise out of sight, out of mind and out of city coffers.

No longer. Now, the city realizes that accurate vacant land values mean more city revenue. They realize that city services create land value, and that value should be recouped.

This summer, 20,000 vacant parcels will be revalued. It’s high time. A glance at current vacant land values would make Paris Hilton blush: The lot at 1401 South 54th Street in the troubled Kingsessing neighborhood is a case in point.

• The lot was purchased in 2004 for $11,000.
• The official “market” value? $2,400
• The official “assessed” value? $640
• Total tax bill? $53!

Meanwhile the house next door pays about 10 times more at $570 a year.

The overdue reassessment of vacant land is welcome. Next step: cut the taxes on the poor homeowner, and raise the holding cost of vacant lots. How? Land Value Taxation.

He ran for Mayor of Pittsburgh in 2005. Recently, he ran into the undemocratic democrats.

Titus North, Green Party Candidate for US Congress. Is he on the ballot or not?

Stop Big Media - Don't Let The FCC Cover Up Facts

Stop Big Media - Don't Let The FCC Cover Up Facts Just as the Federal Communications Commission is poised to open the floodgates to wholesale consolidation, comes news that former Chairman Michael Powell buried a study showing media consolidation is harmful to local news reporting. The FCC can't simply cover up evidence, ignore the public outcry, and hand over local media to the likes of News Corp., General Electric and Disney. They need to hear from you first.

Use the form below to speak out against FCC efforts to make Big Media bigger. Use the text provided or write your own comments about how media consolidation will impact your community.

Dragon Boat Races this weekend on the Mon

I'd rather see real people in swim races.

6abc.com: PA Supreme Court Reinstates Raises for Judges

6abc.com: PA Supreme Court Reinstates Raises for Judges HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - September 14, 2006 - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Thursday reinstated pay raises for 1,200 elected judges and district judges in a decision adding new fuel to an issue that has roiled state politics for more than a year.

The opinion:

Party.

Pointer: Three Rivers Post & Standard -- Don’t Mess with the Bosses In Government Gambling

Gambling: "Well, I’m personally no fan of gambling, but neither am I a fan of laws that prohibit adults of sound mind making consensual decisions among themselves. That means, as far as I’m concerned, if you want to play a little online blackjack or roulette, it is your business and nobody else’s.

The crackdown is yet to come. It will be big.

The sky isn't falling, but the boot on the necks of others is going to hurt.

We see in the paper that the projections at The Meadows Slots Parlor next to the race track has a wide range of expectations. The kickback to give tax relief seems marginal. But that is only part of the story yet to unfold.

When these slot locations don't make enough money -- they'll start to attack others. They'll be hungry and they'll have some cash flow. And, they'll want to be fed, eating what comes between customers and their purses.

Furthermore, the slots deal isn't going to be enough to break even. They'll need to expand to table games and all sorts of other revenue streams.

Op-ed column: Zero-sum games by David Schlosser, candidate in Arizona for U.S. Congress

Source

When there are two people competing for a finite set of resources, whatever one person secures is lost to the other. In a two-party political system, what one party wins, the other party loses. Game theorists call this concept a “zero-sum game.” The logical assumption is that the two parties represent the opposite ends of the political spectrum. Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives.

A logical assumption, but – like most conventional wisdom – wrong. Republicans and Democrats are two sides of the same coin. While those parties may be polarized, they do not represent a true alternative to each other. With rare and easily counted exceptions, both parties advocate the continual expansion of the Federal government into more and more varied parts of Americans lives. Both advocate spending priorities that exceed our ability to pay for them. Both believe the tax code is a tool for granting favors and encouraging or discouraging particular behaviors. Neither so opposes illegal immigration, pork-barrel spending, or the corrupting influence of special-interest campaign funding that it will pass any legislation to actually address those problems.

Americans aren’t used to zero-sum games. At the grocery store, they can choose among hundreds of breakfast cereals and, if they don’t find a cereal they like, they can choose oatmeal, yogurt, a muffin, or fruit. Dozens of brands of automobiles, hundreds of stereos, thousands of styles of carpet and tile and wood and laminate, tens of thousands of book titles – Americans enjoy an embarrassment of riches in virtually every aspect of their lives, except their political choices. Examining the positions of Republicans and Democrats proves there is virtually no difference among their policy positions.

... (snip) ...

The dynamism of our culture and economy is based on circumventing the limits of a zero-sum game. Rather than worrying about how to take away someone else’s piece of pie, leaders and innovators figure out how to make the pie bigger, which benefits everyone. One of the last bastions of zero-sum thinking is the two-party system, in which Republicans and Democrats act as if they own the seats in Congress. Until voters break away from the zero-sum thinking of the two parties, they will fail to acknowledge the real owners of those seats: American citizens.

Full article and other notes from author / candidate reside in his Platform.For-Pgh.org page concerning:

Health care,

Dismal public (primary and secondary) education,

Iraq,

Gay marriage,

Social Security and Medicare,

Immigration.

