Pittsburgh's Last Decade

Some usual and some unusual suspects are quoted in Mackenzie Carpenter's interesting review of Pittsburgh's last decade in this morning's Post-Gazette. I'm in there, too.

There was no way for her or the PG to run more than a small snippet of what I wrote when she asked for my views of the good and the bad things about Pittsburgh's last 10 years, especially from an economics point of view. This is the complete version of the relevant part of my written response; of course, she and I also talked at some length on the phone.

My sense is that from an economics point of view, one really good thing happened in Pittsburgh, and one yet-to-be-evaluated thing happened.

The good thing is that the region finally broke free of the psychic hangover caused by the collapse of steel. Steel's history still matters to Pittsburgh, and there is still a sizable but hardly dominant metals industry in Pittsburgh. But ten years ago the public sphere was nostalgic; it still longed for the return of a dominant industry, which could be steel or something like steel. Today, everyone in Pittsburgh knows that the region will never again be a one-industry economy. Curing that hangover has released a great deal of innovative energy across the region, from the tech spinoffs of the universities to the emerging creative communities of Lawrenceville, Garfield, and the North Side to the restoration of public facilities along the waterfronts.

The yet-to-be-evaluated thing is the emergence of the eds-and-meds economy .... "Eds-and-meds" is code; what everyone really means is that Pitt, CMU, and UPMC are the major public institutions in Pittsburgh. They're the big Pittsburgh players today in terms of employees, budgets, and dollars cycling through the region. But we don't yet know how significant they can really be in terms of contributing to the region's growth. Put a different way, if eds-and-meds are so great, then why isn't the Pittsburgh economy doing better? Part of the answer is that if it weren't for eds-and-meds, Pittsburgh would look truly dreadful! But that's only part of the answer. The other part is that eds-and-meds don't create economic momentum in the same way that big industrial enterprises used to create economic momentum. We don't really know yet what they do or how they do it. But we know that they're essential.

None of that is or should be earth-shattering or even newsworthy, but I thought that the context might interest some people who read the article in the PG.

Next up: Pittsburgh's Next Decade.

A Modest Tax Proposal

The City of Pittsburgh is millions of dollars underwater on its pension obligations (and other things), and as a result it wants to impose a "tuition tax" on Pittsburgh college and university students. The City probably doesn't *really* want to impose that tax; the City really wants to force the area's colleges and universities to step up and make a meaningful contribution to the City's bank account - because those colleges and universities are otherwise sitting on vast tracts of untaxed real estate.

This morning's PG reports on a recent study by Sustainable Pittsburgh on the huge and growing costs to the region associated with Pittsburgh's massive inventory of vacant real estate. The headline says it all: "Millions of dollars lost in taxes, investment because of 'growing crisis' of blight." Most of that vacant land is taxable in theory, but there is no tax revenue associated with it. It's not being developed.

Chris at NullSpace has written a lot about the vacant land problem and the fact that the City has taken positive steps toward development by buying back tax liens; I've lobbed a note or two in that direction myself. But clearing taxes is one thing; moving the properties back into productive use is something else. From the Sustainable Pittsburgh website:

"[T]here exists no regional plan, decision-making table, nor coordinated regional effort to tackle the growing crisis of blight and abandonment in our communities. Southwestern Pennsylvania needs to begin now to develop a collaborative regional strategy and actions to prevent and address blight and abandonment...The figure of 67,886 abandoned housing units in Southwestern Pennsylvania commands attention, particularly when factoring that vacancy begets abandoned properties and the compounding associated costs to individuals, neighborhoods, social networks, the economy and region which is working so hard to reach its economic aspirations. Blight and abandonment affects all counties in the region. And it affects our regional economy...Blight remediation fosters an environment conducive to job creation (including jobs associated with remediation itself) and increase in property values... Given the regional impacts and nature of this issue, regional approaches are in order."

Are there two problems here that are waiting for an integrated solution? What better engines of regional innovation and development could there be than our great universities, from whom so much more is legitimately expected?

