Colin McNickle At Large

Public policy ‘fails’

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A Tuesday editorial on the Insights & Issues (I&I) website (the successor to the scrapped editorial page of Investor’s Business Daily) offers a most apropos public policy narrative.

Here’s how it begins:

“After weeks of lockdown, several states have begun to outline plans for returning to business as usual. The economies in these states don’t need political schemes. They simply need to be released from government chains.

“Governments don’t create economies. It’s not only beyond their legitimate functions, it’s beyond their abilities. They need to stay out of the way and let the wisdom of markets steer us back to normal. But some officials see an opening through which they can drive their big-government dreams.”

Such as Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, who couldn’t resist letting the coronavirus pandemic crisis go to waste. Part of his government’s “Recovery for Pennsylvanians” plan is to raise the cost of operating for businesses teetering on bankruptcy by pushing for a “living wage.”

That is, a $12 hour wage floor on the road to $15 hourly, set by government fiat and not respective workers’ skill set or productivity.

Or the Allegheny County Council, now considering mandatory paid sick leave for employees of any business working within the county confines.

It’s a bad policy in good times – granting paid sick leave must remain in the purview of the private employer paying it – it rises to government malpractice in bad times.

The county consideration follows the “lead” of the City of Pittsburgh, which, to the amazement of more than few legal scholars, gained a liberal state Supreme Court seal of approval.

As the I&I editorial continued:

“Business owners and managers, not elected officials, not bureaucrats, not task forces, will know how to reopen their companies and how best to protect their employees and customers. It’s in their self-interest to succeed.

“They don’t need assistance and direction from a government that cannot possibly take in and then disseminate information necessary to set market pricing, manage supply chains, appropriately acquire and invest capital and efficiently use employees. Nor are businesses aided by politics that eventually produce cronyism, oppressive regulation and stifling laws.”

Yet the Tom Wolfs and Allegheny County Councils of the world – members in bumfuzzled standing of the Command and Control Committee of the Regressive Progressives – continue to be so filled with hubris that they have no comprehension that they are part of the problem and in no way a part of the solution.

Meanwhile, in other public policy developments:

The American Lung Association (ALA) continues to engage in scientific malpractice by yet again smearing the 12-county Greater Pittsburgh region as having among the dirtiest air in the country.

The latest numbers cover the 2016-2018 period. And it’s the same sordid story – using an air-quality monitor not far from a coke-making facility to paint a broad brush of poor air quality in the entire Pittsburgh-Weirton (W.Va.)-New Castle metropolitan area.

Allegheny County health officials are not amused – again.

The ALA ceased to have any credibility years ago. That it refuses to desist in its dirty air mythmaking – and that too many in the media continue to report its claims with a straight face – is a dangerous embarrassment.

The head of the Allegheny County Airport Authority says UPS and FedEx have, as the Post-Gazette reports it, “reached out to inquire about possibly adding service” at Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT).

“We’re aware that we could be seeing more activity from both of them,” CEO Christina Cassotis said. Perhaps with a little public juicer, so to speak?

We can only wonder if that’s code for “Hold onto your wallet, taxpayers.”

You may recall that this is the same Christina Cassotis who cut a mind-bogglingly bad multimillion-dollar cargo deal with Qatar Airways that astoundingly incentivized the carrier to fail. That is, Qatar was paid, and paid handsomely, to not meet cargo goals.

And not to be outdone, Cassotis cut a succeeding deal. Whether or not it was paid anything in deal No. 2 remains a question mark. But Qatar has not flown cargo in or out of PIT since mid-December.

So, does Cassotis plan to triple- and quadruple-down by offering public dollars to UPS and FedEx?

If there’s such a great pandemic-fueled market for the kind of e-commerce these carriers deliver – the supposed reason UPS and FedEx are talking expansion at PIT — why should public dollars be needed to “incentivize” it?

Or is it the specter of a public “incentive” – free money – that’s driving all this?

And, for that matter, if the pandemic has created such an e-commerce cargo bonanza, why isn’t Qatar flying at PIT?

Cassotis now has a long line of subsidized failures, passenger and cargo, on her resume. How and why she has kept her situation in light of it all certainly are valid public policy questions.

Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).

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Colin McNickle
Colin McNickle

Colin received his B.G.S. from Ohio University. The 40-year journalism veteran joined the Institute in October 2016. That followed a 22-year career with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 18 as director of editorial pages for Trib Total Media. Prior that, Colin had a long and varied career in media — from radio, newspapers and magazines, to United Press International and The Associated Press.

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