Ann Arbor Passes An Ordinance To Be More Welcoming - To Criminals

Mlive.com: Here’s why ‘Neighborhood Crime Watch’ signs in Ann Arbor are going away

City Council voted 10-0 Monday night, Dec. 15, to direct city staff to remove all neighborhood watch signs in the city by July 15 as the city strives to be more welcoming and inclusive.

Because watching out for your neighbors and your property and theirs  and being against crime is, according to the city council, racist. 

 Because, of course it is.

And of course, they brought up the canard of Trayvon Martin:

a young Black teenager walking through a neighborhood he had every right to be in, yet perceived as a threat simply for being there.The tragedy of Martin being fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida, did not happen in isolation, Harrison said. It happened in a broader environment that normalized surveillance over relationship and fear over familiarity, she said.

She left out the part where dear, (not so) innocent Trayvon was  killed only after trying to bash that volunteer's head against the pavement.

Because of course she glossed over that. 

Then, of course, she runs with the progressive bromides for which an easy objection is that the bromides are simply not supported by any evidence that they are true:

“Neighborhood watch was built on an old idea that heterogeneous neighborhoods create danger,” she said. “Ann Arbor is built on the understanding that diversity creates strength.”

. . .

“As we remove signs that have long communicated warning, we also have an opportunity to replace them with messages that say something better,” she said. “When people feel welcome walking down the street, visiting family, looking for a place to live, or simply existing in public, our neighborhoods are not just more inclusive. They are safer.”

 There's no facts whatsoever that has shown that diversity creates strength, noir that Neighborhood watch was built on the idea that heterogeneous neighborhoods create danger - she just made that up.

Nor is there any facts that a neighborhood is safer by having people feel inclusive.  Indeed when criminals feel included and unwatched, crime tends to increase and a neighborhood becomes less safe. 

Mamdani Appoints An Armed Robber To Public Safety Team

Because of course he did.

New Yorkers are going to get exactly what they voted for, good and hard.

 Fox News: Mamdani appoints convicted armed robber to public safety transition team 

According to past reports, Linen, a Bronx native who was once signed to Def Jam, was convicted of two felony robberies in the late 1990s.In 1999, a Bronx jury is said to have found him guilty in two armed robberies of taxi drivers, per the New York Daily News.

Well, I guess an armed robber would know all about public safety and be all for Mamdani's "gun violence" initiatives.

Who's next on Mamdani's appointment list?  

Maybe he'll appoint Bonnie Blue for the NYC Health Department next. 

After all, she knows all about the risks of close contact with multiple people, communicable diseases, and the transfer of bodily fluids. but she may get beat out by Typhoid Mary.

FFS, Get It Together Wayne County Circuit Court

So this morning I'm doing work and got a call a couple minutes ago from opposing counsel on a case, wanting to discuss the status conference from this morning on a case we have in Wayne County Circuit Court.

"What status conference from this morning?", I ask, somewhat perturbed.

Apparently there was one, and the court did not send me any notice of it at all, and thus I did not know and did not Zoom in accordingly.

Not the first time this has happened on this case, and it seems the only case I never get notices on, but it's getting well past ridiculous.

How ridiculous?

The Commercial landlord-Tenant case is running under two different files in the court:

It has both an Appeal from District Court (landlord-tenant possession only filed by the tenant after losing to me there) and a Circuit Court case (filed by us for the money owed from that landlord-tenant case) in front of the same judge.  

It's been going on since July 2020.  Yep, you read that right, it's over two and a half years old now.

I have a motions for summary disposition on their counter-claim in the money case that was filed over 2 years ago that the judge has still not set a hearing on or ruled on.  To put it in perspective, that should take around 28-60 days max to get heard, not 2+ years!

Two other summary motion,s and the appeal brief itself have been filed over a year and a half ago with no hearing or ruling in sight. Again, way outside appropriate timing for decisions to be made.

And for some reason, whenever the judge issues a status conference on the Appeals case, the court does not send me a notice.   Even though I show up on the electronic file and docket as the attorney of record, have an appearance in, and have filed a response to their appeal brief, I get nothing. Thus has happened at least three times now.

Rather disconcerting.

Even better, at the status conference held under the Circuit Case (which I actually got a notice and appeared for)  in early September, the court after noting we were there then stated they would call us for the conference.  But, the court  never got around to actually contacting us, so it never actually happened and nothing has moved even an inch in the case.

Still no dates on any of the motions, no action at all, no trial date -- which is probably good considering the motions should get rid of most of the case without a trial if they ever get heard.  

The cases just sits out there, waiting for the court to do its job.

A little notice while it considers doing its job may be too much to ask for though.

The Irony Of Detroit Gun Violence Interventionists

In the Detroit Free Press, there's an article about a rally against gun violence, as they are of course blaming guns for criminal's actions and the fact that criminal violence and assaults, often over trivial matters are very much on the rise in the D.

The Detroit Free Press: Shootings over simple disputes on the rise, Detroit interventionists say

It's mostly pay-walled, but the photos accompanying the article are not.

The irony of course is because of one of the featured speakers depicted in the article:

o

Sam Riddle.  