How about this stone to kill two birds:

[1] Take the Tuition Tax plan off the table.
[2] The region's universities partner in setting up a regional non-profit Vacant and Abandoned Property Inventory and Transfer Center, which starts by buying the tax liens now owned by the City of Pittsburgh. Stretch those payments out a bit, but give the City positive cash flow right now, and pay off the balance over time via step 3.
[3] Share the proceeds of sales to developers. Jointly (with the City) assemble a set of criteria for qualifying buyers (don't dump the properties for the quickest buck and have the properties stay vacant); work with the URA so that efforts are complementary, not competitive. Timing questions aren't easy here (what time period are we talking about here? I don't know.), but my guess is that they can be figured out. Structure at least part of the deal so that the universities come out stronger (i.e., healthier) than they are today: why not offer mortgage and rent subsidies to university employees -- to any college and university employees -- who buy/rent properties that emerge from this initiative, especially if those properties are in the City of Pittsburgh? Perhaps the state could finance some of the debt that the universities would issue to buy the tax liens. That sounds like recycling money to no great purpose, except that the state would likely be more interested in investing in the region if it takes some form other than "give cash to the City of Pittsburgh," and the state is usually intrigued by economic development efforts sponsored by higher ed.

Universities are not, as a rule, in the real estate business, and there is no reason to expect them to do well with this -- except when it comes to their own real estate, and in that area universities seem to do pretty well: Start with fear and loathing of vacant property; raise money, partner with developers, build buildings, comply with complex federal regulations, avoid real estate tax. It sounds to me like they've got just the kind of background that this enterprise needs, starting with an urgent need to avoid sitting on vacant land. Moreover, (i) their increased engagement in the region's economic success is something that just about everyone wants and expects; (ii) their increased engagement in the community (starting with the City, but not limited to the City) is something that just about everyone wants and expects; (iii) properly structured -- and with good partnerships with developers with local college ties -- the universities could (a) make money; (b) give back to the region; (c) get the City of their backs; (d) do something truly innovative in town/gown relations.

And who else in the region has the institutional muscle to make something like this work?

Actually, there is another entity that could be an invaluable partner in all of this: Google. All of those new Googlers who will be setting up shop in Bakery Square? Throw some of their cycles at creating a technical and policy infrastructure to manage the process of creating productive property from abandoned property. I'm a copyright guy; I'm thinking that if Google can assemble Google Book Search to create markets for millions of the world's books, Google can create the Google Property Project to create markets for thousands of parcels in SW Pennsylvania. The whole thing needs a front office (though I know some energetic and creative developers in Pittsburgh who could use something new to do), but the Universities can put up the capital (and the "regional vision" that the Sustainable Pittsburgh report calls for), and Google can supply the back office.

I'm happy to admit that this all occurred to me this morning, when I saw news of the Sustainable Pittsburgh report and wondered why no one (at least in what I've seen so far) connected some of the region's major assets (the colleges and universities) with its other major assets (all of this undeveloped land) -- when the topic du jour in both domains is "taxes." So, I haven't researched the legal questions, and I haven't anticipated replies to the usual barrage of nay-saying Pittsburghers who will argue that nothing like this has even been done before - and therefore can't be imagined now.

But try it on for size, and if you don't like how I've spec'd it out, figure out what might work. It can't hurt. Can it?

Go, Clairton Bears!

A buddy of mine played football for Clairton many, many moons ago. You can take the boy out of Clairton but you can't take Clairton out of the boy, so I've had weekly updates this Fall on the progress of the newly-crowned PIAA Class A high school football champions. He says that back at the start of the season, a rival coach was asked to pick the best defensive players in WPIAL Class A. The reply: The entire Clairton defense. Apocryphal (I'd be happy for a reference, and/or a correction, BTW)? Perhaps. But the results speak for themselves.

Pace Shakespeare:

Now is the winter of our Steelers discontent
Made glorious summer by these sons of Clairton;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our Pittsburgh house
In the deep bosom of the Mon buried.

All hail Clairton Bears!

Pittsburgh to be Assimilated

Jobs. Good jobs. Jobs with a big, rich company. All coming to Pittsburgh. That's all too rare these days; that has to be a good thing. [See also Pgh is a City.] I have friends at Google, senior Googler friends, genuine "Don't Be Evil" friends. There is a side of me that still thinks of Google as just really, really cool.

