The Penalty Industry

Did you hear the one about the guy who got barred from Carnegie Centre for telling jokes?

It's no laughing matter. 

Some people are still annoyed about it.  Last year, Leonard, a pensioner in his early seventies, got permission from Diane, the Co-ordinator of Carnegie Poetry night, to perform as a comedian. Poetry night is popular; a good crowd shows up.

"I practiced for a week," Leonard said earnestly.  

But a security guard -- some witnesses couldn't remember his name; one called him "the grey haired guy"; one called him "the limey"; another said his name was John -- was in the audience and called out to Leonard, "You're jokes are too dirty.   You have to go!"  Many in the crowd wanted Leonard to stay and finish but the guard took him off the stage, barking, "That's enough|!"  

"Oh he was funny!  He was hilarious!", one audience member said of Leonard, throwing his head back, laughing.  "One lady there was laughing her guts out".  When the security guard kicked Leonard out, "She got mad".  He said her anger had the same intensity as her laughter.  Security kicked her out too.

"My jokes were no worse than what you hear on tv", Leonard said.  "Leno and Letterman sometimes tell jokes that are a little dirty; mine were no worse than that", he insisted.

One audience member said that Leonard had told a joke about the bible in which he talked of "foreskins" and that's what set the security guard off.   

This part is not funny at all:  Leonard was barred from the entire Carnegie building for three days.

Leonard has been around for years and is never violent or aggressive.  He's well liked.  To restore his right to come back into the Carnegie building after he had served his sentence, Leonard had to attend a meeting with Security boss, Skip Everall.  (You have to serve the sentence imposed by City of Vancouver security before you can have a meeting to appeal the barring.  Go figure.)  Everall asked him, "What did you say?" Leonard repeated a couple of the jokes and Skip "smiled" and told him he was re-instated.

As is policy, there was a handwritten security report produced on Leonard by the security guard who barred him, and then the handwritten security report was typed into the City of Vancouver Security database by one of Carnegie's twenty-something-an-hour front desk receptionists. Then, of course, there was the time spent having a meeting with the Security boss to get re-instated, after the Security boss was briefed by the barring security guard.  This barring and security report-writing occurs multiple times every day at Carnegie, usually targeting non-violent people.  Some non-violent people have multiple barrings on their security records.   

When a barring is contested, the original penalty can be compounded with another penalty, if the barred individual does not grovel during their meeting with the Security boss.    

When a barring is contested even verbally, more meetings are required, often with more highly paid staff.  It is not uncommon for a barred person to say they had to "meet with Dan", the Assistant Director Dan Tetrault who makes close to $100,000.  Or they may have to meet with Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty who has long surpassed the $100,000 mark.  And it is not uncommon for Everall to meet with both these highly paid individuals about a barring before he meets with the  barred individual, and again after he meets with the barred individual. And then Tetrault and Whitty have to, of course, meet with one another.  Sometimes City Hall's Community Service manager making in the $200,000 range annually, or even the City Manager herself making over a quarter of a million annually, are drawn into the game of a contested penalty and the whole thing has to be run by an in-house lawyer at City Hall.  These costly interactions and meetings are never fruitful; the results are predictable: Carnegie asses are covered every time and the low income Carnegie member learns every time that 'You can't fight City Hall.'  

And if the case of the barred individual turns up on a blog, as is occurring with increasing regularity, more meetings have to be held to talk about who is blogging and legal advice has to be sought from the City.  One woman who was barred for talking back to a male coffee seller at Carnegie, estimates that before her case is finished it will have cost the City $50,000 in labour time.

And as the costs of the penalty industry spiral out of control, so do residential taxes.  Last I heard, they were going up 11%.  And City manager Penny Bellum has not even looked at the cost of the burgeoning penalty industry.  

With one memo, Ballem could drastically cut costs associated with the penalty industry.  She could instruct City staff not to bar anyone from Carnegie facilities who is neither violent or threatening violence.  That would eliminate the majority of barrings.  Many of the barrings continuing to be inflicted on the poor would be grey area cases: a common scenario is a staff person wants to get rid of a low income person who is challenging them, so they call security and portray persistence in a poor person as threatening.     

Virtually everyone on the Downtown Eastside who has used Carnegie Center has a barring story. In the past taxpayers didn't give a shit that the rights of the poor were being trimmed to almost nothing.  But now that taxpayers are being squeezed, they may finally do the poor a favour and insist that this make-work paper work be stopped so that they can save money.  They would be, as Suzanne Somers likes to say, "Doing well by doing good." 

