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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 25, 2016 at 1:53 am
City agencies need to see landlords for what they truly are–as, at best, potential predators, if not actual ones. And to act on that knowledge.
As Niccolo Machiavelli warned:
“All those who have written upon civil institutions demonstrate…that whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.
“If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some unknown reason; and we must assume that it lacked occasion to show itself. But time, which has been said to be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
The power of slumlords calls to mind the scene in 1987’s The Untouchables, where Sean Connery’s veteran cop tells Eliot Ness: “Everybody knows where the liquor is. It’s just a question of: Who wants to cross Capone?”
Many tenants have lived with rotting floors, bedbugs, nonworking toilets, mice/rats, chipping lead-based paint and other outrages for not simply months but years.
This holds true across the United States. But it also holds true in San Francisco–the “renters’ paradise” where the District Attorney’s Office hasn’t prosecuted a slumlord in decades.
Part Two of this series presented a series of badly-needed, long-overdue reforms for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI). This is the agency charged to ensuring safe housing conditions for San Francisco residents.
This concluding part will cover the remainder of those needed reforms.
- Landlords should be required to bring all the units in a building up to existing building codes, and not just those in need of immediate repair.
- Landlords should be legally required to hire a certified-expert contractor to perform building repairs. To save money–that they can well afford to spend–many landlords insist on making such repairs despite their not being trained or experienced in doing so. They thereby risk the health and/or safety of their tenants.
- DBI should not view itself as a “mediation” agency between landlords and tenants. Most landlords hate DBI and will always do so. They believe they should be allowed to treat their tenants like serfs, if not slaves, raise extortionate rents anytime they desire, and maintain their buildings in whatever state they wish. And no efforts by DBI to persuade them of its good intentions will ever change their minds.
- Above all, DBI must stop viewing itself as a regulatory agency and start seeing itself as a law enforcement one. The FBI doesn’t ask criminals to comply with the law. It applies whatever amount of pressure is needed to force their compliance. William Tecumseh Sherman, speaking of the rebellious Southern states, said it best: “They cannot be made to love us, but they may be made to fear us.”
- The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office should create a special unit to investigate and prosecute slumlords. Prosecutors should offer rewards to citizens who provide tips on major outrages by the city’s slumlords.
- Install Rent Control protections for tenants on fixed incomes. San Francisco is notorious for having the highest rents in the nation. A one-bedroom apartment runs $3,448 a month. Even those in the vaunted high-tech industry spend most of their income on rent.
- For tenants on fixed incomes–seniors, disabled, students–the predatory greed of landlords amounts to a staged-in eviction notice. Social Security recipients did not get a cost-of-living increase in 2016 because there had not been a rise in the price of gasoline. But the fact that many of them do not own cars doesn’t mean that the price of everything else–such as groceries–hasn’t sharply risen.
- Allowing landlords to jack up rents to the fullest extent possible every year will eventually drive out all tenants who are not multimillionaires. In fact, an unknown portion of this City’s homeless population doubtless stems from the ability of landlords to gradually raise rents above tenants’ ability to afford them.
- In 1979, San Franciscans passed a Rent Control law to protect tenants against predatory rent hikes and unfair evictions. As a result, a landlord can only raise a tenant’s rent a certain percentage every year. This is set by the set by the Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board, more popularly known as the “Rent Board.”
- But there is a gaping hole in the law: Once a tenant moves out, the landlord can jack up the rent as high as he wants. This is why the average rent in San Francisco is priced beyond most middle-class wage-earners.
- In addition, landlords are allowed to charge tenants yearly fees to maintain the existence of the Rent Board. This is both unfair and insulting, since the Board was created to protect tenants from predatory landlords. Most tenants have far less money to pay such fees than do landlords, who are free to raise rents every year. And landlords–unlike tenants–can and do write off Rent Board fees on their taxes every year. Thus, landlords–not tenants–should be paying the fees.
As Robert F. Kennedy wrote: “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 24, 2016 at 12:28 am
The San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI) has long been outmaneuvered by predatory, law-breaking landlords.
And San Francisco renters–many of them elderly, poor and/or disabled–have been the victims of landlord greed, neglect and/or harassment.
Among the reforms that DBI should immediately enact:
- Hit slumlord violators with a fine–payable immediately–for at least $2,000 to $5,000 for each health/safety-code violation.The slumlord would be told he could reclaim 75-80% of the money only if he fully corrected the violation within 30 days. The remaining portion of the levied fine would go into the City coffers, to be shared among DBI and other City agencies.
- This would put the onus on the slumlord, not DBI. Appealing to his greed would ensure his willingness to comply with the ordered actions. As matters now stand, it is DBI who must repeatedly check with the slumlord to find out if its orders have been complied with.
- If the landlord failed to comply with the actions ordered within 30 days, the entire fine would go into the City’s coffers–to be divided among DBI and other agencies charged with protecting San Francisco residents.
- In addition. he would be hit again with a fine at least twice the amount of the first one.
- Inspectors for DBI should be allowed to cite landlords for violations that fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Public Health (DPH). They could then pass the information to DPH for its own investigation.
- If the DBI inspector later discovered that the landlord had not corrected the DPH violation within a designated time-period, DBI should be allowed to levy its own fine for his failure to do so.
- If DPH objects to this, DBI should propose that DPH’s own inspectors be armed with similar cross-jurisdictional authority. Each agency would thus have increased motivation for spotting and correcting health/safety violations that threaten the lives of San Francisco residents.