And then there is the other side. Google's expanding in Pittsburgh prompts thoughts of the Borg. I've been inside the Googleplex; it is more than a little creepy. (As a result of my visit, I'm confident that Google has my DNA.) I've watched the number of IT domains -- and non-IT domains (energy production, for example) -- where Google's ambition has gotten the better of "Don't Be Evil," or at least has bought a sizable chunk of controversy. Google may look like a cool engineering company; in reality, Google is a massive media-and-electricity-production empire. Search "Google 'world domination'" and you get 806,000 hits. Run that search on Bing and you get more than 21 million hits. Borg aren't a bad metaphor: "Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

Pittsburgh shouldn't - can't - won't say no. And the point of the Borg metaphor isn't that Mayor Luke is going to turn into Locutus. The point is that Borg come, Borg go. The Googleplex was once the fancy campus of a high-flying Silicon Valley company called Silicon Graphics. Anyone remember them? And there are still a few people in town who remember that "Bakery Square," the "Eastside" development where Google is taking additional space, was once the Nabisco Factory in East Liberty Larimer.

One company does not the progress of a city restore.

Lump of Coal for the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership

Comes word that the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership sending out ceiase-and-desist letters to enforce its registered trademark in the phrase, "Light Up Night." [The original version of this post, just a couple of hours ago, referred to the City rather than the PDP. Sorry.] As Johnny Mac might say, you cannot be serious.

Yes: The PDP owns a trademark registration on that phrase. According to the Trademark Office, the PDP claims a first use in commerce in 1960. The application to register the trademark was filed in 2001.

So, two thoughts:

First, if the mark was first used in 1960 but the application to register wasn't filed until 2001, it's entirely plausible - even likely! - that the phrase became generic in the meantime. Look around the Internet alone: There are "Light Up Night" celebrations all over the world, not just all around Western Pennsylvania. And if the phrase is generic, then the trademark is invalid - no matter what the Trademark Office might say.

Second, even if small towns with "Light Up Nights" don't have the cojones or dollars to spend fighting a heartless and possibly meritless trademark threat, then they should change the names of their own celebrations as minimally as possible. "Light Up Night" can become "Light Up the Night," which is almost certain to be noninfringing. That's not legal advice. But think about it: "Light Up the Night" simply describes what's happening; it doesn't (and, I think, cannot) signal who is responsible for the celebration - and that kind of signal is key to any trademark case.

And a bonus: Just because the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership owns a trademark in the phrase "Light Up Night," the PDP does not own the phrase "Light Up Night." Trademark Law 101 says: Infringement of a trademark requires a finding of a "likelihood of confusion" - in other words, that some meaningful number of people would think that the PDP is somehow affiliated with, produces, or sponsors "Light Up Night" in Mt. Lebanon, or Uniontown, or wherever. Is that really going to be true? I doubt it. (The problem is that defending yourself against that allegation is really expensive and time consuming.) Trademark Law 102 says: "Dilution" of a trademark requires a finding that the mark is "famous" -- nationally, not locally. And "Light Up Night" almost certainly fails that test.

Send your lumps of coal to the PDP, with cards that say, "Humbug."

Update: The details of this story fascinate me, largely because I usually flinch at claims like the PDP's argument that the 2009 Light Up Night was its 49th in a row. (1960 to 2009, right?) I'm also curious about the PDP's representing to the Trademark Office that the first use of the mark in commerce was 1960.

The history tells a more complicated story. Yes, the first light up night was held in 1960, but it wasn't sponsored by the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. The PDP wasn't organized until 1994. The 1960 event was sponsored by the Golden Triangle Association, KDKA and the Building Owners and Managers Association. (I'm relying on some history offered by the PDP itself.) In trademark terms, that matters: The PDP can succeed to the rights to the trademark ("Light Up Night") but only if rights to the mark were transferred along with what trademark law refers to as "goodwill" - other aspects of the operations of the GTA, KDKA, or the BOMA. Maybe those rights were transferred properly (for example, the PDP and the Golden Triangle Association "merged" in 1996, but a merger by itself doesn't tell us a lot -- and the BOMA and KDKA still exist), but someone could challenge the PDP to dig them up. If the rights weren't properly transferred to the PDP, then the PDP's priority claim to the trademark would date from 1994 at most. Any city or town that used "Light Up Night" before 1994 would be in the clear, and any city or town that used "Light Up Night" in Western PA before 1994 would have a plausible argument that the PDP was forever barred from claiming that its use was first here -- and that would cause a problem for PDP's trademark claims against anyone in Western PA.

In addition, the Golden Triangle Association itself suspended Light Up Night for "nearly a decade" during the 1970s, on account (I believe) of the energy crisis. (Thanks to Google's archive of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for Nov. 13, 1989 and a story by a young writer named Diana Nelson Jones [the second link goes to DNJ's City Walkabout blog at the PG].) Again, in trademark terms, that matters: Any city or town that used "Light Up Night" during the 1970s hiatus (admittedly, given the energy crisis, this would be a stretch) might be on safe ground today and, as with the management transition described above, might be able to defeat the argument that the PDP's use (stretched back to 1960 with the aid of some corporate sleight-of-hand) was first.

