Writers

I just came back from a "read around" that concluded the two-week Young Writer's Institute for high school students, hosted by the creative writing department at Pitt. About 20 or so high school students, and several of their teachers (local grad students and high school teachers) read poems, prose, non-fiction -- whatever turned them on. There was fantastic, energizing slam poetry.

This has nothing to do with Pittsburgh, per se; the Young Writers Institute is a national program that happens to be sponsored locally by the Western Pennsylvania Writers Project. But watching and hearing a bunch of high school students get that ramped up about the arts is a fabulous thing. I appreciate it like I appreciate my favorite part of a well-trained marching band: the drumline and, where I live, its cousin, the amazing drum ensemble.

And with that, I ammmmmm outta here. For three weeks. See you in mid-August.

Just Right

The best news in today's paper, though, was Tony Norman's column about how Outfoxed, the documentary about the Fox Network, is making the rounds in Pittsburgh.

The fact that the film is available at all is a tribute to my colleague Larry Lessig and other lawyers who are working hard to ensure that free speech interests don't get trampled by copyright law.

Everything's Coming Up Roses

Kate Whitmore of the New Pittsburgh Collaborative thinks so, in her letter to the editor today.

Kate's just a little too cheerful about the city, dontcha think? Didn't she read the story about the city desperately needing an image makeover?

All-Star Game a boost for city's image?

Some mornings, I open the Post-Gazette, and it just screams to be blogged. Take today's All-Star Game a boost for city's image, but economic impact limited.

What about that lede, folks? "Pittsburgh should get a desperately needed image boost from baseball's All-Star Game in two years . . . ." Desperately needed? If any image needs a desperate makeover here, it's the image of our professional sports teams. So why turn to sports to rescue us? And two years from now? Great. I'll set my alarm.

When the going gets tough, the tough turn to . . . sports? I don't think so.

Just for Fun: Fish

This claims to be the only "The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh" site on the Web. Let's hope so.

Social Enterprise Accelerator

I just came across the
Pittsburgh Social Enterprise Accelerator, which supports the Center for Creative Play, among other things. The Center got some nice attention in the July 12 edition of the Wall Street Journal, but none of the Journal's content is available for free online. So no link. Sorry.

Center for Economic Development

Fester's comment about "churn" among 20-somethings in Pittsburgh (a comment that strikes me as on the money) referred to Bob Gradeck at the Center for Economic Development (at CMU). The CED's homepage, which includes links to Gradeck's reports (under "Destination Pittsburgh"), is here.

Manifesto

I don't know who Joe Rossi is (but I expect that I'll learn in the Comments), but he's been studying his Karl Marx.

How About Those Young People?

CNN.com gets hip to Pittsburgh's problem. But we're not hip enough to rate a mention.

Maybe it's no big deal. According to the story, "some experts who track population wonder if focussing on 20somethings is the best tactic for plugging brain drain.

'They're like a revolving door. They move to one place -- and they move away,' says Bill Frey, a demographer and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. 'So any city that thinks they can get a hold on this group is expecting too much.'

D'oh!

Slogan

Via Suzie, at bedsidemanner:

Pittsburgh. Much Cooler Than You Think. Really.

Pittsburgh Regional Branding Initiative

Thanks, Mike, for the pointer to the Pittsburgh Regional Branding Initiative. I have to say that I find the whole concept of "regional branding" kind of . . . scary.

In all seriousness, the last thing that Pittsburgh is or wants to be is inauthentic. And here and elsewhere, you can't "brand" a city the way you can "brand" a new car. If you could, then I'd recommend changing our name and getting a much hipper logo. We could be the Lexus of Rust Belt cities. We need a new color scheme. Black and gold? Everybody's black these days.

How about some celebrity endorsers? Michael Chabon has done a few good things since he lived here (he got a writing credit on Spiderman 2!) -- how about him? "I got my start in Pittsburgh," he could say, "and now I'm rich and famous and living in California." Maybe Mariss Jansons could record "Thanks for the memories" for us? What's Jennifer Beals up to these days -- besides flying to Chicago with Frasier?

And a slogan. We need a slogan. Earlier in the blog, I was trying to push the winner of a local slogan contest -- "Get Yo Pittsburgh On." That didn't take. How about (a la Roddy) "Free Beer"?

