Why I am having a real hard time with ‘Unions’ part 675

As I mentioned back in 2006, I live in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. What I may have not said before is that I am a big advocate of public and mass transit.

Currently we are faced with a transit crisis that is starting to border on the absurd. Whilst we are in the midst of an economic meltdown, and coming off of a drastic fuel crisis, it’s time for the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 85 to negotiate its contract with the Transit Board. Now the current proposal up is for 3% per year increase for all employees, but they have to kick in some more for health care.

Ya know, as I head into my own performance review on the 3rd of December, I can only HOPE for ONE year when I get 3% and have to kick a little more in for health care. And this 3% isn’t enough, the Union Leadership is recommending rejecting this proposal and going on strike.

Ok, I’m all for folks wanting some more cash, but the County is in serious, serious debt (a good portion due to irresponsible speding on sports arenas and a shrinking population). We’ve had to institute a 10% poured drink tax as well as extra taxes on rental cars just to get enough cash to get the state matching funds to keep the buses rolling. This is not the time when you go hog-wild for more cash!  Over 40% of people who work Downtown depend on Allegheny Counties Port Authority to get to work. Many of them are going to lose their jobs if there is a strike.

As such I believe it is socially irresponsible to at this point to turn down much more than most workers in ANY field are getting to demand more and to hold those jobs hostage because of it.  To demand more of a pie that we have to go deeper into debt to fill, and to say that their strike is something ‘for the common man’ and will lead to a ‘triumph of the worker’. Yeah, right. Especially with so many of the lower class then unemployed– yeah they get the full weight of that triumph.

As a matter of full disclosure, I am able to still get to work without the bus— My wife has a car and she can drop me within a mile of where I need to be, and I can walk the rest. I’m very lucky.  I’m also very lucky that gas prices have crashed. But there are a lot of us Pittsburghers who aren’t so lucky.

Maybe we should all picket the union headquarters! Their contact infromation is as at the bottom of this post. If you read this and you give a care about the real working class in Pittsburgh (or just the plain ol US of A) call these Union folks and ask that they stop the strike.

1613 Penn Avenue

Pittsburgh, PA  15222

Phone: 412-281-5583

Fax : 412-281-2627

 

 

To bail out, or not to bail out…Detroit

I’ve been reading MSN Blogs and commments about whether or not to bail out the Big 3 Automakers.  And you can divide most of them into three categories (of extreme viewpoints):

I: Let ‘em fail they mismanaged things since the 70s Oil crisis til now.

II: Bail ‘em out, we need the jobs.

III: Bail ‘em out, Buy USA Buy USA you commie pinko bastards who don’t only buy US Cars.

 

I see a middle ground rather than bail out or not-bail out, but it goes against what has happened historically. Currently when a corporation gets a bail out, there is talk, but no teeth in the accountability factor. Many of the banks took the bailout and bought smaller banks and did NOT start lending (like they were supposed to, and had agreed at least in principle to.)

So, my thoughts are two fold:

1) All bailout moneys should be used specifically for alternative fuel vehicles and the parts neccessary to manufacture them. Ford showed off a hydrogen vehicle that had an SUV body back when Dan Rather was anchor of CBS news (appx 2004). He even drove it around the salt flats at over 70 mph. (So we get SUVs, we get less dependent on Oil, etc). THIS COMES AS A CONTRACTURAL STIPULATION. And as such there will be fines, penalties, etc. for breaking said contract. The contract will be signed and sworn to in a court of law, thus getting jailtime for the Board and the CEO if they break the contract. (It’s called perjury, folks!)

2) Nationally we follow the call of California with its I5 energy highway and help set up the alternate fuel infrastructure.

3) All American citizens buying American hydrogen/electric cars get a 5% discount. Tax breaks are nice and all, but you only get them come April. Get em at the time of purchase and you’ve got a greater impact.

If we don’t do this, Honda will make it happen, as will Hyundai and no calls to “Buy American” will save us. Right now, our energy dependence on foreign sources is so much more a security issue than waving a flag and chanting “Buy USA”.

