Plainfield a Relay For Life site

Relay for Life, the American Cancer Society's premier overnight awareness, support, and fundraising event is coming to Plainfield.

Longtime Plainfield activities promoter Pat Fields is coordinating the entertainment and activities for Plainfield's BIGGEST VENTURE YET as a site community. Shiloh Baptist Church and Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc. will host a kick-off meeting scheduled for Thursday, at Shiloh Baptist Church, 517 West 4th Street. Registration opens at 5:30 PM and the meeting starts at 6 PM sharp.

Folks, this is a big -- make that BIG -- deal. Everyone knows someone who has faced or is facing cancer, everyone knows how important it is to fund research and support.

Now is Plainfield's chance to step up to the plate. Come out and learn how you can help ensure that those who face cancer will have support, those who have been lost to cancer will never be forgotten, and that one day cancer will be eliminated.

This is an overnight, team event. You can learn more by visiting the ACS website or the new Relay For Life website.

What can you do? You can help to organize Plainfield's event (scheduled for June 16th and 17th). Come on out to the kick-off meeting and learn more about the event, how to organize a team that will walk in the event, help raise money, and have a great time camping out overnight.

All monies raised will be used IN UNION COUNTY for education,advocacy, research and family support.

As Pat Fields say, "I know you have the heart -- now just give up some (more) of your time. You will be overjoyed at what you accomplish!"

Call Pat directly at (908) 369-1152 to let her know you are coming.

---

KICKOFF MEETING. Thursday, Feb. 22. Registration, 5:30 PM. Meeting, 6 PM sharp. Shiloh Baptist Church, 517 West 4th Street, Plainfield. To register, call Pat Fields: (908) 369-1152. For PARKING info, call the church: (908) 754-3919.


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Help Cat in Hat

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Reading unlocks the world.

There is no way around it. If you can't read, you lose big time.

And, for very young children, being READ TO reinforces both the IMPORTANCE and the FUN of reading.

YOU can help reinforce this life-changing truth by volunteering a half-hour to read to some of Plainfield's preschool children on Friday, March 2, 2007 (which is also Dr. Seuss' birthday, 103 and going!).

Call the school district's Read Across America coordinator Agness McLean at (908) 731-4360 x5381 today.

Do good and feel good about it.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

---

Online resources --

• "Seussville's Project 236"
  
  
• "NEA’s Read Across America Project"

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Your personal real estate Google?

Half of Plainfielders own their own homes. Chances are very high that there is a real estate transaction in your future -- buying, selling or both. For that reason, a lot of people like to keep an eye out for what's going on in the market.

The Internet has changed the landscape of real estate dramatically. Last Sunday's NY Times had an article about some of the online services.

A COOL TOOL

PT is particularly intrigued by Trulia.com. It has far and away the most, and it seems the most useful, information that PT has come across.

Be aware, however, of what the terms you see used mean --

Let's use Plainfield for an example. Using the 07060 ZIP, 193 properties were returned -- from $159K to $2+M. (Note that 07060 returns NORTH Plainfield properties as well.)

Once you type in the location or ZIP code you are interested in, you get a page with a map and clickable listings on the same page -- sorted any way you wish: price, bedrooms, style, etc.

You can click on the map and drag it to reposition the view or use the sliders to increase/decrease the zoom level.

Hovering over any pushpin on the map, you get a popup with the address and price. Click for more info. Or click on any listing in the side panel to get more details on that property.

Once you get to Trulia's property sheet, you will notice you can also get the Realtor's online listing data, which has even more complete details on this particular property.

But that's only the beginning.

Under the COMMUNITY INFO section, you will find tabs for everything from house prices to crime to community links.

Home prices (Click on any image to enlarge)	Year built	Crime statistics

There is also a SCHOOLS OVERVIEW, comparing local schools achievements with the state averages. And clickable checkboxes which turn on or turn off the locations of school buildings on the map.

USE WITH CAUTION

All this is truly useful, but a note of caution is in order.

It is easy when online to fall into thinking what you are seeing is the whole picture. It is not always so.

PT was intrigued with the Plainfield map, but the Watchung Avenue area especially caught his attention. Not because of what was there, but because of what was NOT.

PT was SURE he had noticed For Sale signs on Watchung Avenue, yet there were no pushpins at all. A quick drive-by netted eleven properties, shown as with a red * in PT's detail below.

