Speaker after speaker argued last week against any private sector takeover of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA) during a public hearing before Pittsburgh City Council.

Never mind that decades of political and “public purpose” chicanery brought the authority to the precipice of failure. Never mind that privatized systems elsewhere – and, mind you, still regulated by the state Public Utility Commission – serve multiple millions of customers with efficiency and safety while turning a profit.

Perhaps the following – posted by a reader reacting to a Post-Gazette story on the public hearing — best sums up the situation:

“(T)he definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Judging by the news, the PWSA is an expensive, inefficient, bloated, political bureaucracy. So maybe it’s time to think about changing that? Of course not! Let’s just do the same thing over and over again, albeit with some organizational deck-chair shuffling on that Titanic.

“I never cease to be amazed at the fear some people have that, if they privatize, someone somewhere might make a profit (horror!) and that that would ‘necessarily’ result in higher costs.

“Well, there’s no private profit motive now — are your costs lower? That fear of profit is only matched by some people’s seemingly endless faith in governments, despite their dismal track record of running almost every enterprise in their purview into the ground.

“These people, who would be hard-pressed to identify a government function they think is performed effectively and efficiently, are all too willing to trust government over and over again in spite of the evidence just to avoid the dreadful scourge of ‘profit.’ It’s insanity.”

Well put.

Poorly put, however, is a reader’s disagreement with this institute’s take on the red herring that is the debate over public school funding.

As the Allegheny Institute recently noted (in Policy Brief Vol. 18, No. 26), the long proffered claim that Allegheny County’s poorer performing school districts would deliver better academic results if only they had more funding lays bare a lack of critical thinking skills.

After all, as a detailed analysis shows, some of the very poorest districts, bolstered by state subsidies, spend markedly more per pupil than “rich” districts.

Which prompted this response, in the comments section of the Tribune-Review’s triblive.com:

“You can claim it’s not about money, but based on the info alone about the ‘highest’ and ‘lowest’ districts in this study, the common denominator is wealth!

“Mt. Lebo, Pine Richland, etc. versus Duquesne, Wilkinsburg — wealthy parents provide their children with resources parents in poverty cannot. Of course the spending is higher; the resources (special-education staff, tutoring, extracurricular programs) low-income children need to catch up can only be provided by government funding. Children of wealth arrive in school prepared. Children of poverty often lack those skills when they enter school.”

Which, of course, begs this question: Why is academic performance in those poorer – but far more heavily taxpayer-underwritten districts – still lagging?

What, even more “government funding” is required? Consider it yet another definition of insanity.

CleanChoice Energy has been soliciting First Energy Solutions Corp customers in Western Pennsylvania to switch to its wind-turbine generated electricity. First Energy generates power that is distributed by Duquesne Light Co. in the region.

It’s a pretty slick pitch. But, as per usual, the devil is in the fine print.

The bottom line is that CleanChoice’s per kilowatt-hour charge of 11.40 cents is nearly 31.6 percent higher than First Energy’s 8.29-cent charge. And that’s merely an introductory rate.

Here’s some more from that fine print:

“After the third month, your price may vary with no advance notice based on a number of factors, including but not limited to the cost to supply electricity in the PJM Interconnection LLC market (including energy, capacity, settlement, ancillary services, renewable energy, distribution charges and other market-related factors).”

Or, one can only suppose, if the wind doesn’t blow that much. Ahem.

Now, some might believe that paying a 31.6 percent premium is worth it to “help save the planet.” But given the paucity of proof that wind power helps to do anything of the sort, the sanity of those who bite on such a “deal” indeed is fair game for scrutiny.

Colin McNickle is a senior fellow and media specialist at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).