City of Oakland Parking Issue: Oakland wants more parking meters

The City of Oakland's desire to earn more revenue on the backs of Oakland's poor continues. This email, sent out by Oakland Councilmember Nancy Nadel's Office, reveals the first hand insensitivity of the City of Oakland during what many are still calling an economic recession and in a city with 17 percent unemployment and even more not working or underemployed. 

Oakland City Council squeezes Oakland

The email below calls for locating additional parking meters "as Per Council Direction" on October 6, 2009. This is in reverse of the desires of Oaklanders for fewer parking meters.


Parking meters call for the same kind of draconian ticketing and enforcement practices that have overloaded Oaklanders with parking tickets and resulted in the towing of cars after five tickets were accumulated. Here's the email that shows the City of Oakland's irresponsiblity toward Oaklanders, and why the Oakland City Council should reconsider its policies or risk losing office, one-by-one, when each councilmembers reelection time comes up.

From: Todd, Amber On Behalf Of City Administrator'
s Office
Subject: RE: Locating additional parking meters per Council direction on
October 6, 2009

Dear Council Members:

To realize $146,000 in additional revenue in FY 2009-10, the Oakland
City Council directed staff at the October 6, 2009 meeting to identify
250 possible locations to install additional parking meters. Staff in
Parking Administration and Public Works worked together and produced the
attached list which suggests possible locations where additional meters
could be installed. To give flexibility in generating revenue, the
attached list contains 470 possible locations for additional meters.

Staff plans to return to the Finance and Management Committee in
February to obtain approval for installing additional meters. During
the month of January, Parking Administration and Public Works staff
would like to work with members of your staff to reach out to and seek
feedback from potentially impacted merchants and other stakeholders.
Parking staff will contact members of your staff this week to discuss
the development and implementation of outreach efforts related to
installing additional parking meters.

Should you have any questions, you may contact Tom DiSanto in Parking
Administration at 986-2687.

Sincerely,

City Administrator's Office

Note the email does not consider Oaklanders, and impacted merchants don't want the meters either. As this blogger calmly told one Oakland Councilmember after that person yelled in my ear, there are other ways to raise $146,000, but on the other hand, the City Council will have to do what President Obama's doing, and ordering a spending freeze where possible. That should include a reduction in salaries.

It's about time the City of Oakland adjust to economic realities and stop trying to act like some thuggish gangster, throwing a fiscal choke-chain around Oaklanders, shaking them down and forcing them to cough up money they don't have.

Stay tuned.

Haiti Earthquake update: the human trafficking problem

In this Haiti Earthquake update: the human trafficking problem. As Haiti works to recover from the 7.0 Earthquake an the estimated 50 aftershocks (many over 5 on the Richter Scale), another problem has surfaced: fears of human trafficking.

"Human Trafficking" is the inhumane process of kidnapping primarily women and children for the sex trade, "forced" marriages, or bonded labor markets like domestic servitude, sweat shops, and agricultural plantations. Since the Haiti Earthquake, UNICEF has reported incidents of child trafficking in the wake of the thousands of newly orphaned kids after the Haiti Earthquake.

Human trafficking was a problem even before the Haiti Earthquake. With an 80 percent poverty rate in Haiti, a poor family sending or "trafficking" its children to wealthier families was common. With the new family the child would live often in substandard, unsupervised or policed abusive conditions.

Now, with escaped Haitian prisoners (because of the quake), little security infrastructure relative to the population, and again a large number of unaccounted for, but living minors, the fear and reports of allegations of child trafficking are on the rise.

UNICEF is not the only organization or person complaining about the poor state of security for kids in Haiti. On CNN's Larry King Live, Anderson Cooper reported from Haiti, explaining that many kids are in what he calls "ad hoc" groups, with little or no established organizational oversight. That has led to the kind of reported activity that was the basis of UNICEF's to this writing unsubstantiated charges.

I called and emailed UNICEF Communications Representative Alissa Pinck in the hope that more light could be shed on this problem. The question is, does UNICEF know who was doing the alleged trafficking and were they brought to justice? It's reported that 15 children were unaccounted for as of this writing in Haiti hospitals. But if those children belonged to wayward parents who survived the Haiti Earthquake, is it possible their parents may have simply arrived to get them?

With all of the uncertainty and chaos, it's hard to tell which end is up with this terrible issue in Haiti. But given Haiti's past, human and child trafficking is likely to remain a problem unless international forces step in.

Stay tuned.

R.T. Rybak: How money warps politics, and campaigns.