So, while sites such as Trulia supply a lot of useful information, you'll never go wrong hopping in the car and checking out what's going on with your own two eyes. At least until it's all available in real time and totally complete -- which is the goal these sites are aiming for in the long run.

But it's still worth a spin right now.

---

New York Times: "Forget Gimmicks: Buyers Want Numbers"

Some sites --

• Trulia.com
  
  
• Zillow.com
  
  
• Realtor.com

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A Black History Month myth

Carter G. Woodson

Jesse Moorland

Mary Church Terrell

When a nationally-known African-American radio celebrity recently was heard remarking that Black History Month was devised by whites, PT did a double-take. Huh?! Not as far as PT ever knew.

Black History Month has grown out of what began as Negro History Week, the observance of which was begun in 1926 by Carter G. Woodson, director of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Woodson had co-founded the organization in 1915 with his friend Jesse Moorland, the first Black YMCA executive in the US.

Woodson consciously selected the week in February that embraced both the day that Frederick Douglass kept as his birthday (the 14th) and the birthday of Abraham Lincoln (the 12th). Which explains why the celebration is in February in the US (it is celebrated in September in the UK).

There are earlier celebrations which may have inspired Woodson. Mary Church Terrell, activist and founder of the National Association of University Women had independently begun the practice of honoring Douglass on February 14.

The Omega Psi Phi's had also begun a celebration of Negro Achievement Week in 1924 as part of their community outreach.

Woodson, who was an Omega and a friend of Terrell's, broadened the concept in three important ways --

• He saw it as a national and not just local celebration
  
  
• He saw it as improving race relations
  
  
• He saw it as a means of undermining racist ideas of Black inferiority by disseminating popular information rooted in scholarship.

By the time of Woodson's death in 1950, the celebration was widely established. In 1976, it was expanded to a monthlong celebration by the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, as Woodson's original group had been renamed. (It is now known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.)

The month sparks an annual debate about its celebration. Is it useful? Is it relevant? Does it keep the larger society from integrating Black History fully into American history? Or does it help?

Whatever the outcomes of such debate, Woodson himself hope the week would eventually be eliminated as Black contributions were fully recognized in American history.

---

MORE INFORMATION

Black History Month
Carter G. Woodson
Mary Church Terrell
Jesse E. Moorland
Omega Psi Phi Fraternity
Association for the Study of African American Life and History

Some of Woodson's groundbreaking books are still in print:

Available at the Amazon bookstore. --

"A Century of Negro Migration"

"This provocative work by the distinguished African-American scholar traces the migration north and westward of southern blacks, from the colonial era through the early 20th century. Documented with information from contemporary newspapers, personal letters, and academic journals, this discerning study vividly recounts decades of harassment and humiliation, hope and achievement."

Available online as free downloads of the Gutenberg Project --

"A Century of Negro Migration"
"The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861"

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Those yellow bags -- Sales pitch? Invasion of privacy? Invitation to burglary?

Reader ES sent the following email after returning home from a few days away on business to find his driveway littered with unsolicited Star-Ledgers in yellow plastic bags, tossed from passing vehicles. Note the questions he raises.

What do you think should be done? After reading of his experience and issues, post your COMMENT or SUGGESTION in this week's POLL SECTION (upper right hand column on the CLIPS page).

Without my warning or my knowledge, The Star Ledger saw fit to begin delivering one month's worth of their newspaper on my driveway -- presumably as an enticement to gain a new customer. I came home from a brief trip out of town to find several papers on the driveway screaming out "Nobody's home!". Had the house been vacant for 30 days, I could only imagine what the collection yellow plastic bags would have looked like. Thanks, Star Ledger for inviting the uninvited. I also noticed quite a few other driveways in the neighborhood are decorated with the same yellow bag of newsprint. I thought we were making progress in getting to a cleaner Plainfield; it's quite an ugly site.

One of the papers had a letter from George Dyevoich, their Home Delivery Manager, telling me to enjoy all this litter from 2/4 thru 3/3!  A  P.S. put the onus on me to call them to stop the delivery if that's what I wanted. (at 888 782-7533) When I called, I had to go thru their interactive voice system to get to a representative in the circulation department. After being on hold for an aggravating 20 minutes, they wanted to know my name, address and phone number in order to stop delivery. Are they serious? I have an unlisted number. I did give them my address and an emphatic message: "cease delivery now and forever". Let's see if and when that message gets thru.

