Mayor Ravenstahl knows our neighborhoods

The collective opinion of the PG editorial board is to endorse Republican mayoral candidate Mark DeSantis ("For Mayor," Oct. 28). No surprise, if one has been reading this paper since Democrat Luke Ravenstahl became mayor. Your writers have been on his backside with trivial minutiae of criticism.

Unlike Mr. DeSantis, who doesn't live in a true neighborhood -- he lives Downtown -- Mr. Ravenstahl is a true neighborhood mayor who lives in the Summer Hill section of the North Side. He has tackled major issues like being the first mayor in many years to submit two balanced budgets along with cutting taxes. And by being a neighborhood mayor, he feels, knows, sees and is taking on problems like crime, abandoned houses and overgrown weeded lots, street repair and trash collection at the curbs of homes. Downtown-living DeSantis could never know the true nature of our neighborhoods.

Mr. Ravenstahl is a Pittsburgher who grew up in our neighborhoods. Mr. DeSantis is like a quasi-carpetbagger who has never run or held elected office before, never having to answer to a constituency.

In my opinion unknown Mr. DeSantis has an agenda not mentioned in your editorial endorsement, when in a debate he uttered the words "I wouldn't mind being the last mayor of Pittsburgh." What nerve Mr. DeSantis has to be so excitedly in favor of a city-county merger doing away with our true city neighborhood representation. If this were to happen, our city would surely become oblivion for affluent suburbia. One wonders who is truly behind Republican DeSantis' mayoralty campaign.

DARRELL J. NOVOSEL
Brighton Heights

---

Terrible idea

Regarding the Oct. 23 article "Residency Sparks Mayor Debate": Mark DeSantis has the audacity to suggest that eliminating the residency requirement would make for happier employees and would "dramatically improve the quality of the people we can bring into city government as well." Of course the employees will be happier. They will be able to move out of the city.

The Fraternal Order of Police has been trying for 40 years or more to eliminate residency. The city has a problem with both police and firemen willing to risk losing their jobs by using fraudulent city addresses and living in the suburbs. Imagine what eliminating the requirement would do. A big part of Pittsburgh's tax base is made up of city employees. So, if only half of them decide to move out of the city, that is still a huge reduction in our tax base. And let's not even go to the topic of all the problems that would lead to.

The firemen are just sitting this round out and waiting to see what happens. If residency is lifted for the police, then it only stands to reason that the fire department and every other city employee will be free of the requirement also. This will result in many of our middle-class workers vacating the city and will reduce the number of future city workers moving into the city.

If Mr. DeSantis is elected mayor, then he will get his wish. He will indeed be the last mayor of the city of Pittsburgh.

JANET HILDEBRAND
Arlington

---

Hope for change

After seeing all the letters from suburbanites supporting Mark DeSantis for mayor and city dwellers supporting Luke Ravenstahl, I just had to weigh in. I am a longtime city resident and registered Democrat, and I support Mr. DeSantis, as do many of my friends.

There seems to be real hope for change in our city this time around. I urge my fellow Pittsburghers to ignore party politics and support the most-qualified candidate. The "accidental" mayor we now have has shown neither the maturity nor the expertise needed to move this city forward.

ROBERTA SHOPE
Highland Park

---

For a saner city

One could define insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Pittsburgh Democrats, vote for Mark DeSantis for mayor and stop the insanity!

DON CROSS
Brighton Heights

---

SCHIP flaws

This is in response to several letters from writers condemning the president's veto of the expanded State Children's Health Insurance Program. Their letters show that they are clueless about this veto.

Karen Crow's Oct. 5 letter asks, "Is Mr. Bush lying or just clueless about SCHIP?" Then I read John Schnepp's letter "Lawmakers Live Well on Our Tab But Refuse Care for Struggling Families" (Oct. 22). Mr. Schnepp, do you consider a family earning $60,000 to $80,000 a year struggling? The bill also did not exclude the millions of children of illegal aliens here, or adults. That is what this bill proposed.

Are you aware that in some states (Minnesota is just one example) more than 50 percent of SCHIP recipients are adults? Are you also aware that the president offered $5 billion to the present program? The Democrats' bill would have added $35 billion and you should know that all government-subsidized programs balloon. I raised my five kids without socialized medicine!

As for the payment for this program, let's include Kenneth Perkins' Oct. 25 letter ("The SCHIP Cigarette Tax Hike Would Be a Win/Win"). The Democrats say a cigarette tax will pay for their $35 billion expansion, yet local, state and federal governments are doing all they can to stop smoking and the sale of tobacco products decreases every year. Then who pays the taxes for it? You, me, my children and grandchildren.

