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Pittsburgh To Tax Students
societyofrobots writes "Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has proposed taxing college and professional students for the privilege of receiving an education in the city. The proposed tax will charge students in the city at a rate of 1% of their yearly tuition — which, at Carnegie Mellon, would mean roughly a $400 tax (PDF) on most students. As the tax proposal hit local media outlets this week, the mayor repeatedly emphasized the burden that college students have placed on city services, and the need for students to pay their 'fair share.'"
Can I ask what's wrong with it?
I admit that at first it does look or read like it is a poor sentence, but I can't actually see anything wrong with it;
"That's a way to dumb down the city."
or
"That is a way to dumb down the city."
He even had the capital and full stop.
(Anon because it's off topic)
Warning: absurdly long post with 99.9% textual content. If you're not interested, skip it, no harm done. If interested, read on.
RC, I don't know how much you know about me, or even how much you *want* to know, but I figure I should open up and share, since I'm asking a favor. If it's too long, you can just skim: I know I tend to babble at the mouth sometimes. The important bit is at the end anyway.
My soon-to-be-ex and I have been living in this house for three years now. Almost exactly three years to the day when he moved out, to move in with his new fiancee. I've been without a job since I got laid off last fall, and despite looking nearly every day for a solid year now, so far I haven't even been asked to an interview. Credit bills have been going unpaid, grocery budgets tight, etc. Some weeks, because we had to buy dog food *and* cat food *and* gas, we'd have almost nothing left for human food. I always put the animals first, even though hubby objected: the dogs lived primarily outside, and as such I felt they should get better quality food; the cats, while they are indoors-only (busy area, too dangerous), include individuals with weakened immune systems, and I'm happy to do anything for them to help them out.
When we moved into this house, we had, so far as cats go, Fred, Socks, Romeo, Fluffy, Butters and Mom, taken in from our apartment complex; Mom's kittens; plus our set of previous cats. That set includes Kitty (rescued from the street near a city health clinic), Moira (rescued from the euthanasia section of the city animal prison), Galileo and Seiyuu (kittens born to a stray in the apartment complex), and Skinny (a friendly stray who showed up one day with a giant gaping hole in the side of her neck).
Fred was a big strong tom cat who'd been adopted by some neighbors. Who would not let Fred come inside, and the man refused to get him fixed, because he did not want to 'take away the guy's manhood'. His tiny water bowl was usually bone dry and they didn't feed him much, so I'd put out food and water on my own patio for him. Then the neighbors moved away, and left Fred there. Nobody else claimed him, so we brought him with us when we moved, and gave him a home indoors. It turns out, however, that Fred had caught feline leukemia, and about a year and a half later, after refusing to display weakness while I was watching, one day ended up laying in his litter box, unable to move his hind legs. Leukemia gave him a spinal tumor. Prednisone brought it down some, but eventually he ended up in renal failure, although I didn't recognize it at the time; he died one night, the day before I was going to take him in to the vet. But he died curled up on a rug, with blankets, in a nice soft house where people loved him, instead of lying paralyzed out in the woods, alone.
Socks, Romeo, Fluffy, and Butters.. I don't know where they came from, but they'd come to our patio for food, so we trapped and brought them with us when we moved, because I couldn't stand leaving them there, where kids were encouraged to throw rocks at them, or hit them, or shoot them with BB guns. It turns out Socks was already been pretty old: we had him (and Butters and Romeo and Fred and Fluffy) in at the vet's temporarily, while we finished building the room in the house for them (yes, this house has a cat room: vinyl floor, multiple litter boxes, a mattress and things to climb on, etc.), and he developed what looked like an auto-immune disease. Doc couldn't figure out exactly what it was, but she said he looked ten or twelve years old, which is old for a hard-living stray, and he ended up dying a few days later. I kind of feel bad that he died sitting in the vet's office, but.. there, he had the whole staff mooning over him and taking care of him. At the complex, he would've been half-blind and half-paralyzed out in the woods. So I guess we still did some good by him.
Fluffy had had a kitten, shortly before we moved out, on a different neighbor's patio. The kitten had no water or anything, and was old enough that ju
Not stupidity. Corruption. Here is your typical Pittsburgh (or Philadelphia) politician in action. Both cities suffer from extreme corruption within: Timestamp 1:00 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS4rRl5B7NI
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>Murtha doesn't represent either Pittsburgh
Oh sorry. I should have said SUBURBAN Pittsburgh (as if that makes any difference). He's a product of that area and typical of the kind of politicians in and immediately surrounding that city.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall