As a person from Pittsburgh, I cannot believe this.
Why would you want to hurt the hand that feeds you...literally?
If you look at all the rust belt cities (Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Toledo), Pittsburgh is still up and its unemployment rate is well below these cities and the national average. (http://www.bls.gov/ro3/urpitt.htm)
Primary reason behind these numbers is CMU and Pitt. I have worked with 6 different IT companies here and they are all offshoots of CMU. Google, Apple, Seagate, etc. have their R&D site here because of CMU.

Agreed, they need to find some new sources of income for the city with dwindling income tax income...but this should not be way. But, these politicians are SMART...they chose one group to hurt where that group doesn't have no or significant voting power.

Kidding right. Let's see which of the following was due to 9/11

- Iraq war
- Mishandling of Katrina
- Secret CIA prison camps around the world
- Gitmo & torture
- Patriot act

I am sure I am missing many more.

Thinking about COBOL gives me nightmares.
In one of our classes ('87), we had to pass a programming test in which you are required to pick a problem from a box (Simplex method) and a language in which you have to implement (COBOL).
We were given 3 hours, needless to say I took the entire 3 hours and more (examiner was very sympathetic) while all my friends were outside the exam hall in 30 mins after doing problems like Gauss-Sidel in pascal & c.

According to this link,
http://www.businessinsider.com/did-apple-lie-about-rejecting-google-voice-iphone-app-2009-9

"In a series of in-person meetings, phone calls and emails between July 5 and July 28, 2009, Apple and Google representative discussed the approval status of the Google Voice application that was submitted on June 2, 2009. The primary points of contact between the two companies were Alan Eustace, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering and Research and Phil Schiller, Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing. On July 7, Mr. Eustace and Mr. Schiller spoke over the phone. It was during this call that Mr. Schiller informed Mr. Eustace that Apple was rejecting the Google Voice application for the reasons described above."

It is interesting that a VP of R&D is talking to a VP of Mumbo Jumbo. Does it tell their respective corporate culture?

I am originally from a rural place in India. I see pretty much everyone uses electric powered irrigation motors and too have an employee sleeps near the motor so that he could start the motor as soon as the electricity comes on. I wondered why they couldn't use a solar powered motor. I found out that there is no incentive for the farmers to move to solar powered motors as they are expensive to buy and more importantly the electricity is free for agricultural usage (in the state of Tamil Nadu...not only that you don't have file income tax if your income is only from agriculture..sweet..huh..while it helps a lot in terms of food sustainability...but i see it exploited as well.).

Whats "upstairs"?

millionaire - inherited?
ivy league educated in law - Legacy quota?