The Crap in Our Back Yard
April 30, 2008
These two pieces of crap sit behind the “Old Crack House”. The windows are all broken and the plumbing and furnaces have been ripped out. The back doors are open or the boarding is busted out and kids play in them. They were built around 1915 or so as two woodstove houses by Leonard Volkenand, who lived in our place from 1904 until his death in 1937. That means they were heated with a stove upstairs and one downstairs. They were problem rentals for us when we bought the place and in really bad shape. When the owner died they were left to her daughter who inherited another 7 just like them. She evicted the tenants for humanitarian reasons (nobody should have to live with that many fleas) and has done nothing with the properties for the last 4 years. She hasn’t paid the taxes either. Her daughter lives across the street and won’t do anything about them. She won’t even cut the grass. We would be happy to get these and demolish them and expand our back yard but we run into a problem. The county sold the tax liens to a bank in Florida. The liens total $12,000 and the cost to demolish these will be about $8000 and the two empty lots are worth maybe $6000 because they are too small to build on under the new zoning code.
There is a program that the city offers residents to acquire abandoned property and get the delinquent taxes forgiven. Taxes have to be two years in arrears for the property to qualify. Basically we would fill out an application form and deposit $1000 with the city. This is used to force a sheriff sale on the property. The first sale is for the taxes owed. If there is no sale it will be put up a second time with no minimum bid. If nobody buys it, the city acquires it and then gives it to us and keeps the $1000. If someone buys the property we get our deposit back. Since the liens keep getting sold to this bank in Florida, these properties taxes are no longer in arrears so we can’t attempt to acquire the properties. So they will sit empty and vacant for another 5 years or until the city sends out the demolition crews to tear them down. They add that bill to the delinquent tax bill so the problem perpetuates itself until the bank realizes that it is sitting on a very expensive piece of crap that they will never be able to sell or collect on.
I mentioned this problem to our mayor last week. The information entered her right ear, ricocheted off a couple of brain cells and created a foggy glaze over her eyes. She looked in my direction and said “You need to talk to the county auditor.” Now I’m willing to do that but my thought is “Yeah right, like my two crappy properties matter to the county auditor! Do you think he’s going to make a call to the bank in Florida that got bilked by him for a couple hundred grand to recall $12,000 in liens?” She said that this is a county problem, not a city problem but the truth is that it IS a city problem because there are many other houses like these within city limits.
My experience in this town is that the city administration does not communicate with the county administration. I think it is a political party thing which is so stupid in this day and age because our governments are supposed to serve “We the people …” and the people in the city of Dayton are getting served poorly as a result of our elected city leaders not being willing to work with county elected leaders because they aren’t members of the same political party, even though it would be the right thing to do.
I’m pretty certain that if the right person investigates this, they will find at least 50 or even more properties about the city in a similar situation. At least nine being owned by the above mentioned lady. If the person investigating would happen to work for the city and would approach the county auditor about this problem then these bad property liens could be swapped out for good ones that have more recent delinquent taxes. This would free these real crap properties up to be acquired by residents who care or land banked by the city planning department.
I have spoken with people in the planning department, the building inspection division and economic development since and will get the opportunity to present this at a neighborhood housing committee meeting that I attend next week.
I am so fed up with the way our city government doesn’t work as effectively as I KNOW it can that I went to the board of elections and asked what I need to run for mayor next year. The gentleman behind the desk looked me square in the eye and said “A prayer.”
The Battlestar/SCIFI Podcast
April 30, 2008
I forgot to post the link to Ep III then we released EP VI…
But no fear we’re now on iTunes and if you are realy bored you can subcribe!.
Aren’t we special???
© jen for Very Big Blog, 2008. |
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Dayton photo of the day – 04/30/08
April 30, 2008
A
What The Strange Case of Jeremiah Wright Can Teach Us
April 30, 2008
I am dumbfounded as to why Rev. Jeremiah Wright would make such a spectacle of himself at the National Press Club. An older black woman, a commentator on Anderson Cooper’s show, said that, in her opinion, what had motivated Rev. Wright’s behavior was his perception that Barack Obama had “dissed” him, and, that Wright lashed out at Obama in anger. An interesting theory.
In today’s New York Times, Bob Herbert affirms that theory. In an article entitled “The Pastor Casts a Shadow,” Herbert writes, “Feeling dissed by Senator Obama, Mr. Wright gets revenge on his former follower while bathed in a spotlight brighter than any he could ever have imagined. He’s living a narcissist’s dream. At long last, his 15 minutes have arrived.”