- This would instantly turn DBI and DPH into allies, not competitors. And it would mean that whether a citizen called DBI or DPH, s/he could be assured of getting the necessary assistance. As matters now stand, many residents are confused by the conflicting jurisdictions of both agencies.
- DBI should insist that its Inspectors Division be greatly expanded. DBI can attain this by arguing that reducing the number of Inspectors cuts (1) protection for San Francisco renters–and (2) monies that could go to the general City welfare.
- The Inspection Division should operate independently of DBI. Currently, too many high-ranking DBI officials tilt toward landlords because they are landlords themselves.
- DBI should create a Special Research Unit to compile records on the worst slumlord offenders. Thus, a slumlord with a repeat history of defying DBI Notices of Violation could be treated more harshly than a landlord who was a first-time offender.
- Turning DBI into a revenue-producing agency would enable the City to raise desperately-needed revenues–in a highly popular way. Fining delinquent slumlords would be as unpopular as raising taxes on tobacco companies. Only slumlords and their hired lackey allies would object.
- DBI should legally require landlords to rehabilitate a unit every time a new tenant moves in, or have it examined by a DBI inspector every two years. A tenant can occupy a unit for ten or more years, then die or move out, and the landlord immediately rents the unit to the first person who comes along, without making any repairs or upgrades whatsoever.
- Slumlords, unlike drug-dealers, can’t move their buildings from one street or city to another. If they want to make money in San Francisco, they will have to submit to the jurisdiction of landlord-regulating agencies.
- DBI should require landlords to post their Notices of Violation in public areas of their buildings–on pain of serious financial penalties for failing to do so. When DBI orders a slumlord to take corrective action, s/he is the only one who is notified. If that slumlord refuses to comply with that directive, s/he is the only one who knows it. Given the pressing demands on DBI, weeks or months will pass before the agency learns about this violation of its orders. Tenants have a right to know if their landlord is complying with the law–so they can promptly notify inform DBI if a violation is occurring.
- Landlords should be legally required to give each tenant a list of the major city agencies (such as DBI, the Rent Board and the Department of Public Health) that exist to help tenants solve problems with their housing.
- DBI should launch–and maintain–a citywide advertising campaign to alert residents about its services. Everyone knows the FBI pursues bank robbers. But too many San Franciscans don’t even know that DBI exists, let alone what laws it enforces. This should be an in-your-face campaign: “Do you have bedbugs in your apartment? Has your stove stopped working? Are you afraid to ride in your building elevator because it’s always malfunctioning? Have you complained to your landlord and gotten the runaround? Then call DBI at—- Or drop us an email at_____.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 23, 2016 at 12:04 am
To hear slumlords tell it, San Francisco is a “renters’ paradise,” where obnoxious, lazy, rent-evading tenants constantly take advantage of hard-working, put-upon landlords.
Don’t believe it.
And in case you’re inclined to anyway, consider the story of Kip and Nicole Macy, two San Francisco slumlords who recently pled guilty to felony charges of residential burglary, stalking and attempted grand theft.
Nicole and Kip Macy
Determined to evict rent control-protected tenants from their apartment building in the South of Market district, they unleashed a reign of terror in 2006:
- Cut holes in the floor of one tenant’s living room with a power saw–while he was inside his unit.
- Cut out sections of the floor joists to make the building collapse.
- Threatened to shoot Ricardo Cartagena, their property manager, after he refused to make the cuts himself.
- Changed the locks to Cartagena’s apartment, removed all of his belongings and destroyed them.
- Created fictitious email accounts to appear as a tenant who had filed a civil suit against the Macys–and used these to fire the tenant’s attorney.
- Cut the tenants’ telephone lines and shut off their electricity, gas and water.
- Changed the locks on all the apartments without warning.
- Mailed death threats.
- Kicked one of their tenants in the ribs.
- Hired workers to board up a tenant’s windows from the outside while he still lived there.
- Falsely reported trespassers in a tenant’s apartment, leading police to hold him and a friend at gunpoint.
- Broke into the units of three tenants and removed all their belongings.
- Again broke into the units of the same three victims and soaked their beds, clothes and electronics with amonia.
The Macys were arrested in April, 2008, posted a combined total of $500,000 bail and then fled the country after being indicted in early 2009.
In May, 2012, Italian police arrested and deported them back to America a year later.
Having pled guilty, they were sentenced in September, 2013, to a prison term of four years and four months.
How could such a campaign of terror go on for two years against law-abiding San Francisco tenants?
Simple.
Even in the city misnamed as a “renter’s paradise,” slumlords are treated like gods by the very agencies that are supposed to protect tenants against their abuses.
The power of slumlords calls to mind the scene in 1987’s The Untouchables, where Sean Connery’s veteran cop tells Eliot Ness: “Everybody knows where the liquor is. It’s just a question of: Who wants to cross Capone?”
Everybody in San Francisco knows who the slumlords are. But the District Attorney’s Office hasn’t criminally prosecuted a slumlord in decades.
Many tenants have lived with rotting floors, bedbugs, nonworking toilets, mice/rats, chipping lead-based paint and other outrages for not simply months but years.
Consider the situation at the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI), which is charged with ensuring that apartment buildings are in habitable condition.
Under San Francisco law:
- A landlord is automatically given 30 days to correct a health/safety violation. If he drags his feet on the matter, the tenant must live with that problem until it’s resolved.