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision freeing up corporations to spend freely on political advertising campaigns one can only imagine the slander, innuendo, and deliberate misinformation will be getting worse -- more diverse and numerous -- right through Election Day in November. In Minnesota, it's already begun as a shadowy smear campaign evidently intended to convince Minnesotans to stay home on caucus night, February 2, 2010 -- especially if they’re thinking of supporting Minneapolis Mayor Raymond "R.T." Rybak in his bid to secure the party endorsement to run for Governor of Minnesota in November.

The facts are chasing the lies in Minnesota, and nobody's quite certain who paid to send the misinformation - yet.

In brief: For years Minneapolis taxpayers had been overcharged by two pension funds that have been closed to new members for almost 30 years. No police officer or firefighter hired since 1980 draws any benefit from these funds — but all Minneapolis taxpayers contribute to it.

Follow the money

Mayor Rybak and other city leaders stepped up to put a stop to the overcharging by the pension funds after the State Auditor alerted them to the problem. They approached the fund managers and the MN Legislature, but ended up taking the pension funds to court — and they won.

One can only infer that high-priced lawyers and lobbyists who represent those who've been overcharging Minneapolis taxpayers are smear-mongering to get revenge for the money they lost.

To read more, and get links to Star-Tribune investigative reports, visit: Rybak Targeted for Recovering Taxpayer Money!

And remember, it's all about following the money.

Nancy Kerrigan's father dies, brother held on bail - by Cat

Nancy Kerrigan is in the middle of devastating family issues. Although there are conflicting reports, authorities say there was a violent struggle at her home which resulted in Daniel Kerrigan, Nancy's father,  dead and her brother, Mark Kerrigan, arrested. 

What is known for a fact is that family members reported a large dispute on Sunday between father and son resulting in Daniel having "a massive heart attack." There is uncertainty as to whether or not the argument had anything to do with his death. There are conflicting reports.

Police said that Mark Kerrigan appeared intoxicated and belligerent upon arrest. Mark Kerrigan is being held on $10,000 bail.

Stay tuned.

posted by Cat of someredcat.tumblr.com

The Hurt Locker wins Producers Guild Best Picture Award - Oscar Buzz

The widely celebrated movie The Hurt Locker won the Producers Guild "The Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures" Award on .

The Hurt Locker, directed by Katheryn Bigelow and about a risk-taking bomb disposal group during the Irag War , beat Avatar, District 9, An Education, Inglourious Basterds, Invictus, Precious, Star Trek, Up, and Up In The Air for the Producers Guild award. All of these movies are considered as possible Best Picture nominees for the 82nd Annual Academy Awards.

Oscar Nominations are scheduled for Tuesday, February 2, 2010, at 5:30 a.m. And this blogger will continue to mention that the Oscar Press Credential process needs a metric system to be considered fair, measuring web traffic, TV ratings (where applicable), subscription reach, and views.

As I state in my video below, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a non-profit organization. A firm that gets government help, and invites bloggers to apply for a press credential, should have a more "name blind" system of press credential submissions. The criteria should be media "reach".



Stay tuned.

Craigslist Founder on media, Obama, and Google Nexus One

On Friday, Craigslist Founder and SFGate.com blogger Craig Newmark was kind enough to open his cool Cole Valley, San Francisco home to me for a vlog interview on the future of media. This is the second "City Brights" video interview I've conducted; the first one was with Doc Jan Gurley, or "Doc Gurley."

For those of you who don't know Craig Newmark, he's a San Franciscan who 15-years ago started what was to be a simple website to help friends make connections with services, resources, and each other. It grew to a 500-city website system of which while he's the founder, is no longer the owner. By agreement, we did not talk about Craigslist business.

The talk with Craig (which was impacted by network problems that were vexing Craig when I arrived) really turned from a look at the future of media, to focus on a lot of pressing media problems today, then on Obama and the Google Nexus One. But to be sure, many people have been talking about The Future of Media. Just a Google search of the term reveals a number of relevant results out of the 199 million recorded.

When I asked Craig Newmark why this was the case -- why the concern? Craig said "A lot of people do realize that a trustworthy and viable press that asks questions is vital to the survival of our country, however, there's more and more problems that come up."

Craig Newmark does not consider himself a media expert, but says that he talks to a lot of people in media and journalists and from his base as a customer service rep for the Craigslist site, he has a view "from the ground."