I went to the trouble of digging up some of this material partly because it struck me, as it likely strikes a lot of people, that the PDP is overreaching here. Yet many cities and towns that receive the PDP's letters will reflexively submit to their claims, and will submit quickly. That happens a lot in trademark cases and in other IP cases. And so I dug it up and posted it here partly because it is important to remind people that IP rights are not self-evidently valid. Even if someone claims that they "own" something (an invention, something they created and "copyrighted" [copyright is not a verb, by the way], a phrase or logo), it is still right and fair to question whether that's true. Is the thing capable of being owned? Are the rights valid? Do the rights apply? Or is this a case where genuine and legitimate public interest is being squashed for private profit?

Tube City, McKeesport and the Future of Hyperlocalism

Back in 2003 and 2004, when I started Pittsblog, I read Jason Togyer's Tube City Almanac all the time, partly because I didn't know anything about McKeesport (the subject of the Almanac) but mostly because Jason was and is a great and passionate writer, and he was writing with verve in something that feels like a blog. The Burghosphere was a small place back then, and I needed models. Several years on, the Burgosphere has exploded, blogs have sort of taken over my life, and I drop in on Tube City all too infrequently. So it was via Chris Potter at City Paper that I learned that Jason is offering drips and drabs of cash to writers willing to help out at TCA.

Chris spins this as a case study of the future of hyperlocal journalism. "Hyperlocal" is a buzzword of the moment, but plain old local coverage is something that's disappearing from the mainstream media; the economics of daily papers and local TV just don't offer returns on investment in folks who sit through School Board meetings. That means that all too often hyperlocal "journalists" are blogging volunteers with an extra hour or two here and there, or an axe to grind, or both.

Has Jason had any takers? According to Chris, no. Chris speculates: "I'm just guessing here, but perhaps part of the reason is that bloggers are just as parochial as the MSM when it comes to places outside city limits. It's the curse of the hyperlocal: Sites like the Almanac, or Blog-Lebo (where, incidentally, local blogger Michael Madison has called it quits) just don't draw much attention outside the community they serve." (Note the clever self-promotion there? Check out a blog where I used to post! Blog-Lebo hasn't got away.)

That's a glass half-full explanation, but I think that the glass is half-empty. I can't speak for Jason, of course, but there was a good reason that Blog-Lebo -- the unofficial blog of Pittsburgh's least favorite suburb, Mt. Lebanon -- didn't and doesn't draw much attention outside of Mt. Lebanon itself. That's the whole point of the blog. Before Blog-Lebo started, I used to post occasional Mt. Lebanon items here at Pittsblog, and guess what? Readership dipped. It's not just local bloggers who are as parochial as the MSM (note that I initially wrote "rest of the MSM," subconsciously concluding that bloggers these days are part of the MSM - which is a fair if debatable position). All of Pittsburgh is as parochial as the MSM. That's why the MSM is so parochial. The rest of Pittsburgh doesn't care about the melodramas that afflict Mt. Lebanon.

In other words, if the Tube City Almanac hasn't gotten any takers, it may not be because the media doesn't care. It may be that no one cares about McKeesport, MSM or blog (pace Jason) or otherwise. The media have met the enemy, and they are us.

I'm tempted to end that sad story right there, but I won't. I am actually more optimistic than that. If I think that it's unlikely that hyperlocal journalism can find a viable business model on a large scale, that doesn't mean that hyperlocal journalism can't survive. But instead of its producers thinking of the product as a part of a for-profit economy, hyperlocal journalism may be able to find a stable foothold as part of a gift economy. Jason gives his time at Tube City; I used to give my time at Blog-Lebo. A friend of mine in Cleveland runs a firm that supplies the software for something called the Lakewood Observer, which is quite explicit about its foundation in the gift economy. That site is a gift from the community's residents to themselves.

Someone will come along and point out that without professional, paid journalists, there is no objectivity, accountability, or assurance of accuracy. There is no definitive record. Well, sure. Increasingly, journalistic content is like other mass entertainment: In the era of the Internet, we are settling for what's available (music on iTunes!) rather than holding out for quality. But I also find, increasingly, that without volunteer bloggers those professional, paid journalists would have less to write about. (Local MSM do crib from and find leads in local blogs.) If Jason Togyer and Tube City didn't exist, then it's possible that they would be invented; if, like Victor Laszlo, he were to disappear (a possibility that I raise only as a hypothetical!), then others might well rise up to take his place.

