Iniquity Quote Kelli Dudley

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,

/s/Kelli Dudley

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.

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.

New blog post is available! Beware of scammers . . . despite news the foreclosure crisis is over, foreclosure rescue scammers are alive and well! http://www.kellidudley.com/2017/10/18/still-scamming/

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!