I get ALL my news on-line and on CNN. I would like to think that helps slowdown the pollution and waste we create. In a mass scale, it would really help. But it's really about exercising my freedom of choice. You may not see this as a big deal, but like the unsolicited flyers, bags of gravel, menus and other stuff that sits on my front door from time to time, it's litter and more importantly, an invasion of my privacy...

PT and others have remarked before, and repeatedly, about the declining readership of print versions of newspapers -- even as readers flock to their online editions.

First, dear reader, disabuse yourself of the idea these are wonderful people who simply live that you should have news. They are businesses that live to make a profit for their owners -- primarily through the sale of advertising. If the news is compelling enough to keep you coming back, chances are the advertisers may also get some nibbles from you. Or so the reasoning has been for the past 130 years or so.

The Internet has changed all that. People are becoming accustomed to getting their news online, in near-real time, and pretty much breezing by the ads. And it is the challenge to the advertising income that has the papers scrambling.

The old sack-in-the-driveway pitch for new subscribers is just that -- literally OLD, and literally a PITCH of the paper.

In sales, it's called cold-calling. It's pretty much a first-cousin of those annoying timeshare and financial planning phone solicitations you used to get just as dinner was being served. But that was in the days before the do-not-call list, which has eliminated 99.999% of PT's phone hustles.

Should something similar be done with regard to newspapers and advertising circulars that are regularly pitched in our driveways? Is the practice, as ES suggests, an invasion of our privacy? An annoyance? Or a useful service? What kind of business sense does it make to solicit a customer and then hide yourself behind a phone-tree-from-hell-system? Lastly, if the pile of yellow bags invites unwanted attention -- say that of a burglar -- who is responsible should you suffer any loss?

Stroll on by the POLL SECTION (upper right hand column on the CLIPS page) and EXPRESS YOUR OPINION. This week will be a SURVEY instead of a yes/no poll, so feel free to sound off on ES's issues.

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A 1920's Plainfield winter storm gallery

The old North Avenue westbound station, JCRR. (Click to enlarge.)

Looking for something else, PT stumbled across the following online slide show of photos from a 1920's winter snow storm in Plainfield.

I do not know who posted them -- it appears to be several years ago -- but you can navigate to their profile page and leave a message.

Enjoy!

Adblock

Plainfield, NJ, a frozen winter in the 1920’s.

A Saturday twofer

LIBRARY BOOK SALE

The Friends of the Plainfield Public Library are holding their annual book sale at the Library from 10 AM - 2 PM today.

Proceeds will help the Friends support summer community outreach programs at the Library, including the Summer reading program and special activities and events.

PT has been addicted to the book sales for years. There is always something for your reading pleasure -- mysteries to histories, biographies to sci fi, cookbooks to poetry. Plus you get an opportunity to chat with old friends and join or renew your membership in the Friends.

I'll be looking for you!



COMMUNITY EDUCATION FORUM

The Board of Education is sponsoring a daylong forum for the entire community from 10 AM to 3 PM today at Plainfield High School.

The morning and afternoon sessions will provide an opportunity for the Board and the district's leadership to present the district's goals as well as engage in a dialogue to further focus the community's needs and the district's efforts.

Demonstrations of specific activities in which students participate will be shared with participants and feedback solicited, as well as opportunities for participants to pledge the use of their expertise.

A continental breakfast is available during the registration period and a complete lunch will be available between the morning and afternoon sessions.

Parking is available at both the Stelle and Kenyon Avenue lots.


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Fix the damn website, willya!

As we enter the sixth month since the City's website has seen an update, PT begins to suspect there is an absolute lack of intellligent design at the heart of this mess.

The whole imbroglio could be corrected quick as you can snap your fingers.

Yup.

Normally, PT or another consultant would charge at least $75 an hour for this advice. But only with a contract. And since this Administration doesn't believe in using contracts to get work done, we'll just give out the info for free.

• REGAIN control of the site. Believe it or not, the Mayor is the administrative contact. She can retrieve the logon and password.
  
  
• Get a NEW HOST. Change the DNS entries.
  
  
• RETRIEVE a copy of the website from the consultant who put it together. (The City DID remember to get that as a WORK FOR HIRE, right?)
  
  
• POST the refreshed site and you're back in business.