Or so I would hope. It's the romantic in me.

The Tuition Tax: An Economist's View

University of Chicago Law School Dean Saul Levmore, who is an excellent economist as well as a celebrated legal scholar, has posted a characteristically acute analysis of Pittsburgh's proposed Tuition Tax (replete with a Chicagoan's dig at Pittsburgh's population struggles). The payoff:

If the city's maneuver is a product of unusual financial stress, as appears to be the case, then the universities might do best to bargain now. In return for agreeing to make modest payments for "services" (based perhaps on a formula that took their own expenditures on police services into account, especially insofar as these provide externalities benefiting the city), they could secure long-term agreements capping the tax or the payments.

Finally, we can see the tuition tax as much more clever than a lump sum payment for services or a removal of the property tax exemption.Of these, only the tuition tax distinguishes colleges from museums and from churches. The city can be seen as arguing that it, along with many other jurisdictions, already imposes sales taxes on amusements and other things that straddle the line between services and products. A modest sales tax on tuitions - and on museum entry fees - is thus rather clever. But can taxes on temple dues and pew fees be next?

The serious point bears noting: The universities could offer the city a guaranteed revenue stream - with a discount for making it a long-term deal. The slippery slope point bears noting, too: A tax on churchgoing! That would sell here - about as well as a tax on cookie tables at weddings. Then again, Dean Levmore is known for a sharp wit; he once asked his economics students to answer the following question: "Why does a house cost more than a cookie?"

Cookies Count in Pittsburgh

Chris Briem points out the that the Tuition Tax Affair landed Pittsburgh on the front page of the New York Times -- driving the final nail in the coffin of the national PR fantasy that Pittsburgh is flourishing in some kind of "renaissance" -- but he doesn't post on a different New York Times story today that arguably says much more about Pittsburgh's past and future. I infer that Chris doesn't read the Times' "Dining" section:

The Wedding? I’m Here for the Cookies

LIKE brides and bridegrooms the world over, the ones in this city and nearby towns bask in the glory of the white dress, the big kiss and the first dance.

But then, a large number of them happily cede the spotlight to a cookie. Or a few thousand of them.

For as long as anyone here can remember, wedding receptions in Pittsburgh have featured cookie tables, laden with dozens of homemade old-fashioned offerings like lady locks, pizzelles and buckeyes. For weeks ahead — sometimes months — mothers and aunts and grandmas and in-laws hunker down in the kitchen baking and freezing. Then, on the big day, hungry guests ravage the buffet, piling plates high and packing more in takeout containers so they can have them for breakfast the next day.

The fact that cookie tables are essential to Pittsburgh weddings is news to no one in the Burgh, I hope. And the vitality of the tradition confirms something that I've written before. The health of Pittsburgh's economy is better measured in terms of baked goods than in terms of other manufactured output. The progressive Cupcake Class in Pittsburgh has nothing on the classic Cookie Class, which was here before and which seems determined to survive forever.

If the supply of cookies to cookie tables really is as inelastic as the Times implies, then a modest cookie tax could be calculated that would close the pension shortfall - and have zero impact on the region's "renaissance PR" or on its students and colleges and universities.

Sure, it's a weird kind of "sin" tax, but let's classify it as a "consumption" tax, which is in vogue these days among tax reformers. Like many consumption taxes, it is modestly regressive. But I think that the citizens of the city could, er, stomach it.

So: Down with the Tuition Tax. Up with the Cookie Tax.

Naturally Drunk in Pittsburgh

From the New York Times annual "Ideas" report comes this item about a study of human decisionmaking: Two faculty members (one at CMU and one at Duke) and a grad student conducted a study -- in Pittsburgh -- on how intoxication affects play of a classic problem in game theory, the "ultimatum game." (This part of a larger project to explore the interaction between economic modeling of human behavior, on the one hand, and what we actually know about human behavior and cognition, on the other hand.)

The so-called ultimatum game contains a world of psychological and economic mysteries. In a laboratory setting, one person is given an allotment of money (say, $100) and instructed to offer a second person a portion. If the second player says yes to the offer, both keep the cash. If the second player says no, both walk away with nothing.