Please Don't Film your TV Commercial in Vancouver

Thinking of filming a commercial in Vancouver?  Please don't.  Make your commercial in Burnaby or New Westminster or Surrey.  Anywhere but Vancouver.

The City of Vancouver Film Office under Muriel Honey is tainted by human rights abuses.  If you do business with them, your company could end up tainted too. 

Here's an example of abuse by the Vancouver Film Office:  Despite verbal promises to a Downtown Eastside resident sickened by a generator outside her street-level window ten years ago during the filming of a Honda commercial on a hot day with little wind, staff at the Vancouver Film Office and their Manager Muriel Honey did little to ensure that she was not sickened again. After a battle that went on for years, Honey promised the poisoned resident in writing that there would be no more generators parked outside her street-level windows.   Honey said that even film trucks would not be situated there.  

Honey lied.  

Over the years, Honey has repeatedly violated the agreement that she personally put in writing.  

Last night the agreement was violated again.  The poisoned resident told me that Honey and her staff arranged for a generator to be parked outside her street-level windows until 2 a.m. while a commercial was being filmed.   "I don't care if they film a commercial," says the resident, "I just want them to respect our agreement." 

Honey didn't just ignore the agreement with the poisoned resident, she ignored the City's agreement with all residents in the vicinity: that the City notify them in advance of filming. "I didn't see any notice; usually, they're taped to the front doors",  says the resident.  She says a friend had offered to pick up some off-sale beer and meet her back at her place, but she would have told him to skip it if she'd known that they'd have to put up with fumes wafting into the apartment all night.  There are no other windows in the apartment to create a cross draft, just those facing Powell St., she explains.  

There is no point in going to Muriel Honey or her staff about last night's fumigation.  The only thing to do is take the problem to the marketplace and ensure that customers know what companies are profiting from deals with a City of Vancouver enterprise that too often relies on deception.  And that deception includes their pointing to the annual outdoor turkey dinner on the Downtown Eastside as evidence that the film industry 'gives back' to the community, while year after year fumes and agreements are ignored in the neighborhood. 

There are alternatives for any company wanting to film a commercial on a location with a century old feel to it, a feel that attracts companies to the Gastown-Downtown Eastside area. They can get that feel in New Westminster, a city older than Vancouver and one with no reputation for a corrupt film office.   

Does anybody know the name of the company that was filming a commercial in the middle of the night on Saturday, May 2-3, 2009, on Powell St. on the Downtown Eastside?  It's important that their name be published on the internet along with Muriel Honey's.  

Honey will usually get you better results than vinegar.  Not in Vancouver.

Library Square

Acrobats practiced at Library Square on Friday, May 1/09.  (Sorry, my camera is broken and stuck on an old date.)

Young people demonstrated at Library Square on Saturday, April 25/09 about the use of child soldiers in Uganda.  A spokesperson said that the U.S. is the only country that has made any effort to put a stop to it.

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Bride at the library on Saturday, April 25, 2009

People sit in the sun on the steps in front of the Central Library on Friday, April 24, 209. 

An acquaintance commented that it seems as if we've gone directly from winter to summer this year, skipping spring.  

Cherry Blossoms in Chinatown

Cherry blossoms on Keefer St. in Chinatown.

(Date stamp on camera is wrong.)

Bill Good Bad Debate Moderator

I listened to the BC election leaders debate this morning on CKNW.  I thought all of them, Carole James of the NDP, Gordon Campbell of the Liberals, and Jane Sterk of the Green Party, came across well.

James made one mistake that women leaders sometimes make though.  She occasionally used an 'up-talk' style: when making an assertion, she would end the sentence as though she were asking a question.  This can make a leader come across as less than confident in their own positions.  But James didn't use that style consistently, just occasionally.  Jane Sterk never used that style.  

I thought the CKNW moderator Bill Good revealed bias against Carole James.  It showed up after James stated during the debate that the NDP had decided that during this election campaign, they would be "tough on the issues" but would not resort to "personal attacks".  Bill Good then asked James if she had not been engaging in personal attacks toward Gordon Campbell during this debate.  She responded firmly, "No".  Then Good allowed a long, long, long pause, so long that it made a statement in itself.  Then, in discussions with four voters -- these voters seemed stacked against Carole James -- after the debate, Good stated that he felt James had been resorting to personal attacks against Gordon Campbell throughout the entire debate.

