Oakland parking problem: Noel Pinto, Susan Bergmann's upset with you!

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I got the email below from Susan Bergmann, who's a very upset Oakland small business owner, and especially with Oakland Parking Director Noel Pinto.

Susan Bergmann gave me permission to present the email in full to you and she wants Noel Pinto to see it. (I'm telling you, she's really pissed). I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who's really in a lather about the City of Oakland's "misery industry."

If you have a problem with Oakland parking you want to share with the World, send it to me at zennie@zennie62.com with the words, "please print for your blogs" in the subject heading.

Hi Zennie,


I am engaged in a battle with Noel Pinto, new head of parking. He insists on giving me parking tickets on MacArthur Blvd, in front of my office, for violation of 2 hour parking, despite the fact that I come and go all day long. After 11 months, I finally got my "hearing" yesterday and it was very humorous (if its not your life). I would love to get publicity for what has happened. Eventually, I will prevail in small claims court, because what the city is doing to me is outrageous. But I have to jump through many, many hoops before I can see a real judge.
Here is my story of yesterday's hearing:


My Day in Court


Today, I went to the Parking Bureau in downtown Oakland to fight a series of parking tickets I have received in the past eleven months. One ticket has disappeared from the system, one had a wrong address on it, so I think it will be thrown out. One has not yet been processed. So that left just one of the four.


My first question to the "Administrative Hearing Officer" (Rudy Villegas):


"How is this the same and different from a court?"


Hearing Officer: "It's just the same."


Me: "Is there the presumption of innocence?"


Hearing Officer: "What's that?"


Me: "It means the burden of proof is on the City to prove I violated a law."


Hearing Officer: "Oh, of course not. I have the file from the parking bureau right here, and you have to convince me that you're not guilty."


Me: "Then this is not like a court of law. In court, you are innocent until proven guilty."


Hearing Officer: "Well, not in traffic court. You have to prove that you didn't do it."


It was an inauspicious start. We got to the ticket in question, a violation of the two hour parking limit.


Me: "I came to my office at 11:00 am. I left at 12:00 noon to go to swim team. I returned at 1:30 pm, parking at a different spot. I got a ticket for violating 2 hour parking at 2:00. The total time I was parked was one and a half hours."


Hearing Officer: "It says on the ticket that your car was parked there at 11:43 am. But I don't see that verified."


Me: "I was parked there at 11:43. I'll stipulate to that. I was also parked in front of my office, at a different place, at 2:00 pm. But I was not there for a large part of the time in between."


Hearing Officer: "Well, that doesn't matter. Because the way the system works, they just record whether your car was there or not."


It reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. I would present the facts, and the White Rabbit across the desk from me would sing "La la la la".


At the end of the hearing, the officer asked me, "Why don't you just park someplace else?"


When I was in the bathroom, Mr. Villegas told my husband, "I just took this job to get the money for greens fees {golfing]. I thought it would be easy, no stress. Then, I get cases like today."


When I got home from court, a notice was in the mail saying my latest parking ticket has been sent to a collections agency.


Zennie, I do have other outrageous details, particularly relating to Jean Quan's office (that is the district where my office is located).


Might you be interested in any of these details? If not, any ideas about how to publicize any of this?
Thanks! Keep fighting the good fight.


Susan Bergmann

OSCAR ALERT - Animated Feature Entries Due November 2nd for Academy Awards

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I just received an alert from AMPAS (The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) explaining that filmmakers who want to qualify for the Animated Feature Film category for the 2010 82nd Annual Academy Awards must get their entry forms and supporting information and materials in to AMPAS by Monday (this Monday) November 2nd at 5 PM. The deadline to get your film prints in is November 13th.

If you need more information visit http://www.oscars.org/rules/, and if that's not enough, call Wil Goldenberg via phone at (310) 247-3000, ext. 190, by fax at (310) 247-2600, or by e-mail at wgoldenberg@oscars.org. (He's not in the office today, but there's someone else there who can help you.)

Getting your information in on time for this awards segment is a big deal. Past winners include Finding Nemo in 2003 and WALL-E last year. Both films were by Disney / Pixar, and Pixar's located in Emeryville, just up the road (Oakland's Telegraph Avenue) from me.