And don’t give me the party line bullcrap about ‘market forces’ and the gas guzzlers. Because for every buyer of an SUV in the US, there’s 1-2 others wanting something fuel efficient. THOSE CUSTOMERS HAVE BEEN IGNORED. These people include me, my immediate family, my in-laws, most of my wifes congregation, most of my congregation, almost every school teacher I had in the 80s, a former US President, almost my entire team at work, everyone who had an Electric car CRUSHED RATHER THAN LETTING THEM BE PURCHASED OUT OF THEIR LEASE.

Yeah, right. It was all ‘market forces’. Uh huh.

Stop the ‘h8′ – Yeah — right. Mormons and Prop 8

As someone who is LDS, and who did not donate to the Prop 8 coffers, I personally find the site: mormonsfor8.com unconscionably condesending.

Now we have sites rounding up all the donors and sifting though trying to find out who was LDS that donated and who wasn’t. I’m now experiencing harassment from ‘friends’, neighbors and co-workers for being LDS– yeah foresight was needed to see this level of hostility. (And I’m friggin in the East, an original colony-state as it were.)

Keep it up, justify the vehemence… talk about not having hate and then knock the next woman down you don’t agree with. Maybe punch her next time. Keep that spray paint handy while you talk about not having hate. Yeah. Right.

AFI’s 100 “Most Inspiring Movies”

Ok this one is near and dear to my heart. I watch movies avidly, as well as some TV. I want my entertainment to mean something and to be excellent.

Unfortunately AFI in looking for movies that were inspiring decided to take a few inspiring movies and mix them in with other movies that fit in with some other agenda. It was very clear that the AFI was choosing this venue to honor Ben Kingsley, Sindney Poitier and Steven Spielberg. Its also very clear that they wanted to select movies that were good filmmaking, but clearly not inspirational for their star quality. And finally, feeling that tragedy is always inspiring, they chose several of the blackest and most depressing movies to “Inspire” us all.

To think that ET inspires children to cope with divorce, as Mr. Spielberg testifies on screen, to think that 2001 does anything other than provide a breathtaking view of science fiction— To pretend that the Right Stuff is not one of the most poorly edited movies that cannot entertain long enough to inspire is ludicrous. These are all good movies in their own genre, but inspiring? Who wants to become an astronaut because of the psychidelic encouters with the monolith?

Apparently you have to be a complete loser, like Rudy, or have Mickey Rooney teach you how to ride a horse to be inspiring as well.

Lets take a look at some movies that didn’t take the cut, and see how they can be inspiring:

Private Benjamin: A woman, a real rich bitch discoveres how to be free, and even free herself from the shackles of money, of power, and of being manipulated by bad men. I want to be free screams from this movie.

Revenge of the Nerds: This campy ‘anti-frat’ movie inspires everyone who has ever felt picked on to rise up and be counted.

The Outsiders: Against social injustice, (which really does not have to involve color as much as the AFI would be appalled to discover), we can stand. In poverty we have the riches of each other.

Parenthood: Ok, so I get the idiot factor I rail against with Rudy and Mr. Gump with Keanu. But truely Diane Wiest shows us those things that Spielberg pretends to care about enough to present, that children can survive divorce and life goes on and can be good. He then shows us that it’s OK to be normal people, and to love each other. And Rick Moranis shows us how evil those parents are who push their children so far that there is no joy.

Bringing Down the House: That there can be justice, that color need not be a barrier anymore. That you can be larger and beautiful. That tough can be sexy. That we can live out our dreams, but we have to fight for them. Queen Latifa— You inspire me more than Steven and Ben..

Mystery Men, The Replacements and Any Given Sunday (among others): I have to group these together, because these are the team building movies out there. They deserve to sit there with Hoosiers (which I agree with the AFI does belong on the list and nice and high), as showing us how strong we can be when we are together, when we are united. When we believe in one another and help one another. And how the difference between winning and losing is simply a matter of when you are willing to give up. How we can rise together. If it was up to me right now these would be mandatory films to watch at work everytime we have a conference to build morale and team unity.