Maybe all of you can pay the taxes, but I can't afford it on my fixed income. I already have less spending money every year due to new taxes and cost of living.

WILLIAM BARKSCHAT
West View

---

He's out of touch

The failure of the House to override President Bush's veto for expanded funding of the State Children's Health Insurance Program is a blow to children in middle-class working families who do not have access to health insurance ("Kids Health Care Bill Reworked After Veto," Oct. 25).

Expanding SCHIP will help to fill in the gap in our employment-based health-care system. It will provide coverage for children in near poor and lower middle-class families who do not qualify for Medicaid. These families do not have the choice of covering children through their employment because coverage is not offered. Eighty-eight percent of uninsured children live in families where at least one parent is working.

SCHIP provides an opportunity for working parents to purchase affordable health-care coverage for their children. President Bush, who vetoed expanded SCHIP, is out of touch with the health-care crisis affecting these middle-class families and many self-employed parents who do not have access to affordable health care. Legislators who justify the veto say it would be inappropriate to offer middle-class children benefits through the SCHIP program. The reality is that parents of these children do not have affordable alternatives. SCHIP provides that alternative along with a cost-sharing component.

We do need to address systemwide issues of quality, cost-effectiveness, access and affordability. Hopefully we will all be committed to working on those system issues. But with expanded SCHIP we would have the opportunity to help near poor and middle-class children who need affordable health care. We cannot afford not to.

JOYCE A. SCHLAG
Clinical Social Worker
Banksville

---

A trooper's killing warranted the death penalty

Justice? Cpl. Joseph R. Pokorny Jr. was needlessly gunned down in cold blood just for performing his duties. Note that he was shot twice. Once in the chest (and that wasn't enough) and once to the neck. Two children were left without a father and a family and community were left to try to make sense of this act.

However, Leslie Mollett, the murderer, is given life in prison ("Jury Spares Killer of State Trooper," Oct. 27). My question would be, "What were those members of the jury thinking when they doled out Mollett's punishment?" If ever the death penalty fits the crime, it would be in this instance. We need to protect those who protect us, and the cold-blooded murder of a great man and a police officer is not enough to warrant the death penalty? I can't fathom that.

I only hope those jurors who deadlocked the jury that resulted in a life sentence instead of a death sentence don't face the same situation in their families that the Pokornys did. There are many criminals on death row waiting for execution for murder, and Mollett should most certainly be one of them.

And, what does Mollett's mother say after the sentencing? "I'm glad my son is going to be alive." Yes, he is, and Joseph Pokorny will never, ever have that chance. Strike up another victory for the liberal left who oppose the death penalty, regardless of the innocent victim.

STEPHEN ARCH
Findlay

---

We receive more letters than we can fit into the limited space on the editorial page, so we'd like to share some additional letters with our Post-Gazette Web site readers.

---

Real Pittsburghers live in the city

Craig Conley of Marshall ("City Voters, Change Your Ways on Election Day," Oct. 11 letters) wrote that city residents should come to their senses and "start doing something different on Election Day" (presumably vote for Republicans). In his letter the next day, Conor Tobin of Upper St. Clair also complained about the "predictability" of city residents voting for the same party ("Downtown's Demise," Oct. 12).

I'll tell you what's predictable: the pre-election day chorus of people who call themselves "Pittsburghers" complaining about the electoral choices of us real Pittsburghers, the people who bear the greater financial burden of subsidizing affluent suburbanites' places of work, entertainment, higher learning and medical care.

If you claim to care about Pittsburgh, put your money where your mouth is and move here. By pulling out your tax dollars, your votes, your money invested in your home, your children from the schools and your simple presence in the community, you are part of the problem you are complaining about! Your $52 occupational tax and occasional patronage of city businesses and parking garages are not going to sustain the urban amenities that make your suburban home more desirable by proximity.

If everyone gives up on the city and retreats to the suburbs, Pittsburgh will become another Detroit: a hollowed-out, impoverished core ringed by wealthy but bland suburbs. That is the "Pittsburgh" that you are helping to build, while some of us actually make a personal and financial effort to save what's left of the Pittsburgh we all know and love.

GREG FUHRMAN
Spring Hill

---

A little boy mayor

I am in absolute awe of the people's attitude toward their boy mayor, Luke Ravenstahl. The turn of events that brought this "child" to power is, in and of itself, remarkable. Luke "plays house" like a little boy ... running about from sports events to dinners in New York to chasing Tiger Woods on the green. He is having a great time! And when he is challenged by Marty Griffin, or any other reporter, he pouts. He turns red. He starts pointing fingers like a kindergarten kid ... pointing at the media, at his opponent Mark DeSantis, at his staff.