Currently, here's the list of possible contenders in this category (they've got to make the deadline) as posted over at AwardsDaily earlier this month:

<i>9
Astro Boy
Battle for Terra
A Christmas Carol
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Coraline
Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Mary and Max
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Planet 51
Ponyo
The Princess and the Frog
Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure
Up</i>

Five of these films will be nominated for the award. One of them may not be my personal favorite Monsters v. Aliens, but then given its box office performance I could be wrong here. Astroboy will not be in the final five as it's just a disappointingly empty story to many, myself included here.

Stay tuned.

Tom Hayes: Has Senator Lieberman jumped the shark?

Shining the light on those who game the system and talk out of both sides of their mouth has given some in Congress fits. D.C. has never liked public attention to focus on influence peddling: the facts about campaign contributions, or how congressional spouses (such as Mrs. Joe Lieberman) earn money from sitting on boards of directors, or working for lobbying firms, etc., never sit well with constituents. But in times of economic crisis the appearance of financial improprieties becomes even more politically dangerous.

In a year when "lobbyist" may replace "liberal" as the dreaded L-word, the wise politician draws no attention to any connections with the corporate shills who infest Congress like a biblical plague. Any elected official whose spouse is paid to represent or advise an unpopular special interest should observe that simple caution even more carefully. Naive voters may not understand that this is simply how business is done in their corrupt capital these days -- so it is best to say nothing and hope that nobody asks too many questions.

~Joe Conason
In bed with Big Pharma
September 2006

What connects the Senator to GlaxoSmithKline, and lobbying firms APCO and Hill & Knowlton? What's the effect of drawing so much attention to the undue influence big insurance companies have via contributions to his campaign and PACs? Will his threatened defection on the public option cost him his precious committee chairmanship?

For-profit insurance is unique to the U.S. health care system. No other developed country has a profit motive warping the payment of health care. Activists have had more influence than predicted, and information flowing from "new media" sites that aren't being influenced by relying on profits from advertisers with an agenda is shining a lot of unwelcome light on influence peddling in D.C.

Will the changes move from health insurance reform to ethics reform?  Remember, both were on Obama's agenda when he was elected a year ago...

Read more...

Thomas Hayes is an entrepreneur, journalist, and political analyst who contributes regularly to a host of web sites on topics ranging from economics and politics to culture and community.

Gates, Crowley hold new "Beer Summit" In Cambridge Bar - No Obama

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According to WBZTV.com, Harvard Professor Skip Gates and Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley were seen at the "River Gods" bar at 125 River St in Cambridge, Wednesday night. (Now,you know the owner of River Gods was just jazzed over the appearance of Gates and Crowley.)

President Obama wasn't there this time

If you remember, Sgt. Crowley arrested Professor Gates at his own home in an encounter that launched a new conversation on racism and racial profiling, where I said that Gates was arrested for being an uppity black man:



...and led to the famous first "Beer Summit" with President Obama:



Both Gates and Crowley said they would meet again and create a joint program to work to eliminate racial profiling.

What drinks the two had is not reported as of this writing and they only stayed for a hour (probably left after the buzz of their meeting got hot), but I noticed by the bar's website that they met on River Gods "Primitive Sounds" night, featuring "Roots Rock and Roll, Gospel, and Blues" with "DJ Easy Ed" as the guest. So Gates and Crowley, black and white, meet on a night mixing Rock and Roll and Blues.

For some reason, I don't think that was an accident.

Tom Hayes: CNNMoney.com gets "Cash for Clunkers" wrong

You'd expect an author at CNNMoney.com to understand the relationship between cashflow and business success.  You'd expect an editor to send this article back to re-write either for more research or more objectivity.  Here was the basis of Peter Valdes-Dapena's misguided assessment:

"...majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com"

So? This isn't news, and it misses the point of the Cash for Clunkers initiative.

Valdes-Dapena and/or his editors may think selling cars sooner rather than later is a valid reason to criticize the program, but as any businessman can tell you: success in business is about cash flow. Any retail operation needs to keep their stock turning over. At a time when the inventory was sitting idle on the lots this program provided a much needed infusion, enabling dealers to pay staff, utilities, creditors, and suppliers.

Did the Cash for Clunkers program solve the economic crisis? Of course not.  Nor was it intended to. The goal was simple: turn over inventory in one segment of the industry - to keep dealerships from failing in huge numbers before the manufacturers could recover. Save some jobs and hopefully avert a catastrophic spread of deterioration in the auto industry that would further delay economic recovery.

The article may fool a person with no entrepreneurial experience, but it reflects either a shallow grasp of money and business or a thinly-veiled attack on the government's attempt to avert a breakdown in the delivery mechanism of an industry it was actively seeking to save - without proposing any alternative that might have been even marginally effective.

