Rov_Scam
18d ago
One of the things I find most irritating about gish gallop election fraud claims is the way they breathlessley move between theories that assume the theft of the 2020 election was something that Democrats had been planning for months and that it was something that was done at the last minute after they realized Trump was going to win. Somehow, your post seems to capture both of these sentiments simultaneously — the PA Department of State is planning on rigging the election, but it's apparently impossible for them to do so without a couple extra days on the back end. How this is supposed to work is beyond me.
Rov_Scam
18d ago
"Food grade" means it has to be manufactured in a food grade facility, which means stricter production standards have to be followed. If people aren't eating it you don't have to put as many protocols in place to prevent contamination.
Rov_Scam
18d ago
I addressed the mirage of this decision only applying to Allegheny and Philadelphia counties below. As to the severability question, any severability or non-severability clause in a statute is going to be ignored by courts. This has been true for a long time, in every jurisdiction. Courts in Pennsylvania and elsewhere have all but completely invalidated these clauses. If this seems sophistic to you, there are legitimate public policy reasons for the courts' stance. Consider the following: Congress passes a law with several provisions that are clearly, unequivocally, unconstitutional. The law also includes a provision saying that if any part of the law is ruled unconstitutional than every law passed by congress since 1890 is unconstitutional as well; the ultimate non-severability provision. I don't think we disagree that it would be ridiculous for a court to uphold such a provision. Now lets consider a less dramatic and perhaps more on-point example. Suppose the PA election law that was at issue here was part of a comprehensive electoral reform bill that completely replaced all prior election law, which was repealed in a separate bill. The new law includes a non-severability provision. Should any successful challenge result in the complete scrapping of an entire state's election laws? If there are clearly unconstitutional provisions in that law, should the courts be forced to either let them stand or concede total electoral chaos? There's obviously a line here somewhere, and the courts have repeatedly ruled that the only way to determine where it is is on a case-by-case basis. They strike down entire laws only when it's clear that the problematic provisions are essential to the law itself. They aren't going to let legislatures poison pill their way into keeping unconstitutional laws on their books.
Rov_Scam
18d ago
Short answer: They didn't. The declaratory judgment invalidating the strict dating provisions as unconstitutional applies to all 67 counties.
Long answer: The plaintiffs only sued Allegheny and Philadelphia Counties. Since those counties declined to defend the suit, the Republicans (the RNC and the PA equivalent) intervened as defendants. They then filed a motion to dismiss on the basis that the plaintiffs failed to join all necessary parties. Civil procedure requires that certain "indispensable" parties be joined in a lawsuit. Typically this is for stuff like contracts involving multiple parties or property with multiple owners, where the court needs to sort out what everyone's rights and obligations are. The defendant intervenors argues that since any declaratory relief would apply to all 67 counties, the plaintiffs should have joined the other 65. The court didn't buy this argument; the plaintiffs said that the reason they only sued 2 counties is because those were the only counties where they had knowledge that voters were being harmed by the dating provisions. If the court had dismissed the suit on the grounds that the plaintiffs hadn't joined all necessary parties, the plaintiffs would have refiled the next day naming all 67 counties as defendants. At that point, the 65 counties who weren't sued the first time would have moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, and the court would have been forced to grant those motions. The court didn't say this in so many words, but suffice it to say that if a court knows that an action against a party won't survive a motion to dismiss, they're loathe to find that party "indispensable" to the proceeding, especially if there are 65 such parties. The court can't issue injunctions against non-parties, so injunctive relief was only granted against Philadelphia and Allegheny counties by virtue of them being the only named defendants. The technical distinction is that they've been specifically ordered to stop something they were already doing. We officially don't know if the other counties were doing anything offensive to the state constitution or not, but the declaratory judgment clearly delineates what they aren't allowed to do in the future. Pinging @urquan since his comment touches on these issues.
Rov_Scam
19d ago
If I'm picturing the streets he's describing correctly they're the kind of one way parking on both sides narrow ass streets that a car would struggle to keep up with a cyclist on because going faster than 10 puts you at serious risk of clipping a mirror.
Rov_Scam
19d ago
This only really has a chance of working if sidewalks are set up like roads, where you have dedicated directional lanes of traffic and no arbitrary stopping. Sidewalks aren't like this; people walk where they want to, stop to chat with friends, loiter, look at restaurant menus, etc. Plus they can be filled with lots of other obstacles like garbage cans, mailboxes, outdoor seating, benches, grocer's displays, etc. There's also the problem that the traffic imbalance is reversed. On roads there's a lot of high speed traffic (cars) and a small amount of low speed traffic (bicycles). High speed operators may have to occasionally accommodate bikes, but it's a relatively small amount of time. On sidewalks you have little high speed traffic (bikes) but a lot of low speed traffic (pedestrians). Every cyclist would be constantly swerving or slowing to accommodate pedestrians. Riding on the sidewalk isn't bad in areas with low pedestrian traffic, but in business districts it's a nightmare.
Rov_Scam
23d ago
It's hard for me to see how the Trump assassination attempt could have stayed in the news longer than it did. Two things that keep stories in the news are mystery, and continuing developments. There was no mystery as to the identity of the shooter, and the continuing developments were naturally limited. With a murder, there's an announcement, a police investigation, a suspect identified, an arrest, hearings, a trial, appeals, etc. With a missing persons case, like Natalee Holloway or the plane that disappeared, there's endless speculation on what may have happened, as well as updates from the continuing investigation. With this, there was nothing. The shooter was dead, and we didn't learn anything interesting about him other than that he lived a few blocks from where my grandparents lived (which was only of interest to people from the area). After a couple days we learned nothing interesting about the shooter, and nothing of note happened other than the announcement of the House investigation and some remarks by the various law enforcement agencies blaming each other (I probably heard more of this than most because local police talked to the news in Pittsburgh after the Secret Service threw them under the bus).
Now, it might still stay in the news if there's nothing more interesting to talk about, but two days later the GOP Convention started, kicked off by Trump's VP announcement, and that was inherently more interesting than an crime with no further developments. Then a week later Biden dropped out, and the Olympics started, and by that point it was hard to see what coverage they could have even run about the assassination without it being the kind of pointless drivel that causes people to reach for the remote.