- If the landlord claims for any reason that he can’t fix the problem within one month, DBI doesn’t demand that he prove this. Instead, it automatically gives him another month.
- A slumlord has to work at being hit with a fine—by letting a problem go uncorrected for three to six months.
- And even then, repeat slumlord offenders often avoid the fine by pleading for leniency.
- That’s because many DBI officials are themselves landlords.
But the situation doesn’t have to remain this way.
How could it be changed?
By learning some valuable lessons from the “war on drugs” and applying them to regulating slumlords.
Consider:
- At least 400,000 rape kits containing critical DNA evidence that could convict rapists sit untested in labs around the country.
- But illegal drug kits are automatically rushed to the had of the line.
It isn’t simply because local/state/Federal lawmen universally believe that illicit drugs pose a deadly threat to the Nation’s security.
It’s because:
- Federal asset forfeiture laws allow the Justice Department to seize properties used to “facilitate” violations of Federal anti-drug laws.
- Local and State law enforcement agencies are allowed to keep some of the proceeds once the property has been sold.
- Thus, financially-strapped police agencies have found that pursuing drug-law crimes is a great way to fill their own coffers.
- Prosecutors and lawmen view the seizing of drug-related properties as crucial to eliminating the financial clout of drug-dealing operations.
It’s long past time for San Francisco agencies to apply the same attitude–and methods–toward slumlords. 
DBI should become not merely a law enforcing agency but a revenue-creating one. And those revenues should come from predatory slumlords who routinely violate the City’s laws protecting tenants.
By doing so, DBI could vastly:
- Enhance its own prestige and authority;
- Improve living conditions for thousands of San Francisco renters; and
- Bring millions of desperately-needed dollars into the City’s cash-strapped coffers.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 18, 2016 at 12:05 am
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks appear every Friday on the PBS Newshour to review the week’s major political events.
On March 25, Shields–a liberal, and Brooks, a conservative–came to some disturbingly similar conclusions about Donald Trump.
Eerily, their conclusions echoed those reached by former Panzer General Heinz Guderian about German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Guderian created the concept of motorized blitzkrieg warfare, whereby masses of tanks and planes moved in coordination to strike at the vital nerve centers of an enemy.
Heinz Guderian
Guderian thus enabled Hitler to conquer France in only six weeks in 1940, and to come to the brink of crushing the Soviet Union in 1941. He recounted his career as the foremost tank commander of the Third Reich in his 1950 autobiography, Panzer Leader.
On the PBS Newshour, moderator Judy Woodruff noted that “polls show Trump’s standing with women voters had worsened in recent months.”
Judy Woodruff
David Brooks said that Trump had displayed “a consistent misogynistic view of women as arm candy, as pieces of meat. It’s a consistent attitude toward women which is the stuff of a diseased adolescent.”
MARK SHIELDS: “She just asked him tough questions and was totally fair, by everybody else’s standards.”
Donald Trump
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Once in power, Hitler quickly–and violently–eliminated his opposition. He make no attempt to disguise this aspect of his character, because the opposition was weak and divided and soon collapsed after the first violent attack. This allowed Hitler to pass laws which destroyed the safeguards enacted by the Weimar Republic against the the dangers of dictatorship.
MARK SHIELDS: “And I don’t know at what point it becomes…politically, he’s still leading. And I would have to say he’s the overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Hitler promised to “make Germany great again” both domestically and internationally. And this won him many followers. In time he controlled the largest party in the land and this allowed him, by democratic procedure, to assume power.
DAVID BROOKS: “The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love, so his relationship with women, it has no love in it. It’s trophy.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: [Hitler] was isolated as a human being. He had no real friend. There was nobody who was really close to him.
Adolf Hitler
There was nobody he could talk to freely and openly. And just as he never found a true friend, he was denied the ability to deeply love a woman.
DAVID BROOKS: “And [Trump’s] relationship toward the world is one of competition and beating, and as if he’s going to win by competition what other people get by love.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Everything on this earth that casts a glow of warmth over our life as mortals–friendship with fine men, the pure love for a wife, affection for one’s own children–all this was and forever remained unknown to him.
DAVID BROOKS: “And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality, but it comes out in his attitude towards women.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: He lived alone, cherishing his loneliness, with only his gigantic plans for company. His relationship with Eva Braun may seem to contradict what I have written. But it is obvious that she could not have had any influence over him. And this is unfortunate, for it could only have been a softening one.”
* * * * *
In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the German people for the rise of the Nazi dictator:
“[They] allowed themselves to be seduced by him and came to enjoy the experience….[They] followed him with joy and enthusiasm because he gave them license to pillage and murder to their hearts’ content. They were his servile accomplices, his willing victims.”
There is a very real danger that millions of ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans will catapult Donald Trump–a man with an “odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity”–into the Presidency.
And that this man–“who received no love, can give no love”–will assume all the awesome power that goes with that office.
If that happens, future historians–if there are any–may similarly condemn those Americans who stood by like “good Germans” and allowed their country to fall into the hands of a ruthless tyrant.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 17, 2016 at 1:00 am
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks appear every Friday on the PBS Newshour to review the week’s major political events.
On March 25, Shields–a liberal, and Brooks, a conservative–came to some disturbingly similar conclusions about the character of Republican Presidential front-runner Donald Trump.
As the business magnate moved ever closer to winning the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination, both columnists appeared increasingly dismayed.