With, of course, the lame site that was put up in the first place, and the lame content.

But, hey, at least it's a website. And we can move on from the major embarrassment of NOT having a website to the less major embarrassment of just having a LAME ONE.

Oy vey!

---

P.S. The Newark website has Mayor Cory Booker's State of the City address online THE DAY OF.


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Taking Plainfield to the cleaners?

Irvington is considering an ordinance to limit the numbers of drycleaners and how close they may be to each other.

That news caught PT's eye a week or so ago, and I wondered why a city would go into the business of making laws to limit businesses. How un-American! Then someone pointed out that we don't give a thought to regulating establishments that serve or sell alcohol. So what's the big deal? Follow me down the yellow brick road and see where it takes us.

Turns out the Ledger's Paul Mulshine's eye was also caught by the item. He fired up the old Chevy and took a ride over to Irvington to check it out. He got taken to the cleaners, and you'll want to read his thoughtful piece about what he learned.

One thing PT picked up from the story was how drycleaners and landromats are informal indicators of what is going on in the community. Renters tend to use laundromats as they are less likely to have washers and dryers in apartments and many landlords do not provide laundry rooms.

Dry cleaners, on the other hand, may be thought of (admittedly unscientifically) as indicators more of homeowners than renters.

What's the diff?



Plainfield is almost exactly divided between homeowners and renters. Will the wave of condo construction proposed for Plainfield in a time of market fluctuation upset that balance in an undesirable way?

Condos occupied by taxpaying owners would be a good thing. Not only because of the ratables, but primarily because of the sense of connectedness to the community and its issues that OWNERSHIP implies. After all, owners have an equity stake in the success of the community, the efficiency and honesty of government and a host of other issues that have a long-term impact.

If, however, the construction turns out to be occupied by RENTERS, the outlook is quite different. There is not as likely to be the same sense of connectedness to community outcomes nor involvement in broader community issues.

PT has always been struck by the paradox of the high number of residents in Ward 2, District 1 (roughly the Crescent Avenue neighborhood) and its relatively low turnout rate at the polls. PT chalks it up to the fact that it is overwhelmingly a district of renters, not property owners.

At a recent Chamber of Commerce meeting, the Mayor enthusiastically cited a new laundromat as a sign of business vitality and that Plainfield was on the march. Maybe. PT certainly wishes the laundromat owner success.

But we have to ask ourselves what more laundromats say about where Plainfield is going.

And not be taken to the cleaners.

---

For your reading pleasure: Paul Mulshine: "Columnist taken to the cleaners"


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Of COPS and sugar bowls

Was it Alice Cramden in The Honeymooners who always tried to put a little money away in the sugar bowl, only to find it empty when she turned to use it?

The sugar bowl is a good metaphor for looking at the 'new' community-oriented policing (COPS) program.

The Courier featured the story on Sunday (see "City hopes police patrols draw business") and PT commented on it yesterday (see "Courier whacks Plainfield again?") -- critiquing the newspaper's choice of a photo illustration.

Now, for the program itself.

COPS is a good thing, period. PT has always thought so and still does. But it is not a new idea and it is certainly NOT NEW TO PLAINFIELD. There have probably been half a dozen starts at getting a COPS program up and running over the past dozen or so years. The merchants love it. The citizens love it. Shoppers love it. The cops PT knows who took part thought it was a good program. But each time the program eventually sputtered out. Why?

Money. It costs money to run an operation like this. Either the Administration budgets for it out of the operating budget or it tries to do it with grants.

This time it's being done with grants -- a UEZ grant, to be specific. Eighty percent of the approximately $360,000 annual cost cited by the City is being funded by UEZ monies, according to Jacques Howard, assistant director of economic development.

There are two things to note about such a strategy for funding.

First is that funds for UEZ projects are available for the community on a DECLINING BASIS over the 15-year life of the UEZ designation. So, if kept in place and with an annual increment to the cost based on generally rising costs of government, we will have an INCREASING COST ON A DECLINING RESOURCE. Sooner or later, Peter will have to pay Paul -- that is, either other UEZ expenditures will suffer or the City will have to kick in more out of the general operating budget. So, unless there is a LONG-RANGE PLAN for funding the program, its future is already problematic.