Roddy at CJR

The P-G's Dennis Roddy recently shared his thoughts on journalism, covering the presidential campaign, and Pittsburgh's true character with the Columbia Journalism Review.

Casting the First Stone

Patricia Prattis Jennings should stick to making beautiful music with the Symphony.

Pitt faculty member indicted

More on the continuing saga of Pitt faculty member Robert Ferrell (genetics), and his Buffalo colleague Steven Kurtz (art): each has been indicted for mail and wire fraud. Story here.

Hacking Pittsburgh

Mark Stroup's thoughtful and sympathetic take on the Jim Morris piece on computer science, computer programming is here. Mark adds a metaphysical gloss that I quite like.

Amos, though, is still skeptical. His comment, in part, is "amused irony. A blog optimistic about PIT, quotes a CMU prof who really works mostly in CA. Does Stanford have an "east" campus in PIT? Does MIT have a "mid-west" campus here? No? Why? Because they do not have trouble attracting talent because people want to live in BOS, and SJC."

Again, with all due respect (since Amos knows the territory), I don't quite agree.

We can't treat Pittsburgh as a wanna-be Mountain View or Cambridge. The concentration of higher ed and capital is far greater in those communities than it is here, and that concentration is (to borrow a social science term) persistent. There's been a lot of VC money around MIT and Stanford for a long time. Pittsburgh and CMU have a long way to go in that department, and frankly I doubt that they will ever catch up. Pittsburgh will never be a Silicon Valley or a Route 128.

So, to start with, why would Stanford or MIT ever think of opening a branch campus here? CMU, which has to play catch up, is doing the right thing: going where the money and the talent is, and giving its educational mission a properly international dimension. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's a good thing. What will come of it, CMU hopes (I assume), is an international educational network with a strong CS and engineering dimension, and its hub in Pittsburgh. If that's the goal, then it makes perfect sense for Dean Morris -- located in California though he may be -- to be preaching about CS education to a Pittsburgh audience. Because he's not speaking just to Pittsburghers; he's speaking (explicitly) about CMU's evolving international role and (implicitly) about Pittsburgh's role in that context.

The idea that Boston or San Jose (San Jose!!) is a more desirable place to live than Pittsburgh, and that this is why Pittsburgh has a hard time attracing tech types, is a gross oversimplification. People live where they live for a lot of reasons, only some of which have to do with the inherent attractiveness of a given city or region. I grew up in the Bay Area and spent a lot of time in the Valley (both before and after it became the *Silicon* Valley), and I lived in Boston before I moved to Pittsburgh. The Valley is a great place if (i) you can afford it (many, many people can't) or (ii) if you don't have school-age kids. Don't forget: the ground shakes, violently and unpredictably (been there, done that); the hills occasionally burst into flames (ditto); and you never know when you'll get a notice that your house sits on top of a toxic plume (didn't happen to me, thankfully). I was happy to leave California seven years ago and have no desire to move back -- though professionally, nothing would be easier. Boston is a charming area, a little less expensive than the Valley, and with more towns with good public schools. But aside from the (considerable) appeal of New England, the Boston-area tech economy isn't exactly humming along at the same pace as the Valley economy (even today, when the Valley economy is still sputtering). Route 128 has never been as vibrant as the Valley (read Annalee Saxenian's book Regional Advantage for an explanation).

In other words, the Valley and (maybe) Boston are better places for 20-something geek hotshots and for people who are coders-for-life. They're good places for people who built roots before the real estate tax system got screwed up and for people who caught the Internet bubble in a good way. For the types of people that Pittsburgh needs to attract the most -- mid-level managers who want to grow small companies (that is, people 30 and up, often with kids) -- for cost and quality of life, Pittsburgh has almost any other region in the country beat hands down. If they'd prefer to live in the Valley (not San Jose -- I've spent a lot of time in San Jose -- no one aspires to live in San Jose), or in Boston, it isn't because those are nicer places to live. It's because there are more management level jobs; if you're out the door at one place today, you can find work across the street tomorrow. At least, this is how it used to work; things aren't quite so easy today. But the basic premise -- Pittsburgh can't compete right now in job depth for people who are more than programmers -- is still true.

