The (more than) Semi-Annual (often) Autoharp House Concert Series

When does the O'Hara Township hold its meetings? I'd love to go there and inject a sense of freedom into their meetings and offer a clue as to the right to assemble.

Check this out.

The (more than) Semi-Annual (often) Autoharp House Concert Series Things are moving along with our Federal civil rights complaint against O'Hara Township. The case is now on appeal to the Federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals. More information and documentation is available here. And of course we're continuing to accumulate legal bills to support the suit. So we're asking for help from everyone who hosts house concerts, performs at house concerts, or attends house concerts. There are at least two ways you can help.

Presented to Allegheny County Council with Erik

Tonight, Erik, my son, and I went to Alleghney County Council's meeting and gave a public comment at the end of the meeting.

I talked a bit about red tape. Dan Onorato is going to China, and I'll blog about it from Pittsburgh. We've been to China three times in the past couple of years.

But I've been running into 'red tape' here in Allegheny County with the Dept. of Elections and especially in Harrisburg. I've been trying to obtain a form as an email attachment, DSBE 210-C PB (rev. 2/07). I'm sure it is on someone's desk top in Harrisburg, perhaps as a WORD file. But the only copy I can get here in Pittsburgh is on paper.

I really need an electronic version of the form.

To create it has been a pain.

In talking about the form, I passed around a copy of our nomination papers that show the various offices we're running candidates.

Erik talked about Single Payer Health Care. He did a much better job at speaking than I did, so everyone says.

I think you can watch the meeting online. We were at the VERY end of the meeting.


Another mention, but I didn't get to it, was about swimming elsewhere in the meeting. The swimmers of B.P, N.A. Oakland Catholic, and even a diver got notice for winning WPIALs.

IceRinkEvents - interested in Neville Ice RFP

IceRinkEvents

Petition thing resolved -- I THINK

I'M EXCITED.

I think I got the petition thing resolved. It is now being tested by others. If you can, send me an email and I'll send you a petition to print on your legal sized paper.

I know that there were some out there helping on this. Thanks! I think we got it now.

It goes down to a 720k PDF file. Must be printed front and back.

STEEL CITY DERBY DEMONS PRESENT THE SPRING FLING-HER!!

Saturday, April 21st, doors 5:30 / game 6:30
BladeRunners in Harmarville

TICKETS ARE GOING FAST!! OUR FIRST TWO BOUTS SOLD OUT!! GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!! SEASON TICKET PACKAGES NOW AVAILABLE
Tickets and more information are available online: www.steelcityderbydemons.com

Tickets also at: Brave New World, 406 S. Craig Street in Oakland, 412-682-5007. Hot Rod Piercing, 95 S. 16th Street, South Side, 412-431-6077.

2007 SEASON SCHEDULE:

Saturday, April 21st, Wrecking Dolls vs. Bitch Doctors

Saturday, May 19th, Slumber Party Slashers vs. Wrecking Dolls

Saturday, June 16th, Hot Metal Hellions vs. Bitch Doctors

Saturday, July 7th, Slumber Party Slashers vs. Bitch Doctors

Saturday, August 18th, Hot Metal Hellions vs. Wrecking Dolls

Saturday, September 8th, Championship bout

Clarke Thomas: The elections aren't over yet

Clarke Thomas: The elections aren't over yet Clarke Thomas: The elections aren't over yet
Even without a race for mayor, hot issues remain in the local May primaries

UNREAL. The elections are NOT over yet. Pinch me. Is he really talking about 2007 or does he mean 2009? I got to meet this guy. Why is he a "senior editor" at the P-G and has a verizon.net email address? Perhaps he hacked the P-G site?

My Comments to City Council - Wed, 4-4-2007

Notes from my statement to city council today:

1. Thumbs up to Michael Phelps and the rest of the USA Swimmers for such a great performance at the World Championships. Phelps won seven gold medals and set a few new world records.

I'm entering the election on November 6, 2007, in multiple events. I too hope to set new records.

A goal of mine is to make history, not be a slave of it.
I wore a red Beijing Olympic polo shirt. We hope to attend the 2008 Olympic Games and see witness some of the competitions ourselves.