David Brooks and Mark Shields
Eerily, their conclusions about Trump’s character echoed those reached by former Panzer General Heinz Guderian about German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Guderian created the concept of motorized blitzkrieg warfare, whereby masses of tanks and planes moved in coordination to strike at the vital nerve centers of an enemy.
As a result, Guderian enabled Hitler to conquer France in only six weeks in 1940, and to come to the brink of crushing the Soviet Union in 1941. He recounted his career as the foremost tank commander of the Third Reich in his 1950 autobiography, Panzer Leader.
Heinz Guderian
Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-139-1112-17 / Knobloch, Ludwig / CC-BY-SA 3.0 [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)%5D
Moderator Judy Woodruff opened the discussion by alluding to the blood feud then raging between Trump and his fellow Republican, Texas U.S. Senator Eduardo “Ted” Cruz.
Both were seeking their party’s Presidential nomination–and both were ruthlessly determined to attain it.
Cruz accused Trump of being behind a recent National Enquirer story charging him with having a series of extramarital affairs.
An anti-Trump Super PAC posted on Facebook a photo of a scantily-clad Melania Trump–his wife. The photo had been taken 16 years ago when, as a model, she posed for British GQ. Its publication came just ahead of the primary caucuses in sexually conservative Utah, which Cruz won.
Trump quickly responded on Twitter, accusing the Cruz campaign of leaking the photo, warning Cruz: “Be careful or I will spill the beans on your wife.”
Cruz struck back, defending his wife, Heidi, and calling Trump a coward. The next day, Trump retweeted an unflattering image of Mrs. Cruz.
This “war of the wives” had cost Trump dearly in his standing with American women. In March, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 64% of women felt highly unfavorably disposed toward him.
DAVID BROOKS: “The Trump comparison of the looks of the wives, he does have, over the course of his life, a consistent misogynistic view of women as arm candy, as pieces of meat.
Donald Trump
“It’s a consistent attitude toward women which is the stuff of a diseased adolescent. And so we have seen a bit of that show up again.
“But if you go back over his past, calling into radio shows bragging about his affairs, talking about his sex life in public, he is childish in his immaturity. And his–even his misogyny is a childish misogyny….
“He’s of a different order than your normal candidate. And this whole week is just another reminder of that.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: As Hitler’s self-confidence grew, and as his power became more firmly established both inside and outside Germany, he became overbearing and arrogant. Everyone appeared to him unimportant compared to himself.
Previously, Hitler had been open to practical considerations, and willing to discuss matters with others. But now he became increasingly autocratic.
Judy Woodruff asked Mark Shields if the uproar over Donald Trump’s disdain for women could really hurt his candidacy.
MARK SHIELDS: The ad featuring a scantily-clad Melania Trump “elicited from Donald Trump the worst of his personality, the bullying, the misogyny, as David has said, brought it out.
“But I think it’s more than childish and juvenile and adolescent. There is something creepy about this, his attitude toward women.
“Take Megyn Kelly of FOX News, who he just has an absolute obsession about, and he’s constantly writing about, you know, how awful she is and no talent and this and that.
Megyn Kelly
“And I don’t know if he’s just never had women–strong, independent women in his life who have spoken to him. It doesn’t seem that way….”
Judy Woodruff noted that Kelly “has asked him tough questions” in a recent debate.
MARK SHIELDS: “She just asked him tough questions and was totally fair, by everybody else’s standards.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Hitler’s most outstanding quality was his will power. It was by this that he compelled men to follow him. When Hitler spoke to a small group he closely observed each person to determine how his words were affecting each man present.
If he noticed that some member of the group was not being swayed by his speech, he spoke directly to that person until he believed he had won him over. But if the target of his persuasive effort still remained obstinate, Hitler would exclaim: “I haven’t convinced that man!”
His immediate reaction was to get rid of such people. As he grew increasingly successful, he grew increasingly intolerant.
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In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 15, 2016 at 1:03 am
August is the month for…assassination. Or at least for advocating—and dramatizing—it.
On August 9, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina: “Hillary [Clinton] wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment.
“If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Donald Trump
The Clinton camp instantly saw it as a “dog-whistle” solicitation for political assassination:
“Don’t treat this as a political misstep,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, who has called for stiffer gun laws, wrote on Twitter. “It’s an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy & crisis.”
“A person seeking to be the President of the United States should not suggest violence in any way,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement.
The Trump campaign issued a statement denying that he had meant any such thing.
Three days after Trump’s remarks, Operation Antrhopoid, a UK-French-Czech historical film, appeared in theaters. Directed by Sean Ellis, it stars Cillian Murphy, Jamie Dornan, Charlotte Le Bon and Bill Milner.
Its subject: The 1942 assassination of SS Obergruppenführer (General) Reinhard Heydrich.
For Trump it was a moment of supreme, if unnoticed, irony.
“The constant violent, brutish talk from Donald Trump,” said Michael Steel, a top adviser to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, “is unworthy of the office he seeks.”
Political violence has long been a feature of Trump’s campaign. During the primaries, he openly endorsed retaliation against protesters who disrupted his rallies, many of whom accused him of racism.
Reinhard Heycrich
And Heydrich—“the man with the iron heart,” as Adolf Hitler eulogized at his funeral—similarly earned a reputation for brutality and racism.
A tall, blond-haired formal naval officer, he was both a champion fencer and talented violinist. Heydrich joined the Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS, in 1931, and quickly became head of its counterintelligence service.