Rov_Scam
24d ago
I'll do @JulianRota one better — I practiced title law for about a decade and I've never seen it. In theory someone could forge the owner's signature on a deed and have it acknowledged by a rogue notary and record the deed, but this doesn't really get you anything. If the property is occupied they'd have to commence an ejectment action to get the owner out, and at this point they'd be found out. If they wanted to mortgage it or sell to a third party they'd run into guardrails the mortgage companies have in place as part of due diligence. For instance, an appraisal requires an in person inspection and the appraiser needs access to the property. The biggest guardrail, though, is that it requires the perpetrator to use his real name and commit a series of felonies that create a massive paper trail.
That being said, I was at a seminar a number of years back and heard that this was a thing in Philadelphia. The caveat, though, is that the forged deeds involved distressed properties in areas that were seeing renewed development interest. And the guy got caught anyway, because when you're selling for enough that it's worth doing, you're creating a massive paper trail. Also, these were properties where the ownership was in question (usually due to an unresolved estate) so the actual owners probably didn't even know they owned the property, or shared it with other heirs. For a normal owner-occupied residence, this kind of thing is near impossible to pull off.
Rov_Scam
24d ago
We already have a standard will. It's called intestacy law. In contracts cases, as long as there is some minimal reason to believe a contract exists, courts have no problem writing missing terms for you, and they're consistent enough to be predictable. You don't even need a price.
Rov_Scam
24d ago
What kind of law do you practice? I'm currently in litigation but I've done oil and gas law in the past and dabbled in bankruptcy and simple estate planning along the way, and I have a hard time thinking of any obvious uses for AI. It may make legal research easier, but I do legal research maybe a few times a year, and clients don't like paying for it so we usually only do it at their request, and they only seem to request it whenever I'm already pretty busy, so cutting my research billables by a couple hours wouldn't make much of a dent in the overall amount of work I have. The thing about most litigation is that few issues arise where there's any real fuzzy question that needs research. If you practice in one area the relevant appellate decisions are well-known and new ones are rare enough that it's news when they're handed down. This was even true when I was in oil and gas, and a relatively large number of decisions were being handed down during the boom, covering the three states I worked in.
Anyway, in litigation at least, I'm rarely ever doing the typical lawyer thing of applying the law to the facts and making an argument. What I spend most of my time doing is gathering facts and analyzing them so I can first make an argument to the client to get settlement authority in the amount I think I need and then making an argument to opposing counsel that they should accept what I'm offering them. The relevant information here is 1. The facts of the case at hand, and 2. The facts of other cases my firm has settled with Plaintiff's counsel. Any LLM would need access to hundreds of pages of depositions, thousands of pages of medical records, interrogatories, fact witness lists, expert reports, innumerable pages of discovery material, and other information each case generates. And then multiply this by every case the office has ever handled, and some that they didn't. Almost every case I handle involves discovery evidence and deposition testimony from prior cases that the Plaintiff is relying on as evidence. And I need it to digest the facts of all recent cases (at least the past 5 years, sometimes longer) to compare settlement amounts. In order to do this, a firm would need to be running their own AI servers, which would have to be training constantly. And that doesn't even get to the other problem, that AI can't take a deposition.
In oil and gas it's even worse since my job was in title, and title records are stashed in courthouses and often haven't been digitized. Some counties are getting better with digitizing land records but few counties have attempted to digitize historical probate records, and the ones that have don't have online access. I'm not aware of any county that has digitized historical court records. With the exception of Ohio, the counties that do have online access are fee-based, and I doubt many companies are willing to give AI the authority to charge credit cards. And once you do get the records, anything before about 1920 is going to be handwritten, often poorly, and anything before about 1970 is going to be typewritten in a way that OCR struggles with. Some online systems don't work off of a typical database, but simply have scanned index pages that require you to manually enter the book and page number you're looking for. These use indexing systems that computers have made obsolete, and it's an open question whether an AI could figure out how to use them absent specific instructions. But the ultimate question is whether or not the general AI's that exist now would even be able to understand what they're supposed to be doing. There's also the problem that even knowing if a particular instrument even applies to the parcel in question. In states that predate the US Land Survey System, property descriptions will often start with "Beginning at a white oak" or something similarly nonspecific, then run through survey calls. Sometimes the calls have inaccuracies that need to be untangled. Sometimes (particularly with old leases and ROWs) it will just state the owners of the adjoining property. Sometimes (pretty often, actually, a title chain will simply stop cold because it passed through an estate and the only record of the transfer is the probate record of the person who died, whose name you probably don't know. I could continue but you get the idea. Figuring out a title takes years of learning various techniques based on the resources available. And God help you if you work in West Virginia.
With bankruptcy and estate planning, while actual legal questions are more prevalent, the bigger issue is being able to advise clients about what they should be doing. The kind of people willing to half-ass estate planning are the kind of people who are going to get a basic will off of Legal Zoom for 80 bucks anyway and allow their heirs to deal with the consequences of the fact that their estate wasn't so simple after all. (Practically every client I did a will for told me their situation was "really simple" and this was almost never the case. One guy had property in another state. One couple had a blended family. One guy owned a fucking restricted business.) Bankruptcy is theoretically more straightforward, especially Chapter 7s, but bankruptcy clients need someone to tell them that things are going to be okay as much as they need legal advice. These people come into your office absolutely scared to death and want to hug you when they leave.
And then there's the thing that local courts have their own customs that can't easily be translated to LLMs. Does the PA Statute of Repose apply to equipment that's permanently affixed to a structure? In Cambria County it does, in Allegheny County it usually doesn't, and it's not something anyone is ever going to appeal. How will the bankruptcy trustee treat a particular situation? Depends on the trustee. These are things you can only know if you're a lawyer who practices in the jurisdiction, and there are no written opinions to guide the AI. I admit that it has some theoretical uses, but I wouldn't start telling people to drop out of law school just yet. I mean, there are plenty of reasons to not go to law school, but this isn't one of them.
Rov_Scam
26d ago
To give some credit to Kraus, the shuttle idea wasn't bad on paper. The South Side is notoriously difficult to park in on weekend evenings with or without restrictions, and offering a free parking and shuttle service seemed like a no-brainer. Waiting for a shuttle is a minor inconvenience compared to circling blocks at low speed while dodging drunk pedestrians as you try to decide which parking space is the least questionable (I always had good luck parking in loading zones since people only see the "No Parking" and not the "6:00 am to 6:00 pm Except Sunday" part), and there's a significantly reduced chance that your car will be broken into/vandalized/hit by a drunk driver if it's in a garage. Using the shuttle would be the logical thing to do. It's just that there's weird psychology at play when it comes to parking; if the only free parking at Wal Mart was 100 yards from the door, that's where most people would park without batting an eye. If there's the theoretical chance of free parking closer, though, they'll circle the lot for 10 minutes to try to find it before parking 100 yards away. This includes people who are able-bodied and have no problem wandering the store for an hour. It's kind of like how in a grocery store we'll spend and inordinate amount of time looking at shit we don't plan on buying but we're all of a sudden in a hurry come checkout time. As for the garages at South Side Works, Kraus never suggested that people park there, I was just commenting that they were the only garages in the neighborhood but were too far away for anyone to want to use.