English, people, English

Ok, I'm a centrist in a lot of ways. I lean Conservatively on some issues, and Liberal on others. I'm not some Redneck wearing a "My Elephant or Die" T-Shirt.

So, we have this thing with illegal immigration– I'm actually all for making it a bit easier (and maybe even less expensive) for people to come to America and become citizens. Personally, I have roots in both Native Americans and immigrants to this continent, and I can at least imagine the perspective. So I'm actually for the amnesty. I'm for letting people come here. I've worked alongside folks from many, many walks of life and ethnicities, and think I've treated them all fairly.

Now, I'm pretty pissed. I mean really friggin worked up. And its all about the National Anthem. Bastards like Wyclef Jean and others have decided it would be really cool to do the National Anthem in Spanish. Put it on an album– use it to find raise to help with the whole immigration issue. If WJ was here right now, he'd take one look at my face and start running.

Some of my ancestors came here from Germany. Though I don't know all the details, I do know that they were in a bad way in the "Fatherland" during WW I, and had to be smuggled out. The Glenn's came here, and then they learned English and became citizens. English wasn't their first language…. but they did it to assimilate and become American. Not "German-American" but American.

Some of my fathers side of the family came here from Italy. Again, they came here, learned English, and became American. Became citizens.

I'm tired, really, tired, of the doublespeak that comes from the bilinguals. "We're doing the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish to help people learn English." No. You're doing it to assert your little Nitchdom. You want to have the privleges of being an American without everyone putting in their dues.

Citizenship and freedom are not free. We all know this, but this time I am not talking about the blood shed on the battlefields. I am not talking about only having "One life to lay down for my country."  I'm talking about making a cultural shift and deciding that you are an American. Americans speak English, we have a variety of colors and religeons, accents and affectations, but we speak Americanese English. We have different philosophies, but we speak them in English. Our road signs are in English. Immigrants who learn English earn more, and assimilate easier into our society. (So we should offer more free classes in English for those who want to come here.)

It is time to integrate, no segregate. It is time to bring down walls, not build more up. Sing the national anthem as it was written, in English. Sign Neil Diamonds "America" in English. Teach American English to anyone who wants to come here, and live here, and work here. Help them join a nation that is a melting pot of different ways of life yet unified in our freedom, and our language.

Ode to a piss-poor ISP. Earthlink.

Ok, here’s the situation. In 2003 I decided to join the modern world and get DSL. A friend of my girlfriend worked for Earthlink, and he talked me into trying them out. So I go online (on ye-olde dial-up) and order up me a kit and to get connected.

So I get my kit in and I anxiously await my provisioning date. The glorious day that some great and wise phone tech will turn up my connection. I received my complimentary connection kit, had it all set up, and waited. The day arrived, and I could barely keep my mind on anything else the whole day at work. I was pumped and excited and damn near unbearable to be with. (Or so my co-workers told me.) I get home, and run the Earthlink software, and no-go. I check connections, I try multiple phone jacks, more than one computer, I even took a spare machine and put a bare OS on it and still no go. Ok, I may be an IT Professional, but even we have to call Support sometimes. So I called Support. First flunkie has me go through some of what I did already, run through a few other things and says he has no idea, and he’ll look into it and call me back. Next day, I call again. Flunkie didn’t put a ticket in and there is no record of my call. The second tech does some testing behind the scenes and states “Your line isn’t connected. Call the provisioning dept.” ‘Course they had already gone home for the day. So I call the Provisioning (Pre-install) folks the next day at work. They say everything is in order and all should be good and have I talked to Support yet?. So I call back one more time. I get tech #2 again and describe the issue and how I’m frustrated and just want some service. So he puts me on hold talks to his boss, calls provisioning for me, gets all the ducks in a row and pulls me back.

Seems provisioning typoed and scheduled me for the correct day and date, just one more month in the future. They even thought I should pay the regular rate for DSL for that month I didn’t have service as well! So after kicking and screaming and with some help from tech #2, I only started being charged for the months I actually had service.

