An OPN Special Report
The upcoming Mayoral primary election on May 20 signifies another crossroads for the city of Pittsburgh—and a choice of which path to take.
The status quo in Pittsburgh has always been robber barons controlling policy through politicians catering to their wishes, which forces the 99% to subsidize those private ventures. Mayor Ed Gainey’s victory over incumbent Bill Peduto in 2021, (the first incumbent to lose since 1938) partly illustrated a city fed up with a top-down, private-developer-driven merger of state and corporate power that causes an inequitable distribution of our resources. Business types using government by capitalism to loot the city’s coffers while claiming to save it under the facade of a democratic system.
Gainey’s election and subsequent first term saw a shift to a more equitable city. Long-suffering communities saw improvements in infrastructure, traffic safety, refurbished playgrounds and community centers, and more—as well as a serious and effective plan to tackle deteriorating bridges long neglected (especially by the Peduto administration). Over years, numerous safety inspection warnings went ignored and the City of Bridges embarrassingly made the top story around the country— with the mangled consequences at the bottom of the Fern Hollow ravine.
.
But also during Gainey’s first term, a fraudulent astroturf mob—egged on and propped up by private developers and peripheral benefactors, as well as corporate press—are involved in what can accurately be described as a conspiratorial political lynching.
The not-so-shadowy 1-percenters believe that wealth equals worth. That they count more than anyone else and are thus more deserving of taxpayer dollars—even though most don’t live inside our city’s borders. They’re squealing like stuck pigs that the people’s money is actually going to the people’s needs. They want all the control and all the credit as our “saviors.” Their pretext is that they “create jobs.” But jobs don’t exist on paper. They exist in the physical act of doing the job by workers and the results of their labor. Workers create wealth.
Please, no more talk of companies “giving” people jobs. In reality, the gift relationship goes in the opposite direction. Workers give their blood, sweat and tears, sometimes their lives and in return companies pay them the minimum they can get away with.
—Barbara Ehrenreich
American author and activist
Their mission is to always keep “developing” so that workers are taxed out of paychecks to
fill the gap left by 1-percenters not paying their fair share. If there are not enough expensive projects they’re involved in, they shriek in sync that the sky is falling and it’s all Ed Gainey’s fault. Meanwhile, they do absolutely everything they can to avoid paying taxes. Such as laundering their money through Pittsburgh foundations. Such as masquerading as hospitals and universities that are really nontaxable corporations gobbling up land and power and the people’s money. In Pittsburgh—and nationally—
the elite are grabbing more pieces of the pie while everyone else is being austericized. They use Sith mind tricks to convince us that it’s all for our own good.
Here’s just one of their multi-generational schemes: The basic needs of certain neighborhoods are
purposefully neglected over years, driving down property values in those communities. Eventually, they’ll announce a multi-million dollar makeover using a chainsaw approach that they arrange behind closed doors—a makeover they themselves will profit from, disguised as the all-too-familiar “economic development and jobs” mantra. Extra bonus points if this includes the use of eminent domain. See, if you create the problem you can then cosplay as white knights—“saving” distressed neighborhoods. More recently it’s called revitalization—in the 50s & 60s, it was known as “urban renewal.”
It’s a facet of the pyramid swindle, part of the “trickle down” philosophy that never materializes for the 99%. If trickle-down economics worked… it would have already worked. But the disparity of wealth is greater now than in all of human history. The richest 10% hold nearly 70% of this nation’s wealth, while the bottom 50% hold less than 3%. Most of us now see how that’s playing out on a national level. Greed begets greed. Absolute power equals absolute corruption. Within this framework, the game of life has become a playing field of survival of the most vicious and corrupt.
Whether it’s the “market rate” homogenization of Pittsburgh’s unique neighborhoods, lifelong debt accrued through our “healthcare system” or college tuition… or aggressively pushing a boondoggling private venture as the answer to everything—Pittsburgh’s robber barons expect and demand obedience
in advance because they believe they’re entitled to rule.
One of the most recent egregious entitlements they’ve demanded was the community-erasing Mon-Oakland Connector (MOC) private roadway project. Mayor Gainey canceled the scheme after looking at both sides of the issue and correctly recognizing it for what it was: a private development land grab masquerading as a public transportation project. A Trojan horse for university expansion through community erasure. Privateers using the power of government through the collaborating Peduto administration to seize people’s properties over time—while using snake-oil sales and marketing tactics and outright fraud to bully it though—supposedly for “job creation.” (OPN is still waiting for the list of jobs MOC planners were asked to produce in 2015 and how their pet project would be beneficial in any way to residents of 15207.)
