or, “Why I didn’t post anything today.“

So, someone stole my car yesterday or the day before.  Not a huge deal in and of itself.  It’s a cheap car, and I’m not that attached to it.  The thieves took it from street parking near my house, and dumped it in someone’s driveway across town, where DPT promptly (and rightfully) towed it yesterday morning.

When I realized the car was gone this afternoon (hey, I don’t drive every day), I made my first mistake.  Instead of calling the police to report the car stolen, I called Auto Return, the San Francisco impound yard.  They had the car.  Then I made my second mistake.  I went out the door without a book, thinking I could file the police report and challenge the tow after I got my car out and stopped the clock on the storage fees.

Not so much.  You have to file the police report before you pay off the impound lot or you can’t challenge the tow.  The impound people send me down the street to SFPD’s South Station (I’m still pretty chipper at this point).  The police at South Station sent me back to the impound lot and had me call the non-emergency dispatch.  The non-emergency dispatch sent me back to South Station, where they had me sit down until a very nice officer came out to tell me that dispatch had been wrong and that I needed to go back down the street to Auto Return and wait for an officer to come look at the car and decide whether the tow fees (around $250 at this point) will be waived.

So, I do.  This was my third (and biggest) mistake.

I wait for about three hours, with no police officer, and no way to know when they’ll get there.  The non-emergency dispatcher, when called said it could be  hours.  (I am far less chipper at this point, and am struggling not to be flat-out rude.)  (Remember, I have nothing to do except wait, and I can’t really leave, in case the police officer shows up.)  And did I mention that there’s no bathroom at Auto Return?  At some point in those 3 hours, as much to relieve the boredom as for any other reason, I ask Auto Return if I can see the car.  It’s got some joyride detritus in it, but it starts fine and it’s drivable. 

So I go back to South Station, where there’s apparently been a shift change in the last 3 hours, and ask them if there’s anything they can do.  There’s apparently nothing that they can do w/r/t the police report from inside the station.  (And they seem puzzled that I was told that I should wait for an officer.)  The new shift offers me a piece of paper with the information on it about how to challenge the adminstrative fee portion (and maybe the illegal parking ticket) of the tow, if I come back the next day during business hours. 

It’s not worth it.  I can’t lose another day to this kafkaesque farce.  I’ve now been told three different things about how to handle this situation, I have no way of knowing which of them is correct, and I need my car.  I tell the officer as nicely as I am able that the paper should go to some one who will use it, and that I’ll just go eat the fees.

So I walk back to Auto Return, pony up the $250, and resign myself to paying the $75 ticket for illegal parking.  I can’t challenge the tow, and I can’t challenge the ticket, since there’s no police report.

I’m not even pissed at the thief any more.  I’m pissed at the city.  The thief was a thief.  People suck.  But the city?  Can’t even get its act together to tell me the same story three times in a row on how to handle the theft of a car which winds up in impound.  That happens how many times a week?

I know that I was trying to report a property crime in which the property had been recovered.  I get that it’s the lowest possible priority. Still, if it’s the official policy of the SFPD that I should just be happy I got my car back, and that the tow fees and ticket is just a thief-triggered tax on having a car in the city*, then just tell me that when I ask, and I’ll add that to the taxes I already pay — maybe it could be made deductable from state and federal taxes.  Don’t make me cool my heels waiting for an officer who may never come.  I’d rather just know that’s the deal.

I know that this is a small thing, but it’s interactions like this that really frame how people feel about their government, right or wrong.  Even if the SFPD had just told me candidly that they didn’t have the resources to get anyone there that day, I would have been happier than I was with “Can’t promise anything, but wait, and someone will be there.”  I should note as well that as the afternoon progressed, I was probably the least polite of any of the players involved in this farce.  And that is of course a character flaw on my part.

*I don’t want to hear piety about not having a car in San Francisco.  If I could swing it, I would.  But for a variety of reasons, I need a car.

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Old Clark, Immigration (but you have to say it with an Austrian accent), Policy Day, some Dems go without, Doolittle, a couple events, Issue 1 of The Daily Roach, money, and some nice photos.

