Open air drug-dealing.
Drug use.
Dopers passed out on the sidewalks.
Beatings; a woman cold-cocked, left unconscious in a public square.
Robberies, some at gunpoint.
Shootings, and not on the fringes or in the wee hours of the morning but, as one of the latest incidents rolled out in shocking fashion Friday last, in the heart of the Cultural District in broad daylight during the afternoon rush hour.
City of Pittsburgh officials are perennially wont to downplay the continuing decline and fall of social order Downtown.
Per the Post-Gazette:
“Mayor Ed Gainey said in a statement Friday that there is no place for violence in any city neighborhood.
“’Isolated incidents of violence are tragic,’ he said, ‘but do not define a neighborhood or city.’”
But it has come to define downtown Pittsburgh, Mr. Mayor. The perception is the reality, sir. No, these things aren’t happening every day. But darn near.
And your near-constant chiding of local media for reporting what’s right before their eyes — and that of the public — shows the depths of your denial.
Or is it just a rank subterfuge to try to keep the spit and shine on the Potemkin Village whose spit and shine has been fading under the weight of its own hubris for 30-plus years?
Or is it simply gross incompetence born out of willful ignorance?
The City of Pittsburgh for far too long has employed public policies inimical to growth and derisive of the very people willing to risk their own capital in pursuit of profit so inherent to facilitating economic growth.
It lacks even a novitiate’s understanding of fundamental economics, then intervenes with over-regulation when the marketplace it handicapped “fails.”
And it fails on a regular basis to promote, let alone meet, the basic standards of public safety – from clean and safe streets, to plowing the snow, to garbage removal. Sadly, in those failures, it all too regularly blames others. The mirrors, when the smoke clears, show the real culprits.
The bottom line in all of this is that incompetence and ignorance must no longer be allowed to masquerade as governance. For sound public policy always dies under the thumb of such failings.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