In 1934, he oversaw the “Night of the Long Knives” purge of Hitler’s brown-shirted S.A., or Stormtroopers.
The S.A. had been instrumental in securing Hitler’s rise to Chancellor of Germany in 1933. They had intimidated political opponents and organized mass rallies for the Nazi Party. But after Hitler attained power, he saw them as a liability.
In September, 1941, Heydrich was appointed “Reich Protector” of Czechoslovakia, which had fallen prey to Germany in 1938 but whose citizens were growing restless under Nazi rule.
Heydrich immediately ordered a purge, executing 92 people within the first three days of his arrival in Prague. By February, 1942, 4,000-5,000 people had been arrested.
In January, 1942, Heydrich convened a meeting of high-ranking political and military leaders to streamline “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”
Up until that time, the Nazis had been unable to agree on a comprehensive anti-Jewish policy. Some had argued for the “mere” expulsion of Jews from Germany while others advocated their wholesale extermination.
At the now-infamous Wannsee conference, Heydrich decreed that, henceforth, all Jews in Reich-occupied territories would be shipped to extermination camps. No exceptions would be made for women, children or the infirm.
An estimated six million Jews were thus slaughtered.
Returning to Prague, Heydrich continued his policy of carrot-and-stick with the Czechs—improving the social security system and requisitioning luxury hotels for middle-class workers, alternating with arrests and executions.
The Czech government-in-exile, headquartered in London, feared that Heydrich’s incentives might lead the Czechs to passively accept domination. They decided to assassinate Heydrich.
Two British-trained Czech commandos—Jan Kubis and Joseph Gabcik—parachuted into Prague.
With limited intelligence on Heydrich’s movements and little equipment in a city under lockdown, they had to find a way to carry out their assignment.
Unexpectedly, they got help from Heydrich himself. Supremely arrogant, he traveled the same route every day from home to his downtown office and refused to be escorted by armed guards, claiming no one would dare attack him.
On May 27, 1942, Kubis and Gabcik waited at a hairpin turn in the road always taken by Heydrich. When Heydrich’s Mercedes slowed down, Gabcik raised his machinegun–which jammed.
Instead of ordering his driver to “step on it,” Heydrich ordered him to halt—so he could take aim at his would-be assassins.
Rising in his seat, he aimed his revolver at Gabcik—as Kubis lobbed a hand grenade at the car. The explosion drove steel and leather fragments of the car’s upholstery into Heydrich’s diaphragm, spleen and lung.
Hitler dispatched doctors from Berlin to save the Reich Protector. But infection set in, and on June 4, Heydrich died at age 38.
For Donald Trump, the timing of Operation Antrhopoid couldn’t be worse.
Trump has long been accused of being a racist and would-be dictator. Facebook routinely carries memes of him wearing a Nazi uniform, complete with Hitler forelock and toothbrush mustache.
It is Trump who raised the issue of using assassination to attain political ends. The last thing he needs is a movie showing that Right-wingers can also be targets for death.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Self-Help, Social commentary on July 29, 2016 at 12:17 am
In 1970, Robert Townsend, the CEO who had turned around a failing rent-a-car company called Avis, published what is arguably the best book written on business management.
It’s Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation From Stiffling People and Strangling Profits.
Though published 46 years ago, it should be required reading–for CEOs and consumers.
Don’t fear getting bogged down in a sea of boring, theory-ridden material. As Townsend writes:
“This book is in alphabetical order. Using the table of contents, which doubles as the Index, you can locate any subject on the list in 13 seconds. And you can read all I have to say about it in five minutes or less.
“This is not a book about how organizations work. What should happen in organizations and what does happen are two different things and about as far apart as they can get. THIS BOOK IS ABOUT HOW TO GET THEM TO RUN THREE TIMES AS WELL AS THEY DO.”
Comcast is the majority owner of NBC and the largest cable operator in the United States. It provides cable TV, Internet and phone service to more than 50 million customers.
So you would think that, with so many customers to serve, Comcast would create an efficient way for them to attain help when they face a problem with billing or service.
Think again.
Consider the merits of Townsend’s short chapter on “Call Yourself Up.”
Townsend advises CEOs:“Pretend you’re a customer. Telephone some part of your organization and ask for help. You’ll run into some real horror shows.”
Now, imagine what would happen if Brian L. Roberts, the CEO of Comcast, did just that.
Brian L. Roberts
First, he would find that, at Comcast, nobody actually answers the phone when a customer calls. After all, it’s so much easier to fob off customers with pre-recorded messages than to have operators directly serve their needs.
And customers simply aren’t that important–except when they’re paying their ever-inflated bills for phone, cable TV and/or Internet service.
Comcast’s revenues stood at $19.25 billion for the fourth quarter of 2015.
In 2015, Roberts earned $36.2 million in salary, options and other compensation, a 10% increase from 2014.
So it isn’t as though the company can’t afford hiring a few operators and instructing them to answer phones directly when people phone in.
But instead of being directly connected to someone able to answer his question or resolve his problem, Roberts would hear:
“Welcome to Comcast–home of Xfinity.”
Then he would hear an annoying clucking sound–followed by the same message in Spanish.
“Your call may be recorded for quality assurance.
“To make a payment now, Press 1. To continue this call, Press 2.”
Then he would hear: “For technical help, press 1, for billing, press 2. For more options, press 3.”
Assuming he pressed 2 for “billing,” he would hear:
“For payment, press 1 For balance information, press 2. For payment locations, press 3. For all other billing questions, press 4.”