Secondly, using UEZ funds for the payment of salaries or purchasing of equipment, while allowed, runs counter to BEST PRACTICES in the field of Urban Enterprise Zones generally, of which New Jersey's are only one example.

All municipalities are tempted to use the sugar in the bowl to sweeten the daily cup of coffee and Plainfield is certainly not alone in this regard.

However, New Jersey's best-run UEZ has taken another (and in PT's humble opinion, better) path -- devoting UEZ funds to developing a revolving loan fund for business development, including recruiting new businesses, improvements and expansion to existing businesses, and business retention programs. In the case of this UEZ, Vineland, it now has a revolving loan fund in excess of $50M, solely under its control (no Trenton review and approval) and is going gangbusters. They didn't get there overnight, it took years. But, as a once-famous Chinese leader remarked years ago, "a journey of twenty thousand miles begins with the first step."

Plainfield's current tactic will mean the sugar bowl will eventually be empty, with no more to come, and the City will be faced with funding programs like COPS entirely on its own or abandoning them altogether.

Let's enjoy the improvement COPS will bring while we have it, but unless the Administration offers a viable long-range plan, we should understand COPS is -- again -- destined to garner a few headlines and then quietly slip away. Whether or not the merchants want it. Or the residents. Or shoppers. Or even the cops themselves.


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Courier whacks Plainfield again?

(Photo, Courier News)

On Sunday, the Courier ran a long front-page story on a renewed community-oriented policing (C.O.P.S.) push by the City, using UEZ monies (see "City hopes police patrols draw business").

The gist of the story is that -- once again -- Plainfield is making a push for cop-on-the-beat policing in its two major business districts, Downtown and South Avenue. Merchants are quoted as saying that business traffic suffers because "there is this idea that Plainfield is unsafe," again an old story.

What caught PT's attention was the photo the Courier used to illustrate the story (see above). What was on the editor's mind?

To begin with, the photo is quite at odds with PT's experience of downtown as far as SHOPPING goes.

Plainfield's downtown -- where almost all of the foot traffic is -- is FULL of shoppers during regular store hours. In fact, PT went out Sunday afternoon to check it out. There was not a parking spot to be found between Madison and Roosevelt Avenues, or on Park Avenue from North Plainfield to the railroad tracks, nor on North Avenue! The area was full of families shopping, women pushing strollers with little ones, and modishly attired teens -- all bundled against the freezing weather. The Supremo and Twin City parking lots were jammed with Sunday shoppers with the usual chaotic situation near the exits as people loaded their groceries into their vehicles. Oh, and did I mention men?

Yes, there are men downtown shopping. But these are not the men in the photo. The men in the Courier photo appear to be mostly daylaborers waiting for work near the McDonald's at Front and Madison.

Two things need to be pointed out --

First, the photographer used a telephoto lens, which flattens the depth of field. Behind the lamppost in the left foreground is the fencing in front of McDonalds (at Madison Avenue). The building at the rear of the photo (with the rows of second floor windows) is at the corner of Park and East Front -- perhaps 800 to 1000 feet away. The effect is to compress everything in between as if it were occurring in a very shallow space -- making the people look like they were a crowd when they were actually spaced out in little clusters many feet apart from each other. And the people appear to be all men, which may be typical of the space in front of McDonalds at a certain time of the morning, but is NOT reflective of the downtown shopping experience generally.

Second, in PT's opinion, using a photo like this to illsutrate a 'shopping' story sends a subliminal message that if you come to Plainfield to shop you are going to have to run what appears to be a gauntlet of men. The photo is like a TAT test -- using a vague but provocative image capable of having a 'story' made up to explain it depending on the viewer's emotional state. So, if you're already fearful of shopping in Plainfield, this photo would tend to reinforce that fearfulness rather than challenge it, as PT sees it.

Far more effective, in PT's humble opinion, would be to use a photo that would induce a feeling of cognitive dissonance in the viewer -- in which the subject matter portrayed challenged an emotion (fear) or misconception (unsafe conditions) about downtown Plainfield possibly held by the viewer. Such a photo would NOT have to be FALSE -- that is, staged à la Leni Riefenstahl -- but just a photo of ACTUAL SHOPPERS. Which, to PT, would be the HONEST thing to do.

Go read the Courier story again and look at the picture again. If you feel like making a comment on the story, why not check out PT's post of last week on how to use the Courier's new StoryChat feature (see "Join the Courier moshpit") and go back to the story and make a comment for all the world to see.