Basic infrastructure maintenance like bridge repair or addressing a neighborhood’s flooding problem
isn’t sexy—but autonomous vehicles are!! Or so they want us to believe. They employ professional sales operatives dangling bright and shiny objects with happy PR talk to hypnotize us into agreeing to be fleeced. This mayoral primary race is a perfect illustration: Corey O”Connor’s campaign is trying to manufacture consent and create an aura of inevitability, so his backers can continue living large at everyone else’s expense. They’re currently chasing billions in Pentagon contracts to develop the AI monster for military uses with the typical Victor Frankenstein hubris and arrogance. Their goal is “Robot City” at the 178-acre Hazelwood development site. Tech-bro fetishists partnered with greedy capitalists… What could go wrong?
Their hand-picked choice for mayor is a former District 5 city council representative who participated in the MOC scheme. Over years, he repeatedly lied to residents in 15207. Eventually, they came to learn that as their council rep, he had the power to defund the project as demanded by the majority of his constituents throughout District 5. But he claimed he had no such power, while phoning and asking Hazelwood residents to attend public meetings to lobby for the community-erasing roadway. A classic robber baron move is pitting one neighborhood against another, especially if you can use dog-whistle race baiting tactics. Unfortunately for Almono Partners and their university cohorts, Corey MOConnor’s constituents built a multi-community coalition and after six and a half years, succeeded in winning the The Battle of Four Mile Run in spite of those and other vile tactics.
The 1-percenters want an agreeable figurehead as mayor. They want what they believe is their city back—and there is no low they won’t sink to in seeing it through. To continue lining their greedy pockets while not-so-subtly inferring that we owe everything to them. Everyday people create wealth, but the overwhelming majority is pocketed by the Henry Clay Fricks and the Elon Musks as well as ivory tower jagoffs partnered with private insurance executives. The merger of state and corporate power is what they’re used to here—and that merger is the essence of fascism.
…the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is facism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.—
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1938
So, they continue their war against equity and decency and truth in this primary race. They are terrified of a just world and their delusions of grandeur are only surpassed by delusions of self-worth. The 1% have created an ear worm of a false reality, where too many good and decent working people have succumbed to their divide-and-conquer tactics and act as brownshirts for our collective demise. Regardless of one’s politics, every one of us is being squeezed, bamboozled and led to believe, “It’s not them… it’s us.” That we should all just work a little harder as they collect from increased productivity and monopolistic market manipulation and price-fixing. That is part of the machine—and we are what the machine feeds off of. Consumption and debt is the soul-sucking hose tethered to our spines.
In a democracy, every voice counts and wealth does not equal worth, thus their war against a democratic system. Rigging the game of life, using constant lies to confuse and influence us. (Infinite growth in a finite world is the biggest lie of all) Weaponizing words with threats of collapse if we don’t continue down the path to a Dickensian world of peasants and nobility where they rule and control our lives from the cradle to the grave, while billing us the whole time for their pleasure in doing so.
Development can be good depending upon the type and how it’s done. Community development, as Mayor Gainey has been focusing on? Or purely private development, which uses the people’s money to build a banquet for the rich, with the occasional table scraps for the rest of us to fight over. Plenty of evidence shows that grassroots community development is the most sustainable. But sustainability cuts off systemic plunder.
Growth can be good. But Edward Abbey wrote that “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Since forever, Pittsburgh city officials have been acting as cancer-causing agents. Mayor Gainey interrupted that status quo.
The onslaught of propaganda claiming there’s not enough growth in Pittsburgh and that it’s all Ed Gainey’s fault are the cries of entitled swindlers and their lackeys infected with a perpetual lust for more. Gainey’s term as mayor sticks in their craw—but if he were to act as their lapdog they’d be singing his praises from their penthouses.
What’s important to remember on May 20 is this: There is no hierarchy. That is a construct of the 1%. The truth is, we have the power to create our collective future and we all have a choice to make: the 99% or the 1%. People power or absolute power in the hands of the few. History shows—as in the last mayor’s race—when we flex… the power of the people is always stronger than the people in power.
Pittsburgh is at a crossroads. It’s up to each one of us to decide which path to take: democracy or oligarchy.
Leave a Reply