Then he would be told: “Please enter the last four digits of the primary account holder’s Social Security Number.”
Then, as if he hadn’t waited long enough to talk to someone, he would get this message: “Press 1 if you would like to take a short survey after your call.”
By the time he heard that, he would almost certainly not be in a mood to take a survey. He would simply want someone to come onto the phone and answer his question or resolve his problem.
Then he would hear: “At the present time, all agents are busy”–and be electronically given an estimate by when someone might deign to answer the phone.
“Please hold for the next customer account executive.”
If he wanted to immediately reach a Comcast rep, Roberts would press the number for “sales.” A sales rep would gladly sign him up for more costly products–even if he couldn’t solve whatever problem Roberts needed addressed.
Assuming that someone actually came on, Roberts couldn’t fail to notice the unmistakable Indian accent of the rep he was now speaking with.
Not Indian as in American Indian-because that would mean his company had actually hired Americans who must be paid at least a minimum American wage for their services.
No, Comcast, like many other supposedly patriotic corporations, “outsources” its “customer service support team” to the nation, India.
After all, if the “outsourced” employees are getting paid a pittance, the CEO and his top associates can rake in all the more.
Of course, the above scenario is totally outlandish–and is meant to be.
Who would expect the wealthy CEO of a major American corporation to actually wait in a telephone queue like an ordinary American Joe or Jane?
That would be like expecting the chief of any major police department to put up with hookers or panhandlers on his own doorstep.
For the wealthy and the powerful, there are always underlings ready and willing to ensure that their masters do not suffer the same indignities as ordinary mortals.
Such as the ones who sign up for Comcast TV, cable or Internet services.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 18, 2016 at 3:48 pm
Michael Richard “Mike” Pence served as a Republican member of the House of Representatives from 2001 to 2013. He also served as Chairman of the House Republican Conference from 2009 to 2012.
In 2012, he ran for Governor of Indiana, won the election, and assumed this office in 2013.
On July 15, 2016, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump announced on Twitter that he had selected Pence as his Vice Presidential running mate in the 2016 Presidential election.
As a member of Congress, Pence:
- Voted, in 2007, to defund Planned Parenthood because it provides abortions.
- Opposed, in 2009, giving American citizenship to children born to illegal aliens living within the United States.
- Compared the U.S. Supreme Court’s upholding the Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
- Voted to eliminate funding for climate education programs and to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
As Governor, Pence:
- Unsuccessfully pushed for a 10% income-tax rate cut.
- Signed legislation in 2015 that repealed an 80-year-old Indiana law requiring construction companies working on publicly funded projects to pay a prevailing wage.
- Successfully lobbied in 2013 to limit reductions in sentences for marijuana offenses.
- Agreed, in 2015, to expand Medicaid in Indiana, in accordance with the Affordable Care Act.
But for all of Pence’s actions as Congressman and Governor, the one which may prove the most far-reaching may be this: His signing into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
As Governor of Indiana, he did this on March 26, 2015. The law allows any individual or corporation to cite its religious beliefs as a defense when sued by a private party.
Mike Pence
Officially, its intent is to prevent the government from forcing business owners to act in ways contrary to strongly held religious beliefs. Unofficially, its purpose is to appease the hatred of gays and lesbians by the religious Right, a key constituency of the Republican party.
In short, a bakery that doesn’t want to make a cake to be used at a gay wedding or a restaurant that doesn’t want to serve lesbian patrons will have the legal right to refuse to do so.
The same applies for a hospital that doesn’t want to provide care to a gay or lesbian patient.
The bill was passed overwhelmingly by both chambers of the Republican-controlled state legislature.
“Today I signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, because I support the freedom of religion for every Hoosier of every faith,” Pence said in a statement on the day he signed the bill.
“The Constitution of the United States and the Indiana Constitution both provide strong recognition of the freedom of religion but today, many people of faith feel their religious liberty is under attack by government action.”
Bill-signing ceremonies are usually highly public events. Governors–and presidents–normally want their constituents to see them creating new legislation.
Yet for all his praise for the bill, Pence signed it in a ceremony closed to the public and the press. The media were asked to leave even the waiting area of the governor’s office.
It’s almost as if Pence sensed that he was about to push open a door into a danger-filled room. And this may well be the case.
Through that door may soon march the First Church of Cannabis. The day after Pence signed the Act, church founder Bill Levin announced on his Facebook page that he had filed paperwork with the office of the Indiana Secretary of State.
Its registration had been approved–and Levin was ecstatic: “Now we begin to accomplish our goals of Love, Understanding, and Good Health.
“Donate $100 or more and become a GREEN ANGEL. Donate $500 or more and become a GOLD ANGEL. Donate $1000 or more and become a CHURCH POOHBA.”
No doubt many Indiana legislators are furious that their effort to attack gays may have brought legal marijuana to their highly conservative state. But worse may be to come.
Since 9/11, Right-wingers such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have warned that Muslims are trying to impose Sharia (Islamic law) on America. And now Indiana’s legislators, in elevating religion above the law, may have laid the legal foundations for making that possible.
Muslims demanding the imposition of Sharia law–on themselves and non-Muslims
Ironically, this may not be so far removed from the goals of the Republican party as many think. Both the party and adherents of Sharia agree:
- Women should have fewer rights than men.
- Abortion should be illegal.
- There should be no separation between church and state.
