Rov_Scam
17hr ago
You don't get a default judgement against you because of the Plaintiff's "procedural tricks". You end up with a default judgement because of monumental incompetence where you don't respond to repeated requests, miss critical deadlines, and ignore court orders. These things aren't optional.
Rov_Scam
20hr ago
No , there's no incentive. In the auto accident case, running over the person again turns ordinary negligence into an intentional tort which means insurance won't cover any damages and the verdict won't be dischargeable in bankruptcy. In the defamation case, you're talking about the unintended actions of a third party, unless you openly advocate for assassination, in which case defamation doesn't apply. This is all without even mentioning the associated criminal charges.
Rov_Scam
21hr ago
Claims about Trump being a "threat to democracy" aren't specific enough to constitute defamation. Russian agent claims could plausibly be specific enough, but it would come down to specific statements. There's also the issue that public figures such as Trump have to meet a higher standard when proving defamation claims than private citizens like the Sandy Hook parents do.
I'd also add that,. while it seems counterintuitive, wrongful death claims are almost always worth less than cases where the plaintiff is living, even when the plaintiff is in decent shape. Your hypothetical of an assassination is geared toward rock bottom damages because the relatively minimal amount of pain and suffering combined with the inability of the plaintiff to testify about that pain and suffering means you're not getting much in the way of non-economic damages. In most cases like this you'd be looking at maybe a million for the decedent, a couple hundred thousand for the widow, and maybe 50 grand for each of the kids. Maybe up that to three million because it's Trump, but these damages aren't unique and you'd have a hard time justifying more than that. Compare that with unassuming people who suffered an unimaginable loss and then had to contend with years of harassment from people who claimed they were faking it, and they're all available to testify about how much of a nightmare it was and there's little the defense can do on cross to counter. It's not a typical scenario and there aren't any clear guidelines on how to value something like that.
The bigger factor in damages in a hypothetical Trump assassination would be economic damages far in excess of what a normal person has, but this would rest on the testimony of various economic experts who would have to contend with the tendency of his companies to show a net loss for tax purposes. I'm actually working on a case right now where a guy is claiming excessive economic damages based on a speculative business venture that was derailed by the Plaintiff's death, and this shit gets messy.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
At first I thought you were confused when you described these as pizza places (i.e. they just happen to be owned by someone named Pirmanti) but I checked the website and they are "official" locations, even if they bear no actual resemblance to a normal location. For the record, Pirmanti's isn't known as a pizza place, and I don't think the smaller urban locations even serve pizza. It looks like the Florida locations were existing pizza places that got a franchise to use the name and sell the sandwiches, with no effort made to resemble the ones in Pittsburgh. Apparently the actual company doesn't care that much about consistent stores. That being said, I normally wouldn't go to a Pirmanti's while on vacation because I can get that here whenever I want to. But since it's evidently a bastardized bizarro version, I'm intrigued.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait
Part II: The Strip District
Early development in Pittsburgh didn’t radiate evenly from the Point but was focused along the rivers. The most obvious location for initial expansion, then, was in the area known, aptly, as the Strip District. Its boundaries are well-defined and uncontroversial. The southern boundary is at 11th St. at the Convention Center, and the northern boundary is at 34th St. near Doughboy Square. Between these points, it occupies the narrow strip of land between the Allegheny River and a hillside so steep there are no road connections from there to the neighborhood on top (though there used to be an incline). The Strip began as a typical industrial/residential/commercial working-class area like any other river district in the days before zoning. No other neighborhood was more important to Pittsburgh’s early industrial history: This was the neighborhood where the bullets for the War of 1812 were cast in the nation’s first iron foundries, the neighborhood where George Westinghouse started producing airbrakes, the neighborhood Charles Martin Hall of what was then known as the Pittsburgh Reduction Company started producing aluminum. James Parton was looking down on the Strip from that aforementioned hill in 1868 when he famously described Pittsburgh as “Hell with the lid off”.
In 1906, the city removed freight tracks that continued Downtown along Liberty Ave. With the railroad now terminating in a yard at Smallman St., the area became a prime location for wholesalers to set up warehouse operations. The Strip had industrialized in the days before people like Andrew Carnegie could build mega-mills on virgin land, so the parcels were of a much smaller size. As the original industries left due to lack of scale, more and more of the area became occupied by warehouses. As the 20th Century wore on, the warehouses expanded and residential areas were demolished; the neighborhood’s population, over 17,000 in the early decades, was below 5,000 in 1940. As the wholesale trade diminished in the 1950s, merchants began opening retail outlets to supplement their existing wholesale business, focused on the Penn Ave. corridor, and by the 1970s the Strip had a reputation as a place where you could find fresher meat and produce than you can get in a grocery store, as well as hard to find oddities. But the rest of the district was an assortment of warehouses, light industrial concerns, parking lots, and storage yards. By 2000, the residential population had dwindled to a mere 266.