I thought it was a fluke. I thought it was just that one in a thousand thing that falls through the cracks of a normally good company and support organization. I was wrong.

O.K. Fast forward to 2006. I’ve gotten on pretty good financial footing, have saved up some cash, and have bought a house. I liked my neighborhood so much, that I bought a house within a mile of my old apartment. Close to the closing for the house, I start moving utilities. I get my phone line moved easily— they even let me keep my number and its a land-line! So I call up Earthlink and give them the schpiel. I’m moving but I am keeping my same phone number. Do they need to do anything to move my service? After being put on hold for approximately 10 minutes our first responder says, “Yes!” and that here’s how it works. He’ll ask me questions, he’ll do some paperwork, he’ll downgrade me to dial-up for a few weeks and then within 3-4 weeks I’ll be back in black with DSL at the new location.

He Lied.

So its several weeks later. I’m taking a day off of work to get some things in order at the new house, making sure everything is ready for the big move day coming up and I get a call from work. They need some help and its urgent. So I unpack the DSL gear, try it out, and no-go. OK, I figured, I didn’t wait long enough, I’ll use the dial-up. Thank God that part worked. So then I got curious. I wondered when the DSL would be coming active. I called Earthlink and navigated through the menus and their automated system said my move was complete! My DSL was active and an automated voice wished me happy DSLing! So, I thought, I missed something. I reconnected everything and triple checked all the connections and still, no-go. OK— Maybe the automated line was wrong, Let’s call support. So I call support the first time. I get the living embodyment of why consumers hate outsourcing. I get someone with a thick Indian accent, who is obviously reading from a script, who wants to sell me more services and really has not even a desire to fix my issue. As it stands it looks like he did sign me up for a few “free trial” services that I’m going to have to find a way to cancel soon. After more than 15 minutes of his sales speech he gets to asking my problem, tells me he can’t do anything about it. Says he’ll transfer the call to those who can. Yep, we’re talking to the Pre-Install/Provisioning department again. So I get transferred, talk for just enough time to say my name, and then get hung up on.

OK folks, now I am pissed.

So I call back again. (Notice I am not complaining about hold times. I’ve worked in call centers as the tech, I know how aggravating phone hold can make a person, so I don’t let it bother me too much. This being said, there is a lot of hold time involved in all these conversations. Don’t be fooled, it’s just not what I have a problem with so far.) Since I don’t know the phone number of the provisioning folks I was just transferred, I try technical support again. I ask for the phone number I should call as well as being transferred. I get the phone number, I get transferred, I start talking to a person where I am supposed to be and I get hung up on again.

Now, I am furious. I call back to the provisioning folks and get a very polite person. He tries to put me at ease and starts looking into it. Turns out that my little friend who downgraded me to Dial Up never put the order in for me to get my DSL back. I’m about to kick Earthlink to the curb, but this guy is persistent. He says he can have me up in just a few days with an expedited provisioning and will push it through and give me primo treatment. Ok, blood pressure starts coming down and I feel less like Mr Furious of the Mystery Men. We start doing paperwork and then he tells me, that since this is a new connection I get an installation fee put on top of this, and I have to commit to a full year of Earthlink service! I start to go postal, and he gets defensive. Starts lecturing me on how this is how it is, regardless of what I like.

I admit, I completely lost control at this point. A rational human being should not have said what I did. But the substance of this was that he was NOT to reconnect me, not to touch a damn thing and leave me on Dial-up. I’ll find an ISP where they may not have customer service, but they can at least fix SOME of their own mistakes.

DEATH TO EARTHLINK! Note, my first experience was with “American” Earthlink support in Georgia. My second with some form of outsourcers in India. Thye BOTH sucked. Cause Earthlink as a company would not know consumer customer support if it was a gorilla eating their office plants!

Now just to prove that Earthlink is not how the whole industry is, lets look at the next chapter of me and DSL.