Sam Riddle talking against gun violence.

The very same Sam Riddle who himself was sentenced to two years for firing off a shotgun in a "simple dispute" - being caught in bed with another woman by his "live in companion" and then shooting at his companion with a shotgun.

So yes, Sam Riddle would surely know all about inappropriately using guns during a simple dispute. 

In the D, even violent felonies, even involving firearms and violence against women - two things Democrats profess to be against - don't stop Democrat politicians from being considered respected (and of course paid) heads of Democrat organizations rather than placed beyond the pale for their actions.

You just can't make this up.

The Intellectual Vanguard Of The Workers

Really, really,  hate that the Workers are uniting on their own without having the intellectual vanguard leading them.

Note that this person, Juliette Kayyem, is very much one of the elite.  

Married to a Federal Court of Appeals judge no less, and she was Obama's Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security and is currently the Senior Belfer Lecturer in International Security at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she is Faculty Director of the Homeland Security Project and Security and Global Health Project. 

She also presently serves as a CNN National Security Analyst.

So she's allegedly one of your betters and an "expert" on national security.

Yet, she doesn't know that draining gas from truck tanks and slashing tires results in trucks that are really difficult to move. She also does not know that that slashing a tire filled to 120 psi is really not a smart idea for the slashee's health - but could be fun for the rest of us to watch.

Obama really had the smartest people working for him, now didn't he?  And CNN and Harvard has her now - make of that what you will.

Meanwhile, the intellectual vanguard has managed to drive inflation to its highest rate in 40 years, with no signs of stopping, further harming the very workers they claim to champion.

Government Efficiency: Your Call Back Time Will Be In Approximately 1,144 Minutes

1,144 minutes is about 19 hours and that's no mistake, that's the waiting time for a Tier 2 call.

Tier 2? Well friends, I'm dealing with USCIS hell.

I have a client applying for an H1B Masters's cap opening.

In short, the kid is an engineer, has a master's degree from a US University, he's a sharp, good and clean kid from India, and his employer here for his apprenticeship wants to hire him as he's good at what he does and they've trained him up.

So I do the I-129 process, including getting a labor certification, and he's actually going to be paid more than the company's American workers due to a very screwed up average wage calculation required by Department of Labor for the area. Stupid as hell, but that's the law.

I submit it with premium processing and send it via express mail on April 3 to their Premium Processing address in California.

USPS shows it was delivered to Premium Processing on April 4 at 11 am.

Then it disappears.

USCIS can't find it, and the fun begins.

First I have fun just calling the USCIS help line - 800-375-5283.

After being on hold for 30-45 minutes per call, I get to Tier 1 support. Half the time Tier 1 just drops the call and I have to start in the queue all over again.

Finally with Tier 1 going through the same maddening script every time and refusing to move it to Tier 2 until we go through the script, they then send me to Tier 2 phone waiting hell. How much hell? It's so bad you do not wait on the line, instead you enter your number and they tell you when a Tier 2 officer will call you back. That call back wait time can be rather extreme.

On a prior Tier 2 call, I was told to email Lockbox support which I did. Lockbox support acknowledged the email and said they would reply within 30 days.

They Didn't. I waited over 30 days before bugging them, but no contact from them, because that would be too easy, right?

Back to calling, starting with Tier 1 hell again. I get connected to Tier One and they tell me to call Premium Processing support and give me a phone number.

There's a little problem with that number. It requires you to enter a receipt number that I don't have because the package was lost so they never issues a receipt number. No receipt number - the call disconnects.

Back to call Tier 1, and after going through the same script tell the next helpful idiot that suggests that I call Premium Processing support that that will not work.

Then I finally get a call actually completed to route to Tier 2 and the time to get the call back?

That's where the 1,144 Minutes comes from. That was the latest estimate.

Then 1,144 minutes later, Tier 2 calls back at 8pm tonight and I have to explain everything again because no one has kept any notes on this issue. At all.

Tier 2 agrees with me that this is getting ridiculous and offers to send me to Tier 3.

I know what is about to happen so I politely ask for the number so I can call myself....

Nope, they won't gove that out, nor the direct number to even get into the queue for Tier 2, but she'll transfer me to Tier 3.

And she drops the call.

This means I need to start all over again with getting on hold to get to Tier 1, to get to be put on hold with Tier 2 to get put on hold with Tier 3, al the while hoping some functionary doesn't have a malfunction and drop the call.

At this point I am beginning to develop rather strong anti-government feelings and a vocabulary to go with it.

So in short, USCIS has lost an application, refuses to do anything about it, refuses to connect me to anyone who can do something about it and this should in a normal world not take this farging long and this much time to even get to the point to find someone to fix their mistake, and we're still not there. And all this for a simple I-129 application that should have been granted over two months ago now.

Meanwhile, Illegals can waltz across the border and work illegally with fake social security numbers have no such troubles.

I halfway want to tell the kid to change his name to Sanchez, have his employer pay him under the table, move to California so he gets free healthcare, and everyone will be happy, unfortunately that's just not good legal advice.

Just wait until government controls your healthcare, expect your service times and levels of customer service to be similar.