Sunday, September 16, 2018
How a Metropolital Planning Organization Ruined a Region: Open Letter to Northwest Indiana Regional Planning Commission
OPEN
LETTER
September 17, 2018
Mr. Ty Warner
Executive Director
Northwest Indiana Regional Planning
Commission
VIA
EMAIL
Dear Mr. Warner:
I was surprised to see an invitation to
participate in a survey by NIPRC. It arrived in my home mailbox in Gary.
Frankly, I did not think your organization
was interested in public input. I base this on long experience. First, you
declined an invitation to meet with Everybody Counts (ECCIL), the local Center
for Independent Living, when you first began your job at NIRPC. ECCIL extended
the invitation to you in public, and you rebuked them in front of several
witnesses. Secondly, your organization has never complied with Federal guidance
concerning public input. This was true even when you chose to thumb your nose
at the consent decree governing your behavior when it was in full effect in a
lawsuit in which people with disabilities sued NIRPC and transit providers for
failing to comply with the ADA. Your efforts to avoid meaningful public input
were so extreme as to risk a finding of contempt of court. You demonstrated
your lack of respect for this community and for the legal system. You have
refused to cooperate with ECCIL to solicit public input from people with
disabilities who rely upon public transit.
Taking you at face value, I logged into the
system. The letter you sent says you will ask about traffic congestion compared
to five years ago, whether public transportation is good and reliable, and
whether sidewalks and bike lanes serve my needs. Not a single question going to
these issues was included in the survey. I have merely been asked to track my
travel on a given day on a form. It seems the sole use of such information
would be to justify further highway funds to continue depriving transit systems
and to continue your decades-long assault on our urban centers. Despite the $276,130.00
paid to the survey “consultant,” the PDF form is not fillable.
Let me tell you a little about my travel. I
live in Gary. I allow at least three hours to travel to court dates in downtown
Chicago because I cannot risk being late. The roads are so frequently congested
and at a complete stop that I am often grateful for having allowed myself the
extra time, arriving just barely in time for court. Because you have long
chosen to hire on a patronage basis, staffing your office with sub-literates
who are technocratically educated (if at all), none of the region’s roads have
resilience. Resilience is a planning term meaning that there is an alternate
traffic corridor when one is impassible. Recently, I have seen people re-routed
from U.S. 51 to a small rural road east of Portage. That should be a cause for
deep shame.
Similarly, U.S. 65 has been impassible for a
long time. Now, U.S. 51—a nearby north-south corridor—is impassible. In
addition, U.S. 12/20 is reduced to one lane or less through Gary—making it
difficult for people to avoid the U.S. 65 on ramp and travel across Gary to the
Broadway or Grant Street ramps or to various tollway ramps (should they choose
to pay to sit at a complete standstill for hours at a time on the tollway).
Anyone with a basic knowledge of planning would have worked around this.
However, you—and your contractors—prefer the cash-grab style of purporting to
do government-funded work on all the roads at one time.
My husband travels to work in Merrillville.
Your agency has long made ideological choices to favor south Lake County,
Porter County, LaPorte County--rural communities and sprawl--rather than
allocating any money to north Lake County. (In fact, as you know, Gary Public
Transportation does an excellent job but is not funded by NIRPC and picks up
much of the slack for your incompetence by serving communities well beyond
Gary’s border—Merrillville and Hammond, for example. In contrast, NICTD is an
exercise in futility, but I understand that it is not funded by NIRPC.)
My husband has been unable to access I-65
South for many months. I do not know what you have convinced yourself you are
doing, but we well remember the time Clay Street was closed for over a year and
no work whatsoever was done during that time. Regardless of what governmental
funding sources were told, it reopened in the same shape it was in when it
closed.
Once my husband arrives in Merrillville, he
faces on overly-congested U.S. 30 corridor. Your poor ideological choices
resulted in emphasizing this area, but your execution is so sub-par that it is
still not passable. Of course, now you have dumped billions of dollars into
developing this area. It is safe to assume you have no plan for what to do now
that young people are eschewing the tasteless and materialistic lifestyle
associated with sprawl, chain restaurants, and malls. A rational choice would
have been to develop healthy urban areas with vibrant transit options, but you
not only left that barn door open—you burned the barn, starving the urban areas
and using NIRPC to actively generate blight.