Jim Morris doesn't come right out and say the same thing, but I think that it's there between the lines of his op-ed: you can't grow a regional (or national) tech economy by treating CS as vocational education. If you want to reach for the next level, you have to pair CS with a liberal education.

10th Annual Pittsburgh Blues Festival

The Blues Festival starts next Friday.

Elements Pittsburgh

Tonight at the Convention Center: Elements. Not your typical Pittsburgh event. Come one, come all.

I liked this tell-it-like-is comment by promoter Antonio DeMarco in the Post-Gazette's coverage: ""The gay public in Pittsburgh did not support this at all. Pittsburgh is a beautiful city, I've lived here all my life, but we simply don't have that community spirit in the gay community that other cities do. I couldn't get strong support, so I opened it up."

UPDATE (9:25 p.m. Friday): The event is cancelled; the website notes only "extenuating circumstances."
Thanks to Colter for the comment.

Seattle Weblogs

I came across seablogs today, a web portal for Seattle-oriented and Seattle-based blogs.

The ranks of Pittsburgh bloggers keep growing (not that I've been keeping up with my list of links). Is there anyone out there with the time and energy to put together a portal?

An Unexpected Winning Streak

No, not the Pirates' current 10-game streak, but Ken Jennings' unprecedented dismantling of the competition on Jeopardy!. Mark Goldblatt at the National Review Online writes: "Jennings is quite simply better at what he does well than any human being I've ever seen. He's better at Jeopardy than Michael Jordan was at basketball, than Wayne Gretzky was at hockey, than Bobby Fischer was at chess. The only comparison that comes close is Secretariat during his Triple Crown rampage."

Goldblatt is right, but not because Jennings is so smart or knowledgeable. A lot of the questions on Jeopardy! these days are pretty easy. Jennings is so good for other reasons. One, he is incredibly quick on the buzzer. There is a rhythm to the buzzer, and it usually takes new players a little while to get the knack. That's why the returning champion almost always gets the first few clues at the start of a new game. (I learned this first-hand as a contestant three years ago.) Two, because (like MJ and Bobby Fischer) he intimidates the hell out of his challengers. Watch the show. You can see it in their eyes. Very few of them can match Ken's rhythm, and so far, none have been able to match it for long.

Baseline problems and Pittsburgh exceptionalism

One general difficulty in posting about Pittsburgh's problems and potential is what we could refer to as a baseline problem:

As a relative newcomer to Pittsburgh, I see a mid-sized city with modest industrial resources, a well-endowed and relatively sophisticated not-for-profit and higher education sector, and a well-educated population, and a beautiful location. I see under-developed exploitation of entrepreneurial resources, of regional resources, and of international connections, and I see a publicly complacent pool of young professionals. In total, I see an enormous amount of energy waiting to be tapped.

Many people who have lived here much longer, or who lived here in earlier generations, moved away, and returned, see a shadow of a much larger and more powerful city, where industry was king and Downtown thrived. They see only the dimmest echoes of the Pittsburgh of 100 years ago, or the Pittsburgh of 50 years ago, or even the City of Champions Pittsburgh of 25 years ago. They see Pittsburgh in a (nearly) irreversible decline, and they struggle to figure out how to restore the former glory.

We're working from different baselines, in other words.

Often, we're also working from different presumptions about Pittsburgh's place in the world. What I sometimes pejoratively refer to as Pittsburgh parochialism is more charitably characterized as Pittsburgh exceptionalism: the idea that if you're not from here, and if you don't live here, you can't understand the city and its issues and don't have anything useful to contribute. Pittsburgh is special.

I start from the premise that Pittsburgh today isn't all that different from a large number of similar communities around the country, and that its future depends on understanding its relationship to other places, both in the US and abroad. Pittsburgh shouldn't blindly emulate "success stories" from elsewhere, but it should welcome thoughtful input from everyone.

Did I get up on the right side of the bed today, or what?

On that note, a response to Amos the Poker Cat, who replied to yesterday's post about computer programming, that the California software market is just different from the Pittsburgh market: I just don't think so. I grew up in the Silicon Valley (before it was the Valley), went to school there, and as a lawyer there represented a lot of software companies (large and small) and individual entrepreneurs, programmers, and VCs. The differences aren't technical -- programming is programming and CS is CS. What a Californian CMU Dean has to say about the discipline applies in Pittsburgh, in Austin, in Cambridge, in Europe, and in the Middle East.