2. At 7 pm on Tuesday, April 17, 2007, I've called a community meeting to be held at the Phillips Elementary School to talk about the RFP and the now-closed city-owned ice rink on the South Side. The RFP has finally come, thank goodness. The facility has been a dark hole in the neighborhood, if not the county, for nearly a decade. All are welcome to attend and share insights.

3. The Pittsburgh Promise is a big lie. Others have been to council chambers recently. When they tell lies, it hurts everyone. People are skeptical of politicians for good reasons. The money is not there and it is not going to materialize. If people on council want to worry about the future of our schools, there are many other better things that should be done.

• Worry about school buildings. Work with the URA and be certain to take over the closed school buildings. The URA has been dragging its feet on taking the responsibility of the closed school at the back of Mt. Washington, South Hill High School, for YEARS. There are plenty of closed school buildings that are in the city that are a major drain to the school district now.


• Worry about city-wide transportation. Focus on PAT. Make sure our kids can get to school and back. Get our teachers and staff to school as well. Busing is a major cost and the flow of traffic on our roads is bad.


• Worry about after school. Get the city to join the WPIAL. But that means folks in suburban districts will need to and want to come to the city after dark. Oh my. We need our kids to compete in a global marketplace but can't ever play sports against the others in Allegheny County. An iron-curtain circles our kids and we need to play together. Raise the bar there.


• Work on access to our facilities. Back in Save Our Summer efforts of 2004 we pointed out that there were dozens of great indoor swim pools, gyms, computer labs that are closed to our kids and our communities throughout the summers, weekends and evenings.

4. Nearly an hour of online debate coverage from the Dem candidates in the city council district 9 race is now posted at my blog. Blog readers know this, but the word needs to spread to others in the community.

5. I've been in a battle to get election forms from Harrisburg and Allegheny County in a digital format. They still have not been provided. Dozens of hours have been sunk into this project trying to battle the 'red tape.' More time is still necessary to get the forms into the hands of eligible voters with the correct information. These efforts could have been resolved in about 15 seconds if the person in Harrisburg would only send out the Word file as an email attachment. The struggle to get onto the ballot is monumental.

6. Citizens who want to run in the November general election have only a week or so to change their party registration. They can't be either "D" or "R" past mid-April. So I provided a form to a few in the audience and I also gave a form, in a public way, to Bill Peduto. We'll see if he changes his registration shortly.

I'm still waiting for a reply from Councilman Peduto about my open letter to him about the revival of campaign finance reform legislation.

MySpace to Hold First-in-Nation Presidential Primary

MySpace to Hold First-in-Nation Presidential Primary MySpace to Hold First-in-Nation Presidential Primary
America's Most-Trafficked Site to Host Virtual Primary January 1 & 2, 2008 Online Straw Polls Will Launch in May in Anticipation of the MySpace Primary

Hey kids, go get your MySpace pages if you want to vote.

I'm at http://www.myspace.com/rauterkus. I could use some friends.

Candidates Confirmed for First GOP Presidential Debate

Candidates Confirmed for First GOP Presidential Debate Candidates Confirmed for First GOP Presidential Debate

SIMI VALLEY, Calif., April 3 /PRNewswire/ -- The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation (http://www.reaganlibrary.com), in conjunction with MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.com) and THE POLITICO (http://www.politico.com), announced today that
nine GOP Presidential candidates will participate in the May 3, 2007 debate held at the Reagan Presidential Library.

The following candidates have accepted Mrs. Ronald Reagan's invitation to participate in this debate: Sam Brownback, Jim Gilmore, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and Tommy Thompson.

The May 3, 2007, debate will air exclusively on MSNBC cable, with full coverage on http://www.MSNBC.com. THE POLITICO will stream the debate live on http://www.politico.com, providing an exclusive and unprecedented opportunity for viewers to question the candidates via the internet.

This debate will be the first of two GOP Presidential Candidate Debates that will take place at the Reagan Presidential Library during this campaign cycle. The second debate will be held on January 30, 2008, the
final GOP Presidential debate before the 2008 'Super-Tuesday' primary in California and several other key states.

I'll need to tune into this from New Zealand.

