[PRCo] Re: Great shot of Liberty Avenue, Downtown Pittsburgh 1960s

[John Swindler]

Hi Fred
 The other point about Shapp is that he was considered an outsider to the political machine.   Things were not quite 'politics as usual' during his administration.  This might relate to his willingness to back Tennyson and go against the Allegheny County Democratic Party during the Skybus controversy.   The big cut-back at PennDOT was in the planning function.  Bureau Advance Planning occupied an entire floor in old T&S Bldg, and there was an additional planning bureau on first floor.  Some bureaucrats know how to build empires better than others.  By 1990s, at least two floors of T&S Bldg had been turned over to other agencies.  The fire started on a floor occupied by Dept. of State.   Nothing unusual about name changes.  A lot of names were changed while passing thru Ellis Island.  Even more were changed to simplify - just look at the annual census records.  All your father-in-law did was simplify his name - just like you use Bill instead of William in your family.  (actually I'm against simplifying names - makes family research more difficult). As for federal funding, 90% comes to mind for federal share of interstate highways.  That is why there are three interstate highways in Hawaii.  (think about it....)  As for maintenance of these highways, that's the purpose of the state gas tax.  The state tax includes both a cents per gallon and a percentage of whole sale price.  But because the politicians want to take care of their union contributors, construction costs are artificially inflated - something to do with prevailing wage requirements.  And politicians don't want to raise taxes during an election year.   Federal funding for mass transit was originally 2/3rds for capital projects starting in mid-1960s, then federal operating assistance was made available in 1970s up to 50%.  Then capital share was increased to 80% where it is today, and federal operating assistance withered.  Far too often the federal operating assistance didn't benefit the transit riders with additional service as intended - it just got wasted on increases in labor costs.  The union negotiators are professionals, and they end up dealing with a bunch of political amateurs.        As for job security, it varies.  Always has, always will.  The trouble with job security is that it does not prepare a labor pool to adapt to change.  The easiest example is the introduction of computers to the workplace.  Some embraced it, but many fought it.  (some still do).  In the end, why sould an employer, either government or private business, pay employees who don't want to adapt to change.  The military is another place where employees have to adapt to change, particularly so with the end of the USSR around 1990.  There was a tremendous reorganization during 1990s.  Those that didn't want to change essentially left.     As for sure fire ways to make a living, simple.  Prepare yourself for change and willingness to adapt to several different careers during your lifetime.  As I mentioned last Tuesday, James graduated from Millersville with a bs in biology, and he didn't even have to look for a job - it came looking for him.  But there were just two pages listing graduates with math/science degrees.  There were seven pages listing arts/humanities degrees.  I wonder about the job prospects for the latter. CheersJohn > Subject: [PRCo] Re: Great shot of Liberty Avenue, Downtown Pittsburgh 1960s
> From: fwschneider at comcast.net
> Date: Sat, 19 May 2012 20:24:15 -0400
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org
> 
> Slide would have been taken during Shapp's 1966 unsuccessful campaign for the Governor's office.   He was elected in 1971 and served two terms (1971-1979).  
> 
> Ed Tennyson did confirm to me the same story about Shapp and Shaker Rapid. 
> 
> One thing, John, that I did admire about Milton Shapp was that he gave back to the state one of the benefits that the Commonwealth gave to him.   He didn't want the annoyance of being in the public eye so he bought his own house on the hill top in Camp Hill with a fine view of the Susquehanna River.   My wife just commented "that he and Muriel wanted to live next to the common man."   One might suggest it was to be in proximity to an Orthodox Synagogue (Shapp was the state's first Jewish governor) but the only Orthodox Synagogue in the area is within walking distance of the governor's mansion in Harrisburg, and he moved about two miles away.    
> 
> One thing I just now discovered about Shapp … like my father-in-law, Shapp changed his name claiming he could not do business with the name Shapiro.  My father-in-law claimed he couldn't practice medicine in Lancaster in the 1930s with the name Francesco Americhe Veri because of prejedice against Italian-Americans; he had it legally changed to Frank Americus Veri and became one of the more popular thorasic surgeons in the county.   Sad what prejudice does…...   
> 
> John, Penn DOT wasn't the only one to tell the public we cut back on state jobs while giving the money away.  
