Inept leaders are dooming our neighborhoods

The closure of Dimperio's market in Hazelwood ("Hazelwood Grocery Gives Up," Dec. 23) repeats the closure of the former Sheraden Foodland last year due to shoplifting. Although a new store has opened in that location, it doesn't have the neighborhood feeling of the former store. The second-generation owner, Joe Krobot, attempted to save our store but could not overcome thievery. Gone are the days of meeting neighbors in the market and walking to the market during a snowstorm.

Sheraden has advanced from shoplifting to major crimes. In 2004, a woman was dragged from Sunday church services, driven to a second location and killed. The day after this past Christmas, a man was killed in his home by an intruder announcing that he was about to shoot him ("Man Shot to Death by Intruders in Sheraden," Dec. 27). Friends who work in our bank are so terrorized by frequent robberies that we are guarded daily by a policeman and the drive-in bank is closed. A walk to Sheraden Station is a high-risk endeavor because our wonderful neighborhood is shattered.

Living in this city is a foolhardy undertaking. I empathize with Mr. Dimperio and the Hazelwood residents who have been victimized by this dysfunctional city government. We are led to destruction because we follow a one-party, well-connected buddy system. Connected areas of the city receive all available benefits and thrive with solid home values, and others like Sheraden and Hazelwood are destined to become ghettos. Our cries for accountability and critical changes in city government go unheard.

Until residents realize that we must demand competent and experienced choices in our elections in order to elect mature and competent leaders, we are doomed to this blight that they fallaciously call city life.

M. ROSSI
Sheraden

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Don't forget Dukes

The well-placed editorial "No. 1: The Pitt Men's Basketball Team Rises to the Top" (Jan. 6) deservedly praises the Pitt basketball team's achievement. Few teams reach such a pinnacle. But then Pitt is a Pittsburgh team.

But, the well-noted citations of the super-achievements of the Penguins, Pirates and Steelers must include the 1954 Duquesne Dukes basketball team.

My Duquesne University basketball team (Dudey Moore, Jim Tucker, Dick Ricketts, Si Green) scaled the pinnacle for about two weeks in 1954 -- and the Dukes were the 1955 National Invitational Tournament winners in Madison Square Garden. The NIT was big stuff then. Pitt is my school too (1959). I love 'em both.

TOM RUPPEL
Bethel Park

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Where's he been?

Like letter writer Gerard D. Pasquerell, I am aghast at the poverty of wisdom in the Senate ("A Dumber Senate," Jan. 1). What surprises me is that Mr. Pasquerell is noticing this only now.

Remember former Sen. Phil Gramm, the man who as recently as July said we were not actually in or heading toward a recession but that the real problem was that we have become a "nation of whiners"? He was first elected to the Senate way back in 1985 and served three terms!

Our own state twice elected a senator who wrote that working mothers have jobs because they are greedy and selfish.

Troubling as they are, "dumb senators" are nothing new.

JIM VELTUM
Bethel Park

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I'll take Big Bird

Gerard D. Pasquerell writes in his letter ("A Dumber Senate") that a Sen. Al Franken and a Sen. Caroline Kennedy would contribute to a dumber Senate and then asks if Sen. Big Bird, Sen. Ziggy and Sen. Elmo would be next.

My immediate reaction to this thinking is that after eight years of George W. Bush and the push to have Sarah Palin as the GOP presidential nominee in 2012 -- Big Bird is looking pretty good!

NANCY BATTILANA
Bethel Park

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Speaking of dumb

Regarding "A Dumber Senate" (Jan. 1): As to potential Sens. Al Franken and Caroline Kennedy, if letter writer Gerard D. Pasquerell thinks this will dumb down the Senate, I wonder what his opinion of President George W. Bush is.

Bush 43, whom I consider the most incompetent of U.S. presidents, did what few could have imagined -- destroyed the economy, by no oversight, and destroyed the credibility of the United States in eight years, by a foreign policy of shoot first!

He dismantled our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, with thousands of infamous signing statements.

STEPHEN F. KISLOCK III
Beaver Falls

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GOP precedent

In response to Gerard D. Pasquerell's Jan. 1 letter ("A Dumber Senate"): Sir, the precedent was set long ago: "President Ronald Reagan"!

MARY DeVAUGHN
Oakland

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Unreliable products

A couple of years ago I was in New York and encountered a couple from Germany who were vacationing in the Big Apple. The couple was having problems with their GPS system in their rental car. My German is poor, but I asked them if I could help. The German husband and I fiddled with the GPS, but neither of us could get it to work properly. The German man looked at me and said, "Amerikanische Scheisse." The translation is not difficult.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman mentions that we need a massive government economic stimulus to get people working and "producing something useful" ("Fighting Off Depression," Jan. 6). "Useful" is the key word. Useful means reliable, efficient, well-manufactured, etc. One reason for our economic crisis is the fact that American products are increasingly deemed to be substandard, unreliable and poorly manufactured. The auto industry is a case in point. No amount of money thrown at industries producing products that people don't want to buy will solve our current economic problems. This is common-sense economics 101.

ERIC RIESEN
Pleasant Hills

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