The Strip had an abortive resurgence in the 90s as part of an attempt to make it a nightlife district, but the story of the modern strip begins in 2006, when the former Armstrong Cork & Seal factory was converted into loft apartments. Since then, construction has been more or less constant. The semi-abandoned industrial areas have been replaced by high-end condominiums and office blocks, but there’s still enough industry left to give the area a raffish feel. The current population stands at about 3,200 and is expected to double in the immediate future just based on what’s under construction or ready to build. But the real draw is the shopping. Those wholesalers I mentioned earlier? They never left. When the rest of the neighborhood was run down and industrial, Penn Avenue had an almost carnival-like atmosphere, especially on weekends. Younger people don’t seem to appreciate this, but in the ‘80s and ‘90s there was no “foodie culture” or whatever other horrible phrase you want to use. Supermarkets carried stuff that everyone bought, and even things we take for granted now like prosciutto and avocados were hard to come by. Some specialty stores sold this stuff, but most supermarkets didn’t, and unless you knew about these places you were out of luck. But everyone knew about the Strip. If you wanted some oddity, it was common practice to assume you could get it there; even if you didn’t know where you were going you could just walk into a random store and ask and if they didn’t sell it they’d direct you toward who did. The atmosphere has gotten even better in recent years, as the commercial district has expanded from Penn and spilled onto neighboring streets. The big regional chain now sells specialty stuff, and even Aldi’s carries things you couldn’t find 30 years ago, but if you want to buy pheasant, or raw oysters, or even just olive oil in bulk at a reasonable price, the Strip is the place to get it. Hell, I can get fresher fish at Wholey’s than I can at any beach town in North Carolina I’ve ever been to.
With all the change, there are some contrarians out there who think that all this construction is a bad thing. They bemoan how they’re turning a historic working-class neighborhood into a place for yuppies and tech bros. The thing is, there was really nothing there to miss. I don’t think these people are truly nostalgic for tow yards, mid-century warehouses, and lots where they store pipe and electrical transformers. Most of these places were just sitting idle anyway. Consider: Everything in this shot is new construction. It may not win any architectural awards, but it doesn’t exactly look like a suburban office park. Now consider what the area looked like in 2008. Feeling nostalgic? If people are going to complain about losing the old neighborhood, the time to complain was well before they were born. The “old neighborhood” was mostly gone before the War, when the construction of the big mills drew jobs out of the neighborhood and the smaller industries that remained couldn’t support the old population on their own. Sure, it would be nice if the old housing stock remained, and some of it still does, but I’d rather build for the future than bemoan the past.
But these people are wrong in a more fundamental way; the heart of the Strip is, and will always be, Penn Avenue. As much as people may want to complain about gentrification (more accurately yuppification, since there were no existing residents to displace), the entire commercial district is local. There are few national chains horning in on the neighborhood. The more well-known businesses here are institutions; something like 20% have existed for more than a century. And the newer businesses have the feel of places that intend on becoming institutions; there’s very little corporate feel. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Pirmanti’s. Yes, it’s more of a local gimmick like the Philly Cheese Steak than fine dining. Yes, it’s overrated in the media. Yes, it’s still delicious. No, the original doesn’t taste any better than the innumerable franchise locations that are popping up everywhere. That being said, there is something to be said for innumerable franchise locations ruining the mystique of a special place. It used to be that you’d eat at Pirmanti’s when you went to the Strip because you heard about it but never got the chance to try it because the Strip was out of the way for most people. It used to be open 24 hours and was a popular place to get a late night snack during the Strip’s old club days. Now every suburb and exurb has one and I think they opened one in Florida, and they expanded the menu to include pizza and wings and a bunch of other stuff that wasn’t the classic sandwich, and these days, to most Pittsburghers, it’s just another restaurant.
That being said, there is a bit of anxiety among current residents that the big chains will see the massive population increase push out the local merchants who made the neighborhood attractive to them in the first place. While this is a possibility, I’d say it’s a slim one. The old commercial corridor on Penn Ave really only runs between 17th and 23rd streets. The area closer to Downtown is more sparsely developed and has a lot of parking lots. After 23rd street development becomes spotty and increasingly industrial until you’re in a sort of no-man’s-land until you get to Lawrenceville. The streets off of Penn toward the river are seeing the most development but aren’t as historically prized and don’t contain many of the classic strip businesses. Most telling, though, is that developers keep opening new retail space, and so far, little of it has gone to chains. The old produce terminal on Smallman St. was sitting abandoned for years after wholesale distribution moved to a larger modern building on the river. The recent redevelopment of the retail portion has been mostly local. Even if a significant chain store presence does materialize, I doubt that it will affect the existing, “classic” retail element too much. This stuff existed long before the Strip had any significant office space or residential development, and the chains that have moved in seemed geared toward meeting the demands of residents and office workers more than those of the weekend tourist crowd. Maybe some clueless suburban shoppers will grab lunch at Chipotle rather than Pamela’s or the cafeteria at Wholey’s, but a neighborhood needs unglamorous, functional places to work as a neighborhood. There’s been recent discussion of a Trader Joe’s moving into the part of the Strip closer to Downtown, and this hasn’t attracted much criticism. Downtown residents don’t really have anywhere to buy groceries, and while the wholesale outlets are fine for some things, they aren’t really places where you can do all of your shopping. There’s something odd about a neighborhood where you can get 759 different varieties of olives but not toothpaste. So I suspect this fear is largely unfounded.