Herbert continues, “The thing to keep in mind about Rev. Wright is that he is a smart fellow. He’s been a very savvy operator, politically and otherwise, for decades. He has built a thriving, politically connected congregation on the South Side of Chicago that has done some very good work over the years. Powerful people have turned to him for guidance and advice. … So it’s not like he’s naïve politically. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Forget the gibberish about responding to attacks on the black church. That is not what the reverend’s appearance before the press club was about. He was responding to what he perceives as an attack on him.”
The judgment that Wright is acting out of ego and out of selfish anger I’ve heard repeated in many versions. It seems the best explanation. This is a strange case that, to me, doesn’t make sense. Why would Rev. Wright, a man of seasoned maturity, throw away so much? Why would Rev. Wright seek to sabotage his parishioner, a person he has known and influenced from the time he was a fatherless young man in his twenties, a man who obviously has affection for Rev. Wright and who, over time, has established what he thought was a basis of trust with the minister. Why would Rev. Wright discard such a friendship?
And with his decision to throw away his friendship with Barack Obama, Rev. Wright also discards a wonderful opportunity to have positive national influence, an opportunity to transform our nation’s discussion about what it means to be a Christian. Wright, as potentially the president’s pastor, could have had the platform to teach the nation about his understanding of “liberation theology,” about his commitment to define Christianity in terms of service to others, about how Christianity caused him to want to serve and uplift his community. Rev. Wright could have provided the teaching and the inspiration that might have provided a valuable counterbalance to the view of Christianity presented by “God wants you to be rich” TV evangelists and to the view of Christianity promulgated by narrow minded right wing evangelicals. It is hard to understand why Rev. Wright threw such an opportunity away.
One thing is for certain, Rev. Wright, because of his actions, has a real problem. His claim to legitimacy is not that he is a scholar, not that he is a community leader, not that he is a black man. His claim to legitimacy is his claim that he is a man of God, a man dedicated to a life of Christian ministry. His actions have now undermined his very legitimacy as a minister. Does a man of God, who feels he has been “dissed,” seek to get even, does he seek to lash out in destructive words and actions? Does a man of God seek his own way? Is Wright’s actions and attitude a good example to anyone who is seeking to understand Christianity? I don’t think so.
It is possible that before this is all over Rev. Wright will surprise us and repent of his sin of ego and self centeredness. Possible, but unlikely. It seems that Wright sees himself as a prophet, and having boldly presented himself to the national stage in a certain manner and with a certain message, it seems unlikely he will reconsider. In the Bible, we are warned about false prophets. And much of the negative trends in today’s world can be blamed on the false prophets of our time. We criticize Moslem religious leaders for leading their flock astray, but the Moslem religion is not the only religion with false prophets.
I imagine that Rev. Wright feels his actions and words are justified. But, what the behavior of Rev. Wright can remind us is that any man who is ego driven, whose thinking and actions are self centered, can delude himself as to his own motivation and can do great harm, while convincing himself that he is doing great good.
Party leader charged with DUI
April 30, 2008
The head of Butler County’s Democratic Party has resigned after he was charged with drunk driving over the weekend.
Ron Wardrup, 48, the party chairman since February 2007, said this morning he quit Tuesday night for the good of the party.
“It’s been a pretty rough few days for me,” Wardrup said in a phone interview. “It really was a tough decision and I had a lot of people asking me not to resign but I felt like it was the right thing to do.”
READ MORE: Party leader charged with DUI
Ohio GOP Flips on PayDay Lending Legislation
April 30, 2008
After months of debate over whether to cap payday-lending interest rates at 36 percent, House Republican leaders tossed a sharp curveball yesterday by proposing a 28 percent cap.
Stunning both the payday-lending industry and consumer advocates, House Financial Institutions Chairman Rep. Christopher R. Widener, R-Springfield, made major changes yesterday to a plan he introduced last week that did not lower the current 391 percent rate.
Widener introduced House Bill 545, which would cap payday lending rates at 28 percent, limit borrowers to four loans per year, cut the maximum loan size from $800 to $500 and require that borrowers get at least 31 days to pay off a loan.
“I’m proud of where we are at with this bill, and I think we’ll have the strongest law in the country,” he said.