I fumed. I walked back to the ol apt to box some more things up. I fumed some more. I walked back to the house and took a look at other ISPs. I saw an opportunity. Verizon! They are my local phone company— they are twenty dollars a month cheaper than Earthlink. They offer 3MB downstream in my area! (Earthlink was giving me 768k). Wow, cheaper, faster, woohoo!

I call up Verizon, and I wait on hold and get connected to this very nice and helpful lady (and I mean lady, this woman was all class) who starts taking my info. At this point my cel phone’s battery dies. Cursing and yelling I plug the thing into its charger and start to call back, when I get an incoming call from a number I don’t recognize. Its my new friend at Verizon. She called me back! She took a few minutes and did some of the paperwork, but she called me back! And I was all ready to go!

Well, the jury is still out on Verizon as it is a few days until my line should go hot, but they definately got off on the right foot. I’m hopeful, and happy so far, but will curse Earthlink til my dying day. Someday customer service will become important in the industries again. I hope I am around to see it.

Just create something new damnit!

I’m getting very, very tired of some of these “Reimaginations.”

Michael J Fox has stated he wants to do Back to the Future IV, but only if he can play Doc Brown and that it would only work as a “Reimagination” of the older stories. BattleStar Galactica 2003, a decent show, very nice to look at, has stripped most of the most essential plotlines out of the original to make it more “realistic”. (Those who actually bothered to watch the original should note that many episodes were devoted to a war of good and evil involving more than just the Cylons and Colonials. But hey now we have a sexy Cylon woman.). The movie Starship Troopers, which according to DVD commentary is less about making a movie about a good book than finding a vehicle to talk about American Fascism. The DREADFUL ending to Return of the King, looking like something Tolkein would have thrown out before even telling his son.

The remake or refilming of a classic is a tried and true methodology of introducing new audiences to older works. And making a movie based upon a book or series of books can be a wonderful experience. And changes may need to be made to accomodate running length, or cultural references that are obviously dated to the time of creation.

But people, if you want to tell your own story, write your own damn story and call it something new! If you want to do an adaption of a book or an old movie or TV show, do it but stay true to it.

A perfect example of this going right is the recently released Disney film “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe”. Clearly all involved in the production had more than passing familiarity with the original work! There were slight deviations, some neccessary, some not, but in the final analysis the spirit, nee’ the substance of the work was the same. I walked out of the theatre feeling refreshed.

Another, the first Lord of The Rings film, Fellowship of the Ring. So true to all the Tolkien legends, it was breathtaking!

So it is possible, even profitable, to remain true to the spirit and essence of a story when making a new version of it! If you have a stance to take about American Fascism, or you hated the mysticism of the original BattleStar Galactica— maybe you didn’t like the Christian themes in a Wrinkle in Time… Write your own damn story then! Use that creative force that you are using to butcher a work that someone else created and others enjoyed and just create something fresh. Maybe we’ll like it on its own merits, not the fraud you portray of it being something it’s not.

 

 

Our Children Get The Education That We Deserve.

I remember hearing the phrase that we get the government that we deserve, since we vote on who goes into office– it makes a wonderful catchphrase.

Our children truely get the education that we deserve. We’ve become a culture so driven by emotion and trivia that it has even penetrated our educational system at all levels. We concentrate on the Evolution vs Creationism issue when we have school boards like Pittsburgh who tax the hell out of all the property owners and then publicly prove that they can’t get along any better than Jr. High School (pardon Middle School) kids, squandering funds to the point of losing many of the grants they were receiving. We’re so worried that a teacher from Kittanning might wear a cross to school again, that we end forgetting how bad our kids need teachers who really want to show up. We spend so much time on this trivia that we get stuck with a misguided attempt like “No Child Left Behind.” (Of course, even with all its problems, at least NCLB was at least an ATTEMPT to change and improve education for the average student.)

I’ll rant about this later, but the whole sense of entitlement that we are giving our children—- of course that goes all the way to college and the bull-ridden commencement speeches.