Neighborhood Grade: Upper Middle Class. As I said earlier, it’s not really gentrified because there was no existing residential population of any substance, and the housing is all new construction. Parts of it were seedy, but it was never dangerous and has always been a draw for outsiders. There were never any rehabs for sale, no one ever felt like an urban pioneer moving here, it was just that one day someone built luxury apartment and the next thing you knew there were a lot of luxury apartments. It was never a hip neighborhood for artists or bohemian types. Urbanists need to take note because it doesn’t follow the standard playbook, and I’m honestly surprised that it even exists.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
The value of the estate for tax purposes is market value, not realized value. Often they're the same, as in the case when the property is sold in an arm's length transaction, but discounted sales to insiders are always suspect. Consider that most estate assets are what could be termed "maximally impaired" in the sense that they're given away for free. This doesn't make the value zero. You can't offer your nephew the option of purchasing your Picasso for a hundred bucks and claim that that's all it's worth for estate tax purposes. The fact that the company only paid 3 million for the shares is irrelevant, and is why the estate has an independent valuation done as part of the audit. The case was about whether the accountant who did the valuation correctly treated the redemption requirement as a liability, and the court ruled that he didn't.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
The amount paid for the shares is irrelevant here since the case is about Michael's estate tax obligation, which requires him to pay taxes on the value of his assets at the date of death. The value of the company on that date includes the value of the life insurance proceeds. The defendant was arguing that the buyback requirement created an offsetting liability that diminished the value of the stock Michael held.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
There is no one second hypothetical here as there's no legal assumption that any of the events happened simultaneously — he dies, some time thereafter the insurance is paid out, and some time after that the company completes the redemption. In real life we're probably talking several months. At the time of Michael's death the company was worth 6.86 million, and it continued to be worth as much after his death.
And while the intent may have been clear, the means used had the effect of nearly doubling the company's value. It's easy to talk about intent, but eventually this devolves into "I intended to minimize my tax burden", and you end up having to give the benefit of the doubt to people who take actions wherein reducing the tax burden is clearly contrary to public policy. Practically any tax avoidance scheme, no matter how hard brained, becomes effective. The fact that convoluted schemes are often used is unfortunate, but it's the nature of the business.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
The difference is that the cash spent on the buybacks reduces the value of the company. To use the example from the case, suppose I hold an 80% share in a company whose only asset is 10 million in cash; that 80%share is worth 8 million. Redeeming the other 20% costs the company 2 million, so now I hold a 100% share of a company worth 8 million. The redemption hasn't affected the value of my shares. If, on the other hand, I purchased the 20% interest from the other investors, my shares, the company would still have 10 million in the bank, and my 100% share would be worth 10 million.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
That the expected payout was a company asset wasn't at issue in this case. The issue was whether the redemption obligation created a liability that cancelled out that asset.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Maybe it's just that it's an AI event where this kind of thing is par for the course? I mean, one of the best-known AI "experts" is Yudkowsky, who doesn't even have the benefit of a GED and never did any substantive work on AI in his life. He founded an NGO at 21 and has been leeching off of the Silicon Valley money machine ever since. At least an HR manager has experience in making sure everyone gets paid on time.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
"Political party affiliation is added to more such laws" is doing a lot of work here. There is not, to my knowledge, any serious push to do this on the Federal level. In states that have prohibitions on political party discrimination and disparate impact (i.e. California), I'm not aware of any attempt to challenge the doctrine.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
I didn't read the entire transcript, but I scanned Cohen's testimony, and I couldn't find any instances where he's asked to draw legal conclusions. The only thing approaching that that I could see, as you said in your initial comment, was that he admitted to having plead guilty to certain Federal crimes. The defense never challenged the admissibility of this testimony in general. They filed a motion in limine to prohibit the prosecution from using those pleas as evidence that the underlying crimes were committed, and they won that motion. The evidence of the pleas was admitted so that the jury could evaluate Cohen's credibility, and the judge gave a limiting instruction as soon as they came up. The defense's motion conceded that the plea evidence was admissible for that purpose. They never tried to get the evidence out entirely, and it wasn't in their interest to, either, because without the evidence of the pleas, it would seriously hinder their attempts to discredit Cohen. Given the limited nature of what Cohen actually testified to on direct, the prosecution probably wouldn't have even opposed a defense motion to keep the plea evidence out entirely, since the defense would have had much less to work with.