NIRPC’s incompetence and commitment to
far-right ideology has destroyed Northwest Indiana. It is unlikely the
communities affected by your agency will become livable communities. Pay your
consultants. Read your surveys. Collect your paychecks. And, let us not forget:
use your very liberal tab at local restaurants. Where do y’all go now that
Country Lounge is gone?
Sincerely,
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Have I Been Hacked?
Edward Clinton recently wrote about a lawyer accused, in disciplinary proceedings, of accessing an opponent's email account. The post is here: https://www.chicagolegalmalpracticelawyerblog.com/2017/09/06/ardc-charges-lawyer-with-wrongfully-accessing-opponents-email-account/.
Unfortunately, a couple of colleagues and I concluded someone may be accessing our accounts or computers. It is a disconcerting prospect, on the other hand, I tend to run my cases in a pretty transparent manner. If my opposing counsel eavesdropped, they would probably suffer from boredom. As an ethical position, I avoid cases where clients are coached, "If the light was yellow, the result will be x; if it was red, y. Now, was it yellow or red?!" My office is tediously dull, devoid of smoking guns. Nonetheless, as a lawyer, I have a right to keep my smoking guns (and those of my clients) to myself if an exciting case come along.
I reached out to a computer type I know, and got back a suggestion I call a forensic specialist. This sounds like a tall and expensive order, though bringing back Jack Klugman on my client's dime would be fun.
As an initial matter, suggesting everyone change their passwords seemed like a good idea. It costs nothing, and could cut the problem right off. It slowly dawned on me that "everyone" could include me. While the thought of having my email account viewed was disconcerting, the thought of an opponent wading through my voluminous and varied account also seemed like an interesting way to do justice. Nonetheless, I decided to follow the dictates of common sense. I changed my password. Browsing through the options, I realized the tendency of computer programs to collect a bit more information than we might like could be useful. Sure enough, both my email providers had "recent activity" feeds that allowed me to view the devices accessing my accounts. Though providers vary, the general steps are:
1. Access the account (usually under the account icon in the upper right-hand corner)
2. Go to safety and security
3. Review the activity
4. Change passwords and think about 2-step verification while there.
This is simple advice and does not replace the forensic examination we will need, but it is a good initial first step in suspected hacking situations.
Unfortunately, a couple of colleagues and I concluded someone may be accessing our accounts or computers. It is a disconcerting prospect, on the other hand, I tend to run my cases in a pretty transparent manner. If my opposing counsel eavesdropped, they would probably suffer from boredom. As an ethical position, I avoid cases where clients are coached, "If the light was yellow, the result will be x; if it was red, y. Now, was it yellow or red?!" My office is tediously dull, devoid of smoking guns. Nonetheless, as a lawyer, I have a right to keep my smoking guns (and those of my clients) to myself if an exciting case come along.
I reached out to a computer type I know, and got back a suggestion I call a forensic specialist. This sounds like a tall and expensive order, though bringing back Jack Klugman on my client's dime would be fun.
As an initial matter, suggesting everyone change their passwords seemed like a good idea. It costs nothing, and could cut the problem right off. It slowly dawned on me that "everyone" could include me. While the thought of having my email account viewed was disconcerting, the thought of an opponent wading through my voluminous and varied account also seemed like an interesting way to do justice. Nonetheless, I decided to follow the dictates of common sense. I changed my password. Browsing through the options, I realized the tendency of computer programs to collect a bit more information than we might like could be useful. Sure enough, both my email providers had "recent activity" feeds that allowed me to view the devices accessing my accounts. Though providers vary, the general steps are:
1. Access the account (usually under the account icon in the upper right-hand corner)
2. Go to safety and security
3. Review the activity
4. Change passwords and think about 2-step verification while there.
This is simple advice and does not replace the forensic examination we will need, but it is a good initial first step in suspected hacking situations.