Green Party Heachaches from the Dems -- Dems bent on breaking democracy

This is exactly what I didn't want to do and was not able to do. I came back from Canada after coaching at camp and talked with Titus North, Green candidate for US Congress. Titus had been sleeping in a tent in Harrisburg, thanks to the undemocratic Democrats.

This is no way to run a democracy. This is shameful politics from the Democrats.

Green Party candidate prepares for day in court
MARTHA RAFFAELE, Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa. - The Green Party's U.S. Senate candidate hopes to persuade a state judge that he has gathered enough signatures to allow him to complete against Republican Sen. Rick Santorum and Democratic state Treasurer Bob Casey on the Nov. 7 ballot.

A Commonwealth Court hearing on a lawsuit filed by state Democrats is slated to begin Thursday amid a tension-fraught review of signatures collected by Carl Romanelli, who political observers have said could hurt Casey's chances of unseating Santorum, the Senate's third-ranking Republican.

State law required Romanelli, a railroad industry consultant and former family court officer from Wilkes-Barre, to collect 67,070 signatures to qualify for the ballot this year. The Democrats allege that more than 69,000 of the roughly 94,000 signatures he gathered - aided by Republicans who bankrolled the effort and Santorum campaign staffers who assisted with the legwork - include numerous fake names, unregistered voters and illegible signatures.

The hearing date comes toward the end of the fifth straight week in which volunteers for both sides have been reviewing the signatures to determine how many are valid.

Tensions have caused two public disturbances during the process. A scuffle broke out last month between Green and Democratic Party volunteers, and on Sept. 5 an independent Congressional candidate helping Romanelli was charged with disorderly conduct.

Although he acknowledges that there have been difficulties, Romanelli, 47, said he remains optimistic that he will prevail.

"I still have all the confidence in the world in our signatures," Romanelli said Tuesday. "It's ridiculous to see the haggling over the signatures, day in and day out."

But before the hearing can begin in earnest, both sides must jointly file papers indicating how many signatures they agree are invalid.

Clifford B. Levine, a Pittsburgh attorney representing the Democrats, said that as of Monday night, the two sides had agreed that more than 28,718 signatures were invalid. That's roughly 2,000 more than the 26,760 that would have to be invalidated to disqualify Romanelli from the ballot.

"We've been going through five weeks where the Green Party's representative has agreed with the petitioner's representative," Levine said. "Nobody forced their hand."

But Lawrence M. Otter, Romanelli's lawyer, contended that some of the signatures considered possibly invalid were erroneously classified as such because of problems with the state's electronic voter registry, which is being used to verify them. For example, Otter said, in some instances the system has indicated that it has no record of a registered voter's signature on file.

"It's a classic example - you're disenfranchising someone," Otter said.

Otter has even used subpoenas to obtain tax records and driver's license records of voting-age Pennsylvanians from the state revenue and transportation departments in order to prove the validity of any disputed signatures.

Pennsylvania law requires minor-party and independent candidates to collect a number of signatures equal to 2 percent of the ballots cast for the largest vote-getter in the last statewide election. This year's threshold, because it is based on Casey's record vote count in winning the treasurer's office in 2004, was set at an unusually high 67,070 signatures.

A separate matter pending before the state Supreme Court could also determine Romanelli's fate.

Otter is appealing a state judge's decision rejecting Romanelli's arguments that the 2 percent signature threshold should be based on last year's judicial retention elections, which would have cut the number required to fewer than 16,000. The high court has not yet heard arguments in that case.

Could and WOULD you attend a Candidate Forum on Oct 30?

This letter was part of "tidbits" from our UU Church, Sunnyhill. The church is located in Mt. Lebo but has members from many areas south of the rivers.

---

Dear Sunnyhill Members and Friends,

We'd love to plan a special event from 7 to 8 pm for Monday, October 30, at Sunnyhill. We've hosted CANDIDATE FORUMS in the past and we'd love to do so again -- but only if we get a strong promise from our core supporters that this is an event that they'll attend and even promote to other friends and co-workers.

Our goal is to bring in four candidates to each provide us with a 10-minute policy talk and field a couple of questions. These would be ALL the people on the ballot -- not just from one party. We want an inclusive event -- but not a 'real debate.'

The candidates we want to invite are the ones who are running for PA HOUSE of Representatives (Harrisburg) and the US House (DC's Congress). They are the ones on the ballot for Mt. Lebo come November 7.

We figure opinions have been established for US Senate and Governor already.

So, please RSVP YES or NO if you'd be able to come to a one-hour event from 7 pm to 8 pm on Monday, October 30, 2006 at Sunnyhill to hear from candidates on the ballot.

Mark will tally the replies. If we hit a critical mass and get a commitment from a sizable audience, we'll make posters for the event, confirm with the speakers and proceed. Otherwise, resume you're regually scheduled programming.....

Mail to: Mark @ Rauterkus . com
YES and HOW MANY _________ you'll be bringing.

NO. Can't attend.

Stay tuned.....