Beyond that, I don't want to get into too many details, but inadequate jury instructions and insufficiency of evidence are usually long shots when it comes to getting an appeals court to overturn a jury verdict. I argue in another post somewhere that intent (most of the time) doesn't require knowledge that the action is illegal. As for that last bit, it wasn't so much about hiding information from voters as it is hiding expenditures from voters. Laws requiring disclosures were created with the express intent of creating a certain transparency in election-related spending. I was reacting to the commenters here who were saying that Trump was in a kind of Catch-22 because there was no way he could have made the payment without drawing the scrutiny of the FEC. This clearly isn't true; if I were Trump's attorney I would have told him that if he wants to be completely safe he should pay it out of his personal funds and report it as a campaign expense. Alternatively, he could pay it out of his personal funds and not report it because unless it's obvious that sort of thing is rarely punished. Paying it out of campaign funds and reporting it isn't recommended but at least it makes it look like he's on the up and up. What I wouldn't tell him to do is to have a third party make the payments so they can't be traced to him, and then create phony documents to obfuscate the reimbursement.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
I think you're assuming that intent to commit a crime requires knowledge of the criminal nature of the underlying act, when that's not the case (except in limited circumstances). To go back to the burglary example, suppose a thief breaks into a house with the intention of stealing a watch worth $800. The value of the watch isn't in dispute. The burglary statute requires intent to commit a felony, and the larceny statute makes it a felony to steal goods valued over $500. If the defendant is charged with burglary, he won't get the burglary charge dismissed by demonstrating that he genuinely believed that the statute only made it a felony if the item was worth over $1,000, arguing that because of his mistake of law he only intended to commit a misdemeanor and not a felony. To go back to the paper clip example and tie it into the New York statute at issue, suppose it's illegal to buy paperclips, and a junior executive at a company notices that one of his underlings bought paperclips. He doesn't know that this is illegal, but knows that his boss, the CEO, said that it was against company policy to buy them, so he forges documents making it look like the purchase was for something else. He can't argue that he didn't intend to conceal a crime because he didn't know what he was doing was a crime. He intended to conceal the purchase, which happens to be a crime, and he accordingly intended to conceal evidence of a crime; his knowledge of the legality of the underlying activity isn't relevant here.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
Intent can't be proven in any of the three scenarios you put forward because buying paperclips isn't illegal, and legal impossibility is almost always a complete defense. In any event, whether you think something is legal or not is irrelevant, because in most cases, mistake of law isn't a defense. Ignorantia juris non excusat. What's tripping people up here is that the crime Trump was allegedly concealing has very specific intent requirements that does require knowledge of the law, while the crimes he was actually charged with don't. The relevant analogy here is where buying paperclips actually is illegal. In that case, if you falsified records relating to their purchase you'd be guilty of the falsification whether you knew they were illegal or not.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
It's not a crime to try to conceal personal information, obviously. But whether or not that was Trump's intent in falsifying the records is a question for the jury. My point was simply that that the statute he was charged with violating has a lower standard of proof than the underlying act itself, and that the evidence was sufficient for the government to make a prima facia case; doing so doesn't require them to prove the underlying act, or even an attempt to commit the underlying act.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
I'm not saying that res ipsa is sufficient on its own, just that there's a certain element involved when it comes to proving intent. If the falsification of the records happened in a vacuum and there was no obvious underlying motive, that would be the misdemeanor. But when you demonstrate that the concealed payments may have covered up a potential campaign finance violation, that's probably enough evidence that a jury can infer that the potential violation was behind the concealment. Like I said in the previous post, if a guy breaks into a store the prosecution doesn't have to demonstrate that the defendant was there specifically to steal a particular item for it to be anything more than trespass; the jury can infer that because there was a very obvious motive for the break-in that the defendant intended to commit a felony. The defendant can certainly argue that that wasn't his intent and present evidence supporting that, but that's a question of fact for the jury. We can argue all day about whether there was sufficient evidence of Trump's intent to commit a campaign finance violation for the purpose of the statute, but my overall point is that arguing about the specific elements of such a violation itself or the mens rea requirement to prove a campaign finance violation is irrelevant here because we're operating on two separate legal principles.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
Tagging @zeke5123a since this response also applies to his comment from yesterday that I didn't get a chance to respond to.
You're confusing mistake of fact with impossibility. Mistake of fact is a defense that obviates some element of the crime, the classic example being the theft of property one wrongly believes to be his own. If I take a coat similar to mine from a coat room at a bar because I thought it was mine, I can use mistake of fact as a defense because I haven't formed the sufficient mens rea. Factual impossibility, on the other hand, is generally not a defense but the opportunity to even raise it is so rare that it's not really a huge issue. The hypothetical I gave doesn't involve impossibility, though, because the conduct doesn't amount to attempted murder. There's no generally recognized point at which mere preparation becomes attempt, but it's but it's basically hornbook law that lying in wait or looking for the intended victim don't rise to that level. Cases involving this test usually focus on things like whether the bullet you fired had a realistic chance of hitting the target, which is well beyond what I presented.