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Sometimes a White Sheet is Just Laundry: A reflection on the possibility racism may loosen its grip
Being committed to civil rights, and living in a hyper-segregated area, I am used to seeing the ravages of racism. A drive a few blocks from my home leads to a dividing line where a new town was established, requiring a change in state law to deprive a particular city of its right not to have new municipalities created within a three-mile buffer zone of its boundaries. A few more blocks takes me to a new dividing line, where suburban white flighters demarcate the area of their specially-created town that is no longer lily-white enough for them. A few blocks more, and I see the area they would classify as "changing."
These lines are not subject to imagination--the economic ravages of white flight bear out in census data and economic reports. In contrast, other images are subjective. On a recent drive through the (all-too-purposefully) "white" area of my city, I saw white robed figures and burning objects. Convinced I had just seen a KKK rally out of the corner of my eye, I persuaded my companion to take another pass around the block. He protested, himself having seen a wedding. Our second pass proved he was correct: it was a beach-front, summer wedding, replete with white attire and tiki torches (months before the latter took on a sinister meaning). Willing to laugh at myself, I realized my perceptions sometimes do not bear out.
In the middle between subjective and objective are the social attitudes that shift with time, even if the shift toward equality (much less equity) is a bit too glacial for my taste. Near my home is a pizza place bearing the name of the staunchly "white" neighborhood in which it sits. I do not particularly care for the place--its name and the fact new branches are located in white-flight areas leave me uneasy. To make matters worse, it is one of several establishments that has long refused delivery in my predominantly African-American city. An owner of another pizza place, located in the same intentionally-isolated pocket of the city, bragged about her refusal of delivery service to my neighborhood--on the grounds that "they" would pull a gun and shoot her delivery drivers. I have previously written about my inability to get simple amenities like pizza delivery: my inability to get pizza delivery and other services at http://www.kellidudley.com/2017/06/30/the-woman-in-the-shoe-and-i-would-like-one-large-veggie-pizza/.
Soon after my post about lack of delivery services, I began noticing delivery cars in my area. I was tempted to believe someone had read my blog. I was also skeptical that a hate-based practice dating back twenty years would simply give way overnight. However, the delivery cars (with magnetized signs bearing the name of the pizza joint) continued to show up around my area.
Leary of the never-too-worn-to-pull-out-again comments from racists and dreading another hate-filled exchange, I continued to eschew the pizza as well as the new service. I anticipated reluctant and limited service to my area, an unwarranted up-charge, or other unfair treatment that has threatened to infect my view of normalcy for over twenty years of living in my city and its surrounds.
Circumstances collided: a hungry friend delivering and setting up my dryer, the need to supervise a high-spirited dog, and limited time led me to try the delivery. There was no up-charge identifiable as associated with my neighborhood's demographics, and hot food came--with a smile--within an hour.
Perhaps change--real, gooey, delicious change--is nigh.
May the woman in the shoe fare as well.
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Sunday, October 8, 2017
Happy Friday! Time to accessorize . . . for the weekend and for Halloween!
It's Friday! Hopefully, no one had to unleash the monkeys this week!
It's time to accessorize for the weekend and maybe pick out a broom to take you through Halloween. Here's a great card for the witches and bitches in your life!
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Smug Smiles and Full Diapers--What the conviction of an Indiana sheriff can remind us about civics
Lake County Sheriff John Buncich was recently convicted of fraud.
While hearing of the conviction did not surprise me, it reminded me of questions I have held through the years. First, the Lake County, Indiana Sheriff's office is a somewhat flawed place. I remember hearing from a friend of mine who got stranded near Gary. Although an officer was nice enough to give him a ride, he had to endure "warnings" about, and racial epithets related to, African-Americans throughout the ride. This was during one of Buncich's reigns.
During another of his reigns, there was an alleged murder in my neighborhood. For some reason, it brought out the Lake County Sheriff as well as the local police. The Sheriff's officers were truly foul people--they ran door-to-door with the energy of excited puppies, speculating the death was a drug crime. Their reactions would have been endearing in a Barney Fife way if not so hateful. They made the episode of The Andy Griffith Show where Andy deputizes Goober look like a stellar police training film. In fact, as I told them was likely, it was a crime of passion. The family affected was in no way involved with drugs. It turned out one spouse had walked in on the other "cheating" and had reacted . . . explosively. Of course, neither the Lake County goons nor the local "press" ever corrected the "drug" story with the public, so the surviving child got to grow up with the stigma attached by shoddy police work coupled with racism.