So, we have debates lined up for the 2008 election. But, who is going to talk about debates for the 2007 general election?

Pop City - The Moving Guide to Downtown

Pop City - The Moving Guide to Downtown

Sell you house in the city. Cash out quickly.

If you can't cash out on your city property in another neighborhood, (i.e., not downtown), go to Home Depot and buy plywood, screws and paint. Button down the old homestead. Paint the windows the same color as the walls so you don't get a bunch of weenie bills.

Might as well pour salt on the earth. Scorch it with bleach or something so that the grass and weeds don't grow. You don't want to cut the grass. You don't want to give places for the rats to breed.

Show up now and then in City Council Chambers to fight against the vacant building ordinaces.

Do swing buy the old home's lot the week after ever election days to remove all the campaign yard signs that are sure to show up next to the for sale sign.

Open up six or more free wi-fi accounts for your computer use.

Get a building permit so you can make your front door a loading zone so you'll always have a place to park, besides the free garage subsidy.

As you move, don't toss any furniture, even if the older dinning room set isn't a 'kwel' as you'd like in your new flat. You'll need the chairs to save parking spots for the next few years.

Sala Udin can stuff his license where the sun doesn't shine

Sala Udin is a cry baby.

Sala Udin took a gamble and lost. Get over it Sala.

Sala Udin should take his middle-man license that is worthless -- and use it as toilet paper. Or, frame it and sell it on eBay. Or, make a paper airplane out of it and toss it off the West End Bridge. Or, Sala could take the license and give a share of it to all the CORO Fellows as a puzzle piece. Then in 10 years they can have a reunion and being to put together all the components and trade notes as to how they learned and applied their lessons of milking the system.

Casino Plans Presented To City's Planning Commission - News Story - WPXI Pittsburgh

So, did any video cameras show up? Was any news agency blocked from pointing their cameras at the people doing the work of the public?

Casino Plans Presented To City's Planning Commission - News Story - WPXI Pittsburgh Casino Plans Presented To City's Planning Commission

Bob Mayor, what happened? Anyone?

Ron Paul gets asked a bunch of tough questions from Bill Maher

Questions on CIA, Civil War, Global Warming. We go to war to subsidize more oil and buy more oil. FAA.

Help: Calling Computer Graphic Gurus - I need to use GIMP to Open a PDF file

Error message:

From signs

I need to open a PDF file. Make some changes by inserting simple text elements. Then resave the document as a PDF.

The GIMP should be able to open a PDF as a graphic. I can't get it to open. What does this error message mean? How do I fix it?

Anyone -- please call or email.

Or, anyone who wants to hand-hold with me, let me know. I've got to do this on a semi-regular basis.

Thanks! Now more on my own:

Don't Back Down: Reading PDF Files with GIMP: "So I browsed about some more, and found this page, which talks about the very issue, and recommends placing a single executable file (gswin32c.exe) into The GIMP's bin folder, usually somewhere like:

C:\Program Files\Gimp 2.0\bin

So I did. Voil�. It came right up the next time I tried to open the PDF (I did exit the GIMP first and restart, not sure if that is necessary). Since only a single file was installed, I figured I would play with it and see if it only needed that file for some reason, or if the entire Ghostscript needed to be installed. When I uninstalled the program entirely, leaving only the executable in the bin folder, it got further than without anything installed - but it didn't load the file. Presumably this means that the exectuable can 'find it's way' back to the libraries that are needed to render the file, which in turn means the whole thing needs to be installed (fonts don't appear to be necessary)."

I did get this to work for me. Works fine, but is very, very slow due to the large size of the file. I'm really pissed at Harrisburg and Allegheny County for the red tape I'm trying to cut. Some 20 hours of effort has been lost in this ordeal, and it isn't done yet -- because some government worker in Harrisburg won't take 20-seconds to send out a WORD file as an attachment. Furthermore, those who work on the 6th floor of the election department downtown in the Allegheny County office building won't insist that it get sent. So, they are little help as well.

Thanks to Mike, Dave, Tom and others who have helped this running mate just show up to the starting line.

City Council Candidates, district 9, Dem's candidate forum in 3 parts

A few weeks ago I went to a city council candidate debate held at the Homewood branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. The wonderful event was hosted by a black media organization.