Rov_Scam
26d ago
It's not so much that it's offensive as it is that it's decidedly unsexy. Also, the accent you hear from a grandmother in 1985 isn't the same as the one you'd hear from a 28-year-old girl in 2018.
I've never heard of transit employees giving a break on fares (one even bitched about my student ID not being in the new format even though it was up to date, though this was 15 years ago), but I take it you were only taking the T from Station Square into town which is only one stop away from the free zone so it doesn't surprise me they wouldn't charge for the kid. I haven't been to the incline since 1989 but the Duquesne Incline is run by a private nonprofit so they may operate differently than the Port Authority. If you were on the Monongahela Incline I have no idea.
Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait
It's been a while since my last update to the series, but this one was a monster that led me down several rabbit holes. I fear a few more of the upcoming ones will be like this. I'm trying to work outwards from Downtown and we're getting to some of the big ones that bring up a number of issues that deserve in-depth discussion. Anyway, enjoy your weekend.
Part 4: The South Side
Roughly speaking, the South Side Flats begin at the intersection of East Carson St. and Becks Run Rd. and end at the West End Bridge. Between these two points, the neighborhood lies on the flat strip of land between the Monongahela River and the railroad tracks. According to city planners, the area between the Liberty Bridge and the West End Bridge is technically called the South Shore, but literally no one calls it that with the possible exception of local TV news anchors (which irks my dad to no end). See map (This time with terrain!) There's also the Slopes, about which more later.
Unlike the Strip and the North Shore, the South Side was dominated by the massive J&L Steel mill at the eastern end of the neighborhood, which splayed across the river and continued on the opposite bank to an entirely different mill at Hazelwood. The neighborhood was originally the independent boroughs of South Pittsburgh, Birmingham and East Birmingham, which were incorporated into the city in 1872. For most of its history, the South Side was a typical Pittsburgh river neighborhood, dominated by industry and populated by a mix of immigrant groups, in this case mostly Eastern European. It was also one of the dirtiest parts of the city, and its population decline started well before World War II. There was never much of an upper middle class population, and the invention of the electric streetcar saw the working class heading for the hills to the south where the air was much cleaner. In the 1970s, there were plans to demolish the river side of the neighborhood to construct a four-lane highway, but this was around the time the Federal government was cutting funding for urban highway projects and it was luckily never completed, though the overengineering of the Birmingham Bridge (1977) is a vestigial remnant of mid-century transportation policy. By the time the J&L Pittsburgh Works closed in 1985, Carson St. was full of boarded up storefronts and dive bars, relics of the days when steelworkers would stop by after their shifts for a shot and a beer.
Incidentally, though, the mill closure would act as a sort of catalyst for redevelopment. I don’t know of any causal connection, but it was around this time that someone noticed that the business district was a nearly intact collection of Victorian-era buildings, and a robust historical preservation effort was begun. In the early ‘90s art galleries, music venues, and “alternative” spots like the Beehive coffee shop started opening, and the sheer density of bars quickly turned it into Pittsburgh’s favorite party spot, the Strip District’s brief club era notwithstanding. As the neighborhood improved, students from Duquesne University began renting in the western parts. The rest of the story practically writes itself.
4A: The South Side Works
The South Side is best described by tackling the ends first before diving into middle. On the eastern end, at the intersection of Beck’s Run Rd., the plain is too narrow to support much, and the only business of note is the renowned Page Dairy Mart. As you head further west, the valley begins to widen, and you begin to see scattered offices on the river side. These mark the beginning of the old J&L site, and they increase in density until Hot Metal St. (29th St.), the beginning of the South Side Works development. This is a typical New Urbanist development with a mix of residential, retail, and office space. While it’s reasonably well-done, it suffers from the same fate as all these large-scale developments in that its idea of retail revolves around big chains, and these chains don’t seem to stick around long. The retail aspect of these developments never reaches expectations, and some of the storefronts at South Side Works have been vacant for over a decade. Some of the restaurants do well, but I suspect that’s because there are offices here, including the headquarters of American Eagle, and I don’t think a midday lunch crowd is what the developers had in mind. I think that part of the problem is that New Urbanist designers are obsessed with the idea of a Town Square as the focal point of the community. However true that may be, they forgot that they weren’t building a town from scratch, but were adding on to an existing urban neighborhood. They built a town square a block away from the existing commercial artery, and it’s no surprise that it didn’t really pan out. The retail space that fronts Carson St. has been occupied pretty much continually, while the interior properties are suffering the vacancies. The square still gets a decent amount of foot traffic and the anchors are all occupied, so maybe the problem is just that the rent is too high, or that it had the misfortune of being built right before the retail market imploded. Either way, even the most “enlightened” theories of modern planning aren’t all runaway successes.
4B: Station Square
The same can be said for the opposite end of the South Side, the Station Square development. This is emblematic of the same ‘70s style development that struggling city governments are huge fans of — touristy, chain-dominated places inspired by a repurposing of some local historical feature. Baltimore’s inner harbor is the success story of this, but a proposed revitalization of the Buffalo waterfront centered around a Bass Pro Shops and Detroit’s countless false starts also come to mind. In Pittsburgh’s case, it was an old railroad station, and in Pittsburgh’s case, it was actually successful. The old P&LE terminal had a fancy restaurant and there was an indoor mall, plus a comedy club and chain restaurants like Hooters, the Hard Rock Café, Melting Pot, etc. at various times (had probably isn’t the best word because some of this stuff is still here). It was a product of the 1970s and I can’t speak to its initial success as I wasn’t born yet, but by the ‘90s it was the place to be. In the early 2000s it was home to Pittsburgh’s transitory club scene, usurping the Strip by providing a whole plaza full of cheap dance clubs. Circa 2006 you could pay 6 bucks to get into the Matrix on Friday nights, which was 3 establishments in one (technically 4 if you include the perpetually-deserted techno room, entered only if there was a line at the bar elsewhere) and sold well drinks for 50 cents.
