Pittsburgh
It’s been unseasonably warm in Pittsburgh. The thermometer in my dashboard said it reached 60° Fahrenheit. It’s been fifty years since I saw a Pittsburgh winter, but I sure don’t remember this.
It was cooler earlier this week, but most of the snow from last week had melted, so folks in Clairton experienced a smoggy, rather than a white Christmas.[1]
Teghan Simonton, “Health department: Air pollution in Mon Valley exceeded federal levels over Christmas,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, December 27, 2019, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-allegheny/health-department-air-pollution-in-mon-valley-exceeded-federal-levels-over-christmas/
Entitlement
In an end-of-decade[2] piece, Helaine Olen has quite the parade of billionaires whining about how the world is so, so cruel to them, replete with Nazi metaphors,[3] of course, because, I guess, they think they’re in some kind of a competition with Jews in the Holocaust. (And no, I haven’t seen anyone complain that this ludicrously false analogy—no one has seriously, no matter how seriously tempted, proposed a similar treatment to Jews in the Holocaust for capitalist thieves who in fact do far more damage and kill far more people than the folks we do put to death[4]—is anti-Semitic, which maybe they should.[5]) Olen didn’t even include the examples in my own collection: Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt,[6] Tom Perkins,[7] and, albeit in 2009, Lloyd Blankfein.[8] But never fear, they have their luxury bunkers to hide out in[9] should any actual move to line them up against the wall materialize.
Helaine Olen, “The decade of the billionaire victim,” Washington Post, December 26, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/26/decade-billionaire-victim/
- [1]KDKA, “‘It’s Making Clairton Sick’: Poor Air Quality Impacting Clairton, Liberty Areas,” December 23, 2019, https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2019/12/23/air-quality-impacting-clairton-liberty-areas/; Teghan Simonton, “Health department: Air pollution in Mon Valley exceeded federal levels over Christmas,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, December 27, 2019, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-allegheny/health-department-air-pollution-in-mon-valley-exceeded-federal-levels-over-christmas/↩
- [2]I’m confused. Centuries end in years ending with 00, apparently because there is a year one, but no year zero, yet decades end in years ending with 9? Apparently all this is still in dispute: Merriam-Webster, “Centuries and How to Refer to Them,” n.d., https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/centuries-and-how-to-refer-to-them↩
- [3]Helaine Olen, “The decade of the billionaire victim,” Washington Post, December 26, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/26/decade-billionaire-victim/↩
- [4]Steven E. Barkan, Criminology: A Sociological Understanding, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006); Jeffrey Reiman, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, 7th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2004).↩
- [5]Eric Cortellessa, “Trump tells pro-Israel conference that some US Jews don’t love Israel enough,” Times of Israel, December 8, 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-tells-jewish-group-theyll-vote-for-him-to-protect-their-wealth/↩
- [6]Chris Reiter, “BMW Billionaire Heirs Say Their Lives Are Harder Than You Think,” Bloomberg, June 20, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-20/bmw-billionaire-heirs-say-their-lives-are-harder-than-you-think↩
- [7]Tom Perkins, “Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?” Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2014, https://www.wsj.com/articles/progressive-kristallnacht-coming-1390600169↩
- [8]John Arlidge, “I’m doing ‘God’s work’. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs,” Times, November 8, 2009, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/im-doing-gods-work-meet-mr-goldman-sachs-zflqc78gqs8↩
- [9]Jim Dobson, “Inside the World’s Largest Underground Survival Community: 575 Luxury Bunkers for 5,000 People,” Forbes, October 7, 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimdobson/2016/10/07/exclusive-look-inside-the-worlds-largest-underground-survival-community-5000-people-575-bunkers/↩