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More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com I spent so much time dealing with the Oakland Parking ticket and tow situation that I lost time working and some sleep too. Today was the day I caught up with work, but frankly I'm totally overwhelmed. I'm also not looking forward to returning to the Oakland Parking office but I'll have to bite that bullet I suppose. I've got an occupational life beyond any one blog; it includes my simulation games for the classroom and the work I do for clients in building new media platforms for them. So if someone reading this - it's on a bunch of my blogs - wants a small-expense pay internship learning and doing blogging, vlogging, and new media in general, drop me an email and a resume. Ideally I'm looking to restart my "SBS Personalities" program of bloggers but expand it to my Zennie.62 blog network, so up to five people will work. If you want to ge...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com I happened on this YouTube video where famous intellectual, author, and spokesperson on the media and politics Noam Chomsky talks about right-wing media during a recent visit to San Francisco's Commonwealth Club. I've always felt Chomsky had his pulse on the zeitgeist of what's wrong in America. My favorite was his take on mainstream media , and while it was over a decade ago, it still applies today in a way. For example, he wrote: The elite media set a framework within which others operate. If you are watching the Associated Press, who grind out a constant flow of news, in the mid-afternoon it breaks and there is something that comes along every day that says "Notice to Editors: Tomorrow’s New York Times is going to have the following stories on the front page." The point of that is, if you’re an editor of a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio and you don’t...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com As the SF Chronicle's Henry Lee explains , Oakland's City Auditor Courtney Ruby officially tells us what some Oaklanders have always known: that the City of Oakland's hiring practices in the 5,500-employee organization have the "appearance of favoritism". I didn't need a report to support what I've seen and experienced in the past and the present , but I'm glad it's released. Let's take a closer look. The report, which you can download with a click on this link to the Oakland City Auditor's website , was prepared for Ruby's office by the Sacramento consulting firm of Sjoberg and Evashenk. The 123-page document is not kind to the City of Oakland, and Oaklanders should be concerned with what the comprehensive report reveals. Here's just a taste of what the Oakland City Auditor's report states: 1. People were promoted ...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com This week for me in the City of Oakland has been one in hell. First, some housekeeping: for anyone who came to see my experimental Oakland talk show at the Lake Chalet , I'm sorry for not being there Wednesday as I was dealing with this City of Oakland issue far longer than I expected to. I'm going to do it again on Friday at 4 PM. It's one thing to deal with tickets, but quite another to learn that if you pay the California DMV , the City of Oakland will not honor that payment for Oakland tickets if your car was towed. I also learned that its common for Oaklanders to "double pay" - that is pay the DMV first, but then be arm-twisted into paying the City of Oakland for the same set of tickets already paid for at the DMV ! Got that? And while the City of Oakland says it will pay you back, it takes almost a year to do, when it's done! In other w...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com Oakland Local 's something Susan Mernit has talked about and worked on for the better part of 2009. It's a comprehensive blog in a kind of " DailyKos -style". Now, after a lot of blood sweat and tears, it's done and has gone live this week. Welcome to Oakland, Oakland Local!

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com  DMV: Where's the Money? I just returned from another really harrowing experience with the California Department of Motor Vehicles office on Claremont Avenue in Oakland . Between this and the taxi cab issue, and the Oakland parking problem , anti-car forces should not complain about California not charging enough to operate a car. In fact I've determined that many of them don't own cars; no bumming rides from me in the future, OK? I think God's putting me through this just to shine a good media light on these problems.  So be it.  To that end, I got the email of the director George Valverde which I will not share, the DMV Twitter accoun t, and his Twitter account, which I will share: @GVCADMV . George Valverde Mr. Valverde to date has been helpful in directing my emails, though we've not talked as of this writing, but it's these revelations belo...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com UPDATE: Do you know where your DMV Money goes? What happened to me on Sunday October 18th should not happen to anyone in Oakland, or anywhere. I was just going to go into San Francisco to catch up with my friend who was finishing the Nike Women's Marathon.  I called "Friendly Cab" to take me from my place near Lake Merritt in Oakland to 19th Street BART Station in downtown Oakland. I was in a hurry to get there as it was around 3 PM, so even though its just about a mile away I figured cabbing it, as they say, was faster. So the cab - car number 236 - showed up as I was standing out there early.  Well, what happed was the cab driver activated this automated call system that says "Welcome to DDS; your cab has arrived."   Well I went out to meet the vehicle and there was no cab for a solid four minutes of time.  Then he rounded the corner. I go...