Pittsburgh is making a proposal for Amazon’s 2nd headquarters. Some of the local contenders are the Alamo site in Hazelwood, Parkway Center Mall (just a Giant Eagle left there from retail), Carrie Furnace in Rankin, Piatt’s Chateau here on the Northside (behind the casino) and of course the Penguins are pushing their lower hill location. The state provided $75M for a new facility in New Stanton for VW, who promised 20,000 new jobs (in the 1980’s) and never got close to that, then Sony had their hand out for $40M for the facility (2008) when VW bailed. We then subsidized Aquion the battery start up from Lawrenceville (in just 2014), we gave them $19M for 341 jobs. Amazon claims the new facility will create 50,000 high paying jobs. I hope we’ve learned out lesson from the past, but with a state legislature that can’t pass a budget with funding for months, there’s little hope for that. They are now proposing adding a 5% tax on top of the 7% hotels currently collect (on top of the 7% sales tax) making us one of the most taxed lodging in the country. But they won’t create a extraction tax on the Marcellus oil & gas companies. I believe we are the only producing state without an extraction tax. I guess my bribes aren’t as steep as the oil & gas industry. 🙂
I’m lucky to have USAA credit cards, they are amazing. Someone run up over $2K Ticket Master charges last Sunday morning and USAA called me Sunday morning questioning if I did that and immediately canceled the transaction. Is this fallout from the Equifax breach? This company that makes millions if not billions selling my information (without my permission) to credit curious businesses and Equifax cannot have a secure site that can’t be hacked? 143M of us have had our information stolen through their incompetence! They have never notified me that my information was hacked (maybe I was one of the lucky ones?). I’m curious if 143M had their info stolen, how many are in their data base? The slime balls initially offered free credit monitoring for a year if their victim signed a waiver not to pursue a class action suite. The audacity!!!!!! Thank heavens, sometimes our government works for us little people and they have now dropped the class action caveat (no comments on my fatness) :), by the way I’ve lost another 8 pounds, getting close to where I want to be.
There’s a ton of little known great people and organizations over here on the Northside. Besides my favorite Brother’s Brother. Another one many people are not aware of is Off the Floor. Started in 2011 (actually before, founder MJ McCarty was driving to work through Wilkinsburg and noticed a couple of little girls on their porch playing every day, but no toys. She stopped to ask their mom if they needed toys and the lady said toys were the least of her worries, she didn’t even have beds for her kids to sleep on, this happened in 2004. MJ went to her church and they started getting furniture for the family. MJ then found out that other families on the block didn’t have furniture either so she started collecting furniture and came to realize this is a real need. So many people, poor (working families on minimum wage jobs only have enough to feed the family, not “luxuries” like furniture) homeless that have recently gotten a place to live out of the elements, etc so she started Off the Floor (their headquarters is right around the corner from me). Off the Floor has furnished 2,400 home since it’s inception. Not only do they help so many people live a more civilized life, they get their staff through the Center for Employment Opportunities teaching them relevant job skills like showing up for work, work ethics, even fixing and repairing furniture (they are so small that they have to do repairs outside in their parking lot which is pretty tough in the winter). They are always looking for gently used furniture and household goods (hint-hint).
My friend Tony (& Sue) called me, Tony’s finished the finishing pieces for the dining room re-do of removing those fluted columns and replacing them with panels and they are stopping by Thursday to finish up, it’s about time he got off his dead a** and finished a project he committed to. Just kidding Tony, don’t get mad at me and bail on me. 🙂 Pictures soon.
Speaking of artists my sister Sue had been on my case that my gerl should have some femininity like a big pink bow. I nixed that. Then she said have her nails painted to reflect her femininity. I was in Target picking something else up and remembered. So I went to the cosmetic area and found these glass tubes with a bright red and what looked like an application brush built in it. A sales rep comes up to the man (me) that seems out of place and asked if she could help me. I said no, “I’m looking for red nail polish” and pointed to the jars or red stuff. She said what I was looking at was eye make up and the nail polish was over there. She explained these are the least expensive for a couple of dollars, or I could upgrade to some system for $40. I told her it was for my dog and I wasn’t paying $40, she said “Sure”. 🙂 Pictures to follow. Da gerl doesn’t allow me to touch her paws, she always yank her paws away when I try and pet them. So I delegated the task to Dee, if anyone can convince da gerl to upgrade her nails it would be Dee.
That’s it for today, have a great night and great Wednesday,
ed