The public may think "Cash for Clunkers" was as simple as just selling cars, the author obviously wants to, but the reality is much subtler. Edmunds didn't surprise anybody (except maybe CNNMoney.com staff) with the news that one of the primary effects was to accelerate the decisions and purchases:

In business, my friends, timing is everything.

 
Thomas Hayes is an entrepreneur, journalist, and political analyst who contributes regularly to a host of web sites on topics ranging from economics and politics to culture and community.

Jewish afro? "Orgasm-inducing Jewfro?" What?

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Have you ever heard of a "Jewfro?" This question is under the category of "change of pace", which is a good thing if only to keep the mind fresh, but I'm also curious to learn more about it.

My friend Sarah was talking about her new hairdo and made a passing reference to it being a "Jewfro" or "Jew-fro" as she spells it. I stopped her and said "what?" as I thought she made up the term since she and I regularly talk about Jewish culture and traditions. But when she broke out with that term I knew I'd been sheltered too long.

She says a Jewfro is an "an Afro, but particular to Jews." But as a person who has Jewish lines in his ancestry, and had a short Afro when I was young...

Here..

Lars checks out Zennie's Jewfro

I figured I'd had a right to use the term, but I'd never known of it before!

Moreover, I had a lot of fun talking about it with her and my other friends, and realized that we'd gone a little too far in punishing people who make offhand comments that identify an ethnic characteristic.

The Bob Griese Taco Issue was the last straw for me. I got the impression the ESPN analyst would have been skewered if he said the singing group DeBarge used too much Jerri-Curl!

I researched the term Jewfro over at Urbandictionary.com's "Jewfro Section" and found some, shall we say, interesting and in some cases howlingly funny definitions, many that I could not have created if I tried:

1. The Jewish man's afro - by Mia Mar 9, 2005
2. An orgasm-inducing hairstyle worn by people of jewish descent. It consists of curly hair and is often large. Famous wearers of the jewfro: Matt Stone (creator of "South Park") Matt Stone's jewfro not only made me want to give him my virginity,but to also hump my chair. - by Amanda and Thais Oct 29, 2004
3. A curly mop of hair with lots of volume, sported by many a Jewish brother.
Matt Stone doesn't look as cool now he's cropped the jewfro. - by Pete Rakowski Jan 3, 2005
4. A large, round and often boulbus hairstyle found most often within the jewish comunity. It's not a fricken afro, I am not black, it's a "Jewfro" for christs sake. - by Sam Freund Feb 28, 2004 

Matt Stone's orgasm-inducing Jewfro

(A Jewfro's orgasm-inducing?  Ok.  I'm jealous.  I was told to go bald for the same reason!) 

So the video you see has led to an interesting set of comments on YouTube, where I regularly read my comments (I don't read them on other newsite blogs because frankly some of them are written by total stalker nutcases, one of which I'm filing a restraining order against), some of which I'll share:

jimisback - My wife has one. But she is not Jewish or African American. It is natural too.


kenrg - LMAO - You really never heard that before? Goes back at least to the mid-70s.


karakaraman01 - Zennie she right she didn't make it up, Seth Rogen uses that term in most of his movie.


Eurotrash4367 - I heard it said by Adam Sandler in one of his movies.

Ok, so it's real the term and the style. But for all of this, it's shockingly not a Wikipedia definition! At any rate, I'm happy to know we can at least laugh at our ethnic differences and learn they're really ethnic similarities, too. 

But with all of this, I'm remaining bald because a woman friend of mine came up with a song called "I like em Bald!" and sang it for me - to my surprise - at Foley's Pub in San Francisco.  So my look stays!

LA Lakers - Will The Lakers go 20 and 1? Take my poll.

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I was watching "The NBA on TNT" when NBA Legend Charles Barkley said that he believed the Lakers would, not could, go 20 and 1 to open this season.

Jack Nicholson. LA Laker

At first I thought he was crazy. Then I thought about it and considered the acquistion of the always hungry enforcer Ron Artest and reconsidered the possibility.

Consider this: The Lakers have only four away games of the next 19 games. That's right. The LA Lakers have 15 home games of the next 19 contests. So that,and given their talent and smart trades and they could do it.

I think they can.