More than 10 people entered the race. This event gave a clear understanding of the candidates who wanted to be the city council member for district 9.

Three frames are posted below. First is the opening statements of those who took the stage. The opening statements were uploaded to both Rauterkus.blip.tv and YouTube.com/rauterkus. Part 1 covers questions 1, 2 and 3. Part 2 covers questions 4 and beyond.

YouTube is rejecting the files because of length. So, all have been put at Rauterkus.blip.tv.







Another candidate, David Adams, was at the event. However he is NOT a Democrat. He is expected to join the race for the general election. More on that effort shortly.

Comments welcome.

Inside baseball comments from Mark Rauterkus:

The incumbent, Twanda Carlisle, did not show up. The event organizers had expected her to attend. I scolded her at the next city council meeting for skipping the event. Debate participation is an important component of a functional system of democracy, in my humble opinion.

Randall Taylor, a member of the Pgh Public School Board, is in the race but he came at the very end. He might have given one answer and closing statements. His late arrival was what it was.

Rachael Cooper, 22, a graduate from Howard University, would go on to win the D party endorsement. But, she didn't get her financial disclosure forms filed by the deadline and the judge would toss her off the ballot. She has a strong voice and was impressive to watch.

Rev. Ricky Burgess has plenty of community experiences. He made a few home runs within his statements including one about "land." That snip of video would be part of a highlights film, if I ever had the time to prepare that. Burgess is the front runner going into the primary election because he was the victor of the second D-party endorsement vote.

Ora Lee Carroll is super strong on family. She also put out a rather strong call to the others for cooperation. She was looking for loyalty and seemed a bit bent out of shape that there were so many on the stage. She knows that it will take a bit of teamwork to unseat the existing councilperson.

Eric -- or is it Erik -- may have pulled out of the race and is offering help to another candidate.

Everyone on the stage did a good job. Stepping up is a hard task. I'm not going to fuss about what was said to a great degree. First, lets just celebrate the will of the participants to mount a campaign against a sitting member of city council.

Sudan: The Passion of the Present: Darfur attracts attention throughout Pittsburgh this month

Sudan: The Passion of the Present: Darfur attracts attention throughout Pittsburgh this month The coalition's rally will kick off on April 28 at 2 p.m. at Freedom Corner, Hill District. It will be a gathering of organizations from the mid-Atlantic region. Actress Mia Farrow is scheduled to address the Pittsburgh marchers.

The next day, the coalition will host a citywide letter-writing campaign and divestment workshops.

Mr. Rosenberg is pleased to see so many join the effort, but he remains cautiously optimistic.

'I'm excited to see the advocacy, but in all the time [that] it's taken, there has been a terrible toll on Sudan. We need a solution.'

For more information on the Pittsburgh Darfur Emergency Coalition's Weekend of Action, visit www.pittsburghdarfur.org.

Put the brakes on the Pittsburgh Promise -- voices from educational advocates

Please see below for my thoughts on City Council’s activities around the Pittsburgh Promise. I urge you to get involved to stop this program from proceeding until it has been defined beyond a press release. Please contact your city councilperson to express your thoughts, even if they’re not in consonance with my position.


Thanks, Salvador Wilcox, CEO, Education Innovations, Inc.
6435 Frankstown Ave., 2nd Floor
Pittsburgh, PA 15206
412.661.8751 ext. 150
www.educationinnovations.org


Please table Pittsburgh Promise resolutions and hold public hearings

Bill and Lenny,

(I don’t have the emails to the other City Council Persons, so could you forward this to them, please.)

I’m writing you to request that bill relating to the Pittsburgh Promise be tabled until such a time that:

1. public hearings are had to discuss the merits of the program; and

2. the program is actually designed and goes beyond a press release released by a mayor running for office and a superintendent who has yet to prove any of his programs actually work

I have many concerns.

1. A solution follows from the problem it tries to solve. In this case, since the solution is money for college, the problem would be defined as a lack of resources to pay for college. However, that is not the problem in Pittsburgh. At least not the primary problem. The problem is that we don’t have enough kids who graduate or get accepted into college. The Pittsburgh Promise does not solve that problem. And the programs that supposedly solve them are yet to be proven. By giving to this hollow promise, we do not focus on the achievement problem.

