Thursday, January 26, 2006
Self Indulgence at City Council
Once again Pittsburgh City Council has demonstrated its loose grasp regarding what’s important as it carries out its responsibilities. In a unanimous vote, the all-Democrat Council has recommended that Republican U.S. Senators Santorum and Specter vote against Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito—an utterly futile, self-indulgent action.
This is the same City Council that twiddled its thumbs and pointed fingers as the City slid into financial decline. Council showed itself incapable of making the needed hard decisions to rein in the City’s overspending and ruinous taxation precipitating state oversight of the City’s finances. But why should we be surprised at the Alito vote? After all this is the same body that supported striking parking attendants against the City’s own parking authority and once proclaimed “Boy George Day”.
Why would a council, grappling with pressing local issues, find it necessary to weigh in on the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice, which it is powerless to affect, unless the desired effect is grandstanding for its constituents? They are obviously not concerned with upsetting Republicans since there aren’t any on Council and very few in the City. But surely they ought to be worried about possibly annoying Republicans who hold the majority in both legislative branches in Harrisburg and the state’s Republican Congressional delegation, folks whose help the City is constantly beseeching.
Council’s partisan, self-serving, impotent action reveals an extreme liberalism in political philosophy and a lack of seriousness required of governing bodies.
Once again Pittsburgh City Council has demonstrated its loose grasp regarding what’s important as it carries out its responsibilities. In a unanimous vote, the all-Democrat Council has recommended that Republican U.S. Senators Santorum and Specter vote against Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito—an utterly futile, self-indulgent action.
This is the same City Council that twiddled its thumbs and pointed fingers as the City slid into financial decline. Council showed itself incapable of making the needed hard decisions to rein in the City’s overspending and ruinous taxation precipitating state oversight of the City’s finances. But why should we be surprised at the Alito vote? After all this is the same body that supported striking parking attendants against the City’s own parking authority and once proclaimed “Boy George Day”.
Why would a council, grappling with pressing local issues, find it necessary to weigh in on the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice, which it is powerless to affect, unless the desired effect is grandstanding for its constituents? They are obviously not concerned with upsetting Republicans since there aren’t any on Council and very few in the City. But surely they ought to be worried about possibly annoying Republicans who hold the majority in both legislative branches in Harrisburg and the state’s Republican Congressional delegation, folks whose help the City is constantly beseeching.
Council’s partisan, self-serving, impotent action reveals an extreme liberalism in political philosophy and a lack of seriousness required of governing bodies.