If enacted, the bill could spell the end of the burgeoning payday lending industry in Ohio, which has grown from 106 stores in 1997 to more than 1,600 today. The bill would attempt to encourage banks to participate in a new small-loan program though a partnership with the state treasurer’s office.
The bill goes even further than the previous proposal backed by the Ohio Coalition for Responsible Lending. Gov. Ted Strickland last week called for a 36 percent cap.
Reasonable costs: What can Ohioans afford to pay for health care?
April 30, 2008
Wages in Ohio make health care unaffordable for many Ohioans. Approximately 20 percent of all Ohioans live in families earning less than needed to meet their basic family budget. A basic family budget for Ohioans includes costs for housing, utilities, food, health care, child care, transportation, clothing, school supplies, and taxes. When families do not earn enough to meet all of these basic needs, they spend more than they can afford on health care or go without health care coverage altogether. While some Ohioans manage to pay for health care or health insurance, often they cannot afford to do so, and over one million Ohioans, 11 percent of Ohioans under the age of 65, lack health insurance altogether.
Policymakers should use a progressive sliding scale when considering what families at different income levels can afford to spend on health care. People with lower incomes can afford to spend not only less in absolute dollars, but also less as a percentage of their income — they have less disposable income, with more of their basic family budgets devoted to other core necessities such as housing, food, and transportation. People with low incomes can pay only nominal amounts toward health care. Limiting total health spending to 4 percent of household income, for households earning between 300 and 500 percent of the federal poverty line, would enable most of these Ohioans to “take up” coverage and enroll. The upper limit that anyone should be expected to pay is approximately 8.5 percent of income.
READ Policy Matter Ohio Report
Super Delegates Could Split Dems
April 30, 2008
The leaders of the Democratic Party, Dean, Pelosi, Reid et al are singing from the same hymnal when they chant the Democrats will unite behind the eventual Democratic Party Presidential nominee.
This is hopeful thinking on their part.
The Obama campaign has attracted historically large numbers of new voters to the Democratic primary process. Most of these voters became involved and voted in the Democratic primaries because of vision of the future offered by Obama and his campaign. In addition, large numbers of Democrats and even some Republicans jumped on the Obama band wagon because they were tired of the same old politics represented by both Clinton and McCain.
There is little doubt that if the Super Delegates anoint Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party nominee a large numbers of Obama supporters will either sit out the November election or join the Nader campaign.
It seems none of the Democratic Party leaders want to discuss or recognize this reality. They do so at the peril of their Party and the future of our Nation.
Time Warner phone hell!
April 29, 2008
A few years ago there was an article about how a survey compiled about how people hate being in a circular “touch 1″ customer service phone hell. Sunday night I actually was a screaming, crying, ranting she-weevil to a TS guy. They broke me.
So my Mother in law has been having issues with her internet and it looked as if the router, and possibly the modem were both bad. She’d had a cable tech out to look at the modem and they said it was fine but there was SOMETHING wrong. So Mr Man finally broke down and bought her a Belkin N1 Vision (which if it works is supposed to tell you everything from how fast your internet is to how to make Paella), and we took it over to install Saturday. The modem didn’t work, didn’t see the network and so I called Belkin Tech Support.
Two hours later I finally got them to deduce something must be wrong with the modem. The fact that it might be the modem was not out of the question so no biggie.. So Since was going to be in town again the next day for a family thing, no biggie, I packed it up and took it to the local TW office and swapped it for her on the way home. Easy peasy.
I come back the next day, 5pm or so, and reset it all up with the new modem. Router still does not work. Argh. So I call Belkin – again.
This time I spent THREE plus hours with them on the phone across five calls (after getting disconnected twice) stuck in the hold line from hell for most of it listening to the same 60 seconds of the SAME Mozart stanza (not even a whole song! Just one little part of it). Let me just tell you this… I’m here to say it feels like torture. Real torture like Guantanamo Bay.
Finally into hour three they give me what I wanted 5 hours and two days ago – an RMA. They would call me the next day to set it up (more on this later).
So that done, I start to pack up to leave, the MIL pops open her email – Not taking her password now. No access. Internet is fine, just no email. WTF? So I call Mr man and tell him to fend for himself, it’s now eight o’clock pm, and I call Time Warner.
First and second call: on hold for 30 minutes waiting to talk to someone, and I’m disconnected. Thrs call I get someone, do a bunch of butt simpe reset and junk, and get bumped to level two. She thinks she knows exactly why were having problems since it accompanied a modem swap, and she puts me on hold to try to get it done. Over an hour later I’m STILL on hold waiting for her to come back.
