City of Brother(hood)ly Ineptitude

Once again, Philadelphia is in the news not for great social breakthroughts, or great events that raise civic pride, but for urinals. Yes, URINALS. Seems that the Comcast Corporation (motto: "We supply all your communication services, so we demand whatever the f**k we want"), who is erecting a large office tower in Center City (after bending our city management over a barrel and asking them to supply not only tax concessions but also a ramekin of K-Y Jelly), wanted to have this building be the tallest Green-certified building in the United States. As part of this noble goal, they wanted to install flushless urinals in all the men's rooms, which would save gajillions of gallons of water each year. Who could possibly think this is a bad idea? Well, the local Plumbers' Union, of course, who protested that these urinals would not require the same level of installation services as traditional urinals. A furor ensues! City politicians and local State government officials are pressed for their opinions on the burning urinal issue. Finally, a resolution is negotiated: Union plumbers will go ahead and install standard water lines, even though these are not required by the new urinal technology, so that they get their precious work, regardless of the environmental benefits. Sure, we'll still save all the water, but money that could have gone elsewhere (say, to reduce our cable bills. Yes, call me Pollyanna.) will now line the pockets of the local plumbers' union. Pardon me, but haven't other people been affected by advances in technology and suffered work or financial loss? Explain to the customer service person who has had his/her job outsourced to India, simply because the technology is now available to make the customer service transaction cheaper and transparent to the user, that they can't continue to get paid for a make-work project while the plumbers' union can. Don't get me wrong -- at their inception, unions served a noble purpose that ensured a safe workplace and a decent standard of living -- but incidents such as Urinalgate have exposed the ridiculous excess to which the basic concept has been taken. (Yes, I expect the Democratic National Committee will repossess my membership card presently.) And Philly wonders why it has the reputation as a provincial backwater on the Northeast Corridor?

BUT WAIT...there's more. Philly seems to be on the verge of again not being able to pass a non-smoking ordinance in restaurants, bars, etc., due to pressure from restaurant/bar owners. Most forward-thinking cities have done so, over the objections of restuarant/bar owners, out of a novel concern for the public good. (Again, I'll risk my DNC card here, but perhaps a better approach would be to incent*, via tax benefits/credits, etc., those who implement non-smoking status, or disincent* those who don't.) Studies have shown that the implementation of non-smoking ordinances have not decreased business at these establishments. But we can't do that here, of course. The plumbers need to have a place to kick back and light up after a hard day of installing useless piping.

* Yes, incent or disincent, not "incentivize." The linguistically-lazy choose to take the noun arising from the verb, add "-ize" or "-ate", and think it's correct. To wit:

• "incent" becomes the noun "incentive." "To provide incentive" is NOT "incentivize."
• "orient" becomes the noun "orientation". To orient is NOT "orientate."

Sorry for the rant on one of my linguistic pet peeves. I'll depart now to visit my traditional, flushing urinal.