One thing that you learn very quickly in politics is that there is always an us and a them.  Depending upon where you are, your team members change, but that there is presented an irrevocable split is inevitable.  We love things where they hate things.  We're for the good where they are for corruption.  We are right; they are wrong.

Needless to say, if you're someone more concerned with results than insults this probably is not the most effective way to accomplish things.  As I have the opportunity to talk to more people, I find that this is one of the many reasons why people stopped listening to politics and simply walked away.

If you listen to candidate stump speeches, you'll see this very easily.  There are certain catch phrases and groups that you're allowed to villify.  They think this, so they are bad.  That doesn't work for me; I like to understand why people think what they think, and then I find it much easier to talk to them about what I think and why I think it.  Respect and dignity, two simple values lacking from our discourse.

As I get involved with local politics, nowhere do I find this division more poignant than in the contest between business and labor.  The irony of it is that they both like attacking each other for the same basic offense.  Business gets angry with labor when they want better pay and benefits because their profit margin gets cut.  Conversely, labor gets mad when business is making money and their cut isn't large enough.  So, they attack one another and ask government to play referee.

The truth is if they looked past the rhetoric, they would see an opportunity.  A business that treats its workers well will have loyalty, higher productivity, and more commitment.  These days, since many employees are shareholders in their company anyway, there has never been more incentive to have shared success.  The same applies in reverse.  Unions should know that if a business grows and expands that there will be more opportunities to bring in more workers and promote from within.  If instead of asking government to pick a favorite they could work together, they would see that the challenge isn't between them, but between the companies without.

This is a lesson Pittsburgh desperately needs to learn, and I believe it has begun to do so.  The fight of the future isn't between labor and business, but between our businesses and those in other places in this nation and the world.  We need to stop attacking one another, and see there is a way forward where everyone benefits.  Smarter government would help.  Cut regulation, taxation, and red tape for business, but with the understanding that the employees will benefit also.  There will be more money, more room for expansion, and more to go around.

Balance is the key, and a willingness to understand that us and them is something different today.  Us is all of us, because we cannot have economic renewal if no one can even afford to purchase the products we create.
 
 
Sometimes I feel like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, where everything is upside down and nothing makes sense.

I firmly believe in the idea that solutions to issues should be local and that acting thusly would create not just smaller, but more efficient government.  While I think that can be the case, what I am learning bit by bit is that, in fact, the opposite is often true.  It shouldn't surprise me; it makes sense that corruption would be easier to create when everyone knows each other.

We often rant about the size and scope of the federal government, but I learned an amazing fact today.  Taken in sum, the local and state governments in our nation would dwarf the size of the feds in terms of both numbers employed and expenditure.

Take Allegheny County.  I know their budget was in the $770 million range.  Plus, the City of Pittsburgh, plus the municipalities, plus the authorities, plus the school districts.  Add all these up and you'd have several billion dollars, spread across numerous governments that we barely know and most often ignore.  That scares me.

I'm learning how it works and two things strike me.  One, it will be much harder to reform things locally than it would be to fix DC.  Two, it is more important than that, for as much as I care about the national issues, the process is broken in our own backyard.  Contracts and candidates.  Authorities you never hear about.  And no one even knows what to ask.

To take on the system, I think you might have to expose it all.  You would make many enemies and few friends, but you would have the respect of people who wanted to know what was real.  I hope there are enough who feel that way, like I do.

For now, I will have to leave this as abstract as possible because I cannot explain all the relationships, and I am trying to understand myself.  I can tell you one thing:  The Point will be a gamechanger.