The rational move in any single game is for the second person to take whatever is offered. (It's more than he came in with.) But in fact, most people reject offers of less than 30 percent of the total, punishing offers they perceive as unfair. Why?

The academic debate boils down to two competing explanations. On one hand, players might be strategically suppressing their self-interest, turning down cash now in the hope that if there are future games, the "proposer" will make better offers. On the other hand, players might simply be lashing out in anger....

[The researchers] took a "data truck" to a strip of bars on the South Side of Pittsburgh (where participants were "often at a level of intoxication that is greater than is ethical to induce") and also did controlled testing, in labs, of people randomly selected to get drunk.

The scholars were interested in drunkenness because intoxication, as other social-science experiments have shown, doesn't fuzz up judgment so much as cause the drinker to overly focus on the most prominent cue in his environment. If the long-term-strategy hypothesis were true, drunken players would be more inclined to accept any amount of cash. (Money on the table generates more-visceral responses than long-term goals do.) If the anger/revenge theory were true, however, drunken players would become less likely to accept low offers: raw anger would trump money-lust.

In both setups, drunken players were less likely than their sober peers to accept offers of less than 50 percent of the total. The finding suggests, the authors said, that the principal impulse driving subjects was a wish for revenge.

Or, to reduce this whole thing to non-academic jargon, some psychologists and an economist went to Pittsburgh to find to find out whether long-term considerations or short-term considerations are most prominent in their thinking.

What they found out -- that short-term dominates the long-term -- comes as no surprise to anyone who has observed Pittsburgh's political scene in recent years. (It might be a surprise, however, to learn that the inebriated denizens of the bars of the South Side are reasonably representative of the sober barons of the Golden Triangle.) We also now have a good explanation for Clint Eastwood's popularity.

It also suggests a political strategy for Luke Ravenstahl, who is frequently accused of selling tghe city's out long-term interests for his own short-term political interests: If he is going to play to our collective instinct for revenge, then he might sell his agenda more effectively if he were to act the part.

Pittsburgh Creatives Blog

Just added to the blogroll to the left are three blogs that focus on Pittsburgh's evolving, and some would say, emerging, arts scene:

Pittsburgh Art and Technology

City Creative

Bittersweet Harvest

I'll add more as time and interest permit.

City of Asylum: Pittsburgh

There are pockets of unusual dignity, distinction, and ambition in Pittsburgh, if not necessarily pockets of weirdness. I'll call them mysteries of Pittsburgh, with a nod to Pittsburgh's most celebrated writing son. Last night, I had the good fortune to experience one of them: I attended a reading by and reception for the writer George Packer, often known for his work in The New Yorker and currently the author of a new collection of his journalism, Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade, at Pittsburgh's City of Asylum venue in the Mexican War Streets.

I am a huge admirer of George's work; we have been acquainted since we were teenagers, and I have read and enjoyed almost everything he has ever published. It was an enormous privilege to see him here in Pittsburgh, even if it was only for a brief visit.

The real joy of the evening, however, was getting acquainted with City of Asylum/Pittsburgh. The City of Asylum network is a worldwide movement to provide safe haven for writers who are threatened in and therefore exiled from their own countries. Pittsburgh's CoA was the fourth founded in the US, and it is led by Henry Reese and Diane Samuels. Henry is a Homestead native and made his mark in the business world with the Reese Brothers telemarketing firm. Diane is a sculptor.

Their collection of houses on Sampsonia Way is home to an impressive and inspiring small group of writers, as well as to readings, concerts, and now an online magazine called, appropriately, Sampsonia Way. On the drive over to the North Side, the radio carried the signal of the weekly radio program that features the Steelers' Santonio Holmes, who spoke with brightness about the challenges that the team faces after four disheartening defeats in a row. Santonio soon faded into nothingness, literally and metaphorically. On Sampsonia Way, I met Henry and Diane and listened with several dozen other Pittsburghers and the CoA residents (including the writer known in George's work by the pseudonym Hnin Se) as George Packer read from his long August 2008 piece on the brutal regime in Burma.