But, as I alluded to earlier, the North Shore has since usurped Station Square’s position as the top downtown-adjacent tourist destination, and most of the club scene has migrated to the South Side proper, especially after the aforementioned plaza was torn down to build housing. This actually makes sense; until fairly recently, if you were visiting from another city to attend a sporting event, there wasn’t much development around the stadiums, and Downtown didn’t offer much in the way of nighttime activities that weren’t cultural or fancy restaurant-related and nothing in the way of typical pregame activities. So Station Square filled this gap, and offered a ferry service to the North Shore to boot. Now people from Cincinnati or Toronto can just stay on the North Side. It also didn’t help that UPMC initially planned on taking over the mall to build more offices. All the tenants were evicted and the building gutted. Then the pandemic happened and they changed their mind. So the building sits empty, with the exception of a few restaurants, and the entire development is now for sale. All that being said, I don’t see Station Square going away any time soon. It’s right across the river from Downtown and has the lower stations for both inclines, so it will always get tourist traffic. And the new residential development may induce some functional businesses to take up residence.
4C: The South Side Proper
There’s not much to be said for the far western part of the South Side, unless you’re interested in unglamorous semi-industrial businesses. So we’ll head back east. Moving eastward from Station Square there are about 10 blocks of transitional no-man’s land. It’s semi-residential, semi-industrial, and semi-commercial. There’s a bar called Brewski’s I think I was in once 15 years ago. Then, at 10th St., the real South Side begins. The heart of the neighborhood is between 12th St. and 18th St. Development is still thick up through South Side Works (which is around 26th and 27th Streets), but it’s quieter. There’s a lot of cool stuff down there, but the real draw is the bars. If you’re looking to get smashed on a Saturday night, this is the place to go.
This is the first of several rowhouse neighborhoods we’ll look at. Pittsburgh isn’t a true rowhouse city like Philadelphia or Baltimore, but it has its fair share of rowhouse neighborhoods, and I’d argue that the median rowhouse neighborhood in Pittsburgh is on par with the premiere rowhouse neighborhoods in either of those cities. Why? It’s tempting to say that since rowhouses don’t dominate like they do in Philly or Baltimore, and the rowhouse-heavy neighborhoods tend to be among the most desirable, that it's simply a question of money, since wealthier residents can afford to invest more in the upkeep of the exteriors, and rising property values give flippers an incentive to make the houses more attractive. There’s certainly some of that, but it’s a bit simplistic. Even if there were a massive campaign to restore every rowhouse in those other cities to its former glory, Pittsburgh would still come out ahead. The real answer is in the way they are constructed. In Philly and Baltimore developers built what was essentially one long building per block and divided it up with interior walls to create multiple units. This gives the street a certain rhythm and continuity of style, but makes it look boring. There were occasionally attempts to make the individual units look different, but there’s only so much you can do. In Pittsburgh, on the other hand, the houses were usually constructed individually to the point where the few block-long developments that do exist are interesting for their novelty.
If you thought I was going to post a picture of a nicely varied Victorian rowhouse street, though, you’d be wrong, because the South Side isn’t the neighborhood for that. Instead, I’m posting this picture from South 26th St. that is practically a field guide to mid-century remuddling. These houses are all at least 150 years old, as they appear on an 1872 map of the city. But note the massive dormer (complete with 90s fanlight) on the fourth house from the end. Note the front picture windows. Note the anachronistic brick façade on the end unit. Note that several houses have completely redone the front doors, removing the wood frames and transoms. I could go on but I don’t have all day. One thing I will point out, though, is the Kool-Vent awning on the house next to the one with the dormer, if only because architectural historian Franklin Toker once facetiously remarked that the South Side should be designated the Kool-Vent Awning Historic District. This may not be the kind of architecture that has outsiders paying big bucks, but I find it more interesting than what’s going on in Baltimore, and infinitely more interesting than anything in the Sun Belt, where even the old neighborhoods look like underdeveloped rural communities.
Anyway, the creeping problems with the South Side seem to be an unforeseen consequence of what happens when a formerly run-down neighborhood becomes trendy. A little too trendy. When most people complain about their neighborhoods, they look around and say “This place isn’t as nice as it used to be; the neighborhood has changed.” In the South Side, they say “I don’t like this neighborhood as much as I used to; it’s exactly the same as it was when I moved here”. To understand this seemingly odd state of affairs, you have to understand the dynamics that led to the South Side’s revitalization. The urban pioneers who took it from a declining working-class neighborhood to the Place to Be were young professionals in the ‘90s. They were also, incidentally, the people who made Carson St. the city’s premiere nightlife district. But there are more bars than any reasonable neighborhood to support on its own. Premiere nightlife district means outsiders. It also means noise. Now we’re in a situation where the people who initially invested in the neighborhood are in their ‘50s, and they’ve mostly aged out of the bar scene, and the music is starting to get loud.
This is partly a consequence of the South Side being the first Pittsburgh neighborhood to gentrify in the commonly-understood sense of the term. There were always areas that were nicer than others, but the South Side was the first neighborhood to become trendy, with hipster coffee houses and bars, an art scene, in-demand housing, and interest from outsiders just visiting for the day. There was always a bit of a hipster scene in Oakland (which will be discussed more thoroughly when we get to that neighborhood), but that was more of a consequence of proximity to Pitt and CMU; colleges always attract that element. As an inevitable consequence of this, combined with the increasing student interest from Duquesne, a lot of the bars catered more to the bro scene than the hipster scene, even in the early days. And since it spent so long as practically the only game in town for suburbanites and tourists looking for a good time, rather than morphing into a typical upper-middle class yuppie area, it solidified its reputation as an entertainment district. When other neighborhoods began gentrifying after 2000, this reputation became more and more ingrained, much to the chagrin of those who expected the neighborhood to mature along with them.
If you look at the Pittsburgh subreddit, every time someone moving to the city asks about living in the South Side, the consensus view is that it’s a nice area, but you’d better have a high tolerance for noise, and if you’re over the age of 30 the scene might not be for you. Someone else will inevitably point out that noise is only really an issue on Friday and Saturday nights within a block or two of Carson in the western part of the neighborhood, and that the businesses are diverse enough that there’s something for everybody. I’m inclined to agree with the latter view. I’ve never actually lived there, so take it with a grain of salt, but in my experience as a visitor on weeknights or during the day, and on most of the residential streets the weekend rowdiness is a low roar at best, easily drowned out by a TV or radio. Not the best place if you love peace and quiet, but not unbearable by any means. That being said, there are a number of places here where young people go to engage in what I call Loud Drinking. This is where you and your friends get dressed up to crowd into a bar that features overpriced drinks, no food, and a DJ blasting terrible music, wherein you struggle to get the bartender’s attention, fail to have a conversation over the noise, and ultimately guzzle your drinks as quickly as possible before moving on to the next equally crappy bar. They appeal to the kind of people who are either looking to relive prom every weekend or haven’t yet figured out that frat parties are boring, probably both.