The reason I presented that specific fact pattern is that it illustrates a point I'm trying to get — the intent requirements of some crimes don't require you to prove those other crimes. The crime of burglary developed at common law specifically because the act of breaking into someone's home did not in and of itself rise to the level of attempt, but the courts agreed that it was still a crime. So when New York law prohibits anyone from falsifying business records with the intent of concealing another crime, whether or not you can prove that he committed another crime isn't important. Whether or not you can even specifically identify that other crime isn't important. With respect to crimes like this, there's a certain res ipsa loquitur aspect where the mere commission of the act is evidence of intent in and of itself; if a defendant is found having broken into a jewelry store with his face concealed and in possession of burglary tools, the prosecution usually doesn't have to go any further than that to show intent. They don't have to — what some are suggesting would be required in Trump's case — give extrinsic evidence showing that the defendant broke into the building specifically to steal jewelry.
The fact that Trump may not have violated election law is therefore irrelevant. The fact that the prosecution couldn't demonstrate the very specific scienter requirements required to prove an election law violation are also irrelevant. Trump wasn't charged with violating election law. The elements of the crime he was charged with are independent of the elements of the crime he is alleged to have concealed. You may not like this, or think the DA is stretching the law, but that's just The Way It Is, and it's been that way for a very long time. If you're looking for an appellate court to overturn the conviction because you disagree with one or another of the principles involved, that's fine, but even as someone who's broadly liberal I don't know if I'd welcome that, as it would give the Warren Court a run for its money on how defendant-friendly it is.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
That's a perfectly reasonable position to have. Unfortunately, it's not one that makes for an easy defense of Trump. We're talking about a guy with a history of questionable business behavior who surrounds himself with the kind of people who, if not exactly operating within the criminal world, were squatting near the margins of it. He's been sued numerous times, and lost quite a few of those suits. Whether or not he actually did what the New York DA says he did is irrelevant in your world because he's already proven himself to be the exact kind of person who would do something like that. There's debate above on whether the hush money payments were campaign expenses and how was Trump supposed to proceed without getting into hot water but that's irrelevant; whether they were improper campaign contributions or not, I can tell you that what you don't do is have your attorney make the payments out of his own pocket and then create phony invoices and ledger entries as part of a reimbursement scheme. According to your logic, that alone should be enough evidence of suspicious activity regardless of his past. I'm personally not in favor of getting rid of plea bargaining because I don't think it's going to have the effect some people think it will, but if you're going to take the position that people who engage in suspicious activity deserve what's coming to them, I don't see how you can defend Trump in this situation.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
This is the part that bugs me the most. How can a crime be asserted as a predicate fact in court when that crime has never been charged, tried or convicted?
Would you feel any better if you found out that the referenced crime need not even have occurred? And that this has been the case for hundreds of years? Look at common law burglary, for example (modern statutes usually expand the definition, but we'll keep things simple). Unauthorized breaking and entering of a dwelling in the nighttime with the intent to commit a felony therein. Say Bill breaks into Tom's house at night. A neighbor sees him break in and calls the police. The police apprehend him and he's carrying a gun. Tom was not home at the time. A witness testified that Bill told him he was going to kill Tom. There's sufficient intent to prove burglary. The fact that he can't be convicted of murder is irrelevant. The fact that he can't even be convicted of attempted murder is irrelevant. The fact that it would have been impossible for him to even commit the intended murder is irrelevant. He's not getting this reduced to criminal trespass.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
Those are avenues for appeal, but they aren't all good avenues for appeal. Keep in mind that I haven't read a full trial transcript and my knowledge of the specific laws involved is limited to what I read in the news. To go one by one:
- This isn't really an issue since Cohen testified. Even if an appellate court were to rule that the specific evidence of the plea bargain was inadmissible, the fact that Cohen outlined his actions in detail for the jury with the defense being given an opportunity to cross-examine likely puts this in the harmless error category. There is the fact that in New York they can't convict on accomplice testimony without corroboration, but the jury was properly instructed.
- I'm not familiar with the specific scientier requirements in this case, but as long as the jury was properly instructed of them, an appellate court is loath to contradict their findings.
- See above. It's another "the evidence wasn't sufficient to prove x" arguments that don't usually go anywhere. Again, I haven't read the full trial transcript, but as long as there was some reasonable basis for which the jury to reach their conclusion, an appellate court isn't going to set aside the verdict.
- This goes back to the first point. Cohen plead guilty to a Federal charge. IIRC, there were state charges involved as well, and if his testimony implicated state law violations, the bootstrapping argument is moot.
- The Appellate Division already ruled on the recusal issue, and I doubt the Court of Appeals will take up the issue. The Wiesselberg thing is moot because the defense didn't protect the record. If they had a problem with the prosecution relying on his statements without calling him they could have called him themselves. The fact that they didn't want him anywhere near that courtroom may be good trial strategy, but there are tradeoffs. I usually load up my witness lists with people I have absolutely no intention of actually calling for the simple reason that if things go sideways and the case goes to trial and some odd reason arises where I need to call them I don't want to get the "He wasn't on the list" argument from Plaintiff's counsel and deal with the subsequent malpractice suit.