- Religion should be taught in school.
- Religious doctrine trumps science.
- Government should be based on religious doctrine.
- Homosexuality should be outlawed.
What will happen when:
- Muslims in Indiana claim their right–guaranteed in Islamic religious law–to have as many as four wives?
- Muslims demand a taxpayer-funded “halal” non-pork food shelf at free food pantries for the poor? (Exactly this happened among Somali refugees in Minnesota in 2015.)
- Muslims demand that police departments cancel counter-terrorism courses by claiming that their materials are anti-Muslim? (Exactly this happened to several police departments in Illinois.)
And when they claim that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act protects those rights?
Hang onto your hijabs–it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, Self-Help, Social commentary on July 6, 2016 at 12:17 am
NO SWIMMING
BEWARE
PLEASE BE AWARE OF ALLIGATORS IN THE LAKE.
So warns a sign at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Hotel, in Bay Lake, Fla. To drive home the message, it features an eye-catching symbol: A green alligator, its jaws open wide.
Just minutes away lies the Grand Floridian Hotel at Walt Disney World Resort, where, on June 14, a sign read:
STEEP DROP-OFF
DEEP WATER
NO SWIMMING
It’s likely that the parents of two-year-old Lane Graves wish they had chosen the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Hotel for their vacation spot.
Had they done so, their son might well be alive today.
On June 14, an alligator, estimated at seven feet, snatched Lane as he waded in less than six inches of water at nightfall.
Lane Graves
His father, Matt, rushed into the water to save Lane. But he was attacked by a second alligator as he fought for his son. He suffered several bites before the two alligators disappeared into the lagoon.
The next day, an Orange County Sheriff’s dive team found Lane’s intact body.
The Graves family, natives of landlocked Omaha, Nebraska, were overwhelmed with grief.
“We are devastated and ask for privacy during this extremely difficult time,” said a statement released by a family friend on June 16.
The Graves family were not the only ones shocked by the lack of an alligator warning at Disney.
Several tourists interviewed at the nearby Hyatt shared similar outrage.
“We didn’t know there weren’t any signs like they have here, ‘Beware of Alligators,'” Hyatt guest Chloe Giles, 21, told PEOPLE. “We thought they had a big sign like they have here: ‘Beware of Alligators.’ “
Three weeks before the fatal snatching of Lane Graves, Dani Saunders, Christopher Spackman and their two young daughters, Charlie and Laila, visited Disney in Orlando, Fla. They stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort, but one night they went to a beach on Bay Lake to watch fireworks.
Grand Floridian Hotel at Walt Disney World Resort
“It’s the same area that the lagoon goes into,” Saunders said. “And we went at the same time– at 9:30 as the other people were there.”
In a state where the alligator population numbers at more than one million, Florida residents know the dangers and keep small children away from ponds and lakes. But many out-of-state visitors aren’t aware of threat posed by the reptiles.
An official at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission stated that May and June are typically mating season for alligators.
The Commission’s executive director, Nick Wiley, announced that his agency had taken and killed five alligators who were suspected of the attack.
Even more damning for Disney, the Orlando Sentinel reported that Disney staff at a nearby resort knew about guests feeding alligators, and had ignored requests to put up a protective fence around the lagoon.
Mike Hamilton, a custodian at the Polynesian Resort Village–a short distance from the Grand Floridian resort–warned his employer that gators were swimming too close to guests and that a protective fence should be erected to keep them at bay.
“The entire property is interconnected via canals so it is difficult to keep [alligators} out of the lakes. Gators are on all of the golf courses. The team attempts to relocate the gators to the uninhabited natural areas as best they can, but the gators don’t understand the boundaries,” former Disney executive Duncan Dickson told the Sentinel.
According to The Wrap, guests at the Polynesian Resort Village–which charges $2,000 and $3,000 per night for a room–commonly feed the alligators.
“Disney has known about the problem of guests feeding the alligators well prior to the opening of the bungalows,” a source told The Wrap.
The day after divers found the body of Lane, Disney announced that it was reviewing its policies about warning signs.
“We are conducting a swift and thorough review of all our processes and protocols,” Walt Disney World Vice President Jacquee Wahler said in a statement on June 16. “This includes the number, placement and working of our signage and warnings.”
Among the changes:
- “Tick Tock,” the Croc from “Peter Pan,” has been removed from the park’s Festival of Fantasy parade.
- So has “Louis,” the trumpet-playing alligator from “The Princess and the Frog,” who was supposed to be part of the Friendship Faire castle show.
- The Jungle Cruise tour guides will no longer joke about crocodiles eating children as they narrate a boat tour through the world’s rivers.
- The Kilimanjaro Safari ride has dropped references to a crocodile pit.
This is typically how an incompetent bureaucracy operates:
- Ignore repeated warnings about a problem that poses a threat to its customers. The reason: To avoid spending money–most of which will otherwise go to the top officials of the company.
- When the predicted disaster occurs, the company issues a public apology–and makes “security theater” gestures to reassure the public.
There is no word as yet whether the Graves family intends to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Walt Disney World. But only such a lawsuit–and a huge financial loss–will convince this corporation to make a genuine effort to protect its guests.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on July 1, 2016 at 12:16 am
“One man with courage,” said frontier general Andrew Jackson, “makes a majority.”
Yet it’s amazing how many “heroes” come out of the woodwork only after the danger is safely past.
Joseph Stalin dominated the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953. He held absolute power twice as long as Adolf Hitler–whose Third Reich lasted only 12 years.