4D: How Many Shootings in a Rash?
The other issue plaguing the South Side in recent years has been the perception that crime is on the increase. This was punctuated by a few high-profile shootings that occurred outside of nightclubs in the madness that was immediate post-COVID America. As usual, this was entirely overblown in the public consciousness, as the shootings were easily avoidable by staying away from Loud Drinking nightclubs in the western part of the neighborhood in the small hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings, but shootings are still shootings. The neighborhood usually has about 3 nonfatal shootings and 1 homicide per year. This ticked up slightly in 2020 but not enough to really gain anyone’s notice, especially since most people weren’t looking to go to bars. In 2021, however, there were 10 nonfatal shootings, and in 2022 there were 11. The numbers ticked back down to 6 in 2023, and so far in 2024 there has been only 1. Homicides were steady at 1 throughout the period, except in 2020 when there were none. The South Side has always been among the city’s worst neighborhoods in terms of total number of crimes, but this has always been downplayed in the public consciousness since it’s a generally wealthy area and it’s easy to blame it on the bars. Indeed, statistics bear out what I mentioned earlier, that the only really dangerous time is between 1 and 4 am on Saturday and Sunday mornings. It’s easy to wave of assaults as the result of bar fights, robberies as drunks being easy targets, etc. But when shootings are on the news seemingly every weekend (at least in the warmer months), perception begins to change. The idea that the South Side was dangerous became rooted in the public consciousness as it never had before.
Compounding the problem was that Bill Peduto had seemingly lost interest in being mayor. He had already been defeated in the May 2021 primary, but he probably would have won if he had bothered to campaign. He basically deferred to the chief of police, who responded by implementing traffic restrictions and increasing police presence. This didn’t do much to curb the violence, though the response times were excellent. The traffic restrictions proved so disruptive that they were jettisoned a few weeks after being implemented. Conservatives chastised Peduto and his successor, Ed Gainey, in the media, claiming that crime had increased in the wake of the George Floyd protests due to a kid gloves approach taken by Democrat mayors who didn’t have the balls to solve the problem. This attitude played well in certain circles but it’s unclear how true it was. Crime in the South Side didn’t start increasing in earnest until well after the “defund” insanity had subsided. And neither mayor showed any hesitation when it came to deploying extra officers in response to the violence; some argued that police presence was worthless if they weren’t allowed to do their jobs, but arrest totals were up as well, suggesting that they were doing plenty.
As 2022 was turning into a retread of 2021, Ed Gainey made a late night appearance in the neighborhood to assess the situation and meet with community leaders. The night proved uneventful from a crime standpoint, and Gainey insinuated that the problem was somewhat overblown based on his own observations, but critics countered that his appearance had been announced well in advance and he was escorted by police, media, and other local government officials, making it unlikely that anyone would do anything stupid in front of him. In July of 2023 he announced the formation of an “Entertainment Patrol” that would aggressively enforce quality of life violations in the South Side between 8 pm and 4 am Thursday through Sunday. There have been a number of articles in local media marking the one year anniversary and proclaiming the whole thing a smashing success that is set to be replicated in other neighborhoods, and soliciting comments from local business owners who want assurances that the patrol will be permanent. Aside from reporting the news, these articles seem well-placed to announce that the South Side has lost its stigma, and it’s all thanks to the smart leadership of local government.
Or is it? Yes, shootings on the South Side are no longer much of an issue, and haven’t been since 2022. But there was a dramatic citywide crime reduction between 2022 and 2023, which appears to be continuing in 2024 — is the drop in the South Side do to police tactics, or overall trends? These articles mention that the Entertainment Patrol consists of 10 officers and 2 sergeants. It doesn’t mention that at the height of the violence the city was regularly deploying 40 or 50 officers to the South Side on weekend evenings, with little effect. There’s also some question as to who, exactly, was perpetrating the violence. The Entertainment Patrol articles mention that, during the pandemic, a lot of people started drinking in the street or in parking lots, and police gave them a pass since the bars were closed. But the behavior continued after the pandemic ended, particularly among underage kids, and this fueled the shootings. I don’t particularly buy this, though, since ground zero for the shootings was in the crowds that congregated in front of bars around closing time. I’m not suggesting that the Entertainment Patrol is a bad thing, since the business owners seem to like it, it’s by and large made the area at least appear more desirable, and it sends the message that the city is committed to keeping the area nice, but I doubt its overall effectiveness at preventing violent crime.
Overall, I think the shootings are just one of those things that we’ll never have a good explanation for. I think that a big part of the problem is that most people, particularly those who study these sorts of things, are by and large rational and logical people, and accordingly assume that the perpetrators of violence are rational and logical people who simply lack the same moral compass that the rest of us do. But if you start from the premise that someone who would shoot someone else is inherently irrational, then there’s not much you can do in terms of traditional policing to stem the problem. The city threw officers at the problem, which sounds good in theory. But when an illogical person decides he is going to shoot someone, the presence of police doesn’t so much prevent the shooting as it does ensure swift apprehension of the suspect. Hell, one of the shootings took place directly in front of a parked patrol car with two officers inside.
4E: No Minimum
Among online urbanists and YIMBYs, there is no greater evil than the parking minimum. While they may grudgingly concede that some aspects of zoning codes are necessary — keeping housing away from industry, not putting a skyscraper in the middle of a historic district, etc. — the parking minimum gets nothing but scorn. This is understandable, to a degree. Parking lots are ugly, they take up a lot of space that could be used for better things, and they make businesses harder to walk to. But there’s a bit of a Chesterton’s Fence thing going on here, with the South Side being a textbook example.
Parking in South Side was never easy, considering that unlike many other rowhouse neighborhoods in the city, virtually no houses have a full-size lot which fronts on an alley, meaning there is little off-street parking. Given many people drive to the South Side to socialize, the popularity of the neighborhood made it difficult for residents to park near their homes. In relatively quick succession, essentially every residential street in South Side Flats went over to permit parking. The initial enforcement of it was limited at nighttime, meaning it didn't really cut down on bar traffic. It did, however, cut down on daytime shopping. Worse, employees of many South Side businesses had nowhere in the neighborhood to park all day, making it difficult to work there unless they lived in the neighborhood (which is hard for low-wage service workers) or took one of the few buses in. The city then compounded the issue in 2017 by prohibiting meter parking on Carson St. after 10 pm on weekends to keep a traffic lane open for safety vehicles.