2. When the Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools complains of financial stress, it is not a time to be adding another bloated program to the already bloated bureaucracy. The City and the School District should be looking for revenues to bring the school district back to financial health. Aside from adding more staff to the District, no other details have really been thought out. Neither big business nor the foundation community in Pittsburgh is running to support this. We should ask why before we appeal to good nature of tax payers to give to a program which has yet to detail how the money would be spent.

3. The school district is in as bad shape, in part, to a historical and continued overstaffing in the administration level. It took decades to address the decline in population. It took decades to close buildings. It has not sufficiently addressed uncontrolled changes in work orders. It is paying for two Deputy Superintendents of Instruction, one of which does no work for the District.

4. It seems unfair that the District, who already receives nearly ½ Billion dollars per year in tax revenues should dip into tax-payers good will again. Especially since it has yet to actually prove that it can educate the majority of our minority population. There are many other organizations that actually do provide results. Council could start with a charter school fund to introduce more competition for the District. Charter schools and charter applicants have been orphaned by foundation’s support of only the superintendent. A charter school fund would bring about innovation in the district. Philadelphia has embraced public schools and Pittsburgh should also. In Philadelphia, charter schools boost the District’s average achievement!

5. The District has not released any details on how children will qualify for the scholarship, nor how much children will get. The school district has not analyzed what the overhead for this program will be. If the financial health of the district is any indication, I’m not convinced that the District can handle such a large program. If the intent is true, perhaps a local foundation like the Pittsburgh Foundation would be better able to handle the program.

6. Charter high school students are in spirit and in law, Pittsburgh Public School students. They should not be left out of the program. So far, no indication has been made about their participation. If the District is allowed to have a tear-off coupon but excludes charter school students, then tax-payers should also be given the option to designate their funds to a particular charter school, or a general charter school graduation fund.

The idea in principle is a good one, though the problem to access to higher education seems to me lack of academic skills and not a lack of resources to pay for college. Were that we had so many students accepted to college with no means to pay for it.

Since the details have not been developed and since no time line has been given for those details, surely we should be apprehensive about passing City Council resolutions blindly.

Salvador Wilcox

PAT Audit Promised: Controller awakes from his slumber

Marty Griffin, KDKA Radio, was wondering why there will be a new audit of PAT. He was scratching his head thinking, perhaps, it was because Jack Wagner had done audits and there might be a race in 3 years for the Governor's office.

I give him the real reasons in an email.

---

Hi Marty,

Mark Patrick Flaherty, Allegheny County Controller, became aware, last week, that he'll face an opponent on the ballot in the general election. That is why he woke up and came to life with PAT.

The opponent is a Libertarian, doctor from Hampton. He is a 'running mate' of mine.

Furthermore, we're starting to gather the thousands of necessary signatures.

Plus, I told you a few weeks ago about Rich Swartz, the Dem on the ballot who is running against Dan Onorato. Well, Dan's lawyers could NOT toss him off the ballot. That went down on Friday afternoon.

So, Dan Onorato has an opponent in the primary, Swartz, and the winner will face me in the general election.

I'm now running for FIVE offices, not six, as I stated on the show with you a few weeks ago. Another guy from Chartiers City is standing in my place (that's the placeholder element) for the slot for Allegheny County Council Member At-Large.

If you'd like an update, give me a call. There is a lot to talk about. For example, I want to sue the Allegheny County Election Department as they will NOT provide an electronic version of the nomination papers. Red tape that they could fix in about 15 seconds with a simple email of a state form.

Did you ever listen to the CD I left with you???? It has a great campaign theme song. We should play that on the air.

I could use the ARMY to lend signatures to get access to the ballot.

PRESSURE comes now and then with elections. Dan Onorato is on the record saying he thinks elections are a DISTRACTION.

Kennywood has a new feature and is looking for videos -- RUSH for the April 30 deadline

Welcome to Kennywood - Funzone Kenny TV is an information and entertainment closed circuit TV system that makes its debut this summer at various locations around Kennywood including a big screen at the Kennyville Stage. At the Kennyville Stage, various types of video entertainment will be shown to park Guests such as concerts and funny videos. And that's where you come in.