The Steelers bring hope and joy (and this week, sadness and anger) to millions of people in Western Pennsylvania and around the world. Henry Reese and Diane Samuels and their colleagues in the City of Asylum network touch, directly, far fewer people. Yet their dignity, distinction, and ambition, and that of the writers they help, at least matches and in many respects exceeds that of the players and coaches who appear on the Heinz Field gridiron. Sharing a tiny bit of their work made me feel as if I were part of a city filled with true nobility, which is a feeling that I don't get even from Super Bowl and Stanley Cup victories. As George Packer wrote on his blog:

[T]he City of Asylum headquarters, which is his home ... [is] one of the mysteries of Pittsburgh, a house covered over in Chinese poetry, another in Burmese prose, on a street where a telemarketer devotes his life to giving a few of the world’s many Huang Xiangs [the Chinese poet] and Hnin Ses [the Burmese writer] a safe place to work.

Something Completely Different

I do have a day job, teaching and writing about intellectual property law (especially copyright and trademark law). If you'd like to see a tiny bit of me and what I do, for free (that is, no law school tuition expected!), then stop by the William Pitt Union in Oakland tomorrow afternoon (Friday, December 4) for an academic conference:

You are invited to a book launch and symposium for Music and Cultural Rights (University of Illinois Press, 2009), co-edited by Andrew Weintraub and Bell Yung, on Friday December 4, 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm, in the Kurtzmann Room in the William Pitt Union.

Framing timely and pressing questions concerning music and cultural rights, Music and Cultural Rights illustrates the ways in which music--as a cultural practice, a commercial product, and an aesthetic form--has become enmeshed in debates about human rights, international law, and struggles for social justice.

We will celebrate the publication of this landmark volume with food, drink, and live music! Copies of the book will be available for examination and purchase.

The keynote speaker at the Symposium will be Dr. Beverley Diamond, Canada Research Chair in Ethnomusicology and Director of the Research Centre for Music, Media and Place, Memorial University of Newfoundland. Other speakers include Mike Madison (Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh); Damien Pwono (Executive Director of the Global Initiative on Culture and Society, The Aspen Institute), and the two co-editors, Bell Yung and Andrew Weintraub (Department of Music, University of Pittsburgh). Please refer to our website for further information:

http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/inpac/conferences/music.html

****

I will be speaking around 4 pm. If you come, I hope that you'll buy a book. I didn't contribute to the book; I was simply invited to speak as part of the launch. I'll be talking about IP theory and some applications to contemporary pop music - specifically The Beatles and Bruce Springsteen.

****
More information about Music and Cultural Rights:

http://www.uiuc.edu/goto/f09weintraub

"The best perspective to date on the issues of music and cultural rights. This anthology speaks to the many scholars who believe that engaged scholarship is the way of the future."--Beverley Diamond, author of Native American Music in Eastern North America: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture

"A volume on music and cultural rights is both timely and welcome, particularly one that relies upon diverse ethnographic studies as this one does. An innovative interdisciplinary contribution to ethnomusicology."--Rosemary J. Coombe, Senior Canada Research Chair in Law, Communication and Culture, York University

Supported by the Human Rights Division under the Peace and Social Justice Program of the Ford Foundation, the essays in this volume examine how interpretations of cultural rights vary across societies; how definitions of rights have evolved; and how rights have been invoked in relation to social struggles over cultural access, use, representation, and ownership. The individual case studies, many of them based on ethnographic field research, demonstrate how musical aspects of cultural rights play out in specific cultural contexts, including the Philippines, China, Hawaii, Peru, Ukraine, and Brazil.

Contributors are Nimrod Baranovitch, Adriana Helbig, Javier F. León, Ana María Ochoa, Silvia Ramos, Helen Rees, Felicia Sandler, Amy Ku'uleialoha Stillman, Ricardo D. Trimillos, Andrew N. Weintraub, and Bell Yung.

Down with the Universities?

I haven't had the time or taste to post about the proposed Tuition Tax on Pittsburgh college students, but as I've listened to the rhetoric, I've wondered why the debate is so lopsided.

Over on one side, there are folks arguing that Pittsburgh really needs every penny that it can find, and that there are no pennies left to find except the pennies floating around in students' pockets. There are folks arguing that this logic is an insult to everyone's intelligence, or, in other words, what Chad Hermann calls the "Shakedown Tax" is a stupid idea from the perspective of the City and the politicians who run it. The City of Pittsburgh is really after the non-profit landowners like Pitt and UPMC; college students are pawns in a poorly-executed strategy to get them to pay up. (For what it's worth, I think that this critique is right.)