The differences between Pittsburgh and Palo Alto are structural, or cultural. A metaphor might apply, for the technically inclined: Palo Alto is an open (source) system. It has its customs and its traditions, but at its core, it welcomes input from the outside. Pittsburgh is a closed (proprietary) system. Where do you want to go today? Answer: Dahntahn.

Computer science v. computer programming

CMU Dean James Morris has this great piece in Sunday's Post-Gazette on the difference between computer science and computer programming.

His unstated conclusion: The future of IT in this country -- that is, what won't be outsourced for another generation -- is computer science.

Lessons for Pittsburgh

Post-Independence Day thoughts:

I read yesterday's NY Times magazine piece on the manufacturing revolution in China and came away with some impressions.

First, the manufacuring economy in Pittsburgh (as in most similar American cities) will never, ever return. It's not that the wage structure of Western PA is too high, and it's not that we lack the means to make needed capital investments. Here's the key: No matter what Pittsburgh does (and Pittsburgh is hardly alone in this), the Chinese can do it just as well, for less. The region is simply fooling itself to think that there is a meaningful manufacturing component to economic revitalization in Western Pennsylvania.

Second, the idea that "Downtown" can and should be the anchor of economic revitalization is equally misbegotten. The whole concept of "Downtown" is a relic of an economy when capital was "Downtown" and labor was in the mills and factories. The blessings of geography give Pittsburgh an interesting natural asset -- the Golden Triangle -- which can be a destination for people who occasionally visit Downtown (sports and entertainment), a resource for the pioneers who live in and near Downtown (maybe a Walmart, unconventional though it is, isn't such a bad idea), and a home for the handful of firms that, for reasons of history or prestige, find it appropriate to house their employees there. The concept of planned urban "redevelopment," another relic of a bygone era, is intellectually bankrupt. Small, projects, and mostly private ones, are the future.

That's a blend of visions, not one. But the fact of a virtually unlimited labor supply drives manufacturing to China; the fact of a virtually unlimited parking supply moves real economic vitality in the region, to the extent that we have it, permanently out of Downtown. As the mavens of the music business put, in a very different context, you can't compete with free.

(There's an implication in there that we just have to get over another intellectual relic, the supposed conflict between the City and the suburbs. Culturally and socially, the public face of the conflict is between the hard-working folks who live in the City and the effete, wealthy snobs who live in the suburbs. Its private face is a lot of effete, wealthy snobs in the City and a lot of working people and an increasing amount of racial and ethnic diversity in the suburbs. If there's a substantial increase in the occupation privilege tax for people working in the City -- which is probably a good idea, as well as necessary one -- then there should be a corresponding occupation privilege tax on people who work in the suburbs. But suburban communities can't do this themselves; under Act 511 OPT limits are set by state law for suburban communities as well for the City. This is another example of how the financial restructuring of the City may turn out to be futile in the long run without state-level tax reform for all of the taxing authorities in the state. Canonsburg and Cranberry, for example, have the same $10 OPT as the City. If the City OPT is raised to $145 or some such, then these suburbs will have yet another huge economic development subsidy. (A City-imposed "commuter tax" would run into the same problem.) It's a region, people, and eventually -- notwithstanding the best efforts of some of our elected politicians -- we'll have to look at it that way.

Third, and last, could all the lonely single people in Pittsburgh just stop whining about how un-hip and un-cool Pittsburgh is? We've got bigger fish to fry around here. There's a lot more going on that you think, if you look at little bit. And if you can't find the club or the restaurant that you like, then find 5 friends, load up on your credit cards, and open one yourself. For anyone with a genuine entrepreneurial streak (see the reference, above, to Joe DeMartino and his plans for a downtown hotel/nightclub, Pittsburgh has to be nirvana. Because unlike a place like Palo Alto, there's no competition.

Rauterkus Blog

Mark Rauterkus has a new blog with opinions galore about Pittsburgh politics. Jonathan Potts reviews the Rauterkus file here.

Pittsburgh to host Kerry Rally Tuesday July 6

Local John Kerry volunteer goose3five blogs a "major" announcement by JFK himself next Tuesday at a 9 a.m. rally in Market Square.

Potts' Conversation

The always thoughtful Jonathan Potts is up and running with a new blog about Pittsburgh, The Conversation. Check it out!