Craig says there's a great concern for accuracy and fact-checking in media today. Craig also reports that, "In a lot of publications, there's a tendency to make things up...Even TV network or two seeks to propagate that disinformation." What he's talking about has many examples, the latest being the rumored breakup of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, or the fake news death of Johnny Depp. In politics, the Right Wingnuts propagated the view that President Obama was Muslim and Fox News helped spread the idea.

This blogger thought the blogsphere was supposed to take care of correcting such information problems, but Craig correctly states that blogs also put out false information. The problem will persist until more media institutions do something about it.

With this, Craig's view of the future is optimistic because more and more people are working in what he calls "Networks of trust", doing fact-checking and news curation. Craig says that the main problem in media and journalism today is money; there' so much media that revenue does not flow to the newspapers of the past or present, leading to staff budget cuts and in some cases closures of entire publications, like The Rocky Mountain News, or Editor and Publisher.

Craig says there are a number of new media business models unfolding that are interesting, most notably the new non-profit initiative funded with $5 million from San Francisco financier Warren Hellman, called the Bay Area News Project. The BANP - which came under fire from local traditional journalists because they see it as taking jobs away from them - just hired Lisa Frazier as its CEO, and new Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Weber; Frazier will reportedly earn $400,000 per year.

Nice for a non-profit.

At any rate, Craig looks favorably on the BANP effort, which will supply Bay Area stories to the New York Times. Newmark sees the New York Times as a bastion of media accuracy, which I disagree with, but this space is not the place for that. He points to the NY Times as one publication that focuses more on important stories than others, and derides the habit of reporting "non-important" stories over stories of importance.

I asked Craig about this because as a person who earns a living via the development of media traffic I will post a celebrity blog entry over a political blog entry because it's clicked on more. That's just human nature. Craig says that's OK as long as important stories are mixed in. "People need to make money," he says. But regardless of the type of story, he wants to see more accurate blogs and news sites.

Craig recommends a good 30-second Google "sanity check" to make sure a story is accurate, and avoiding putting someone on as a news guest or source who's intentionally putting out a false story. Now with all of this, you may think Craig doesn't like TMZ.com, the "Three-Mile-Zone" celebrity news site with the habit of breaking big entertainment-related stories and getting news that other publications wish they could have. Craig appreciates what TMZ has done, he just hasn't got around to reading it. "My focus is elsewhere, and I need a break."

On Barack Obama and the media

We turned to how the media has covered President Barack Obama. Both Craig and I were among the first to support then-Senator Barack Obama (for me, December of 2006), for President. Craig is saddened by what he sees as the media covering the "sensational" aspects of Obama's presidency, but not the substance of what Obama is doing or has done. "Most of the media has badly or unfairly covered Obama," Craig observes.

Craig calls for bloggers to promote the truth about Obama, and on matters of how Obama has insisted on accountability and transparency in government "There's been a lot more accomplished in the first year (of Obama's Presidency), than the last eight (under George W. Bush)."

On Craigslist and society

From his ground level view at Craigslist, Craig see a "benevolent" society. "The big change I think I've seen," Craig says, "is that using the net people see that they can help each other out, and its easy to do."

Google Nexus One vs. iPhone

Craig Newmark is testing the Google Nexus One against the iPhone, and had both out for view in the video. "Right now, I think I'm heading, I think, towards the Nexus. The iPhone is a great phone, but right now it's on AT&T. There a few year behind where they need to be in in terms of networks...I may wind up with an Android phone on the Verizon network. I like the Nexus. As soon as I can figure out Google Voice, I can network all of my phones and make my life a little easier."

The 25-minute video features a deeper conversation on governance and technology, which I will post later this week. But Craig has also agreed to do another video talk so we can better flesh out many of the topics we touched on today.

Stay tuned.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie split news called false

The Internet was inundated with rumors that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were breaking up or had already split and were filing for divorce.

One blogger claimed to have been "vindicated" by the news from a UK publication, because he claimed Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie broke up last April.

The news originally came late Saturday night, from a British news website called News Of The World which reported a $205 million divorce settlement as in the works. But today, that news was declared false by People Magazine and TMZ.com.

TMZ:

There's a report out that Brad and Angie are calling it quits. One source -- who should know -- says, "It's B.S."

The news by News Of The World was detailed and claimed that a divorce agreement was finalized.

The reason for the constant rumors of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's splitting up is that the two have heavy schedules that keep them on the road and apart. People Magazine reports that while Brad Pitt was in LA for the Hope for Haiti Telethon, Angelina Jolie was in New York city for a Vanity Fair photo shoot.