He misses important meetings with his constituents to attend ballgames or any event that will satisfy his boyish, playful, power position ... to do anything he wants, when he wants. He is a spoiled little boy and his little temper tantrums are becoming more frequent, his lies more apparent and he is getting "caught" more often, as will happen when you are in a state of continuous, unrestrained "fun-seeking."

Pittsburghers, it is not your fault this little boy is running around pretending to be your mayor. Fate put him there. It will be your fault, however, if you elect him to continue prancing around at the expense of anyone who will pay his way, to have unrestricted fun for the next two years. It's up to you.

PATRICIA MORAN
Point Breeze

---

Smokers aren't going away

I wonder why Senate officials are pressuring House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese into introducing a new bill banning smoking in public places ("Smoking Ban Rises From Ashes," Oct. 15). Could it be that the nonsmokers of this state would like to push their influence as far as they can? I live in a housing unit where smoking has been banned from public spaces, and it's been a blow to the community. There are already some rental properties that ban smoking. Next it will be private homes.

The majority of the clientele at bars are smokers. The bars, it looks like, will already be bearing the burden of bailing out the Port Authority system with a $2 drink tax. Shouldn't they have a say-so in what would affect their business? What about the consequences on the economy? Restaurants have already solved this problem with smoking and nonsmoking sections. They recognize acclimating to the wishes of their clients is good business.

Like the poor in this country, smokers will not go away.

CHRISANNE WHITAKER
Downtown

---

WDUQ and Duquesne, rethink this stance

Regarding "WDUQ Pulls Planned Parenthood Spots" (Oct. 13): We were dismayed to find out that WDUQ rejected underwriting by Planned Parenthood because Duquesne University, which owns the station's broadcasting license, considers the group's work contrary to its Catholic mission. By rejecting Planned Parenthood's messages about sexually transmitted diseases and cancer screening and prevention, the university deprives Pittsburghers of essential information about accessing public health services.

Duquesne is entitled to its views, but it violates the public trust when it imposes those views on the public who do not affiliate with Duquesne and who depend on WDUQ -- the leading publicly funded NPR news station in southwestern Pennsylvania -- for current and reliable news and information.

By imposing a particular viewpoint on the kinds of public service messages its listeners receive, WDUQ undermines its credibility as a news source. If the station makes ideologically biased decisions about underwriters' messages, then how are listeners to know that the same kind of decisions are not being made about the news?

We urge WDUQ to restore Planned Parenthood's underwriting and to uphold free-speech values so essential to academic freedom, dependable news and public health.

REBECCA L. ZEIDEL
Research Assistant and Coalition Coordinator
National Coalition Against Censorship
New York, N.Y.

---

Still part of the mother

In Rick Catizone's Oct. 19 Web letter (" 'Inconvenient' Babies") bemoaning the availability of abortion services in this country, he fails to address the fact that an organism can have no rights while it is housed in another organism.

A fetus is physiologically connected to (and therefore a part of) the woman in whose uterus it is housed. The only rights that are operative during pregnancy are those of the mother.

Irrespective of the presence of a fetus' beating heart and its "innocence," it does not have a right to life until it is an individuated organism.

AMESH ADALJA, M.D.
Butler

---

Mission accomplished

"U.S. in Gun Battles With Militants" was a banner headline on Page A-4 of the Oct. 22 PG. The article stated that the Iraqi government protested U.S. military action in Sadr City. But the real untold story of this article, and many like it, is that the Iraqi government spoke as a united organization. On the subject of U.S. military action, Iraqis seem to always speak with one voice.

Therefore, one would have to conclude that we have fulfilled our mission there. A functioning, democratically elected and maintained government is operating in Iraq and the United States can take full credit for precipitating it. The Iraqi people ought to be eternally grateful to America for enabling them to create this. So, why in the hell are we still there? We're done.

HOWARD S. SCHWARTZ
Squirrel Hill

---

We welcome your letters. Please include your name, address and phone number, and send to Letters to the Editor, 34 Blvd. of the Allies, Pittsburgh 15222. E-mail letters to letters@post-gazette.com or fax to 412-263-2014. Letters should be 250 words or less, original and exclusive to the Post-Gazette. All letters are subject to editing for length, clarity and accuracy and will be verified before being published.