For the interest of completeness, I have no idea whether Trump personally cutting a check would have avoided legal scrutiny, but the ambiguity doesn't really bother me, because I don't like the idea that someone trying to be President would blatantly hide information from voters. Hell, at least have the foresight to do it before you're actually running so there's no campaign money to speak of.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
Moses consulted on the highway plan over a decade before ground broke, and his original design had the interchange at the Point itself, because that's where the existing bridges were. City officials implemented most of the plan but decided to construct new bridges and moved the highway alignment to its current location. While the pedestrian walkway under the interchange isn't exactly beloved, the Fort Pitt Bridge is, and you can't have one without the other. The way the highway divides the space is testament to the attention to detail I mentioned in the post. Using something functional for that purpose seems more natural than constructing a wall or an arch, which would make things seem a little too intentional. The effect is creating without your noticing. Whether or not it's actually better than any other conceivable possibility of your choice is a matter for debate. Would the Golden Gate be more beautiful without the bridge obstructing the view? Would Downtown Pittsburgh be more beautiful if it were left as old growth bottomland forest? Would Black Canyon be better without Hoover Dam backing up the river? Finally, as the series progresses I'm going to criticize a number of ill-conceived projects; if I praise something it's because I like it, not because I'm trying to advance an argument. The point isn't that urban renewal was always good, just that it wasn't necessarily always bad.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait
I initially teased this by saying that I was going to tackle Downtown and its environs, but my efforts since the introduction have shown that such a post would greatly exceed any sense of reasonableness as I kept using various things as jumping off points for broader discussion. This wouldn't be a problem except I had intended to weave a narrative that depended on presenting everything at once, so I spent several weeks waffling over whether I wanted to continue writing or retool, and only when the whole business was at 6000 words with a good deal left to cover did I decide to retool, which itself took longer than I expected. So I apologize for the delay, as I would have had this out several weeks ago if I had just stuck to Downtown. The upside is that the next several installments are practically finished, so I'll be posting them more frequently, probably as filler for whenever things are slow. I've occasionally linked to Google streetview images. I tried to pick representative locations, but you're encouraged to move around a bit to get a feel for the places I'm describing.
Part I. Downtown
For the purposes of this discussion, Downtown includes everything west of I-579 to the Point, except for on the northern part where it extends to 11th St. Map. The city’s official boundary of downtown also includes the area where the Civic Arena used to be, but for historical reasons that will become apparent in a later installment, that area will be discussed along with the Hill District. The city also officially calls this area the more boring Central Business District, while some old maps use the more whimsical Golden Triangle, but nobody uses the former term and only whimsical writers use the latter. It’s Downtown.
The first thing to be said about Pittsburgh’s downtown area is relatively tiny, about 2/3 of a square mile. Despite this, it manages to seem bigger than downtowns in similar rust belt cities that are geographically much larger. Topographical constraints prevent the urban core from expanding much beyond the boundaries outlined above — rivers hem in two sides of the triangle while a hill rises from the third — so everything is much denser than in a place like Cleveland or St. Louis, where the downtown has large lots and wide roads that sprawl out as much as urban planners thought they needed to. Compare this view of a typical street in Downtown Pittsburgh with this one from Cleveland. Traditionally there were several quasi-neighborhoods within downtown; Fourth Street was the financial district, Smithfield St. was the shopping district, Liberty Ave. was the red light district, Forbes Ave. was the seedy bum district, and there was even a small Chinatown. Most of these have changed in character (e.g. there are a few local banks still headquartered on Fourth St. but the big ones have all moved to modern skyscrapers) but a couple still survive. Penn Ave. is officially the Cultural District, containing the homes of The Pittsburgh Symphony, Pittsburgh Opera, Civic Light Opera, and several other similar cultural amenities, and Grant St. was and always will be the home of local government. Every little corner feels unique.
I suspect this is due to a few factors in addition to the aforementioned geographical limitations; the city always had a large number of corporate headquarters, and they never charged a high commuter tax. This kept these headquarters in the city rather than seeing them decamp to the suburbs like in so many other places. There also aren’t many surface lots downtown, and the ones that do exist are small. Finally, city property taxes were based on Georgist principles from 1913 to 2001, when a reassessment effectively forced them back to a single-rate system. I’m not going to go too much into this because city taxes were a relatively small component of total property taxes (county and school taxes used a traditional system), and it’s arguable whether other forces played into the relatively high development rates (it hasn’t abated since the system was abandoned), but it’s worth at least mentioning.