• The Big Dog has a video of a Wes Clark speech from 2005 up at his shop. It’s not news at the moment, but Wes Clark is clearly a contender for 2008, so have a look.
• Frank Russo at California Progress Report explains why immigration is so very scary for our favorite Austrian immigrant. I haven’t done the research, but I wonder if Governor Schwarzenegger was ever out of status — that would have made him a felon under the House immigration bill (Some speculation here). Oh, and look! The President! With a Mexican Flag! It’s just a symbol, but if people want to blow it up into something more, let’s party.
• Alliance for a Better California notes that the two main Democratic candidates for Governor took a break from sniping at each other and introduced some policy proposals. Sweet!
• Ament Stone of California (Who I believe is our “Nathaniel, Burbank native”) posts a diary at MyDD which notes that a fair number of California House Democrats won’t have Republican challengers this year.
• Words Have Power notes that the company John Doolittle keeps seems to be moving prisonward, and leads us to a Houston Chronicle piece explaining how some of that came about.
• Dump Doolittle tells us that Julie Doolittle seems to have worked for a lot of companies attached to current and soon-to-be jailbirds. Nite Swimming continues to do a great job picking up letters to the editor from angry Doolittle constituents.
• Also from Dump Doolittle, there’s gonna be a get-together, with lots of NorCal Democratic candidates on April 10 in Sacramento.
• The Democratic Daily has the text of the letter from Senators Boxer and Feinstein to the Bush Administration, requesting that the Bush Administration stop stepping on the states’ efforts to reduce emissions. Equal billing this time.
• San Diego Politics reports on the reporting on Eric Roach’s “newspaper” mailer. The comments are a hoot.
• Bill Bradley’s doing the money and advertising horse race in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. On the subject of money and the horserace, the California Observer has a great find from the Stockton Record on the extent to which there really aren’t any small donors in California campaigns.
• Marc Cooper notes that the Minutemen seem to be losing steam by the, er, minute. Again, the comments are priceless.
• Left in SF tells us of a Barbara Lee fundraiser in the Transamerica Pyramid on April 10. Click through, then put the pun down, and back away slowly.
• Last, it looks like janinsanfran got out of the city last weekend and took some nice pictures between showers.

California News Roundup on the flip. Teasers: Peter Schrag on California, Pelosi profiled, Schwarzenegger profiled, voter registration, Dean, salmon, emissions regulation, insurance, and of course, lots of immigration.

Not Immigration

• Shorter Peter Schrag: California is just very confused. Discuss at the California Progress Report.
• The Chron has the first in a three-part profile of Nancy Pelosi. This installment, at least, is very pro-Pelosi, and pro-machine.
• The LA Times profiles Schwarzenegger. I don’t have any idea what to make of the profile, except that I’m sure I would never want to work for this guy.
• Voter registration is still hosed, requiring registrars to manually confirm hundreds and sometimes thousands of new registrations in time for the June primary (and in CA-50, by April 11).
• Ballot Watch Graphic from the SacBee on the race to replace Steve Westly as State Controller.
• Capitol Roundup from the Merc / CC Times, showing what they thought was important in state politics last week. Oddly, that doesn’t include the minimum wage bills under debate.
• Two different views on Howard Dean’s recent visit to the area: one from the AP, focusing on his statements on immigration, and one directly from the local reporter focusing on the Asian-American Democrats’ conference.
• California steps up with emissions regulations to try to slow global warming. Of course, business interests want it ignored handled at the federal level. The Bush Administration apparently agrees, and is attempting to override both the EPA and state regulations with adminstrative rulemaking by the Transportation Department. Federalism and deference to the legislative branch are core principles of the Republican Party. No, seriously. Stop laughing. Stop it.
• Great piece from the San Francisco Chronicle laying out the constituencies affected by Klamath River damming and water usage decisions, and why now is the time that perhaps past mistakes destroying the salmon fishery can be rectified.
• The Sacramento Bee reports on a privacy screwup by the California State Employment Development Department. Before all y’all anti-government types get twisted up, though, the EDD’s screwup pales beside corporate screwups.
• Last, one of my hobbyhorses: setting auto insurance rates based on driving record, not zip code.