Meanwhile, PT has more thoughts on the COPS initiative, but that will be another post.


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The City's PMUA mess

'Houston Plainfield, we have a problem.' Well, maybe not Plainfield, but the Administration appears to. Again.

You will recall PT muttering last week (Counting to five) that it didn't seem like there should be TWO appointments to full seats on the PMUA board coming up, as Bernice had earlier noted in the Plaintalker.

Well it kept after me just because it seemed so ASYMMETRICAL it didn't make any sense. So PT started to check it out.

First up -- the ordinance passed by the City in September 1995. Below is a scan of the section pertaining to membership (I have merged the portion on the overleaf into one image). Click on any image to enlarge it or check the links at the end of the article to full-size scans posted on the archive blog.



You will note that is quite sketchy, but elsewhere in the ordinance it does refer to the State statute which allows for the setting up of county and municipal utilities authorities. Since the City ordinance doesn't explain how the terms are to be laid out, PT turned hopefully to the State statute.

What a shock he got!

Not only does the statute specify that there will be five full members, it specifies that they will serve 5-year terms and specifically outlines a process whereby it is guaranteed that ONE, AND ONLY ONE, will be appointed to a FULL five-year term in February of each year. (Of course, if a seat falls vacant it is filled FOR THE REMAINDER OF THAT SEAT'S TERM.)

Check it out yourself here --



But that's not all. Guess who does the appointing? It would appear from the language -- and I read it aloud several times -- that it is NOT the Mayor, but the GOVERNING BODY that makes the appointments. (It seems it IS the Mayor only if the form of government is that of a TOWNSHIP, else it is the governing body. Plainfield is, of course, not a Township, but a City -- with a special charter.)

But wait! There's more! The next page contained another shocker, regarding the ALTERNATE MEMBERS.



Two are allowed, again apparently APPOINTED BY THE GOVERNING BODY. But there appears to be an additional wrinkle -- their terms are for FIVE YEARS, and not TWO as Plainfield's ordinance would have it.

Now, PT is not a lawyer, but the plain English of the statute -- and I was always told State statute takes precedence over local ordinances -- suggests that Plainfield has a real mess on its hands in the way it has gone about these appointments.

PT hopes that the Council will be concerned as well, and will get to the bottom of the matter before taking any action on the PMUA appointments.

With President Bush sending our young men and women to die in a war that has as a goal bringing respect for the law to the citizens of that unfortunate land, it hardly seems appropriate that Plainfield should be less concerned about respecting the laws here at home.

---

Full page printable scans of the State statute and the relevant section of the City's ordinance can be found here.

The State statutes are on the State Legislature's website, and the link to this particular statute is here.

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Something for Super Bowl Sunday

It's Super Bowl Sunday. Have you got your cold cuts and beer?

Steve Nease, The Oakville (Ont.) Beaver

See you tomorrow!


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Join the Courier moshpit!

PT noticed a while back that the COURIER has begun to include a feature they call STORYCHAT on its online stories. But it doesn't seem to be getting any attention, as far as I can tell -- at least for the stories I check out.

But when I noticed on an Asbury Park Press story (a sister publication of the Courier's) a large number of comments, it occurred to PT what we are all missing out on. See the APP example below.




Comments on an APP story.

This is different from the posing and lurking that goes on over at the LEDGER forum -- which is discussion-thread based. The Courier's is story-based, so all the comments appear at the end of the story. This is similar to the way the big dogs do it -- for instance, the Washington Post.

Getting started is quite simple. PT will walk you through, using my own signup as an example. Remember, you can click on any image to enlarge it.

First, at the bottom of any story where you see the logo, simply click on the POST A COMMENT phrase.




Step 1.


The Register or Log-on window.

Here is where you start the sign-up process.

Step 2.


The Terms of Use.

You must indicate that you are over the age of 13 and that you agree to the Terms of Use.


Step 3.


Registration Necessities.

Designate a USERNAME (this will display on your comments), supply your bona fide email address, and create a password. You must type in the characters in the human-verify box just as you see them -- including uppercase or lowercase. This last step prevents automated 'bots' from registering as if they were humans and then posting Viagra ads, etc., to the comments pages.

Step 4.


Registration Niceties and Preferences.