> 
> There is something else for which I wish I had about 60 years of historical perspective and that would be how federal legislation affected how we spent money in the states. I am familiar with the Wagner-Peyser Act and how it created a Federal-State Employment service and how that developed in 50 states and how it was funded.
> 
> The State Employment Service had expanded quite heavily just before Shapp came into office.   I received every merit-based promotion I ever got during Shapp's tenure.   Then the Republicans came in and switched to giving money to the private sector in exchange for kickbacks.   In fairness to Shapp, the Employment Service was 100% Federally funded and a good deal of our hiring  resulted from the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson "Great Society programs."  In fact the entire Federal-State Employment Service was created in the Depression under FDR's administration.  Everything we (and all the other states) did was prescribed by Washington … USDOL passed the regulations and told the states what they would do and handed them a check to cover payrolls.   Of course if they could not handle it out of the money the feds gave them, T. S. …. then find your own money.   One of the significant attempts to help mankind in the 1960s was the establishment of  "Human Resources Developmen!
>  t" offices in addition to the normal labor exchange offices in order to better service those people on the lower edge of society and those offices required employment counselors instead of the usual job placement interviewers.   The idea was to take those people at the lower margin of society and work with them to make productive workers out of them.   Once in a while it worked.    Of course it became depressing to the counselor when the same doofus "became lost" between the office and the site of job interviewer seven times in a row.   By the 1970s the HRD offices closed, the counselors were merged into the regular offices.   Then the a few years later we dispersed our counseling staff to other agencies … education, welfare, probation & parole.   Then the counties lobbied to get all the money the states had and they stole the remaining job funds away from the states.   Next they discovered they had bought into pension and health costs.  Today, in many areas, private compan!
>  ies are handling what used to be the state employment offices.  
> 
> I wonder how the US and Federal Interstate highway programs backwashed on the states.  You mention how PennDOT expanded.   We had a huge US highway program.   It occurs to me that many of those highways were decommissioned once the Federal government built similar parallel Interstate highways, i.e. much of US 30 is now I-80.  A lot of those U S highways are now simply maintained at state expense.   In the 1960s UMTA was created as savior for mass transit with a ration of 2/3s federal funding, 1/3rd local funding … and those ratios were capital and operating costs.   Washington has since reneged on the operating costs once the states and local governments were entrapped.   
> 
> How many other parallels are there in which the feds said to the states, "Do and we shall help you" only to have Washington cutback or drop out entirely later?   We know that for many years the federal income tax tables never changed because they inflation gave them enough money.   Then we have a Republican administration that chopped hell out of them … politically easier to borrow money and pay it off with cheaper dollars or never pay it back….   But then we have no money to fund what we started.   Witness Amtrak?  I guess we have to admit it was only a promise to save union jobs and now that the senators and representatives who made that promise are gone, we can stop funding it.   
> 
> John, I do not think PennDOT or Labor and Industry were alone.   There is a wonderful lady who used to work for me in L&I who left us to get a supervisory job in Education; she was the last hired there … it is easier to hired outside consultants to do the work rather than state people because the consultant can be told to give a percentage back to the political party.  I have lunch with her once in a while.   So that's three agencies heard from.  I suspect Dwight could tell us similar horror stories from Delaware once he retires.   
> 
> I was once naive enough to believe that government was one place where there might be job security.   I think I have come to believe that there are very few places that offer security.   
> 
> What's a good business?  Remember the name William M. Moedinger, Jr., who wrote articles on Colorado narrow gauge railroads for  Trains magazine back in the 1940s?   Bill was lucky enough to have access to a relatively new Buick in 1931 when most high school kids were lucky enough to afford shoes in the Depression.   Why?   His dad sold tomb stones.  Bankers were jumping off roofs.   Even in the Depression we still needed tomb stones.   In the mid 1970s we buried 93% of our dead.   Today we are burying about 67% of the departed and cremating about 33%.   Even tombstones isn't a good business.   
> 
> Is selling toilet paper the only sure fire way to make a living?  My brother-in-law has made a fabulous living selling paper towels and toilet paper.    Perhaps that isn't even a safe way to make a living. Could we wind up buying Japanese style toilets that wash you off and then gently dry you with warm air?   