Immigration

• Gregory Rodriguez’s LA Times Op-Ed provides some additional context on the issue of Mexican immigration. Seriously, this is a complicated question, and there’s going to be a lot of “more context” stuff.
• A SacBee piece “analyzing” the effect of the immigration discussion on the California gubernatorial race. And by “analyzing”, I mean turning mostly to political consultants for each major party to criticize the other side’s approach.
• A series of pieces from New America Media about the interaction between black Americans and immigrants. I might read them slightly out of chronological order: (1) Straight Reporting, (2) Earl Ofari Hutchison (3) The Black Commentator / Bruce Dixon, and (4) The Black Commentator / Bruce Dixon again.
• Everybody running for CA-11 against Richard Pombo is more sane on immigration than he is. One finds this article as well, profiling the more nativist of the Republicans in California’s U.S. Representatives. Frankly, my head just spins when I hear Republicans from the House talk about “rule of law”.
• New polling says that in California, immigration is a partisan issue. Nationwide, not so much.

Today’s Blog Roundup features entries from the last couple days. Teasers: CDC Council, ABC vs. BRT, minimum wage, health insurance, recent governor’s race polling, lots of CA-11 coverage, emission regulation, and immigration.

• The California Democratic Council just finished their convention, and they have a slate of endorsements. How they got missed on our blogroll / resources list is beyond me. Mea culpa.
• Alliance for a Better California does a little chest-beating over the recent ruling concerning the California Recovery Team’s campaign finance violation. It’s cool. One should be allowed to celebrate victory. In related news, ABC responds to the Republican whinging about ABC Chair Joe Nunez’s appointment to the State Board of Education and the continuing action by ABC with respect to CRT’s campaign finance violations. What were the Republicans expecting, exactly? Did they think that Schwarzenegger was buying Nunez off?
• Frank Russo of California Progress Report places in context the Governor vs. Legislature blame game and polling results.
• Randy Bayne posting at ABC discusses PPIC’s polling on Schwarzenegger’s “likability” quotient. Julia Rosen at the same shop compares the PPIC poll to another poll this week from Zogby.
• California Progress Report on the fundamental justice of inflation-indexing the California minimum wage. Schwarzenegger and the Republicans of course want to make this a continuing political football, rather than just doing the right thing for working people.
• Say No To Pombo has a discussion of the significance (or insignificance) of the presence of Pete McCloskey at recent Latino immigration rallies, and the absence of the Democratic candidates. PomboWatch has its own contribution to that conversation. There’s also an interesting post at SNTP about expanding the environmentalist base through outreach to the reasonable religious.
• SNTP also has a beef with some of the uncritical coverage of Richard Pombo’s creative relationship to the truth. Pombo Watch explores Richard Pombo’s creative relationship to science and the truth.
• Not a blog, exactly, but the NorCal Young Dems Action Caucus is planning a voter registration drive in CA-11.
• The CA-11 Blog posts an interview with Steve Filson on last year’s bankrupcty bill. CA-11 supports Filson, so don’t look to that source for a similar interview with McNerney.
• San Diego Politics does a rundown on the finances of the candidates for the CA-50 special election. Lot of self-funded Republicans there — it’s like a vanity press for revanchist political aspirants. La Prensa has apparently endorsed Busby and her sane immigration policy. Watch the Republicans lose their minds.
• nyceve at My Left Wing has a diary up about California Blue Cross running a “retroactive review department” to cancel health insurance for people who get sick. Nice. Single payer, single payer, single payer.
• Marc Cooper republishes an email from a reader of his. It’s not really pro or con on any of the various immigration proposals. It’s just really interesting.
• The Democratic Daily reports on the California Senators’ request that the EPA allow California to set its own auto emission standards. Dem Daily is a pretty heavily DLC shop — they only give Feinstein props in the headline or the lead paragraph (where they add Republican Olympia Snowe), even though both Boxer and Feinstein (and 18 other Senators) signed the letter to the EPA. So, it’s good to read to understand that part of the party.
• Old Hickory holds forth on nativism and the Mexican flag. Bouphonia reminds us of some earlier immigration concerns, which were also entirely justifiable and based on nothing but respect for the law. And Hoffmania reminds us that most of us are immigrants without proper permission — after you check that post, you should know that I’ve seen “conservative” commenters saying that Native Americans have no cause for complaint, since they didn’t have a shared language or official immigration law. Ah, principle is a fine thing.
• D-Day points out that most business don’t even try to determine the immigration status of their workers, and the government (currently run by Republicans, remember) doesn’t seem all that interested in pressing the question.

California News Roundup is on the flip. It’s brief — quarter-end is a drag. Teasers: Shwarzenegger team campaign finance violations, blogs in CA-50, solar power, salmon, Filson interviewed, Pombo too extreme for other Republicans, anti-government group loses in court, research to be done on CA schools. There’s immigration news, but nothing all that new, so not in the roundup today.