Parking is a complex issue. The permit parking was good on paper but implemented horribly. The perception locally is that the permit parking has no clear winner and mostly losers, and as a consequence proposals to implement permit parking in other popular neighborhoods have died a quick death. Councilman Bruce Kraus has tried to make parking available across the river over by the jail offering a shuttle service; however, this has been a huge flop. Much of the feedback is people don't like waiting for a shuttle every 30 minutes to get to their car parked half a mile to a mile away. Trying to force changes in consumer behavior that don't adequately meet the demands of the consumer doesn't usually work well. Uber and Lyft were successful in derailing Yellow Cab because they provided a pathway to convenience, not because they forced people to jump through their hoops. It should be noted that residential permit parking is the preferred solution among online urbanists. Kraus, who retired a couple years ago, was an unapologetic NIMBY. He advocated vociferously for South Side residents but had no sense for the bigger picture. Proposed residential developments, which would have given the neighborhood more of a local base for the business district, were killed due to parking concerns. He was fully opposed to the construction of any garage, which would have helped immeasurably. There are a couple of inexpensive garages in the neighborhood, but they’re all at South Side Works, and, even if they could use the exercise, you can’t expect people to walk 15 blocks just to go out to eat.
4F: When Gentrification Ends
Over the past decade and a half, the South Side has been eclipsed by the gentrification of neighborhoods in Pittsburgh’s East End. Virtually every vacant lot has been built out. Most of the existing housing has been rehabbed, and what hasn’t is selling for top dollar for something that needs six figures worth of work. And despite this, house prices are actually dropping. A lot of this is obscured by the across-the-board price increases since COVID, but while the city has seen an average home price increase of 37% since pre-COVID, the South Side has only seen about a 20% increase, and the houses take a while to sell (the South Side data is admittedly based on my own perusal of Zillow sales, so take this with a grain of salt). What’s more, this decline was occurring well before COVID. 1717 Jane St., a new construction town home, sold for $362,000 in 2011, but only $355,000 in 2017, and took over a year to sell. It sold again last fall for $418,000, which looks like a decent increase, until you realize that it’s only up 15% from 2017 prices. Growth in itself is its own economy. If an area stops growing or improving, the speculation and capital that creates investment is basically where you hit your diminishing returns. Investing in residential properties in the South Side is a bit riskier these days, as you aren’t seeing the kind of ROI that you can get in other neighborhoods. Retail leases are still astronomical while residential prices are falling. This isn’t sustainable. Gentrifying neighborhoods generally have low retail rates that allow hip, independent businesses to set up shop, while residential home values in the surrounding area skyrocket to do increased desirability. The South Side is seeing the opposite happen. It’s also getting to the point where a lot of the original rehabs are becoming dated and will need to be redone soon, but since the owners bought them when the market was hot they can’t get the kinds of returns that the original gut-jobs did. I don’t know if this ends with stabilization or decline, but the next decade or so will be interesting to watch. I read an article suggesting that the rough reputation it developed during 2021 and 2022 might lead to a second round of gentrification, but I don’t see that happening. Gentrification happens, in Pittsburgh at least, because the area is cheap enough that it’s worth investing in. As recently as the 2000s, houses in some “up and coming” areas were selling for like $40,000. They weren’t even gut jobs, though walking into them was like going back to the 60s in a time machine. I doubt the South Side would see that much new investment unless the area sees a significant price drop, and I don’t see that happening. My guess is that the neighborhood will be what it’s always been to outsiders, with Carson St. still being the rowdy part of town, but with relatively cheap rents compared to other places.
Neighborhood Grade: Upper Middle Class. Despite the problems I discussed, the typical markers of decline aren’t present, and though it’s not as desirable as a place to live as it used to be, no one is itching to get out and it’s nowhere near the point where Section 8 housing will start moving in. It’s also not accurate to say that it’s at an incomplete stage of gentrification because the traditional markers of gentrification aren’t there either; the original mill hunkies have all passed on, and the “quirky” businesses have either closed or been there long enough that they’re practically institutions. It’s not hip to hang out on the South Side, and it’s not hip to open a business there.
4G: The South Side Slopes
This is already a marathon post, but it doesn’t make sense to discuss the Flats without discussing the Slopes, since they’re really all just the South Side. The Slopes begin where you cross the railroad tracks around Josephine St. and end at the top of the hill. This area was never part of the aforementioned Birmingham or East Birmingham and was essentially undeveloped until around 1880, when the increasing need for housing near the J&L facility meant that any available land had to be developed. Being on a steep hill, this was always the least desirable part of the area, and it shows. The housing is mostly frame “mill houses”, that weren’t built well to begin with, and have often been remuddled or downright neglected. One interesting feature, though, is the so-called “low side house”. These look like tiny cottages from street level but descend another story or two in the back. While the Slopes never saw any significant levels of urban flight or abandonment, the benefits it’s seen as a result of the gentrification of the Flats have been limited. Some streets near the bottom of the hill have been rehabbed and sold for decent amounts, but the further up you go, the worse it gets. The benefits to the Slopes are that it’s relatively close to an active commercial district and the houses can have absolutely stunning views of the city. That’s about where it ends, though. The housing is cruddy and outdated. The areas near the top of the hill, while not dangerous themselves, are close to bad areas and are incredibly run down. The worst part, though, is that, in defiance of all logic, it’s neither walkable nor car-friendly. The Slopes have no business district of their own, so walking means a long trek down the hill to Carson St. and, more importantly, a long trip back up the hill from Carson St. The roads are circuitous, meaning that the only way to get their in a decent amount of time is to use a series of public staircases that don’t see snow or ice removal in the winter and can get overgrown in the summer. Driving means parallel parking on a narrow road with a 30% grade, which also happens to be at the bottom of the city’s snow removal priority list. It also means driving on similar roads to get in and out. A friend of mine lived here for a while and liked it, but he’s also an idiot.