We're hoping you will submit your FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS or, in the case of local bands looking for exposure, A VIDEO OF YOUR BAND PERFORMING so that we can show them all summer long to our Guests. Who knows - this may be your first step towards becoming a big Hollywood producer?

Here's a sampling of the types videos we're looking for:

* High School Marching Bands performing
* Funny Pet Tricks
* American Idol wanna-be's
* Funny Home Videos
* Upstart local bands (rock, country, etc) performing original material or someone else's with permission
* Your Kennywood Memories (stills or video)

Submission is simple! Here's what you do:

Rendell: Hijacking the Reform Train

Great insights, as always, from PA Clean Sweep:

Governor Ed Rendell should step aside from his bid to become the state’s reformer-in-chief. While some of his ideas may have merit, the Governor has no more right than the average citizen to prescribe the structure of state government in Pennsylvania and his viewpoint is distorted by his position.

Perhaps his goal of a better open records policy is desirable, but his suggestion of creating an Office of Public Records Advocate might be just another plump patronage position to be filled by political pals. Maybe the people can come up with a better plan for making government more transparent.

Perhaps merit selection for state appellate judges is an idea worth considering, but what if the people would rather make all judicial races non-partisan affairs and ban contributions to those races by lawyers?

How could Rendell’s proposed Appellate Court Nominating Commission, dominated by a majority of legislative and executive appointees and confirmed by the Senate, improve the independence of the judiciary? Independence from the other two branches should be encouraged, but independence from the sovereign people at the voting booth should not.

Perhaps the Governor’s suggested campaign finance limits appear to level the electoral playing field. On the other hand, maybe the people of this Commonwealth realize that the voter revolt of 2006 would not have been possible under those limitations and that no financial ceiling could ever negate the current incumbency protection program.

Perhaps Rendell’s legislative term limits sound like a good idea, but reality in Pennsylvania suggests that if the General Assembly was truly part-time and was stripped of the unconstitutional perks it now enjoys, term limits would be utterly unnecessary.

Perhaps Pennsylvanians want a smaller legislature, but maybe they’d like a larger one, or to keep its size the same, with some of the above mentioned features and fewer expenses. Maybe they want to look at the other 49 states to see what others are doing before deciding which path is best for the Commonwealth.

Perhaps the time has come for citizen redistricting, but Rendell’s 11-member commission would include four legislators and three appointees of the governor, two of whom would be legislators. The remaining four would be appointed by - you guessed it - the four legislative caucus leaders. Pennsylvanians just might have a slightly different notion of how a citizens’ redistricting commission should look.

On constitutional issues in Pennsylvania, the governor’s opinion has no more real or deserved weight than the average citizen’s. Perhaps the Governor has some good ideas. Perhaps he doesn’t. Either way, today’s climate dictates that constitutional change should not be viewed only through the myopic lens of the chief executive.

The merit of Rendell’s ideas have should be discussed openly among citizens, not quietly between the three branches of government. Other citizens should be able to discuss their ideas as well. The proper forum for such a discussion is a constitutional convention. Surely, the Governor would be free to provide his vision for consideration at such a gathering.

“Citizens will not rest until there is an end to perks, an end to control by private interests and an end to political rules that shut them out of the process,” the Governor said in a press release. But his plan eliminates no perks, suppresses the freedom of speech in political races and utterly shuts the people out of the process of structural change.

Nearly two years after the reform train left the station as Ed Rendell signed the pay raise, the Governor is using his bully pulpit to try to hijack it. Perhaps he doesn’t realize that many other citizens were on board well ahead of him. Their voices on constitutional matters deserve an equally fair hearing.

In announcing his preferred reforms, Rendell expressed trepidation at the prospect of a constitutional convention, but if he truly believes in the right of self-governance as enumerated by Article I of the Constitution, a carefully crafted citizens’ convention provides no cause for hand wringing, anguish or hesitation of spirit.

A plan for such a convention of the people is available at www.PACleanSweep.com.

Citizens’ Constitutional Convention Act of 2007

Read the Governor's Proposed "Reforms"