You can only re-sod a field so often. What would you suggest they do when Pitt plays the same weekend as the Steelers?

You can’t wash paint off of grass. The re-sodded field needs time to re-root - you can’t change it every time they play.

It’s why one end zone says “pittsburgh” while both seasons are going.

They spend plenty of money there. That field has been re-sodded at least 3-4 times this season alone.

It’s not an issue of being cheap.

It’s much harder (impossible?) to wash paint off of real turf as compared to articulate turf.

All electricity distribution is a monopoly. You can choose an alternate supplier, but the distribution network is expensive to build and maintain so it’s only built once for an area.

Same with water distribution and natural gas.

The republiturds have been in charge of the state legislature for quite some time. So place your blame appropriately.

WTF bugs are you talking about? That modicum of convenience saves hours of my life waiting in line at JFK after international trips (I did 12 this year alone). I waltz thru immigration and customs while the conspiracy nuts and stupid people stand in the one line they leave open for the people that live in the past.

My time is too valuable for that shit.

I have both. I have a passport (both the book and the card) for international travel and a real ID drivers license. The drivers license is a hell of a lot easier to carry in your wallet and much more convenient for domestic air travel. TSA now inserts drivers licenses into an electronic reader for an instant ID check at domestic airports without needing to scan a boarding pass. Passports take longer in that process. I fly 100+ flights a year. Convenience trumps the conspiracy shit and the fact that you are saddened that the standard PA license doesn’t meet the security rules to participate fully in society.

Convenience is also the reason I have the passport card. Way easier at driving borders into Canada. I even gave the feds my iris scan and prints to get global entry due to extensive international trips. The convenience is worth it. I’m not hiding from anyone or fearful of enrolling in those programs - the convenience more than outweighs the non-existent risk. Never once has a black van full of government operatives showed up at the house either.

Before you get excited, that’s trump with a small “t” used as a verb. I wasn’t referring to the orange dipshit from Florida.

While the children sit in the corner and kick and scream about the rules that the rest of us operate under, the adults will continue functioning as a normal society and move forward.

How well did that approach work in the last election? Everyone living within the grand conspiracy theory seems to have lost. The country is moving on. You can continue to sit off on the side and be left behind if you’d like.

Since you’ve run out of points and are only left with insults, I guess we’re done here. Not surprising.

Prior to the enactment of the PA real ID the PA license didn’t qualify under the federal guidelines. You don’t make those rules and requirements - the feds did. Tough shit. Adults make decisions. Sometimes life isn’t fair.

The law has been in place since 2005. PA just chose to drag their feet since then because the republican legislature had its head up its ass and decided to be one of the last holdouts.

Even conspiracy theory haven Florida complied.

There is a program in PA to get a free ID.

https://www.dot.state.pa.us/public/DVSPubsForms/BDL/BDL%20Fact%20Sheets/FS-HomelessID.pdf

It does say that the $30 real ID fee cannot be waived though. I suspect that has something to do with the checks and verifications that happen that require system fees to process.

It’s not perfect but the federal government has decided that certain federal activities require an ID that has tougher standards to obtain. The alternate choice is to not participate in those activities. The federal law has been in place since 2005. Pennsylvania was one of the last states to hold out. That’s because the Republicans that ran the state legislature through that time were all grand conspiracy theorists.

The other poster that I replied to said Florida IDs comply. That’s because even bat shit crazy conspiracy Florida land decided to comply with the law in the period while Pennsylvania was still holding out since 2005.

Of course. Go to the boot licking conspiracy bullshit. If you don’t like the requirements, then don’t get an ID that has the stronger requirements and don’t participate in the aspects of society that require the more stringent identification (federal buildings, airports, etc).

Oh wait, you advocated for passports and were fine with those even though getting a passport has the same ID requirements as a real ID license. So you just want to bitch. Got it.

Feds flow laws and requirements down. Not the other way around. You have a fundamentally flawed view of the way our system works too.

The feds applied one set of rules to what could be considered a real ID. States that didn’t qualify were required to tighten up the process and require more documentation to get the license. All this means is that Floridians already had a higher bar to getting a license than PA residents did prior to the real ID act.

It’s not the grand conspiracy you think it is.

The title/tag places don’t do licenses. Need to go to the DMV.

Get an adjustable wrench - much easier to detach the kitchen sink than looking for the exact size.

The feds didn’t just single out PA with the real ID rules. It’s nationwide.

Cause stone cold said so.

Has PA Real ID even been out long enough to need a renewal? Or was she transferring from out of state?

You forgot the lock of your first hair that your mom kept when you were a baby and the plastic ring from a milk bottle lid that was produced in the year 2008.

Got it. You’re one of those people that prefers your bill to be cheap and to kick the can down the road to a future generation to pay for the problems that your generation neglects. This is what the baby boomer generation did to most of our government owned utilities by the way.

It’s a very short sighted strategy that government owned utilities use. Because by the time the bill comes due, today’s politicians will be gone from office.

But keep whining about greed, etc.

No matter how much you want it to be cheap and free, reliable utility service costs real money. Those costs are increasing like costs are everywhere else. For some reason we thought it was a good idea to close a bunch of nuclear power plants around the world, so electricity is only going to get more expensive.

Explain pittsburgh water and sewer authority then. A city run by democrats and the utility is woefully underinvested. Not everything is politics.

Most of the poorest run and underinvested utilities are in big cities. Big cities trend blue…..

And then we wonder why government owned utilities are poorly run and underinvested in their infrastructure and need to be bought out to rescue them from the mismanagement.

Somehow we’ve come full circle here.

Got it. So the government should take over a $15 Billion company and have no one run it day to day. I’m sure that will work out perfectly.

This viewpoint intrigues me. What do you think a fair salary is for someone leading a $15 Billion company, in Southern California?

If you hate this comp package, don’t even look at bank CEO pay.

Reality check - senior execs get paid a lot to lead these companies.

Most utilities will have employee annual bonuses tied to similar safety metrics among others. A safety culture needs to be enforced at all levels of an organization, so that metric is usually in the bonus calc for all levels of employee.

Never said Harrisburg was the problem. My point was that Harrisburg provides oversight and it’s a public process. All states follow similar processes under guidance provided by the FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission).

It’s a public process following well defined rules. It’s not a bunch of execs in a smoke filled back room setting an agenda to screw the little guy.

Look at Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority for a prime example of the issues that arise from a government owned utility that refused to raise rates forever and the infrastructure is in terrible disrepair.

The real issue is that it takes hundreds of millions (billions for some bigger utilities) in investment to keep these systems running. Think about the damage that one big ice storm does to electric wires - in order to get that investment done, there has to be a way to get a return, since the investment horizon is so long.

People will argue that utilities are too critical to leave to the free market, so the bodies like the PA PUC were created to regulate it. Regulation does not mean zero profit. The capital gets paid either way - whether the utility is owned by the government or a public company. In a public company it’s dividends and stock appreciation. In a government utility the utility pays interest on its debt that it incurs to build and maintain the infrastructure.

During the pandemic, the PUC was very stingy with rate increases - some might say rightfully so. But the utilities still had maintenance to perform and improvements to make. Now they are back asking for increases as their costs have increased just like everyone else. Add that to rising commodity prices and you get a double whammy.

My electric commodity prices went up over 45% last year. It’s a straight pass through from my electric company - they don’t make any money on the electricity itself. It kind of is what it is. Costs are rising elsewhere. Look at the price of eggs? Where is the outcry about the egg conglomerates trying to artificially raise prices to screw us? Should the government take over all chicken farms too?