Think I'm on easy street? Try my job for a while

For 16 years, I have listened to people talk and have read letters to the editor stating what an easy job I have and how I make too much money for what I do by people who have never done my job. I feel I must respond.

After reading the Nov. 6 letter from Marc Loniero ("Transit Workers Should Feel Lucky to Have Such a Contract"), I would like Mr. Loniero and the many others who have made similar statements to know that now is their opportunity. The Port Authority has said it will hire 200 new employees to fill the jobs of the recently retired employees. I invite Mr. Loniero and the many others with similar opinions to go online or get an application at any Allegheny County employment office and send the application to me at the West Mifflin garage, and I will do anything I can to get you hired.

If, after you've gone through the 10 weeks of training and been spit on, had things thrown at you and been called derogatory names among other things -- simply for having the audacity to ask someone for his fare -- come back to me after one year's time and tell me that I'm overcompensated for what I do.

Please understand that I, speaking only for myself, enjoy my job immensely and understand how important we are to our passengers. The vast majority of the people we serve are some of the greatest people in America. After all, they are Pittsburghers.

DOUG KALAKEWICH
Port Authority Operator
Belle Vernon

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They earn it

In response to Marc Loniero's Nov. 6 letter ("Transit Workers Should Feel Lucky to Have Such a Contract"): Mr. Loniero states that he has "never had such benefits" and "I pay about 15 times that figure" (for health coverage). He could certainly apply to the Port Authority, obtain a commercial driver's license, train, then go about the task of safely delivering bus/trainloads of people safely every day, through construction, clogged streets and foul weather.

When will the "race to the bottom" regarding wages and benefits stop? Who am I (or Mr. Loniero) to publicly complain that someone else makes too much money or has too good benefits? Apply at that job, and reap the benefits!

Perhaps Mr. Loniero could look into organizing his workplace and bargaining for better wages/benefits for all co-workers.

DAVID C. BERG
Kennedy

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Focus on real woes

On Oct. 29 the PG published "Council Favors Quadrupling Fine for On-Street Drinking." After reading that story, I said in an unpublished letter to the editor of the Post-Gazette, with a copy to Pittsburgh City Council, that several political pundits have already been speculating that U.S. cities would increase fines to their citizens as federal monies dried up in this treacherous economic environment, and the movement is already afoot.

City Council has proposed a viable answer to the horror of having dreadful criminals walking around Oakland with open containers (usually college kids) by quadrupling the current fine from $50 per incident to $200 and then, of course, with escalation clauses.

In addition, the city is looking at new and fruitful ways to reach into landlords' pockets ("Landlords Are Upset by Stricter City Rules," Oct. 29). In this case, a new measure is being written to allow the city to punish landlords -- financially, of course -- whose tenants do not follow newly enhanced garbage disposal laws.

Where does it end? I strongly suggest that City Council sit down and address its own redundancy, pay packages and benefit packages and think about new ways to stop spending taxpayer money rather than glean more of it for themselves -- and perhaps send the people who are supposed to write these new tickets to look for murderers instead -- particularly since, as of Oct. 26, there were 57 homicides in the city this year and less than half of them have been solved.

JANIS McDONALD
Herminie

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City's odd priorities

The management of the city of Pittsburgh continues to operate in a misguided, improperly prioritized direction. For those who feel that requiring landlords to educate tenants on trash collection procedures should be at the top of city management's list of priorities ("Landlords Are Upset by Stricter City Rules," Oct. 29), consider the following:

I was summoned to a hearing because a tenant at one of my city rental properties allowed his grass to reach the height of a city rat. The magistrate's office was packed with a few of us citizens who pay tons of taxes, and with several tons of city employees who live off of these taxes -- police officers. I explained to the magistrate that I used vegetation killer to kill the weeds, but I, of course, lost and received the full fine.

There were so many police at the magistrate's office that day that I had to have two of their cars moved since they blocked my car in. During this hearing, I received a cell phone message from a tenant residing at another one of my city properties. His house had just been violently broken into. If just a few of the double-parked police officers at the magistrate's office were instead patrolling in their cars maybe crime prevention could have been a possibility.

Regardless, up until I can sell off all of my properties, I will educate my tenants as to trash disposal, focusing on the proper disposal of the splintered wood and broken glass of so many break-ins indicative of the city's reactionary approach to law enforcement.

K.V. MORIMANT
Trafford

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Familiar description

No wonder people think Barack Obama has a messianic complex.

Jack Kelly quoted Michael Malone, the technology critic, in his Nov. 2 column "In the Tank for Obama." Mr. Malone's quote, "If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (at least who will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography."

I don't understand why this description of Barack Obama doesn't resonate with more right-wing Christian fundamentalists; this is as literal a description of Jesus Christ as I've heard in a long time.

Mr. Obama has a track record, he's been as overexposed as a candidate can be with today's "gotcha politics." It seems that 2.1 billion Christians have made a "leap of faith" with a whole lot less documentation than Mr. Obama has provided.

If you can put your faith in secondhand accounts from 2,000 years ago, you probably have enough faith to believe President-elect Obama's words of "change."

JOEL BORSH
Canonsburg

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Tragic for America

As a 13-year veteran of the Navy and the Coast Guard, I see these as the three greatest disasters in American history:

1. The bombing of Pearl Harbor.

2 The destruction of the World Trade Center.

3. The election of Barack Hussein Obama.

We survived the first two. I am not optimistic about the third one.

JUDE POHL
Chartiers

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A Bush achievement

After hearing some of the post-election comments from the conservative side, the Republicans have no one to blame but themselves along with the current White House occupant.

And that leaves me with just two words for George W. Bush: "Mission accomplished!"

WILLIAM OZANICK
Sheraden

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The 'Promise' shuts out many city students

Regarding "Scholarship Effort Scores Big" (Oct. 22): The Pittsburgh Promise is a broken promise for many.

It is hard to understand the city sponsoring a scholarship program that discriminates against many worthy students who reside in the city of Pittsburgh. Why are students whose parents live in the city, pay taxes to the city and pay city school taxes -- but who have children who go to private schools that are in the city -- not eligible for this program?

Students who live in the city and who attend North Catholic, Central Catholic or Oakland Catholic, just to name a few, should be eligible. If the city wants to sponsor this program, then it should be available to all city residents who go to school inside the city limits, regardless if it's a public or private school.

Not all children who attend private schools are privileged children from wealthy families. Many of these students are in just as much need as some of the public school students. With all the extra money coming in from the wonderful foundations, do the right thing and make this program available to all city students. Until you do that, this Promise program is nothing but a broken promise for many.

DON SAND
Stanton Heights

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