What Would George Celebrate?

Today is the 250th anniversary of George Washington's surrender at Fort Necessity, a defeat that led ultimately to British victory in the Seven Years' War and, as historian Fred Anderson argues, paradoxically, to the American Revolution. From Professor Anderson's op-ed:

"The 250th anniversary of the Battle of Fort Necessity reminds us that imperial victories can endanger the victor as much as the vanquished. Success in the Seven Years' War convinced Britain's leaders that their nation possessed the world's greatest military power. From that accurate perception, they drew the fatal inference that they had nothing to lose by using force against colonists whose genuine affection for British institutions, rights and liberties had hitherto constituted the empire's strongest bond."

Professor Anderson is the author of
Crucible of War, which is, by thoughtful accounts, a compelling narrative history of the Seven Years' War.

The Capitalism of Soccer - Why Europe's favorite sport is more American than baseball.

Read this piece about the economics of sport and then ask yourself: if the Pirates and Penguins faced the risk of relegation, would their management be as complacent as it is today?

Fear and Loathing in Buffalo

The Critical Art Ensemble website includes links and information about the bizarre recent indictment of Pitt genetics professor Robert Ferrell by a federal grand jury in Buffalo over what seems to be, at worst, a case of petty theft involving biological material, and more likely not a criminal matter at all. The Post-Gazette report on the indictment, which gives little inkling of the scale of the international outrage that the indictment has prompted, appears here.

Fear and Loathing in Mt. Lebanon

Steve sent me a note reminding me that my little municipality, Mt. Lebanon recently and quietly eroded a piece our local civil liberties. In the School District's revised "Parking Policy," there is the following language:

"Student vehicles parked on District property are subject to search by the District and/or law enforcement authorities at any time for any reason, with or without notice. General and random searches (including canine sniff searches) are authorized, and no particular suspicion is required. Students should
have no expectation of privacy as to vehicles on District property. Parking is a privilege, not a right, and student parking permits will be issued only where students and/or parents consent to such searches. Refusal to cooperate in such searches may result in loss of parking privileges as well as disciplinary action."

The policy raises a number of problematic questions. I'll leave aside the first two, which are whether this sort of policy is a good idea (I think that it's not, but I'm not interested in debating the matter), and whether the policy oversteps the legitimate Fourth Amendment interests of public school students who aren't reasonably suspected of illegal activity (I think that it does, but the law here is hardly a model of clarity).

Interesting and problematic question number one is the declaration that parking is a "privilege, not a right." Well-informed contemporary lawyers (and philosophers) have abandoned this sort of distinction, precisely because it isn't based on anything except an empty declaration. Suppose I say that parking *is* a right. What then? How do we resolve this debate? It can't be done. We just go 'round and 'round.

Interesting and problematic question number two is the declaration that students should have no expectation of privacy as to vehicles on District property. Aside from some atrocious drafting (What if a students is driving a car owned by one or both parents? Is that a "student vehicle"? Does the student status of the driver deprive the parents of an expectation of privacy? What if a parent parks on District property in order to visit the school, using a student parking pass?), it's pretty clear as a matter of constitutional law that the scope of an expectation of privacy isn't simply a question of what a school district (or some other public entity) says it is. If it were, students would end up with no privacy rights at all, and that's clearly wrong as a matter of both law and logic. Could the district adopt a policy that declares that there is no expectation of privacy in a bookbag that a student carries in the high school hallways--and have that policy enforced by the courts? What about a student's wallet? When it comes to declarations, why is the parking lot any different?

Interesting and problematic question number three is the rule that refusal to consent to a search might result not only in a loss of parking "privileges," but also in "disciplinary action." The coercion implicit in that statement, it seems to me, is just outrageous. Given the vagaries of the Supreme Court's rulings in this area, I can imagine a court (especially the Third Circuit) upholding a rule that says: Don't park here unless you consent to a search. (I don't like the rule, but I can imagine it being upheld.) I have a hard time imagining the constitutionality of a rule that says: Even in the absence of any reasonable suspicion, you may be punished be school authorities if you don't allow them to search your car.

Knock, Knock (on Pittsburgh)

It's hard to be an optimist today.