But what do you think? Will the LA Lakers go 20 and 1? Take my poll:

create fun quizzes & tests on pollsb.com

Bay Bridge Closure - Caltrans should not rush repairs to bridge

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The latest news in the Bay Bridge Cable Collapse Disaster is that CalTrans spokesperson Bart Ney told KRON-TV that the Bay Bridge could reopen under a "best-case scenario" Thursday if repairs and bridge testing were completed in time.

My response: please don't rush this. Let's get it right.

In fact, it's not even a good idea to put out the message that this process could be done in a jiffy because if it is, the bridge is re-opened, and we have another Bay Bridge Cable Collapse Disaster, it will be a life-changing event for drivers, passengers, and California.

Everyone would call for the heads of the people ruining CalTrans, and the next "F-U" letter sent by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will be to Caltrans Director Randy Iwasaki.

The quality problems my blogging friend Yobie Benjamin points to should be adressed as part of this repair and evaluation process and a public report issued. This should not be considered a problem that needs a "band-aid, quick-fix" solution. Please, no.

In fairness to CalTrans' Ney, he did say that officially there's no timetable and that's the response he should stick with.

CalTrans needs to take its time with this and make sure the Bay Bridge Cable Collapse Disaster does not happen again.

Bay Bridge Closure - BART wants 24-hour service if CalTrans pays them

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I've got an important update especially for late-night workers who pray that BART offers a 24-hour service schedule - right now they're not - in the wake of the Bay Bridge Cable Collapse Disaster (as I'm calling it).

I just got off the phone with BART Spokesperson Linton Johnson. Johnson explained that BART would like to offer a 24-hour service but they're hampered by, economics, operations maintenance, and commuter commute demands.

The first issue is economics. "The fares, at $3.18, don't come close to covering the operating costs to run trains in a 24-hour schedule," Johnson said. The Labor Day Weekend Service was provided after months of planning and CalTrans, which operates the San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge, paid BART to cover the loss of revenue due to the simple fact that fewer people ride the trains between 12 midnight and 4 am, when the morning commute starts.

The second problem is operations maintenance. Linton Johnson says "It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars each day just to provide that extra service." And even if CalTrans were to step forward and give what would be by my estimate $1.2 million to $1.7 million (depending on the estimated days the bridge is closed) to help BART provide 24-hour service, there's the additional problem of now having extra trains that have to be taken out of service because they were used at night - trains needed for the AM and PM commute hours.

Which leads to the third consideration: commuters. Johnson isn't saying BART doesn't want to provide 24-hour service, but he stresses they didn't see this accident coming. So, they're trying to alter their system to provide service to a crush of riders that don't normally take the train. That's the first priority.

"BART wasn't designed for 24-hour service," Johnson observed. And he's right. A train system, as in New York for example, has two tracks going the same way, so one car can be worked on just as another is going by. BART's work tracks are in rail yards at the Richmond and Fremont and Daly City terminus stations; there are few points to allow such maintenance on the BART system.

So the bottom line is BART would love to extend its current service to a 24-hour schedule, but CalTrans needs to pay for it. And even then, BART's risk is that fewer trains would be available for the morning commute due to maintenance requirements.

My view is such a price is one CalTrans should be willing to pay and BART's problem of fewer commute trains one they should be willing to bear. More people have flexible schedules anyway, so it's something BART could do with less pain than in a pre-Internet past.

The alternative is to have a Bay Area economically crippled between the hours of 12 midnight and 4 AM, and in this recession this region can't afford any more fiscal hits.

Ares I-X lifts off on flight test (video)

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The Ares I-X successfully launched into a clear blue Florida sky this morning and without incident, "testing concepts for the future of new rocket design" as the Kennedy Space Center spokesperson said in the video.

Indeed, it went off without a hitch - I'll deal with the vibration issue I mentioned below - and what's really neat is that you can see the video of the launch from a camcorder placed in the rocket itself and posted in this blog. The video also shows the breaking away of stages of the rocket as it happens. How huge is that?

Gushing aside, here's vital information on the vehicle that I saw over at spacefellowship.com. One important item of information is the rocket was built entirely here in America: Utah, Alabama, Tennessee, and Texas contractors created the Ares 1-X.

Spacefellowship reports:

The 327-foot tall Ares I-X test vehicle produced 2.6 million pounds of thrust to accelerate the rocket to nearly 3 g’s and Mach 4.76, just shy of hypersonic speed. It capped its easterly flight at a sub-orbital altitude of 150,000 feet after the separation of its first stage, a four-segment solid rocket booster.