The first box gives you an opportunity to provide other means for other readers to contact you. You do NOT need to give any of this information if you do not wish to. The second box is preferences -- some of which you may choose and some which are set by the Courier as defaults.

Step 5.


The account creation response message.

Once you have submitted your account information, you will see this box. It lets you know that to finally activate your account, you must click on a link in an email that you will shortly receive.

Step 6.


The confirmation email.

The confirmation email shows your username and password and a link to activate your account. Do TWO things: 1) Click the link to activate your account, 2) SAVE the email in case you need to refer to your username and password in the future.

Step 7.


The account activation box.

Once you click on the link in your email, you will be taken to this page acknowledging your account is active and you can start posting comments to any story.

That's all there is to it. Sign up and get busy. At last, there's no excuse for not expressing your opinion about the Courier's coverage of your favorite news -- local, state or otherwise. And you don't have to take the chances your Letter to the Editor may never see the light of day.


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This Internet rumor is true

PT gets at least one email every couple of days circulating another Internet rumor. You know, the kind where you have to scroll down for twenty feet past all the lists of people who have simply hit 'Forward' without stripping out any of the previous lists of names.

Anyway, one came this week that is -- guess what! -- TRUE (thank you, CA!).

It concerns a one-time REFUNDABLE TAX CREDIT on your 2006 return (the one you file this year) for the Federal Excise Tax that has always been on your monthly phone bill.

Seems that tax was enacted by Congress to help pay for the Spanish-American War -- that's 1898 for those who may have forgotten.

It was an EXCISE TAX -- originally based on INTERSTATE telephone calls, collected by the telephone company from users and forwarded to the IRS quarterly. Theoretically, at least in the early days, the wealthy paid more (on the assumption they were more likely to make more calls and over longer distances) than working-class families, among whom telephones in individual homes were not common until the 1940s.

The tax has actually lapsed and been reinstated several times in its history. The current tax comes from a 1932 Act designed to help cover a Federal deficit owing to the precipitous decline in income taxes as a result of the Great Depression. It has been reauthorized 29 times since then, and in 1941 was extended to LOCAL telephone service, becoming at that time a tax on both the DISTANCE and the LENGTH of the call.

(This helps explain why you always saw not only the LOCATION called, but the LENGTH of the call, and led -- indirectly -- to the development of regional calling areas, the foundation of today's AREA CODES. There is a delicious irony in that -- with the development of wireless and cell phones -- Area Codes are no longer bound to geographic areas.)

When phone companies began to offer FLAT-RATE calling plans, in which the charge was NOT CALCULATED ON DISTANCE OR LENGTH OF CALL, change was in the wind.

Challenges to the excise tax ended up in the courts in several jurisdictions, and the IRS finally cried 'Uncle'.

The tax should have disappeared from your phone bill in October 2006.

AND the IRS has agreed to this one-time credit WHICH YOU MUST CLAIM WITH A SPECIAL FORM on your 2006 return. It will not be given at any other time.

To find out how to file for your refund and how much it might be, go to this helpful article on Snopes.com.

And enjoy a little justice. Your great-grandparents would be glad to know the Spanish-American War was finally paid for.


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It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your pols are?

It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your pols are? Chances are they're on their way to the train station for the 11:35 AM departure. Of the annual Walk to Washington, that is.

Today is the great rolling schmoozathon -- the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce's jam-packed drinkathon-on-wheels to DC for...? More drinks, and dinner with our Congressional delegation.

Some wags say that while the pols get lit, it is the public that gets railroaded. We'll just have to see.


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'Raise more hell'

Molly Ivins

Molly Ivins has left us.

Both richer, for all that she wrote about and fought for, and poorer, because her pen will write no more.

Molly Ivins, the razor-witted, language-bending political columnist from Texas who lampooned pols and their antics from her perch in Austin, lost her last bout with breast cancer yesterday.

PT has mentioned her from time to time and pointed readers toward some of her columns. She has been an inspiration to me for years.

Houston-born, from a rock-ribbed Republican family, like her mother and grandmother she became Smith-educated. Molly got her journalism degree at Columbia. Her first gig was in Minneapolis, and then the Texas Observer. When she made her way to the NY Times, everyone knew their heavy editing would mean she would eventually move on.

And she did. She found her voice wisecracking the powerful to account and standing up for the common folk of Texas and the whole country, and back to Texas she went.