It was somewhere about the 40th ad for I Am Legend on Pay Per View that something in me snapped like a burnt twig. I realize I’ve been dumped I got mad, but I also started crying like someone who couldn’t take any more. but also mad. The mother in Law is urging me to hang up and call it a night, it’s nearly 11pm now. I should go to bed. She wants me to stay over now that it’s so late.
Through tears and clenched teeth I say that they are NOT WINNING and call back, twice more trying to circumvent the hold times and get ANYONE to rant at. Finally I give up and call the regular tech line again.
When the guy comes on the line I actually felt almost bad for him as I began a all out frontal assault cursing at him between sobs. I tell him under NO Mean was he putting me on hold EVER. He was going to solve my problem if it meant taking his headset and HANDING it to a supervisor, but he WAS NOT putting me on hold. I had had all I could take. I hissed at him for five whole minutes that it takes A LOT to break me, but they had done it. I told him I knew what Guantanamo Bay must feel like, because after “five hours of headset assholes” I was not even the same person and repeating messages put the shiver of hell into me. I told him that I am pretty unflappable and I get angry before anything else, so for me to be crying like a wussy girl meant they had done me mental harm, and goddamn them for that. (I am NOT a crier. I just don’t do it. I have three moods: goofy, happy and trigger happy, thanks that’s it. When I get to trigger happy back away slowly. I had surpassed my previous peak of “I’ve had it” level.)
The last time I cried that completely from my soul it was when Mister Man’s cousin shot her Mom who was suffering from Cancer in the hospital and turned the gun on herself last October. Yeah. That bad. (Did I blog about that? I can’t remember.)
Anyway, I have to say it though, he could see the writing on the wall and was going out of his way to try to work around my refusal to be on hold, and trying to talk me out of the bell tower. Finally they know what happened, talking to a supervisor on IM across the building, that I needed to go to level two – again. I said no. I said “
end me to level three”. He agrees, but says it means I have to go on hold again, but the upside was the wait time was shorter for level three since they had far less call volume. I sigh and begrudgingly say okay. I tell him that If I’m disconnected, they were truly going to wish they were never born.
I only wait ten minutes this time, and a young man answers. I tiredly ask him what level he was, I barely have the brain to even mouth the words. He said three. I begin another exhausted rant, being sure to tell him that I’ve been trying to fix this for for going into my third hour and sixth call, twice being disconnected and once being abandoned entirely for an hour. He is aghast and sets to work solving the problem, which only his level could have done anyway – Reinitializing the modem. Email works again. It’s now a little after midnight. I thanked him for fixing it and then me and my MIL did a happy dance of victory.
See, seems the local TW office hadn’t done it it’s job. The modem was not taking her password because it hadn’t been cleared from the LAST person it was owned by. Only the email app checks into the server, so it was sending it in and erroring since we weren’t who it thought we should have been. It wasn’t the problem we started with, but it also sure the hell wasn’t our fault. It was a massive error on their local branches side, and I’m thinking Wednesday I’m going to call and raise holy hell about it to the office in question.
All this time my Mother in Law , 79, is steaming mad seeing me go through all this – she is raving how she doesn’t need the internet, how she’s had nothing but trouble (and it’s true she has), how she was regretting signing up for two years to save a few bucks and and how what they were doing to me was absolutely reprehensible. She was as stomping mad as I was broken.
So that is how my 15 minutes job on the way home turned into 6 hours of pure 7th ring pf tech support phone hell the broke my will to live and now why Mozart makes be burst into tears. (Yup till does, I was trying to find the song in question for this post, but can’t do it… )
So to pick up on the Belkin half of the saga again, Monday their “staff” was supposed to call me at MY house to set it the return, but managed to call my MIL instead (opposie what I had directed) and left a voicemail, but not a phone number. Of Course. So I had to call Tech support AGAIN. As soon as second the 30 second clip of the same stanza of Mozart starts again, (that god damn clip that I can’t find the name to) I lose it, entirely. I’m crying when Mr Mac calls through on call waiting. That stunned him a bit, as he knows I’m not a weepy pussy girl.
I come back to the hold just as they are picking up and I’m still crying. At this point he starts to explain how they do the exchanges. I have two options: pay in advance for a replacement to be refunded later after they get the broken unit or send mine in first and wait 20 days or so for a new one.