Parachutes deployed for recovery of the booster and the solid rocket motor will be recovered at sea for later inspection. The simulated upper stage, Orion crew module, and launch abort system will not be recovered.

“The most valuable learning is through experience and observation,” said Bob Ess, Ares I-X mission manager. “Tests such as this — from paper to flight — are vital in gaining a deeper understanding of the vehicle, from design to development.”

Wednesday’s flight offered an early opportunity to test and prove hardware, facilities, and ground operations – important data for future space vehicles. During the flight, a range of performance data was relayed to the ground and also stored in the onboard flight data recorder. The 700 sensors mounted on the vehicle provide flight test engineering data to correlate with computer models and analysis. The rocket’s sensors gathered information in several areas, including assembly and launch operations, separation of the vehicle’s first and second stages, controllability and aerodynamics, the re-entry and recovery of the first stage and new vehicle design techniques.

No word on the vibration issue, which means the dampening systems developed worked.

The objective of this flight is to test a program system that will eventually lead to America's return to the Moon after 2020.

Bay Bridge Closure - BART must offer 24-hour service

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Kudos to BART for offering "beefed-up" service with extra trains in the wake of the Bay Bridge Cable Collapse, according to BART spokesperson Linton Johnson, but what's really needed, and we don't have, is a 24-hour BART schedule.

There's no real idea when the bridge is going to be fit to be opened and Henry K. Lee's SFGate.com article explains that it could be days before that happens, especially with these high winds impacting the bridge not to mention making sure this accident does not happen again regardless of conditions, so a major part of what (even with this recession) still is our economic engine is crippled.

Some Oaklanders, for example, work in San Francisco and don't get off until midnight or later - just when BART has stopped running at midnight even with this closure.

So what we face is a period from midnight to 4 am when we can't travel from Oakland or the East Bay to San Francisco or much of the West Bay. So if you work in one place and live in the other, you're stuck.

And God help you if your flight arrives at SFO at 11:30 PM, because by the time you get your bags and head to BART, not only will it have stopped running but there will be no other way to get to the East Bay if that's where you need to go.

That's just plain horrible.

BART must employ the 24-hour schedule that was used during the Labor Day Weekend Bay Bridge Closure. But what surprises me is that BART didn't automatically do this. It should not take a blog or any hue and cry for BART to implement all night service to help in any disaster, which is what this is regardless of its scale.

Adding more train operators is great, but the 24-hour service plan is needed, starting tonight.

NY Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.; print media is like Titanic

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Here's a shocking statement from a person who one would think is not ready to give up on print media: New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

NY Magazine talked to the media mogul at a benefit for the New Literacy Project, and asked what advice he had for journalism students looking for a job in print media:

"Um, what I would tell them is the industry is in the midst of a massive transition," he said. "But the core of the fundamental job is critical. We have to re-create ourselves, but the heart of what we're going to re-create is still journalism. The way people get information is changing, but the need for information will remain constant."

He thinks that physical newspapers will stick around as well. "The best analogy I can think of is — have you ever heard of the Titanic Fallacy?" he asked. We hadn't. "What was the critical flaw to the Titanic?" We tried to answer: Poor construction? Not enough life boats? Crashing into stuff? "A captain trying to set a world speed record through an iceberg field?" he said, shaking his head. "Even if the Titanic came in safely to New York Harbor, it was still doomed," he said. "Twelve years earlier, two brothers invented the airplane."

He went on to say there would be print, but it will not be the driving force. I agree but I'll go a step beyond what he said. The driving force in the future will be multimedia - video, web, print, audio - and all of the same content.

Take my example you're reading: it's also in video form with me speaking, and I can strip out the audio and have an Mp3 version and print the website page and have a paper version. So that's web, print, video, and audio versions of the same message.

Imagine that as the foundation for a news company. That's the future.

That said and written,I can't think of a firm - well a big media company - that's actively headed in that direction. Not one.

But back to The Titanic and Sulzberger. Art Jr.'s analogy is appropriate because the New York Times opened the first three months of 2009 with a $74 million operating loss. Overall, American newspaper circulation fell more than 10 percent.

That, folks, is the beginning of a long-term death spiral. Ad sales rates are based on subscription size; if that falls then newspapers can't charge the same rates because they don't have as great a reach, so revenue is even less, leading to more cuts in production, which impacts circulation until a steady state is reached.

But where that steady state of circulation is, is anyone's best guess.

I can't help but wonder what Phil Bronstein thinks of Sulzberger's comments...