IA: A Past Not So Rosy
If there’s one theme I want to focus on when discussing Downtown, it’s urban renewal. It’s trendy to criticize urban renewal plans as being misguided boondoggles that effected all manner of misfortunes on cities, but to my knowledge no one has ever done a comprehensive examination of these efforts to do a serious evaluation of their success or failure. I say this because the Downtown we know today pretty much exists as a function of urban renewal dating back to the 1940s. Pop urbanists never seem to take a genuinely historical approach when discussing why cities are the way they are today, and they have a tendency to look at the prewar era as some sort of halcyon wonderland of walkability. They blame racism, or the auto industry, or any number of other lazy targets for what they see as a blight upon the landscape. But none of them seem to consider what city life was actually like before the era of highways and strip malls. In 1951, at Pittsburgh’s population zenith, Karl Schriftgiesser of the Atlantic wrote of Pittsburgh:
The decrepitude showed in its worn-out office buildings, its degraded housing, its traffic-choked streets, its sordid alleys, its polluted and uncontrolled rivers, and, above all, in the dense-choking smoke that covered the city and the river valleys…
Renaissance I was a bipartisan effort to change all that. Spearheading it were the Mayor, Democrat David L. Lawrence, and the Governor, Republican Richard King Mellon. The Point at that time was nothing more than unused rail yards and abandoned warehouses. The upper reaches soon became Gateway Center, a contemporary collection of modern high rises in a city that hadn’t seen any new Downtown construction in 20 years. The best was yet to come, though, as the 36 acres closest to the Point became Point State Park, one of the finest spots in the city. It’s so well-integrated into the urban fabric that no one really even thinks of it so much of a park as they do something that just exists. There isn’t much in the way of traditional amenities other than a museum dedicated to Fort Pitt and a lot of green space, but there’s an ineffable joy in taking a stroll around the fountain on a summer night. The most remarkable thing about it is that there’s an interstate highway running right through the middle of it that somehow manages to enhance the park rather than degrade it. There’s enough lawn on the city side to make it usable for events and a quick lunch, but going through the underpass to the river side is like entering an urban oasis, with the towers of Gateway Center looming behind you like a great wall of a city. It’s one of my favorite views, and one that few photographers have captured. Robert Moses was involved.
The whole Point project is an anomaly in American urban planning, the one urban renewal project that never shows up in the various lists of disasters that circulate around the internet. Having been started in the 1940s, it was one of the earliest such projects, and was viewed as an unparalleled success nationally, reinvigorating a downtown that was in imminent danger of collapsing in the face of inevitable suburbanization. While some projects were poorly thought-out from the beginning, I think that urban renewal would be viewed better today if subsequent planners using Gateway Center as a model would have focused on the right things. The reason it works, and is still attractive today, is that, from the shine of the chrome steel facades to the impeccable landscaping, no expense was spared, no detail too minor to be relevant. This is quite literally the ideal of Corbusier’s towers in a park. But that’s not the lesson that was learned; planners instead thought that demolishing old buildings and building towers in a park was enough. For what it’s worth, Jane Jacobs didn’t like it, and the destruction of the old point is now bemoaned by a few armchair urbanists who feel the need to crap on anything that was done between 1945 and 1980. But I don’t think Downtown would be better now if it terminated in an indeterminate mishmash of old industrial buildings.
And then the steel industry crashed. But somehow, in the 1980s, Renaissance II took off. In what should have been the city’s darkest days, there was a commercial building boom that saw construction of 4 of Pittsburgh’s 5 tallest skyscrapers, including icons like the PPG Building. Enter Tom Murphy. Pittsburgh seems to have a tradition of alternating between bold, visionary mayors and caretaker mayors, much like Russia alternates between hairy and bald leaders. Dick Caligiuiri had been Pittsburgh’s mayor from 1977 until his untimely death in 1988 and was definitely the bold visionary sort. He was replaced by Sophie Masloff, a kindly elderly woman referred to as “everyone’s Jewish grandmother”. She’s remembered as a good mayor, but was more focused on maintaining fiscal solvency amid a declining industrial base than on achieving grand proposals. She practically inherited the position (though she later won a full term) and was in her 70s; she wasn’t exactly the kind of person who becomes mayor with an ambitious vision.
IB: Urban Renewal's Last Gasp
Enter Tom Murphy. Murphy became mayor in 1994, at a time when the city was at a crossroads. The air was clean and the new offices were shiny, but the city was hemorrhaging population and in a state of fiscal crisis. Downtown had once been the region’s premiere shopping district, but suburban shopping malls, combined with a transit project in the ‘80s in which the construction of the world’s smallest subway kept some streets closed for years had turned it into a shadow of itself. One area that wasn’t doing bad, though, was the Fifth-Forbes corridor. At the time, 90% of storefronts were occupied, and they did brisk business. The problem was that, in the eyes of the city, they were the wrong kind of businesses. Wig stores, newsstands, liquor stores, pager stores, dive bars, and other places of ill repute lined the district. And they attracted the wrong kinds of people. The Hill District was Pittsburgh’s Harlem. With its own business district decimated in the wake of urban renewal, riots, crack, and gangs, its residents needed to shop somewhere, and merchants on Fifth and Forbes filled the void. This picture is from 2008, which is a decade after the proposal, but it gives you a general idea. Murphy, desperate to revive Downtown, proposed a sweetheart deal to acquire the whole area by eminent domain, raze the buildings, and sell to a Chicago developer who promised to attract high-end tenants like J Crew, build a movie theater and bowling alley, and add other chain shit like a House of Blues. Murphy was a visionary and a policy wonk, but his ideas were straight out of the 1970s. Council was unanimously in favor. The Post-Gazette loved it, and described the area as “downtrodden” and “blighted”. But there were problems brewing. The business owners were unanimously opposed. This was an area with 120 businesses and a 90% occupancy rate. The Institute for Justice got involved, erecting a dozen billboards throughout the city with canny opposition slogans like “Murphy’s Law: Tke from Pittsburgh Families, Give to an Out-of-Town Developer”. Normal people thought that it was some white elephant plan that wasn’t going to do shit. People debated it on talk radio endlessly.