20 days!!! And he can’t even do it for me over the phone, I have to go to Belkin’s website to fill out paperwork for it. I tell him there is no way after this treatment I’m giving them my credit card number and I’ll fill out the stinking form. Thanks for nothing and making me call in for this again.
I hang up and get an idea. I call the place I bought it from, techonweb.com. he answers immediately I and tell them my saga and the guy doesn’t hesitate that of course they’ll take it back as long as it’s within 20 days. (only had it a week). I wanted to kiss the techonweb.com guy on the mouth. I hadn’t called them earlier since most times the internet places won’t take back warranty items making you go to the manfacturer, so I didn’t even think if calling them sooner. Within 12 hours the modem is being shipped, it’ll be here tomorrow. Techonweb.com rules! (many links for google love.)
Yesterday I call Time Warner, and only a few minute son hold I get get billing on the line and demand my MIL be comenstaed for all her un-service and MY time. I said someone is going to pay and she’s getting the money. They can only offer a measly $20 credit. I take it for now and tell them to apply it to her bill. It’s not a head on plate, but I’m not done yet. I’m sending this post to BOTH of my torturers.
Belkin and Time Warner SUCK!! (and I did that so it shows up in Google Searches. Bastards.)
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McCain Strongly Rejected Long-Term Iraq Presence: “Bring Them All Home” [FLIP FLOP, FLIP FLOP...]
April 29, 2008
Sam Stein
The Huffington Post
When it comes to getting U.S. troops out of Iraq, Sen. John McCain was for the idea before he was against it.
Three years before the Arizona Republican argued on the campaign trail that U.S. forces could be in Iraq for 100 years in the absence of violence, he decried the very concept of a long-term troop presence.
In fact, when asked specifically if he thought the U.S. military should set up shop in Iraq along the lines of what has been established in post-WWII Germany or Japan — something McCain has repeatedly advocated during the campaign — the senator offered nothing short of a categorical “no.”
- “I would hope that we could bring them all home,” he said on MSNBC. “I would hope that we would probably leave some military advisers, as we have in other countries, to help them with their training and equipment and that kind of stuff.”
- Host Chris Matthews pressed McCain on the issue “You’ve heard the ideological argument to keep U.S. forces in the Middle East. I’ve heard it from the hawks. They say, .keep United States military presence in the Middle East, like we have with the 7th Fleet in Asia. We have the German…the South Korean component. Do you think we could get along without it?”
- McCain held fast, rejecting the very policy he urges today. “I not only think we could get along without it, but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence,” he responded. “And I don’t pretend to know exactly Iraqi public opinion. But as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be.”
The January 2005 comments, which have not surfaced previously during the presidential campaign, represent a stunning contrast to McCain’s current rhetoric.
They also run squarely against his image as having a steadfast, unwavering idea for U.S. policy in Iraq — and provide further evidence to those, including some prominent GOP foreign policy figures in the “realist” camp, who believe McCain is increasingly adopting policies shared by neoconservatives.
Finally, the comments undercut much of the criticism the senator has launched at his Democratic and even Republican opponents.
On the campaign trail, for example, McCain has accused Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of a “failure of leadership” by advocating a policy of drawing down troops. But in the MSNBC interview, McCain was arguing that U.S. “visibility” was detrimental to the Iraq mission and that Iraqis were responding negatively to America’s presence – positions held by both Obama and Clinton.
Somewhere along the way, McCain’s position changed. Perhaps twice. As Think Progress reported, in August 2007, as the troops surge was underway, McCain told the Charlie Rose Show that the Korea model was “exactly” the right template for U.S. forces in Iraq. Only three months later, and on the same show, he completely reversed himself.
“Do you think that this – Korea, South Korea is an analogy of where Iraq might be,” Rose asked in November 2007.“Even if there are no casualties?” Rose chimed in.
“No,” said McCain. “But I can see an American presence for a while. But eventually I think because of the nature of the society in Iraq and the religious aspects of it that America eventually withdraws.”
Then, in the lead up to the New Hampshire primary, the senator famously said that he wouldn’t mind seeing the U.S. in Iraq for a hundred years, “as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed.” And when his political opponents used that statement against him, McCain responded by saying he was drawing an analogy to the current military presence in Japan, Germany and South Korea.
And yet, when he was asked by Matthews in 2005, if he “would you be happy with [Iraq] being the home of a U.S. garrison” like Germany, McCain again said no.
The McCain campaign did not return a request for comment.