He was wrong.

A personal attack is an ad hominem attack or gratuitious criticism of another politician that has little to do with the issues.  An extreme example would be past federal Conservative Party TV ads criticizing the facial paralysis of Jean Chretien.  During this morning's debate, James was simply being intensely critical of Liberal policies; each time she was asked about an issue, she would criticize the Liberal record on it and use the name "Gordon Campbell" when she did it. For example, when a caller accused James of misleading the public by saying that the Liberals had sold assets such as rivers when in fact they had leased them, James retorted that when "Gordon Campbell" gives a company a 49 year lease on a river or a 99 year lease on BC Rail, the result is esentially a sale.  That response was typical of James' responses throughout the debate.  She was on the attack, but not in a personal way.  

I found it interesting that while James repeatedly emphasized the name "Gordon Campbell" when answering debate questions, Campbell avoided using James' name and consistently referred to her as the "the leader of the opposition." But he called the Green Party leader, "Ms. Sterk". 

I'm not a defender of Carole James or the NDP.  But I think if CKNW is claiming to be hosting a neutral debate and re-cap, they should make every effort to ensure it is neutral.  After the debate, I had little doubt that Good was a Liberal supporter.

Judy Rogers still on City Payroll Despite Record of Fraud at Carnegie

Are you happy?  That's the question on promos in Vancouver stores where Mayor Gregor Robertson's Happy Planet Juice is sold.  

No, Gregor, I'm not happy.  In fact, I'm right pissed off that you still have on the payroll a woman who was in a supervisory role in relation to Carnegie Center fraud, disenfranchisement of voters -- Don't like who got elected to the Board? Bar him from the building -- and chronic civil liberties abuses including the City's own brand of sharia law for women.  

There is evidence at Carnegie that a woman can be barred from City facilities for showing confidence in relation to a man and that, in the Carnegie "court" in which the decision to bar her is made, a male's testimony is considered to carry much more weight than the female's, so much more in fact that it is not necessary to even speak to the female. Classic sharia. Sharia is so entrenched at Carnegie that even a man who has been accused of sexually harassing the female defendant in the past is allowed the privilege of advising Carnegie security on what punishment she should receive.

In one case that lacked witnesses, the claim that "15" anonymous witnesses existed was entered into the "security" report.  In another case, when the CBC asked Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty why an elected official was barred from Carnegie, Whitty concocted a story about him being a WorkSafe risk.  There had been no mention of a WorkSafe risk in the City letter barring him. Judy Rogers knew of these and other examples of fraud at Carnegie.    

But Judy Rogers, who we all thought had been fired, is still on the City payroll.  Judy Rogers is happy.

CKNW has learned the details of Rogers' severance package.  She got $572,000 and she will continue to get a car allowance, health and welfare benefits, and will remain on the City payroll until the end of May, unless she gets another job.

Who would give her another job?  

At least one of the victims' of the City's brand of sharia law practiced under Judy Rogers has now taken her case to the new City manager Penny Bellum. It is going to be interesting to see whether Bellum, a lesbian feminist-type with a boyish hair cut, is going to rubber stamp sharia at Carnegie the way Rogers did.  The impression I get from talking to this victim -- she started calling her treatment "sharia" after learning the term from bloggers -- is that she is going to consider her case outstanding until it is resolved, no matter how long it takes. Rogers may as well put this case on her resume because it's going to follow her around like Carnegie "security" reports follow Downtown Eastsiders.

 

What is it with the City's reward miles plan for abusers?  City managers or co-ordinators can be caught commiting fraud or grave breaches of public trust -- like Carnegie Security boss Skip Everall caught on tape barring a woman from an entire City building to teach her a lesson for daring to ask him his name so that she could appeal a barring -- and they keep on going and going and going on the City payroll.  They're a variation on Timex watch commericials: they give you a lickin' and they keep on tickin'.   

Bellum has specifically been asked not to renew Ethel Whitty's contract as Carnegie Director.  Once it is clear that you have been supervising fraud -- there is as much evidence against Whitty as there is against Rogers -- your career with the City should be over.  Over.

After covering these cases, I can no longer drink Gregor Robertson's Happy Planet juice.  Just seeing a bottle of it on a store shelf makes me gag.