Joseph Stalin
Above all, he was responsible for the deaths of at least 20,000,000 men, women and children:
- At the hands of the executioners of the NKVD (later named the KGB).
- In exile–usually in Siberia–in Soviet penal camps.
- Of man-made starvation brought on by Stalin’s forced “collective-farm” policies.
Then, the unthinkable happened: Stalin finally died on March 5, 1953.
Almost three years later–on February 25, 1956–Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, shocked the 20th Party Congress of the Soviet Union with a bombshell announcement:
Stalin–the “Wise Leader and Teacher”–had been a murderous despot.
Among his crimes:
- He had created a regime based on “suspicion, fear and terror.”
- His massive purges of the officer corps had almost destroyed the Red Army–thus inviting Hitler’s 1941 invasion, which killed at least 20 million Soviet citizens.
- He had allied himself with Hitler in 1939 and ignored repeated warnings of the coming Nazi invasion.
Naturally, Khrushchev didn’t advertise the role he had played as one of Stalin’s most trusted and brutal henchmen.
Over the ensuing years, many of the statues and portraits of Stalin that had dotted the Soviet Union like smallpox scars were quietly taken down. The city of Stalingrad–which Stalin had renamed from its original name of Tsaritsyn–became Volgograd.
Then, in 1961, Stalin’s corpse was removed from its prominent spot in the Lenin mausoleum and reburied in a place for lesser heroes of the Russian Revolution.
The young poet, Yevgeney Yevtushenko, noted the occasion in his famous poem, “The Heirs of Stalin.” Its gist: Stalin the tyrant was dead, but his followers still walked the earth–and lusted for a return to power.
Something similar happened in the United States around the same time.
From 1950 to 1954, Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy terrorized the nation, accusing anyone who disagreed with him of being a Communist–and leaving ruined lives in his wake.
Joseph R. McCarthy
Among those civilians and government officials he slandered as Communists were:
- President Harry S. Truman
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow
- Secretary of State George C. Marshall
- Columnist Drew Pearson
Finally, in 1954, McCarthy overreached himself and accused the U.S. Army of being a hotbed of Communist traitors. Joseph Welch, counsel for the Army, destroyed McCarthy’s credibility in a now-famous retort:
“Senator, may we not drop this?….You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Later that year, the Senate censured McCarthy, and he rapidly declined in power and health.
Senatorial colleagues who had once courted his support now avoided him.
They left the Senate when he rose to speak. Reporters who had once fawned on him for his latest sensational slander now ignored him.
Eisenhower–who had sought McCarthy’s support during his 1952 race for President–joked that “McCarthyism” was now “McCarthywasm.”
Fast-forward to July 12, 2012–and the release of former FBI Director Louie Freeh’s report on serial pedophile Jerry Sandusky. As the assistant football coach at Penn State University (PSU), he had used the football facilities to sexually attack numerous young boys.
Jerry Sandusky
But Sandusky was regarded as more than a second-banana. He received Assistant Coach of the Year awards in 1986 and 1999, and authored several books about his coaching experiences.
In 1977, Sandusky founded The Second Mile, a non-profit charity serving underprivileged, at-risk youth.
“Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State,” Freeh stated.
College football is a $2.6 billion-a-year business. And Penn State is one of its premiere brands, with revenue of $70 million in 2010.
PSU’s seven-month internal investigation, headed by Freeh, revealed:
- Joe Paterno, head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions, was aware of a 1998 criminal investigation of Sandusky.
- So was president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz.
- In 2001, then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary reported to Paterno that he’d seen Sandusky attacking a boy in the shower.
- Paterno, Spanier, Curley and Schultz then conspired to cover up for Sandusky.
- The rapes of these boys occurred in the Lasch Building–where Paterno had his office.
- A janitor who had witnessed a rape in 2000 said he had feared losing his job if he told anyone about it. “It would be like going against the President of the United States,” Freeh said at a press conference.
In 2011, Sandusky was arrested and charged with sexually abusing young boys over a 15-year period. On June 22, 2012, he was convicted on 45 of the 48 charges. He will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
On the day the Freeh report was released, Nike–a longtime sponsor for Penn State–announced that it would remove Paterno’s name from the child care center at its world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
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COMBATING SLUMLORDS: PART THREE (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 25, 2016 at 1:53 amCity agencies need to see landlords for what they truly are–as, at best, potential predators, if not actual ones. And to act on that knowledge.
As Niccolo Machiavelli warned:
“All those who have written upon civil institutions demonstrate…that whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.
“If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some unknown reason; and we must assume that it lacked occasion to show itself. But time, which has been said to be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
The power of slumlords calls to mind the scene in 1987’s The Untouchables, where Sean Connery’s veteran cop tells Eliot Ness: “Everybody knows where the liquor is. It’s just a question of: Who wants to cross Capone?”
Many tenants have lived with rotting floors, bedbugs, nonworking toilets, mice/rats, chipping lead-based paint and other outrages for not simply months but years.
This holds true across the United States. But it also holds true in San Francisco–the “renters’ paradise” where the District Attorney’s Office hasn’t prosecuted a slumlord in decades.
Part Two of this series presented a series of badly-needed, long-overdue reforms for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI). This is the agency charged to ensuring safe housing conditions for San Francisco residents.
This concluding part will cover the remainder of those needed reforms.
As Robert F. Kennedy wrote: “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.”
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