> 
> 
> 
> On May 17, 2012, at 7:38 PM, John Swindler wrote:
> 
> >  Shapp also graduated from Case Western University in Cleveland, which indirectly stopped Skybus from being built in Pittsburgh.  PAT - and Allegheny County - needed the state share of the Skybus funding.  Ed Tennyson tells the story that during a heated meeting in Pittsburgh, Shapp asked Ed - "what's this light rail that you keep talking about".  Ed said "didn't you go to school in Cleveland, and didn't you ride Shaker?".  Yes, said, Shapp.  "That was pretty good transportation".   Shapp also started the Pennsylvania Lottery, and the free transit program for seniors.  Allegedly this evoloved from a meeting in Philadelphia where Rizzo promised seniors a ten cent transit fare, and Shapp countered with free transit for seniors.   He also started the state income tax.  And PennDOT expanded to around 24,000 employees during Shapps first administration.  PennDOT was borrowing against the future, and highway fund was near bankrupt.  By early 80s, PennDOT was well on way to 12,00!
>  0!
> >  employees where it remains today. Cheers John  
> >> Date: Thu, 17 May 2012 23:05:51 +0000
> >> From: bobrathke at comcast.net
> >> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org
> >> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Great shot of Liberty Avenue, Downtown Pittsburgh 1960s
> >> 
> >> 
> >> A couple of recollections about Milton Shapp: 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> - Before politics, he made his fortune by founding Jerrold Electronics, an early player in the cable TV industry (Jerrold was Shapp's middle name). 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> - In 1976 he ran for the Democratic nomination for P resident, but he dropped out of the race  after polls continued to show him ranked below "no preference". 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> Bob 
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> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >> 
> >> 
> >> From: "Herb Brannon" <hrbran at cavtel.net> 
> >> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org 
> >> Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 5:54:18 PM 
> >> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Great shot of Liberty Avenue, Downtown Pittsburgh 1960s 
> >> 
> >> Back in the 1970s PATransit participated in a Pennsylvania-wide program 
> >> titled, "Poetry In Transit". It was open to residents of PA to submit their 
> >> poetry for inclusion on the car-cards placed in the vehicles, statewide. I 
> >> remember many of the car-cards, in the PCCs, and one in particular stands 
> >> out. The poet was one, Milton J. Shapp, Governor of PA. His contribution 
> >> was, "....I never met a phor I didn't like". 
> >> Just a little transit trivia from PATransit in the PCC era. 
> >> 
> >> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 6:40 PM, Bob Rathke <bobrathke at comcast.net> wrote: 
> >> 
> >>> 
> >>> I see a Milton Shapp billboard in the photo.  He ran for Governaor of 
> >>> Pennsylvania in the fall of 19 66, and East End trolleys ended in January, 
> >>> 1967.  The primary election was in the spring of 1966, so that would place 
> >>> this photo that year. 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> Bob 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> ----- Original Message ----- 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> From: "Herb Brannon" <hrbran at cavtel.net> 
> >>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org 
> >>> Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 12:34:37 PM 
> >>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Great shot of Liberty Avenue, Downtown Pittsburgh 1960s 
> >>> 
> >>> Two of my favorite Pittsburgh items are in the photo.............the small 
> >>> street lamp at the end of the safety island and the traffic signal showing 
> >>> yellow over green. I did put the photo on my "watch list" on eBay. 
> >>> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 12:54 PM, Barry, Matthew R <mrb190 at pitt.edu> 
> >>> wrote: 
> >>> 
> >>>> Really like this view of Liberty at Sixth, Downtown Pittsburgh - probably 
> >>>> taken between 1963 and 1966... 
> >>>> 
> >>>> 
> >>> http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pittsburgh-Trolley-Slide-75-Wilkinsburg-Car-1465-/150814841314?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item231d43d9e2 
> >>>> 
> >>>> Matt 
> >>>> 
> >>>> 
> >>>> 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> -- 
> >>> Herb Brannon 
> >>> In Cuyahoga Valley National Park 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> -- 
> >> Herb Brannon 
> >> In Cuyahoga Valley National Park 
> >> 
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> > 		 	   		  
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