Farewell, Ferry Queen

By Alex Brant-Zawadzki

One of San Francisco's finest, proudest and earliest queens may soon be laid to rest for fear it might become too flaming.

The Delta Queen, currently steaming up and down the Mississippi, is "America's last proper paddle-wheeled steamboat," according to an Economist article lamenting the ship's potential demise. The Queen was ordered in 1924, built in Scotland then sent to Stockton in pieces in 1926, where the California Transportation Company ran it between Sacramento, Stockton and San Francisco. During World War II the ship was requisitioned for Navy duty, serving as both a floating barrack as well as a ferry in the San Francisco Bay.

How the ship found its way from San Francisco to the mighty Mississippi? The answer can be found at Save The Delta Queen, a group which has sprung up to save the superstructure. From an Open Letter to Congress as posted on the site:

Dear Members of Congress,

My name is Charles Greene. My dad, Robert Greene, was ferried off to his WWII troop ship in San Francisco Bay aboard the Delta Queen, which then returned loaded with wounded troops. My dad came back from the war. Far too many did not.

In 1947, my grandfather’s cousin, Tom Greene, bought the Delta Queen, had her towed from California to Cincinnati, and put her into operation carrying passengers up and down the Mississippi River and its tributaries just as steamboats had done for more than 100 years.

Read the rest on the world-famous SF Weekly news & politics blog, The Snitch

Go Spork Yourselves!

Originally Posted On The World-Famous SF Weekly Political Blog, The Snitch

Feds to Katrinians: Go Spork Yourselves
Wed Jul 23, 2008 at 10:37:45 PM

For those of you who missed the horrific blurb on CNN.com, it seems the government overestimated the amount of aid it has yet to get to Katrina victims.

Previously, The General Services Administration (GSA), which manages federal property, listed the government aid languishing in warehouses at $85,000,000.

Turns out they were wrong by a factor of four or so. In fact the victims of Hurricane Katrina have only been waiting in vain for EIGHTEEN (point five) million dollars, not eighty-five. And yet somehow it doesn't sting any less.

From CNN.com:

"The original GSA estimate of $85 million should have been $18.5 million, according to figures released by GSA and FEMA. ...GSA officials were asked recently to reassess the total cost of donated items in what the agency called a routine audit. "In doing so, it was determined that some of the unit costs were 'eaches' and others were 'for-case' lots. The final adjustments reveal there was a significant overstatement in the total asset valuation," GSA officials reported to FEMA, which released the findings Monday. For example, each spork was assigned the value of an entire case, inflating the original estimated value of the supplies a thousandfold to $36 million from $36,000. Packs of toilet paper originally estimated to be worth $1.5 million dropped to about $18,000, and plastic cutlery kits, from $6.3 million to about $25,000."

This of course begs the obvious question: where the hell does one find individually-sold sporks, let alone generate a price listing for one? Where, I ask you?

No, the obvious question is actually, "The government thought they were sending Katrinians THIRTY-SIX MILLION dollars worth of SPORKS? And no one saw this as odd?"

"Hey there, friend. We're sorry your house blew away and/or flooded, not necessarily in that order; have some sporks. No, really, take as many as you want."

No one found it odd that 42% of Katrina aid had apparently been spent on sporks? This goes beyond failure of oversight. Someone failed to oversee, undersee, or see anything outside the inside of their own ass.

Cracking Open A Miller

Cracking Open a Miller
Posted by Alex Brant-Zawadzki in 241 Toll Road

Congressman Gary Miller (R-Diamond Bar) has jack-assed his way back into the news. Seems he owns $20,000 in toll road bonds. What's the big deal? Miller is a big-time toll-road supporter, putting his signature on letters of support to the project as well as garnering earmark after earmark of pork-barrel tax-payer dollars for the project, the completion of which is necessary for the return of Miller's money.

The Register tried out a new tactic this week and actually did some reporting for a change:

"Financial disclosures for Rep. Gary Miller, a land developer who represents Orange, San Bernardino and Los Angeles Counties, show he purchased $20,000 in Foothill/Eastern Transportation Corridor Agency bonds in 2000. The bonds pay investors a fixed rate and are repaid by drivers' tolls."

Though Miller has repeatedly signed financial disclosure forms listing the bonds, he expressed surprise when asked about that investment. Miller said his wife must have purchased the bonds and added that she is largely responsible for the family's investment decisions.