So let’s talk about the whole Evolution vs. Creationism in the classroom debate. We have two extreme sides here that both need some serious counseling. On the one hand, we have some serious Bible Banging “Christians” who believe that it is their right to have whatever they believe taught in the classroom in comparison with scientific theory. On the other, we have some great “thinkers” who state that Evolution is fact and shall be taught so without fetter.

Let’s get something straight, in plain English so that even someone like Howard Dean can get it. Both sides are completely wrong.

I had a Bio teacher in High School who taught Evolution as fact. “This is how it happened.” There was no “this is Theory.” This is the postion of Howard Dean and others. One blogger wrote: “Evolution is not a political debate. It is a scientific fact. They can debate it until the cows come home, but that won’t make it anything less than reality.” That may be their belief, but Evolution is NOT a scientific fact for the origin of life on this or any other planet! (This is not to say that Intelligent Design IS a scientific fact for the origin of life on this or any other planet.) It is a THEORY. Since noone alive, nor anyone that is an acceptable historian was present at the time, we speculate based upon observable fact what MAY have happened.

As such, teach Evolution in the schools and Intelligent Design in the Churches. But teach Evolution correctly. Teach it that it is a scientifically based guess, and might be right and might be wrong. Then end the debate and get back to why we have graduates who can’t do simple math nor read. Why disctricts that build million dollar football stadiums have no orchestra, or no publicly funded drama program. Why money does not seem to be the complete issue, when we spend so much on DC Public Schools and have such a completely empty educational result.

And on top of it, it is requisite upon each of us, most notably parents, to get involved and to provide better solutions. To be on School Boards, to attend meetings, to elect (and be elected as) other officials who will impact the educational structure of our communities and our nation. This is the only way we can truely make things not just For The People and Of The People, but By The People.

 

Sports and Municipalities

I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For all the sports fans out there, yes, this is the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I have a beef with the Steelers and several of the other sports teams housed here. But, I have an even greater contempt for my local officials, past and present in how they treat them.

Pittsburgh is a shrinking city. We’ve not had the census numbers grow in decades. Our local officials have not done that much to curb spending, to the point of running out of salt early in at least one of the winters in recent memory. But what do we concern ourselves with spending money on? Sports stadiums. Pittsburgh had not finished paying off Three Rivers Stadium before wanting to demolish it and replace it with TWO Stadiums. (Since the Pirates and the Steelers can’t be allowed to share anymore. They put it up to a vote, and the people of Pittsburgh voted NO! No new stadium from our Tax dollars. So what does the city and county do? They do it anyways!

Now our hockey team, one of the worst teams in the league at the moment. A team plagued by bankruptcy. A team led by a “community contributer”, who “cares about Pittsburgh” Mario Lemieux throws around his weight to get political backing and funds to build a new arena, or barring that, the slot machine license designated for the area of Pittsburgh! 

The arena they have right now works just fine! Its relatively modern and we’ve had some good concerts there.  Why I don’t attend more events there is that the markup is extraoridinarily high. I can catch a band later in a burb (Burgettstown) for half the price on not only the tickets but the T-Shirts. So, let’s spend more money on a team thats in and out of bankruptcy to keep them here, while we keep raising taxes on everyone to keep the city and county services running.

Our property taxes are some of the highest in the US. Our parking tax is 50%. (That is not a misprint, nor an exaggeration.) Our police and firefighters have had to cut back staffing levels. We have bridges that have to wait til they are in complete disrepair before they can receive maintenance. (31st Street and High Level). The city is in “Act 47″ (a municipal form of reorganization similar but not exactly like a bankruptcy), and we now need to spend more money so that the Hockey team doesn’t leave?! Let them leave, then! They are not contributing to the community if they are acting in detriment to its survival!

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. And there is a reason I am still an SF Giants Fan. The Giants asked for public money. The public said NO. So they went and found some other money and financed a new location. This should be the norm and not the exception in times like these when there truely is not enough money to go around.

http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/sf/ballpark/index.jsp (AT&T Park site.)