Some sports media types in Pittsburgh are all a ga-ga over the latest NFL Players Association (NFLPA) survey in which Steelers players panned their working conditions, team facilities and how their families are treated on game days.
The specter of players with multimillion-dollar contracts complaining about things like a lack of game-day childcare, a family room and no sauna aside (ahem), some local sports reporters used the survey results to take up the cause of a new stadium for the Black & Gold.
By garsh, some intimated, the largely taxpayer-built Acrisure stadium is so long in the tooth that its gums have all but disappeared. A new football stadium is a “must.”
That’s all fine and dandy – but only if the Steelers pay for it and then pay property taxes on the new facility. Taxpayers have been burned many times by the barons of sport, forced to pay for what team owners should be solely responsible.
Past simply cannot be prologue any longer. Such craziness no longer can be abided.
And lest we forget, the NFLPA is a labor union. Its motto might as well be “We get what we can get and let the taxpayers eat cake crumbs.”
How contemptuous it is that the Allegheny County Airport continues to pimp the lie that is “no local or state tax dollars” are being used to pay for the coming new $1.6 billion new ticketing, check-in, baggage and security terminal at Pittsburgh International Airport.
Paul Hoback, the authority’s chief development officer, repeated that wholly misleading public relations talking point in a Thursday Tribune-Review story.
He says costs are being covered by airline fees (true), some of the Airport Authority’s revenue (true) and $25 million in grants from the federal government (also true).
But where does the authority think the federal government gets its money? And what about gambling money that the authority has been tithed in perpetuity. No local money, eh?
Talk about crazy.
Hoback also notes, apparently with a straight face, that the new terminal project remains on budget. Cue the laugh track. A project that was sprung on the public began life as a $1.1 billion endeavor and ballooned to $1.57 billion.
That’s what passes for “on budget” these days?
As has been the case with so many Airport Authority pronouncements, truth is a relative thing.
A Lancaster County district judge has affirmed that, yes, too many times the law is an ass.
As Pennlive.com’s Jonathan Bergmueller reports:
“Judge Raymond Sheller found Joshua Wingenroth, 35, of Downingtown, guilty of two counts of using illegal electronic devices during hunting; disturbing game or wildlife; and violating regulations on recreational spotlighting for the Dec. 6 incident.”
So, what exactly did Wingenroth do?
He used a drone – not to track deer so hunters could shoot them – but to locate and recover wounded deer for hunters.
Sounds like quite a humane operation, does it not?
Again, from reporter Bergmueller’s Pennlive.com dispatch:
“The crux of [Wingenroth’s] three-hour trial hinged on the fact the legal definition of hunting includes tracking, hunting, and recovery — which means Mr. Wingenroth using a drone to help recover a carcass was technically Mr. Wingenroth using a drone to ‘hunt’ game.”
With all due apologies to Jethro Tull, that’s as crazy as skating on the thin ice of a new spring day.
Again, from the Pennlive.com story:
“Michael Siddons, Mr. Wingenroth’s attorney, described the laws concerning using devices while hunting to be ‘archaic’ and that they have been patched over time to cover new technologies. He said the law has not yet considered the use of drones.”
Even Judge Sheller says the state Legislature “needs to address this.”
“Everyone is playing catchup to science,” he added.
No kidding.
All that said, a pox on the state Game Commission for using the nonsensical law to set up Wingenroth. Instead of entrapping a fella who is using technology to help ensure that injured game don’t inhumanely languish, the Game Commission should be leading the charge for reform.
That it did what it did is just another in a long line of abuses at the hands of “The State.”
Wingenroth will appeal this injustice. Here’s to real justice prevailing.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
