Homeless in the Heartland

Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2007 01:15:46 -0800

Wow -- homeless people in Indy (where they freeze in the winter) !

Good to see these issues touching the heartland, which I think has to happen before broader solutions get discussed.

IndyStar.com
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At 04:51 AM 8/19/2007, you wrote:

There's certainly something bizarre, and maybe naive, about the police telling a reporter, "Why yes, we've decided to begin routinely molesting homeless people lately. And you can quote me on that!"

I remember doing a story for the Exponent about Lafayette's one homeless shelter. You were talking maybe a dozen beds. I assume more would be necessary these days. It's been an economic miracle, those Bush tax cuts.

Nice they quoted the ACLU, which in that part of the country is a pariah (quick search, it was George Bush senior who derided Michael Dukakis as a "card-carrying member of the ACLU" ! )

Yes, it's a whole different ballgame. I was a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and back then, I remember thinking that the Indiana ACLU was a bunch of wussies collaborating with the enemy, whereas the California ACLU was way off in commie land.

Geez... I'm not very impressed by unions. It's an ambiguous relationship. On one hand, I'm fairly happy with my wages, but feel like it's the market driving them rather than the union. I feel like their incessant efforts come across as alot of whining, and efforts regarding grievances are protecting workers who should get the boot.

On the other hand, I do feel like someone should be advocating for workers... but I think the greatest crimes are some of these handouts happening at a level 3 layers above us -- things that are truly eating up the budget which leaves less for lower-level salaries. I don't think the Union is doing much about that other than reacting to news reports and pointing their finger saying "we should be getting that!" In reality, it would be better to lower tuition, taxes, and hospitalization costs, but everyone is gouging for their piece of the pie !

Essentially, places that desperately need unions, where workers are being horribly exploited, don't have them. Places that have unions, everything has become a bureaucratic morass with unions being as much a part of the problem as the solution.

Also, though I don't really want to be "management," there's something defeatist about saying I'm going to devote my life to fighting management.

Issue below - because of a mismatch between effective dates of raises, the union was forced to issue rebate checks (mine was a whopping $7). Now there's another SNAFU with the checks. All this could have been avoided if there weren't such animosity between the University and the Unions.
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Dear XXXXX health care member,

On August 15, 2007, XXXX mailed out the XX dues rebate checks. Unfortunately, the mail house misprinted the checks with the date of August 13, 2006. To rectify this problem, XXXX has contacted the bank and has authorized the clearance of these checks. We strongly recommend that you deposit your check rather than cashing it. If you wish to cash your check and if the date poses a problem, please ask the teller to call...

Phone companies suck

Let's face it, their business model does not include customer service beyond hooking you up to the system (and you'll wait for that, thank you).

I found this item buried in the web site. When I waited for customer service for 15 minutes, the guy in god-knows-what-country had no idea this is why I wasn't able to access my account online. Wouldn't it be nice if they told you ahead of time? Oh, they're not really a communications company.
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Please note: From August 13-19 some accounts are being migrated to our new billing system.

If you are impacted during this time, you will not be able to complete a transaction through sprint.com, our automated voice response system, or Sprint Customer Care. If you send an account related email inquiry or a request for changes to your Sprint account, we will respond after the account migration is completed on August 19.

Mega Land Grabbers

Besides the nonprofit TNDC, there are two major organizations who have grabbed up more real estate in the city than anyone. CitiApartments, which was sued by the City for illegal conversions...

And now the Academy of Art, which has been ignoring laws regarding building conversions and signage. Click link for SF Examiner article.

Lots o' luck

I'm always amazed at the crackheads downtown buying lottery tickets. I guess they think it's just a matter of luck that they ended up where they are, and just a matter of luck will get them out of that spot. Good luck with that one.

Motorcycle Parking, Lombard Style

The City of San Francisco grants a nice discount to motorcycles in its city-owned garages. But not all of them have motorcycle parking.

The Ellis-O'Farrell garage downtown saved my motorcycle from getting continually bashed by crackheads and bad parallel parkers. Unfortunately, moving to Cow Hollow, I was back out on the streets, and my motorcycle at the mercy of drunken Marina frat boys.

The Lombard Street garage is owned by the city, but when I moved here, there was ONE motorcycle parking spot. It wasn't even really a spot, it was taking up the bicycle parking area. So I complained. Which got me nowhere, until I wrote a few letters to my representative on the Board of Supervisors, who connected me with the department that oversees parking garages.

It took about four months and several rounds of complaining, but now, gloriously, THREE parking spaces for cars have been converted to motorcycle parking. Hallelujah.

Tenderloin Tales

In case you haven't read all of my posts, or feel you want "official" stories rather than someone's ranting...

The Chronicle Sunday Magazine has published an Iraqi Veteran's story of moving to the Tenderloin. If you like bars, you fit in to the Tenderloin better. And after you've been in the military, you're used to hanging out in bars. For me, those days were long ago.

My Tenderloin: Iraq vet Colby Buzzell on his 'hood