Read the rest on OC WEEKLY'S WORLD-FAMOUS STAFF BLOG, NAVEL GAZING

This is What I'm Doing

Obama Campaign Dispatching Thousands

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 13, 2008; A05

CHICAGO, June 12 -- Moving to harness the grass-roots energy that helped win the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign will deploy 3,600 volunteers in 17 states this weekend, each committed to six consecutive weeks of full-time political work.

The project, launched two months before the senator from Illinois became the presumptive nominee, is a measure of his determination to out-organize Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in states that could swing a close election.

The campaign put out word in April about "Obama Organizing Fellowships," an approach that went well beyond the "y'all come" model of luring volunteers with free doughnuts for two-hour canvassing stints. Supporters were required to answer essay questions, supply references and go through a telephone interview with campaign staff members.

In return for a promise to give the campaign at least six weeks of their lives, they were promised training in community organizing techniques.

A cover letter from Obama, who spent three years in the 1980s working in impoverished Chicago neighborhoods, spoke of lessons in the "basic organizing principles that this campaign and our movement for change are built on."

Obama urged supporters to apply and to "put progressive values to work in the real world."

More than 10,000 people applied, said Obama strategist Jon Carson.

"They didn't have to have campaign experience before," said Buffy Wicks, the director of the campaign's national volunteer program. "The best organizers are people who are passionate about what they're doing. We were looking for folks who had really compelling stories."

Highway Administration MUST be high

241 Toll Road Update

May 29, 2008 12:59 PM


By Alex Brant-Zawadzki

The Department of Commerce has stated their interest in holding a public hearing on the Foothill-South toll road extension, disregarding the impotent raging of Transportation Corridor Agencies counsel Robert Thornton. The LA Times reported on the road's construction cost leaping from $875 million to $1.3 billion and that ridership is down on the Foothill-South by "nearly 4 percent." The Army Corps of Engineers has declared that there could still be potential alternatives to the favored route, one which would carve through the Donna O'Neill Land Conservancy and inland San Onofre State Beach, potentially exterminating the Pacific pocket mouse and annihilating any sense of tranquility at the Acjachemen sacred site of Panhe. One has to ask, what hasn't gone wrong for the TCA lately?

In fact there are two nuggets of good news for toll road fans. In a letter dated May 23, 2008, FHWA counsel James D. Ray sent a letter to Undersecretary of Commerce Conrad Lautenbacher citing the urgent need for this traffic-reducing, $875 Million dollar project. But there are a pair of problems.

1) The toll road is clearly a traffic incentive, not a traffic reducer.
2) The TCA has revised their numbers; now the road will cost $1.3 billion, nearly a 50 percent increase.

TCA spokesperson Jennifer Seaton informed the Weekly she had provided the Times with the updated $1.3 billion figure. Seaton cautions that there is no "apples-to-apples comparison" between the two figures, as the new number incorporates environmental mitigation costs not calculated into the initial number. Seaton also warns this is not a "new" number, but merely part of the annual update to the board. Still, add this money to the $1.1 billion in taxpayer dollars the TCA is seeking to help facilitate a merger between its two boards, and we get a number like $2.4 billion. This is disturbingly close to the $2.8 billion the TCA claims it will cost to widen Interstate 5, a number it brandishes like a weapon to demonstrate the ludicrous ideas and expenditures of anyone who opposes them.
READ THE REST AT http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/241-toll-road/241-toll-road-update/

DIGG HERE: http://digg.com/environment/Save_Trestles_Or_Pay_1_3_Billion

Cold War Kids Covering Radiohead? What?

Cold War Kids - Electioneering

This better work. Okay. Deep breaths. Just discovered last.fm and whilst dicking about on that site I discovered an as-yet unheard Cold War Kids track. And it's a cover. I love their covers. And they cover Radiohead. In fact there's a whole damn TRIBUTE album - not for Radiohead in general, just one particular ALBUM. OK Computer. That's how good Radiohead is. You can't tributize THEM. You have to start with one album.

Stupid Stereogum ran outta licenses for downloads but you can stream the whole album HERE.

News Flash - High School Kids Are Sexual

I remember waxing psychotic in a high-school newspaper editorial about how a proposed re-wording of the Exeter sex policy, specifically the declaration that Exeter did not approve of such activity, was as idiotic as it was contrary to nature.

It's nice to see some things never change.

I need to find a copy of that article. It got me in enough trouble...