• ABC spanks Arnold for campaign finance violations in the failed Special Election power grab.
• CQ Politics has coverage on the blogs’ effect on the CA-50 campaign, mostly around the Kaloogian photo fiasco.
• Lake Elsinore, in SoCal, goes live with big solar power project.
• CQ Politics interviews Steve Filson. One wonders if they’ll do Jerry McNerney next.
• Capitol Weekly has dueling environmental position pieces by the two main Democratic candidates for Governor: Angelides | Westly.
• A Santa Clara County Judge dismissed a case from an anti-government group trying to stop the voters from deciding on a sales tax adder in June.
• Richard Pombo’s intended gutting of the Endangered Species Act may be too radical for the Republicans in the Senate. They’re scared of even touching the subject because of what he’d do in conference committee.
• There’s gonna be a big ol’ pile of reports on the California school system sometime around the end of the year. One hopes that they will be both nonpartisan and informative.
• Klamath salmon get some help going home to spawn: fish ladders. Closure of the fishery still looms, though.
• San Jose is hosting a conference for Asian-American and Indo-American Democratic leaders. This is a good thing.

On the flip, one will find the Californa Blog Roundup for today, if one is so inclined. Teasers: Absolute disaster with McPherson voter registration database, Reiner resigns, CA-50 polling and Busby immmigration policy, Arnold’s new consultants and their classiness, lots of immigration, a little Doolittle, Some CA-2 and CA-11, Kid Oakland, and a good lawyer.

• State Senator (and candidate for Secretary of State) Debra Bowen responds to the godawful voter registration database problems in Bruce McPherson’s Election Division — 43% new voters rejected in LA County, 26% statewide. Simply unacceptable. Seems to me that this kind of thing is a good argument for a change in the Secretary of State. The Brad Blog has a good explanation of how it happened and exactly how insane it is.
• The California Observer breaks the news that Rob Reiner resigned from the California Children and Families Commission. Arnold still digs Reiner, though.
• Chris Bowers of the mighty MyDD has a look at the latest Survey USA poll in CA-50. Francine Busby seems to have a surprisingly large plurality. San Diego Politics reports that Move On is mobilizing for Busby. Also, they’ve got a report of Kaloogian’s weak weak response to the photo fiasco.
• Down With Tyranny points us to Francine Busby’s immigration proposal, which sounds, well, sane. That’s a nice change from the Republican House, at least.
• Alliance for a Better California has more on the Schwarzenegger consultants, who are clearly from the Bush-Rove school of campaigning. Unsurprisingly, Matthew Dowd sees no distinction between the Schwarzenegger campaign and the California government. This is a core insight of the Rove-driven Republican Party, which we are now seeing replicated in California.
• As Seen from Just Above Sunset excerpts a great piece from an author in New Mexico concerning what it is to be American and Latino.
• Leftcoast at Best of the Blogs argues for an official language as consistent with liberal values. Mark Kleiman makes a similar argument, and throws in some reference to the Know-Nothings and Mickey Kaus as a nice historical context. History may not repeat itself exactly, but it does tend to rhyme.
• Jeanne D’Arc from Body and Soul thinks that the official language idea is not so good. Beautifully written, as always.
• Marc Cooper continues his series on immigration, illegal and otherwise, with a personal story. The comments are fun too. Bill Bradley makes several appearances, as does Mark York.
• left i on the news: it’s funny because it’s true.
• Nite Swimming continues the series on John Doolittle’s money-laundering through his helpmeet. Is a shame lobotomy mandatory, or just recommended, in order to become a Republican House member?
• John Drzal of NorCal Progressive has a profile of the Democratic candidate for CA-2, running against Wally Herger.
• PomboWatch wants to know wny Richard Pombo, head of the House Resource Committee, never did anything for the piñeros.
• I was sure the CA-33 blog was dead, but its proprietor has reported on a Culver City Council race. Click through, and show him some love and encouragement.
• Bouphonia has the funniest response to the Kaloogian photo fiasco I’ve yet seen.
• Kid Oakland finds this century disappointing, at least so far.
• Lies.com has a great story in which some lawyers do some good. I’ve met the Fenwick partner who went to bat for the blogger in this story, and by all accounts he’s a good guy. I’m glad to see him using his skill set this way.