Neighborhood Grade: Stable. I don’t see this area ever becoming trendy, but I don’t see it declining much either. This is a prototypical Yinzer neighborhood that people won’t move out of because: 1. Their entire family lives on the same block, and 2. They can’t afford to. A few years back I was in one of the South Side’s dingier bars (at which I was a regular in my younger days), when a girl in the group I was with said that I girl in one of the booths said I was cute. I looked over and saw a reasonably attractive girl in her late 20s, so I took a seat across from her and introduced myself. I experienced a disappointment that is all to common here, as the first two words out of her mouth indicated that she was raised in a household that did nothing to discourage the development of an accent. I’d say it’s among the thickest I’ve ever heard, except that at a certain level it’s just like an on/off switch. Needless to say, she was also fucking insane, and when she asked me what I did for a living, I told her I rolled back odometers. Thinking I had made a successful escape, I was disappointed to learn that my friends would spend the rest of the evening winding her up about my obvious moral failings, which I later extended to include title washing, so that we could continue to hear her ramble about how degenerate we all were. She was from the Slopes. We dubbed her “Princess Sarah” and she’s become somewhat of a legend among the group.
Rov_Scam
28d ago
PMC control as opposed to what? The last I checked Musk was both professional and managerial. It's not a term I've ever heard used by anyone other than an online conservative who isn't exactly blue collar.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
Yeah, but who's reading this? If you have to go looking for it then you're probably the kind of person who reads poll critically anyway, and the only people publishing this are hacks who are already in the bag for Trump trying to soothe the woes of his supporters. It's only going to get worse next week as the Dems get the usual boost from their convention. After that, the Republicans would need to make a bold move to regain their lead in the race, something so unthinkable that it would send shockwaves throughout the world — dumping Trump from the ticket. This obviously can't happen, and there's approximately zero chance that he realizes his goose is cooked a la Biden, but I hope that it does happen, not because I don't like Trump, but because it would make for the most anticlimactic election in US history. An almost impossibly bad debate performance, followed by an assassination attempt, followed by a major candidate dropping out mid-race, followed by the script completely flipping, followed by the other major candidate doing the unthinkable and dropping out as well, all before Labor Day. After that, it quickly becomes Harris vs. Haley: The election no one gives a shit about. No matter how many stories NPR runs about how historic it is that not only are two women running against each other but two South Asian women, no one will be able to escape the fact that the election is incredibly boring, unless pro-Trump conspiracy theorists try to bum rush a Haley event or something or start another insurrection.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
If they are then it isn't affecting voting much. The issues you talk about were much more salient in 2020 than in 2024, along with other assorted "woke" issues, and Donald Trump lost that election. In 2022, Democrats won the governorships of Michigan and Pennsylvania by large margins. I agree than Trump will fare better than Mastriano, but if these things were going to have electoral consequences in states that matter then we would have seen it by now. If Trump wins PA, it won't be because of a trans panic.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
The Democrats have realized that memory is short, at least in the sense that bringing up what your opponent did three years ago has less relevance than what he's saying now. Trump was unusually restrained while he was leading, and Biden's references to his past behavior didn't stick because they seemed at odds with the Trump of 2024. Now that Harris is the nominee the strategy is for her to run a straight shooter campaign that accentuates the positive and only criticizes Trump in terms of his most recent statements, to the extent that they even pile on rather than letting these statements speak for themselves.
One of Trump's primary weaknesses as a candidate is his tendency to pander to his base in situations where it costs him votes among constituencies he needs to win. If Trump calls Harris a DEI candidate then his audience cheers but ordinary suburban swing voters think "Is he really going there?" She doesn't even have to respond, since him belaboring the point is only digging himself in a deeper hole. Similar thing with Tampon Tim — trans issues get right wingers fired up but aren't going to swing an election. The more time spent attacking a vice presidential candidate on that just makes it look like the Republicans don't have their priorities straight.
The worst thing, though, is that Trump seems to be doing to himself what Biden never could. Trump was able to keep a more or less even keel through all of Biden's Threat to Democracy talk. Now that Biden's out of the race, Trump can't help but make election theft comments about a popular Republican swing state governor. Why should Harris say anything about it when Trump is all too willing to remind people himself? What does bringing this up accomplish for Trump? Are there really that many Biden voters out there who think the election was stolen? Do swing voters need Trump to remind them of all the things they find distasteful about him? As long as Trump keeps making these kind of bonehead moves, the Harris campaign is going to sit tight and talk about positive vibes. Why go after Trump in this situation? It's an attack ad without the downsides of running an actual attack ad. And Trump seems more than willing to oblige. The question isn't only one of how long the shine stays on Harris, but of how much Trump will add to his own stink.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
They biggest thing keeping the Supreme Court from taking this up is the fact that there's no realistic way for them to strike down an assault weapons ban, no matter how ridiculous and ad hoc, without jeopardizing existing Title II restrictions that no one but the most ardent gun advocates are looking to invalidate. At least not without imposing the kind of strained balancing test that conservatives tend to abhor and are constantly criticizing liberal justices for imposing. Alito's test doesn't help here — I don't know if there were any colonial-era firearms restrictions that are comparable but it's hard for me to imagine any that would clearly justify banning one kind of weapon that had yet to be invented but not another. And even if they can wriggle out of this then there's still nothing to stop states from imposing an FFL-style program of their own, after which the whole thing will end up back in court and the conservatives will again have to find some clear Second Amendment justification for why the Federal government can impose restrictions but the states can't.
One alternative is that they could create a standard that allows them to strike down the existing laws as arbitrary and capricious, but all that will do is cause the state legislatures to enact new laws that address whatever concerns the court brought up, which laws may address the arbitrary nature by being more restrictive. All this does is kick the can down the road, at which time they're forced to make a decision. The only time the court usually wades into these dilemmas is when a circuit split forces its hand, but that's unlikely here since any circuit that would strike down the restrictions doesn't contain any state that would enact them. I think it's high time that gun advocates realize that until we have a court that's willing to strike down any and all gun restrictions as unconstitutional, this is about as good as they're going to have it.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
In some states, Pennsylvania included, if the victim is younger than 13 the offense is Rape of a Child and it doesn't matter whether it was coerced or not.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
I based my analysis on swing state polling, which showed a sharp turn toward Trump in the immediate aftermath of the debate but in the ensuing weeks leveled off with Trump gaining about a point. Certainly not the best outcome but it wasn't the kind of drop that would normally have one running toward the exits. The whole "path to victory" thing is hopelessly muddled anyway, with RFK Jr. being in the race. He's polling around 9% in some of these states, but there's no way he actually wins 9% of the vote there. Telling a pollster you're voting third party is easier than actually voting third party. It's not clear who Kennedy voters favor but if, as Republicans have been saying, they lean more left than right, it could make up for the gap. If Trump is up by, say, 4% in Pennsylvania but Kennedy is polling at 9%, half of Kennedy's voters breaking for Biden (and a negligible amount breaking for Trump) would be enough to close the gap. I honestly thought earlier that choosing RFK would be the best thing the Democrats could do because he'd in theory get his own voters plus Biden voters, which puts him in the lead in so many states it's not funny. Trump would have gone from talking about getting 320 electoral votes to being in danger of losing Texas. It's understandable (and probably advisable) that Democrats didn't elect to go this route, but it's an interesting thought experiment.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
But then, something happened that was not anticipated: Biden was not ready to go gently into that good night. He stuck around for weeks as the calls for him to step down mounted. What could, and, (from the Party's perspective) should have been a clean withdrawal followed by a Harris coronation, stretched into something that looked more and more like a soft coup (which, if my theory is correct, it certainly was). Finally, Biden under mounting pressure formally withdrew; though given the medium for that message, even that was done in a way that raised eyebrows.
