Publius Awakened

Reading “The Stone Canal” by Ken MacLeod – a science fiction writer quickly becoming one of my favorite authors – I came upon this bit of dialogue:
“…the Western democracies are socialist! Big public sectors, big companies that plan production while officially everything’s on the market … sort of black planning, like the East had [...]

The Community College of Allegheny County’s student government gave preliminary approval to student Christine Brashier to form a chapter of the national Students for Concealed Carry on Campus at CCAC, the Post-Gazette reported.
The group will receive student activity money in what should be recognized as a major step forward for advocates of the Second Amendment [...]

The City’s response to last week’s storm illustrated that government is better suited to making regulations and collecting tax dollars than it is to providing services. Although it’s important to praise the employees of the Departments of Public Works and Public Safety for their admirable efforts, it should be recognized that city politicians failed once [...]

Student Government Board President Charlie Shull said that the University asked for his opinion on make up days and gave him three options: hold class during Spring Break, hold finals week past graduation or hold classes on Saturday.
Of these options, Shull said that he recommended holding classes on Saturday because it was the least disruptive [...]

There were a few things wrong with the city’s response to the recent snowstorms: some residents were stranded for days without power, many tertiary roads are still unplowed and the city’s workforce was unable to cope with the volume of snow that fell.
These flaws were magnified by Mayor Ravenstahl’s promise in 2008 to totally revamp [...]

In a discussion on WPTS-FM’s Media Roundtable last Wednesday, Student Government Board member Phil LaRue voiced his support for allowing individual students to speak for or against specific allocation requests during SGB’s public meetings.
LaRue said that it was something he hoped to see happen in the future and said that he would be discussing it [...]

The Mayor’s New Year’s Eve veto of the prevailing wage legislation promises to dominate Pittsburgh politics for at least the next few weeks. City Council called an emergency meeting to override the veto, Council personalities clashed and nothing was accomplished amidst allegations that the meeting was illegal.
The most forceful allegations of illegality came from Councilman [...]

The University of Pittsburgh Student Government Board did something I agreed with Tuesday when it voted to deny Students for Life’s allocations request of $1,515 to pay for the group’s travel to the January March for Life.
I don’t believe that the student activities fee should go to pay for students to attend an anti-choice rally [...]

Threatening the very foundation of this republic, the New York Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the state had the right to confiscate private property and give it to a private investor in order to build the 22 acre Atlantic Yards development, The New York Times reported.          
The case was watched [...]

Marred by questionable practices, significant clerical errors and an almost total lack of student interest, this year’s Student Government Board elections are more about the flaws inherent in SGB as an institution than they are about individual candidates and their platforms.
While the candidates themselves all seem relatively competent and have some decent ideas to improve [...]