I had dinner recently with a friend who moved to Pittsburgh six months ago to take a management position at one of the local universities. I asked her: What are your impressions so far? She has lived out West, in New England, in the South, and in Europe; she comes to town with as open a mind as you could hope for.

She said that she was dumbstruck by the conservatism of the community, not only its unwillingness to change, but its outright fear of doing anything different. This is true not just at the public level (remember: Firefighters and police unions behaving badly!), but at the personal, individual level.

The remedy? Tough love. Strong medecine. Welcome to the fight, Scott Craven, "entrepreneur doctor." (And once again, goodbye to schools superintendent John Thompson. Thanks to Tony Norman for devoting today's column to this Pittsburgh parochialism, and to the community leaders of the Hill District, who are calling out the members of the Board of Education.

Her point two was the absolutely retrograde state of race relations in the city, both in terms of physical segregation, and in terms of social attitudes. This struck me, too, when I moved here Racially, Pittsburgh seems to be stuck in the 1970s. There's more than a slight echo of this in l'affaire Thompson, of course, even though the P-G's report tiptoes around it.

The remedy for this? Long, hard slogging, and a lot of marketing. Item: the city's legal community yesterday rallied around a formal commitment to train and hire more African-American lawyers. I'm hoping that this turns out to be more than mere marketing, more than "It's the right thing to do" for new lawyers and for the community. ACBA members should go ahead and say it. It's OK. Divesity is good for the bottom line.. Expanding your hiring and promotion of racial minorities will make law firms more profitable.

Over time, at least. Real change on the diversity front takes years and years to accomplish, and that estimate assumes the best of all possible worlds in the community at large. Law firms in San Francisco signed a similar pledge back in 1989, when I was a lawyer there, and achieving the goals of the pledge took roughly 10 years.

Finally, I can't decide on the recipient of my "weenie of the day" award. We elected these people; part of the job description is to stand up and say, "I'm responsible." Is it Dan "I fired them but it's Roddey's fault" Onorato? Or Jim "Don't blame me" Roddey? How about School Board chair Bill "Sergeant Schultz" Isler?

Glorious Day

Having violated my own internal rule ("No Whining") in my last post, here's the upbeat counterpart. My family went to PNC Park yesterday to watch the Pirates play the Cardinals. As everyone in town knows, it was a glorious, sunny, dry afternoon. Perfect for baseball. And we were in a nearly-perfect baseball park.

There was a good, vocal crowd that, briefly, reminded me of a European soccer crowd--cheering and clapping for the home side at the oddest moments. Then (oh my!) a baseball game broke out. Solid defense, timely hitting, competent pitching, and best of all, a come-from-behind Pirates victory, sealed in the bottom of the ninth. And the whole thing was over in just under three hours.

We watched the game from the comfort of section 139, in right field, with a panoramic view of the stadium and a gentle river breeze to cool our backs.

Get yo Pittsburgh on!

Back . . . in (the) Black (?)

I've been away (again): we drove to Minnesota, and back, for a wedding. The land of Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.

Unlike Pittsburgh, where the news couldn't be worse: The Mayor signed the Act 47 recovery plan, which is clearly the right thing to do, but the public political whining about the plan shows that the City is nowhere near the road to recovery. We can't even find the on-ramp. The last week has been like an episode of "Firefighters Behaving Badly."

The Mayor is hardly blameless. Talk about a failure of leadership. The ship of state has been sinking on his watch; the rescue crew arrives with a plan to bail her out; and the captain . . . is nowhere to be found. Was I missing something, or was the Mayor's voice all but absent from public debate over the last week?

And our new County Executive, Dan Onorato . . . signs pink slips for 110 people, then hides from the press. Geez.

The news only gets more depressing.

We're going to fix the region's tax problems (meaning: there are too many entities with the power to tax) . . . by installing slot machines around Pittsburgh. The deal isn't done yet, but I'm not exactly doing cartwheels over the possibility that my real estate taxes in Mt. Lebanon might be lowered because other folks like to gamble.

And still worse. The Superintendent of the Pittsburgh schools, John Thompson, is being let go as his contract expires because . . . he has the audacity to fix the district's budget and to push bold new ideas. Board members hate that! It's not the Pittsburgh way! Said board member Jean Fink, "I'm a Pittsburgher and he's not."

My view: John Thompson should stick around, and we should elect him to the Mayor's office.