Way too many people don’t want you to be President. You’re a weak candidate, with no knowledge, you make a lot of mistakes, you can’t control your delegation, and you’re toying with forces beyond your understanding. You should drop out before things get even more embarrassing.
The Pittsburgh Comet
Bram, i know you won’t publish this, but i have an observation and a comment. Why is it that a developer that has given large sums of money to Peduto, was named to the affordable housing task force (that called for more affordable housing) is now getting the majority of the gigs to build these housing projects? Isn’t this a major conflict of interest?
Taking a look at the AHTF website and OPB, I suppose you mean Bill Gatti of TREK Development.
Whether it’s a conflict-of-interest would depend. One thing I don’t know is what process by which the city determines who gets these “gigs,” and whether it’s technically even the city awarding them. I guess sometimes it’s the URA, which is about the same thing. I keep reading TREK is “one of the few” local developers that’s been doing this sort of work “for decades,” which is rhetoric I take as a yellow flag. But to be honest I’m surprised to hear that very many of these affordable housing projects are actually, already underway.
Wasn’t meant to single out one developer. But the task force as a whole are those that are vested in creating more “affordable” housing. Whether that be developers that make money off the development, service providers or advocates, it is a cycle that they want to continue. Curiously, none of the task force meetings were held in places that actually have affordability issues. I don’t remember any meetings in high priced east end neighborhoods, or did i miss them? While the City is still losing population, the task force recommends building 7,000 new “affordable” units. And, all the while the City continues to gain national attention for being the most affordable major metro in the country. So riddle me this, why in the world would we continue pumping millions of dollars into building “affordable” housing units when we have the most affordable housing stock sitting right here and can’t even attract enough residents to live in them? (And the reason i put affordable in quotes is because it has so many meanings, often times misleading. Affordable to whom – and the misleading nature of having people believe that they will actually be able to choose and walk up one day and say, yes i would like to live in X neighborhood in that building.)
Come on Bram, we’ve known each other 23 years! Sure we haven’t seen each other in like 18 of those, but I would hope you would think we were good enough friends back then to be able to disagree on politics. I was finding that discussion very interesting and enlightening, and was pretty disappointed you felt you had to unfriend me because of a very mild comment I made. Perhaps you find me generally annoying on FB which explains the unfriending that I can’t fault you for, but otherwise – come on man! Is discourse not allowed anymore?
I’m glad we caught up and sorted this misunderstanding offline, Robyn (in how I had taken a break from Facebook in general, and did not defriend you for adding a very appropriate comment!)