She was generous to a fault, donating her book royalties and shamelessly using her fame and connections to raise money for the Texas Observer, the muckraking journal that keeps a lamp of LBJ-style populism flickering in the land of DeLay.

Her style carried over into her fight against breast cancer, and can be seen in the piece she wrote for the website of Inflammatory Breast Cancer Survivors --

"Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that."

Here are a couple more quotes that give the flavor of her point of view --

"I don’t care who anyone in politics is screwing in private, as long as they’re not screwing the public."

"The first rule of holes: When you're in one, stop digging."

"Good thing we’ve still got politics—the finest form of free entertainment ever invented."

We will miss you, Molly I., and we will remember you by doing what you thought was best -- raising more hell.

---

Her last two columns --

"Iraq Exit is Up to Us" (January 8, 2007)

"The president of the United States does not have the sense God gave a duck -- so it's up to us. You and me, Bubba."

"Stand up against the Surge" (January 11, 2007)

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'"

Obituaries --

The Texas Observer -- or go here if their server is too slow

Creators Syndicate Tribute -- Molly's column was syndicated in more than 400 papers

Houston Chronicle, New York Times and Washington Post

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QuadTech: That extra page - sloppiness? or fraud?

Today, PT will look more closely at the ACTUAL DOCUMENTS submitted to the City for clues to sloppiness or, worse, fraud.

But first, let's review. What we have learned so far is that this project was the Mayor's initiative, and that QuadTech would provide a methodology and tools to implement the Mayor's vision.

Fair enough. To be thorough, PT slogged his way through both the City's RFP (47 pages) and QuadTech's proposal (52 pages). No, make that 53 pages.

Reaching the end of the proposal packet, PT thought he had gotten the pages out of order, as the page after page 52 (the last page) was page 47.

Going back, however, he found there ALREADY WAS A PAGE 47 in the packet. So, the copy machine just generated a second copy of the page? Happens sometimes. If so, why was it at the END of the packet and not RIGHT AFTER THE FIRST COPY?

Why indeed. Upon closer inspection, the signatures on the two page 47s DO NOT APPEAR TO BE THE SAME. Take a look for yourself --



This is a scan of the signature on page 47 in the packet.



This is a scan of the signature on the 'extra' page 47 at the end of the packet.

See what I mean? Now, the second, extra, page appears to be on the same stationery as all the others in the packet and is NOT a fax. Is it the signature of a City employee? A QuadTech employee? Was it the ORIGINAL SUBMISSION, and was the CORRECT SIGNATURE submitted to the City AFTER THE BID PACKAGE WAS OPENED?

If so, that would be a violation of the public bidding law. There is to be no 'FIXING' of the contents once they are submitted, sealed, in the bid process.

All of this caused PT to go over other pages with signatures more closely. ALL THE OTHER PAGES appear to bear a signature identical with that on the page 47 that is in sequence.


Scan of signature on the Non-Collusion Affidavit page.



Scan of signature on the Mandatory Affirmative Action Compliance statement.

But wait, SOMETHING ELSE caught PT's eye. The signature on page 46, the Non-Collusion Affidavit -- meant to prevent BID-RIGGING, requires NOTARIZATION. Curiously, this item is dated as notarized on September 5th, the due date for the proposal, while other items in the packet attest a September 1st date.

Notaries public perform a valuable function in many legal processes, particularly in affirmations that the person signing the document is who she says she is. PT's personal experience includes hundreds of real estate transactions where contracts and mortgage applications had to be notarized, as well as petitions for public office, in which the individual petitions need to be notarized.


Scan of signature space of the "Notary" on the Non-Collusion Affidavit.

In no case did PT ever see a notary fail to include the JURAT, which identifies the jurisdiction granting the notary's commission and that the person who appeared before the notary affirmed the truth of their statement or identity.

Curiously, the notarization of the Non-Collusion Affidavit here contains no JURAT, just an indication of an expiration date. Also, curiously, there is no signature for the notary, only a PRINTED name. So we CANNOT CONCLUDE from it by what authority the person who signed as Notary Public was allowed to do so, nor by what jurisdiction, nor even that they are a bona fide Notary Public. A fatal flaw? Evidently not in Plainfield.

So, are we witnessing sloppiness in violation of the statutes? Or fraud?

Let's hope the Prosecutor, to whom this matter evidently has been referred, got to see ALL the pages.


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