If this were really the case then I think the reaction from the top would have come on quicker. Instead the initial negative reaction was among the media and rank and file Democrats. It took several days for any elected officials to go on the record in favor of Biden stepping down, and it took a couple weeks for the heavy hitters to start talking. In the days after the debate, in fact, most of the "official" sources doubled down on their support of Biden. If Biden had suddenly announced he was stepping down in the immediate aftermath of the debate then it could have been perceived as a rash decision and thrown the whole Democratic ticket into chaos. Prudence required them to at least wait until the next round of polls came out before deciding to switch horses. Except the following week was the 4th of July, and the holiday and associated vacations meant that the results of that week would be below standard. So they'd have to wait another week for more reliable poll numbers came out.
They couldn't announce the following week, though, because the focus was on the RNC, and while there was a chance an announcement could have taken the wind out of the GOP sails, there was an equal likelihood that it would create a narrative where Trump was being coronated while Democrats were scrambling. This was especially likely in the wake of the assassination attempt. So instead, they had to wait until after the convention. But then Biden got COVID and couldn't make a traditional prime time announcement from the Oval Office, and rather than delay any further, they put it out on Twitter and scheduled an appearance for several days later, when he would presumably have recovered.
It's worth noting that, prior to last week, it didn't necessarily look like Biden dropping out was the right move. The polls I mentioned earlier? They showed a sharp drop in the days after the debate but quickly recovered to their prior positions. Maybe a little lower, but not the kind of precipitous drop that would suggest changing candidates; if they had dropped like that for no discernible reason then it would just look like normal variation. More importantly, when given the option between Trump and an entire raft of possible Democratic candidates, Biden did better than the competition. Yes, that even includes Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania. And while Kamala was the obvious next in line, it wasn't clear if picking her would be well-received or elicit a chorus of groans from the Democratic rank and file.
What they would have feared most, though, was several weeks of infighting among prospective candidates, which would threaten to divide a party that needed unity and a strong message. I'm guessing that once Democratic leadership was on board with a replacement the week of the GOP convention, a lot of time was spent talking to Biden delegates to make sure that one candidate would have enough support to avoid a floor fight. They wanted to be sure that the new candidate would come out of the gate with enough support that any person who could credibly challenge for the nomination would have the entire party apparatus arrayed against them and would be committing political suicide by throwing their hat into the ring. If Biden drops out over the Fourth of July you run the risk of immediately having big names start calling delegates to get support and having a unified party becomes less likely.
One other advantage of waiting until after the convention was that, in the triumphant atmosphere of being at a convention while ahead in the polls (something foreign to Trump), he ended up making a bad VP choice. It's as if he was so assured of victory he decided to name a successor rather than make a strategic pick. In 2016 he chose Pence because there was a legitimate concern that a twice-divorced philanderer might not play well among Evangelical Christians. It was a constituency he needed to shore up his support with. Vance ostensibly shores up his support with working-class whites in the Rust Belt, who are already Trump's core constituency. And I say "ostensibly", because Vance actually polls worse in the Rust Belt than he does in the country as a whole, -16% net favorability to -6%. Having an heir is of limited value if you don't win the election.
That being said, I don't think that much thought was put into it. I don't believe in all this "palace intrigue" nonsense. The Democratic party planned on running Biden. He had an awful debate performance. Party leaders weren't thrilled but they initially thought that stepping down would be worse than staying in, and, in any event, Biden wasn't about to step down after one bad night. But there was a bottom-up groundswell that party leaders couldn't ignore. When local reps start getting calls and letters that all run in the same direction, they tend to bring these things to the attention of party leadership. Eventually, the President was persuaded that things would be better if he turned things over to Kamala Harris. To imply that there's this much coordination among "party elites" is naive; it's based on the assumption that being a smart person in a position of power means you have an almost God-like control over things. But this is rarely the case. Most of the time, what you see on the surface is what's actually happening, and the simplest explanation is the correct one.
One of the things I find most irritating about these "Voter integrity" narratives is that they operate on the assumption that states have crappy systems while the people making the arguments have no idea what the systems actually are. I can't speak for what Virginia's laws were like before Youngkin, but the fact that only "tens of thousands" of voter's were purged after his directive suggests that things were actually running like they were supposed to. I live in Pennsylvania, a state that's often accused of shenanigans and was in fact so accused earlier in this very thread, and they purged nearly 300,000 voters from the rolls in 2020. There was nothing unusual about this because they "purge" a similar number every year because that's how many people die or move away every year. While I wouldn't expect some rando on the internet to know that, I would expect a gubernatorial candidate to know that before he says the state of the PA voter rolls is so messed up we need to do a total purge and require everyone to re-register. OF course, it's easy to keep track of people who move out of state if you're part of a multi-state system that keeps track of these things. Youngkin, however, decided to remove Virginia from the ERIC system, following the lead of other Republican-led states who were convinced by conspiracy theories about it being some evil Democrat vote rigging scheme. How these states plan on eliminating those who move elsewhere from the voter roles is currently anyone's guess, but election deniers would prefer to ignore that.
Again, Pennsylvania was doing this before 2020. Voting machines were never connected to the internet. I'm unaware of any jurisdiction that hasn't tested voting machines before an election, at least in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
I highly doubt this is the case. The most obvious concern about dropboxes is that someone could break into them and destroy the votes. This is not something I've heard the election deniers express any concern over. Instead, they express vague fears that the dropboxes will enable ballot harvesting that is somehow a vector for MASSIVE FRAUD. They might have an argument if the only place to cast these ballots were the dropboxes, but these are mail ballots. Every mailbox in the state is a potential ballot dropbox. If someone is going to ballot harvest they can just put them in a mailbox on the street, or mail them from their house for that matter. I doubt Youngkin is posting monitors at all public mailboxes, let alone monitoring households and businesses.
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