Over on the other side, there are the leaders of our local universities, who are doing a not-very-effective job of explaining why the proposal is a stupid idea from the perspective of the universities themselves. Chad deconstructs their argument here, though with some rhetoric that is a little overwrought for my taste. The colleges argue that the students are good for the City, and that the benefits that they offer far outweigh any alleged drain on Pittsburgh resources. As Chad rightly points out, this is thin gruel. But Chad grants the city some debating points that he doesn't need to concede, like the point that students "should pay for what they get," thus twisting the knife in the colleges' back ever so subtly and indirectly. Lots of us get things that we don't pay for. All the time. And rightly so. Especially students. The whole point of education is that at its core, it's a gift. But that's a debate and discussion for another time.

What's missing, even in a more constructive suggestion like this op-ed about a PILOT program in Rhode Island, is a defense of the idea that Pittsburgh's colleges and universities are unique and special resources. They are assets to the region and to all of its residents, and neither they nor their students (or faculty, or staff) should be singled out as the City proposes without an extraordinary justification.

I won't go into a full defense of the idea here; it would come off as spectacularly self-interested. I do think that something like the Rhode Island (and Connecticut) PILOT idea should be explored in Pittsburgh; the complaint about non-profits avoiding real estate taxes on their land holdings is a valid one. And universities and colleges are hardly above criticism. For their aloofness alone they invite skepticism about just about everything that they do. And their aloofness only scratches the surface.

It's possible to ascribe the lop-sidedness to the universities' own arrogance. Hoist on their own smug, irrelevant petard, one might say.

But I have a different hypothesis for the lop-sidedness. It isn't about the universities' aloofness and arrogance; universities have been aloof and arrogant for centuries, yet in general terms, and especially during much of the 20th century, universities were often viewed as central to economic and social progress. Attacks on universities were attacks on society.

Instead, I hypothesize that public indifference today has to do with sports. The Pittsburgh population in general treats big-time universities (read: Pitt, not CMU, for reasons that are clear in a moment) as the equivalent of big corporations, rather than as large-scale educational institutions. Here as elsewhere, most people encounter big-time universities in their roles as purveyors of big-money, prime time football and basketball programs. The Big East, Big 10, SEC, and the Big 12 conferences are functional equivalents, in our consuming experience, to the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball. (For exactly this reason, in Sunday's PG Norman Chad - the Slouch - repeated the oft-heard and mostly sensible suggestion that colleges should simply abandon intercollegiate sports.)

In the Tuition Tax debate, is Pitt reaping the bitter harvest of its athletics success? Pitt has certainly played the athletics card to its advantage: For the first time in the modern (ESPN) era, it has nationally competitive football, men's basketball, and women's basketball teams. And its academic standing has risen dramatically over the last 15 years. (Coincidence? I hope so.) Selectivity at the undergraduate level has gone way, way up. In other words, the school has gotten more populist in its general community engagement (football games at Heinz Field, more appearances on national TV) while becoming much less populist in its student selection (it's more difficult today to get admitted to Pitt). The payoff is that in cultural terms, the region treats Pitt very differently than it treats the Steelers. We all "own" the Steelers, because everyone has equal access to fandom. (The same might be true of the Penguins.) But not everyone "owns" Pitt; access, in various ways, is limited. When the City of Pittsburgh comes calling at Pitt, hat in hand, the region mostly yawns. If the City of Pittsburgh were to go to the Steelers with the same proposition, there would be demonstrations in Market Square. The millionaires who compete on Sunday already do more than their fair share for all of Steelers Nation! But college students? They aren't paying their fair share.

Surely I'm missing something.

The Warhol as One Giant Pocket of Weirdness

The Economist magazine this week features a long review of Andy Warhol's impact on the art world (as part of a review of the contemporary art scene), and reading it prompted the thought that the center of gravity in Pittsburgh's cultural scene may really lie a block away from PNC Park, at the Warhol Museum, rather than in Oakland or in the Cultural District. Sure, the latter may have history and breadth on their side, but the Warhol has mass.

From the magazine:

Warhol’s importance as a symbol is immense. He is not just famous; he has been a dominant influence on many of the most successful artists today, including Jeff Koons (see article), Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami and Richard Prince. He redefined the role of the artist as a “creative director”—more of an architect than a craftsman—who is acutely aware of the media resonance of his art. “In future Warhol will be much more important than Picasso,” says Gerard Faggionato, a London dealer, “because he is more relevant to the younger generation.”

Is this right? Pittsburgh may have a pocket of weirdness at the Warhol that beats all pockets of weirdness anywhere.