The real question, though, isn't whether there are flaws. It is why people keep voting for these flawed representatives. In Northwest Indiana, many people brag on this kind of voting with smug looks on their faces, clearly thinking their ignorance is "cute." It is not so cute for a black family whose reputation is smeared or crime victims who don't get justice because we put reprehensible in people in office time and time again.
Although the Supreme Court has deemed much of the Voting Rights Act irrelevant, we really need a new, expanded one. The Voting Rights Act is largely limited to "covered jurisdictions" based on a problematic history, and it forbids practices like gerrymandering and imposing a poll tax or literacy tests. While these protections are important, there is the question of how people are disenfranchised through lack of basic, civic knowledge.
When I ran for a political office in the 1990s, I encountered a lot of weird behavior. There was the smug insistence on voting for a known wife-beater (person, not t-shirt) because, "I knew him since he was in diapers." However, more troubling were people who were disenfranchised for low amounts of money.
When a woman told me should could not vote for me because she would lose her place as an election judge, I assumed this was a mighty position. After all, one would have to be paid a lot to be disenfranchised in exchange for the job. However, the job paid $50.00 for a grueling day of work. Some years might bring two opportunities ($100.00), but some brought none. Others gave up space in their yards for election signs--to the tune of $5.00 per election. Even people holding onto coveted municipal jobs were making a whopping $18,000 year--a salary easily matched (or beat) with honest work in a private-sector job with soul intact.
In the end, questioning of people brought one common theme: they honestly believed they could be observed in the voting booth. Maybe they were--many had stories of lost jobs and other repercussions following a vote. It seems more likely that a stray word about how one voted got back to the wrong person.
Northwest Indiana voters put up with a lot, seeing a lot and saying nothing. Someone knew--some spouse or employee or contractor--about the Buncich scandal before it erupted. But people said nothing. For years. Through multiple Buncich reigns.
Before that, a powerful county politician was controlled by one disgusting, corrupt family. Word was (as was told to me), the drunken patriarch had dangled the politician, a lawyer, from a high window by his feet to drive home the point that he would do the family's bidding. He obeyed (maybe liking not having his skull crashing down onto pavement) for years before he was caught. His misdeeds were public secrets, eliciting that sleazy, aren't-I-cute smile from any number of voters--until he was caught. He crashed so hard and fast that I was the only person civil enough to give him a few minutes at a fundraiser after the "public secret" became public. He ended up doing time in jail, and losing his Illinois and Indiana law licenses.
To this day, Indiana's lack of public transit is one of this best indicators of corruption. Money enters the area, but it does not go into buses and trains. Suspecting we knew where the money went, a friend and I dined at a watering-hole known to be popular with certain political appointees who control transit money for Northwest Indiana. Although the now-shuttered restaurant was truly vile, we poked down a bit of what they called food. We asked for our bill to be applied to the transit conglomerate's tab . . . and the waitress smilingly complied. Perhaps it was the fried gristle, but we didn't have the stomach to carry out fraud. We quickly called the waitress back and settled our bills with cash.
Indiana needs an enhanced Voter Rights Act of its own. Basic civic education is sorely lacking--voters at least deserve to know they are not watched/recording in their polling places. Perhaps the education should be tied to eligibility for a driver's license, since poor political choices have resulted in transit monies being pocketed and few public transit options--making driving a necessity for survival.
At any rate, it is time to wipe the smug smiles away and stop selling votes. And surely we can find a better basis for electing officials than our memories of their full diapers.
While hearing of the conviction did not surprise me, it reminded me of questions I have held through the years. First, the Lake County, Indiana Sheriff's office is a somewhat flawed place. I remember hearing from a friend of mine who got stranded near Gary. Although an officer was nice enough to give him a ride, he had to endure "warnings" about, and racial epithets related to, African-Americans throughout the ride. This was during one of Buncich's reigns.