There was also a lot of money involved; the total cost estimates were over half a billion dollars, over 100 million of that public. Part of the cost was a $28 million inducement to bring a Nordstrom’s to town; a spokesman for the mayor described this as a bargain since Cincinnati paid $47 million to get a Nordstrom’s. The business owners proposed an alternative plan in which the city would give them $28 million to renovate upstairs space above the shops into apartments that were currently vacant due to fire code nonconformities, but the city didn’t seem interested. In the face of the mayor’s intransigence, he was inevitably forced to yield, not because of their opposition but because Nordstrom decided to mothball a planned expansion for reasons unrelated to Fifth and Forbes specifically and the developer backed out. Murphy took eminent domain off the table and tried two more out of town developers, but neither was able to accomplish much. When his term ended in 2006, new mayor Bob O’Connor officially killed the plan. That’s not to say that the story has a happy ending, necessarily. The Urban Redevelopment Authority destroyed the opulent marble interior of the original Mellon Bank to make room for a Lord & Taylor that lasted like three years. In 2011, PNC announced that it was building a new 33 story tower to house its corporate headquarters; it had spent the past few years quietly buying out the block that it sits on. Slowly, the dinginess of the area melted away, and now it’s just nondescript urban bleh. The storefronts are mostly vacant. The problem with these kinds of proposals is that they try to do too much. Murphy was constantly questioned about why he wasn’t using local developers, and while he never gave a clear answer, I suspect it was because none of them were willing to take the kind of risk involved with something as big as he proposed. He wasn’t willing to wait for the area to turn around a building at a time, and he was skeptical that it was even possible that anything he found acceptable would move in with all the real-world businesses surrounding it. But we all know how this would have gone — there would have been an initial inrush of new businesses, but it would have taken a long time to fill out. The anchors would have accordingly cut and run after the initial leases were up, and the city would have been left holding the bag. It seems odd that this all happened in 2000 as well, because, a decade later, such an idea would have been unthinkable.
1C: The State of the Triangle
For the next few decades, Downtown remained stable, if not great. The commercial activity was there during the daytime, but at night the whole place emptied out, save for the Cultural District. There was very little residential. If you were in the vicinity of 6th Ave. everything seemed fine, with the theaters and restaurants abuzz and lots of foot traffic, but anywhere else was a ghost town save for the occasional bum asking for change. It wasn’t exactly dangerous, but a bit sketchy. In more recent years, there’s been a movement to build more residential space Downtown, and things are slowly changing. Stymieing this, though, is the increasing vacancy rate of Downtown office space post-pandemic. This isn’t unique to Pittsburgh, but combined with a couple high-profile incidents of violence, it’s created the impression among suburbanites that Downtown is increasingly unsafe. Part of the problem is that the homeless population is more visible than they were before. Contrary to popular belief, the actual homeless population has about halved since they first started counting in 2010, but reduced foot traffic and the proliferation of tents along the bike trails (with the associated drug activity) make the problem look worse than it actually is. I don’t intend to make this an in-depth discussion about the homeless problem in America, as that’s beyond the scope of this post, but it’s something the city has to contend with. Luckily, the actual unsheltered homeless population is under a thousand people, almost all concentrated Downtown or in nearby areas, so the problem isn’t as intractable as it is on the West Coast.
As for the future of downtown, it’s hard to predict. Office space was at a premium before the pandemic, but the new hybrid office environment has led more and more companies to downsize. Commercial real estate companies are acting like it’s the apocalypse, but they do that every time there’s a market downturn. My prediction is that the trend towards more residential continues, but that the office situation stabilizes as natural demand increase fills up the existing vacancies, combined with more companies demanding employees come back to the office. That said, it's never going to be a trendy area. Downtown is ubiquitous in the public psyche, so it will never have the cachet of an undiscovered territory. Pittsburgh isn't New York, and no one will want to raise a family in a Downtown high rise. The inevitable demographic is single professionals and childless couples who presumably make enough to live Downtown because they're workaholics who want to be close to their high-paying jobs. A girl I went to law school with lived Downtown for a while and said that she liked it but that it wears on you after a while and you want to just live in a normal neighborhood.
Neighborhood Grade: Upper Middle Class as far as residential is concerned, with the caveat that, despite having over 4,000 residents, this isn’t really a residential area. Accordingly, it’s a lot different than most of the other Upper Middle Class areas in the city.
The US bankruptcy code (it's all Federal, except for in a few specific areas) is similar but doesn't require "bodily harm", only "willful and malicious injury". Courts have said for a long time that this basically means all intentional torts.
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