Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh
Infrastructure
Fig. 1. Post-collapse scene at the Fern Hollow Bridge, photograph by National Transportation Safety Board, January 29, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
I’m sorry but the question has to be asked now: Is Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey doing anything?
“The mayor’s office is fully committed to a great board that brings everybody to the table because infrastructure is about everybody and is about everybody’s safety,” Mr. [Corey] O’Connor, now the Allegheny County controller, said last year.
The failure to staff the commission for well over a year is the latest example of the [Ed] Gainey administration’s inaction when it comes to Pittsburgh’s growing infrastructure problems.
A city-commissioned report, which cost taxpayers $1.5 million, found in December that 32 city-owned bridges were in poor condition. Just over a month later, officials had to close one such bridge, the Charles Anderson Memorial, because of safety concerns.
In the year after Fern Hollow’s collapse, the city made almost no progress in fixing its other bridges, a Post-Gazette review of public records found.
And Mr. Gainey shifted blame for delayed funding for Charles Anderson repairs to the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, an obscure government cooperative of 10 counties and the City of Pittsburgh, which helps funnel state and federal dollars to infrastructure projects in the region. But Mr. Gainey has a seat on the group’s executive committee and rarely attended its meetings last year, missing opportunities to lobby for infrastructure funding, the Post-Gazette reported in February.
Mr. Gainey’s office declined to comment for this story.[1]
Sorry, Mr. Gainey, but Pittsburgh deserves a mayor and your performance has not merely been unacceptable, but nonexistent. If you weren’t going to do the job, you shouldn’t have run for office, but now you should resign, effective immediately.
Hallie Lauer, “Pittsburgh formed an infrastructure group after the Fern Hollow collapse. But Gainey hasn’t appointed anybody,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 8, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-local/2023/06/08/pittsburgh-bridges-mayor-ed-gainey-infrastructure-commission/stories/202306080108
Neoliberalism
Work
Fig. 2. Yeah, this is me. The sign says, “If you’re whining about a labor shortage, STOP ignoring my job applications!” And the QR-code leads here. Photograph by author, January 16, 2023.
Lizzy McLellan Ravitch, “Workers again ponder whether their jobs are essential, as poor air quality poses risk to outdoor employees,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 8, 2023, https://www.inquirer.com/news/outdoor-work-risks-smoke-air-quality-philadelphia-20230608.html
Gilead
Donald Trump
Coup attempt
Fig. 3. “Jake Angeli (Qanon Shaman), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15.” Photography by TheUnseen011101 [pseud.], October 15, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
“It’s not quite as dysfunctional as the media portrays it,” one of [Donald] Trump’s lawyers told me about the group [Trump’s legal team], but “to the extent it is dysfunctional, it does negatively affect things.” Another lawyer told me the media’s depiction of Trump’s legal team as disorganized and riven by interpersonal conflict is “fair but slightly overstated.”[2]
Jacqueline Alemany et al., “Trump lawyers meeting with Justice Dept. on classified documents case,” Washington Post, June 5, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/05/trump-lawyers-meeting-justice-doj/
Josh Dawsey and Amy Gardner, “Trump-funded studies disputing election fraud are focus in two probes,” Washington Post, June 5, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/06/05/trump-funded-studies-disputing-election-fraud-are-focus-two-probes/
Rozina Sabur, “Flood at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort raises suspicions in classified documents case,” Telegraph, June 5, 2023, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/05/donald-trump-mar-a-lago-resort-flood-pool-documents/
Chris Walker, “Trump’s Lawyers Have 2-Hour Meeting With DOJ Over Mar-a-Lago Documents Case,” Truthout, June 5, 2023, https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-lawyers-have-2-hour-meeting-with-doj-over-mar-a-lago-documents-case/
Casey Newton, “The platforms give up on 2020 lies,” Platformer, June 6, 2023, https://www.platformer.news/p/the-platforms-give-up-on-2020-lies
Spencer S. Hsu et al., “Trump special counsel shifts focus of possible indictment to S. Florida,” Washington Post, June 7, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/06/miami-grand-jury-trump-classified-documents/
Alex Isenstadt and Kyle Cheney, “Trump notified that he is the target of an ongoing criminal investigation,” Politico, June 7, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/07/trump-notified-that-he-is-the-target-of-an-ongoing-criminal-investigation-00100920
Marc Caputo, “‘Prosecuting Politicians is Hard Here’: Why South Florida is a Tough Place for DOJ to Try Trump,” Messenger, June 8, 2023, https://themessenger.com/politics/trump-south-florida-miami-doj-jury-challenge
Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html
- [1]Hallie Lauer, “Pittsburgh formed an infrastructure group after the Fern Hollow collapse. But Gainey hasn’t appointed anybody,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 8, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-local/2023/06/08/pittsburgh-bridges-mayor-ed-gainey-infrastructure-commission/stories/202306080108↩
- [2]Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html↩