During another of his reigns, there was an alleged murder in my neighborhood. For some reason, it brought out the Lake County Sheriff as well as the local police. The Sheriff's officers were truly foul people--they ran door-to-door with the energy of excited puppies, speculating the death was a drug crime. Their reactions would have been endearing in a Barney Fife way if not so hateful. They made the episode of The Andy Griffith Show where Andy deputizes Goober look like a stellar police training film. In fact, as I told them was likely, it was a crime of passion. The family affected was in no way involved with drugs. It turned out one spouse had walked in on the other "cheating" and had reacted . . . explosively. Of course, neither the Lake County goons nor the local "press" ever corrected the "drug" story with the public, so the surviving child got to grow up with the stigma attached by shoddy police work coupled with racism.
The real question, though, isn't whether there are flaws. It is why people keep voting for these flawed representatives. In Northwest Indiana, many people brag on this kind of voting with smug looks on their faces, clearly thinking their ignorance is "cute." It is not so cute for a black family whose reputation is smeared or crime victims who don't get justice because we put reprehensible in people in office time and time again.
Although the Supreme Court has deemed much of the Voting Rights Act irrelevant, we really need a new, expanded one. The Voting Rights Act is largely limited to "covered jurisdictions" based on a problematic history, and it forbids practices like gerrymandering and imposing a poll tax or literacy tests. While these protections are important, there is the question of how people are disenfranchised through lack of basic, civic knowledge.
When I ran for a political office in the 1990s, I encountered a lot of weird behavior. There was the smug insistence on voting for a known wife-beater (person, not t-shirt) because, "I knew him since he was in diapers." However, more troubling were people who were disenfranchised for low amounts of money.
When a woman told me should could not vote for me because she would lose her place as an election judge, I assumed this was a mighty position. After all, one would have to be paid a lot to be disenfranchised in exchange for the job. However, the job paid $50.00 for a grueling day of work. Some years might bring two opportunities ($100.00), but some brought none. Others gave up space in their yards for election signs--to the tune of $5.00 per election. Even people holding onto coveted municipal jobs were making a whopping $18,000 year--a salary easily matched (or beat) with honest work in a private-sector job with soul intact.
In the end, questioning of people brought one common theme: they honestly believed they could be observed in the voting booth. Maybe they were--many had stories of lost jobs and other repercussions following a vote. It seems more likely that a stray word about how one voted got back to the wrong person.
Northwest Indiana voters put up with a lot, seeing a lot and saying nothing. Someone knew--some spouse or employee or contractor--about the Buncich scandal before it erupted. But people said nothing. For years. Through multiple Buncich reigns.
Before that, a powerful county politician was controlled by one disgusting, corrupt family. Word was (as was told to me), the drunken patriarch had dangled the politician, a lawyer, from a high window by his feet to drive home the point that he would do the family's bidding. He obeyed (maybe liking not having his skull crashing down onto pavement) for years before he was caught. His misdeeds were public secrets, eliciting that sleazy, aren't-I-cute smile from any number of voters--until he was caught. He crashed so hard and fast that I was the only person civil enough to give him a few minutes at a fundraiser after the "public secret" became public. He ended up doing time in jail, and losing his Illinois and Indiana law licenses.
To this day, Indiana's lack of public transit is one of this best indicators of corruption. Money enters the area, but it does not go into buses and trains. Suspecting we knew where the money went, a friend and I dined at a watering-hole known to be popular with certain political appointees who control transit money for Northwest Indiana. Although the now-shuttered restaurant was truly vile, we poked down a bit of what they called food. We asked for our bill to be applied to the transit conglomerate's tab . . . and the waitress smilingly complied. Perhaps it was the fried gristle, but we didn't have the stomach to carry out fraud. We quickly called the waitress back and settled our bills with cash.
Indiana needs an enhanced Voter Rights Act of its own. Basic civic education is sorely lacking--voters at least deserve to know they are not watched/recording in their polling places. Perhaps the education should be tied to eligibility for a driver's license, since poor political choices have resulted in transit monies being pocketed and few public transit options--making driving a necessity for survival.
At any rate, it is time to wipe the smug smiles away and stop selling votes. And surely we can find a better basis for electing officials than our memories of their full diapers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)