There was a pattern. San Francisco's fires ires were often in residential hotels. Most of these were owned by a green stick pinned German fellow--i.e., in this case an obvious Nazi, yellow was also big. The majority of residential hotel tenants were slow moving at best. The frail and evicted, many after decades of residence, tended to die within two months, according to the Grey Panthers who worked with the help of Graduate students in Gerontology at San Francisco State University. My housemate was studying the death rate of San Francisco Elders
Many such hotels were within running distance of our flat and my Jewish Housemate took off on foot one night when the sirens shrieked loud--a big fire in a nearby 8 story older complex.
People were jumping. A woman in an advanced state of pregnancy landed on the sidewalk near him from 8 stories up. Some who had jumped were being packaged
for drop off at the Coroner's. About 250 people burned alive that night, a few on the lower floors survived to leave a yawning pit with a high fence--that's how I remember the number--someone got over the fence and wrote "Two hundred and fifty people died here."
When Jerry Brown was elected Mayor of Oakland he'd been campaigning on downtown revitalization. After his election I called Wendell Harper, a Black Naval Veteran of the Pacifica Newsroom, I said I'd be at Jerry Brown's Door the next morning with anything the station had on the Gubernatorial Immolations If I could get there, and with stats on premature deaths from relocation.
The Seniors and down on their luck people in Oakland, I feared,were about to suffer the same fate, from fire or death from eviction, or relocation to a "higher facility" in a town where they knew
No-one as had happened in California State had when he was Governor. The Grey Panthers estimated that 100,000 people died as a result of fire or of forced relocation. The Elders who were not forcibly moved seldom died.
Without an electable alternative I will go on voting for dubious Democrats. All would have been outside the possibility of dialogue with a Republican, and I believe in Collective Responsibility. We watch our Democrats, and grudges are not what they are on the other side of the aisle--vindictiveness less often takes root and so a certain transparency prevents more secrecy and double dealing.
It matters whether 250 frail and elderly die after an eviction from longstanding residence hotel, as compared to hotels which did not suffer Ellis Act Evictions, or some higher number die from greedy gutless insurance companies with negligent, poor wiring in older buildings all at once and the German slumlords' buildings going up almost at once and very much for profit.
Who uttered the upscale saw "What's good for business is Good for America."?
If that is so, who is America? Many of us don't meet the current requisites for
equality before the law. A line item veto could be enacted to hold over questionable provisions of Obama Care, and I know of no more likely time to pass it.
So how will JB do as Attorney General of the "Late Great State of California?"
A great person to administer the decriminalization of Marijuana and get
those guilty only of Marijuana and other status crimes (meaning acts that are penalized only because of a statute) out of our prison system, which is already at double or upward capacity. All of this is, in my view, could reverse the wave of criminalization of everything that is sweeping the World.
Jerry the onetime Jesuit and son of the one time Governor Pat Brown's promising
son has hubris, a fatal flaw, a blind spot. His hubris will become apparent to those who have not examined closely Jerry Brown in Office before. People who have pain that is off the 1 to 10 pain scale--there is a 10-20 scale named after it's developer,
and people whose pain chronic, severe longstanding and irremediable pain have probably never received adequate pain management. Some have severe pain after
everything medicine can do.
Some have responsibilities, or are journalists. Journalists who are tweeting madly because we have had Iranian friends, Caregivers, spouses and children and feel that this is the time to release the Conservative mullahs' Basiji and Revolutionary Guard's totalitarian regime's strangle hold in Iran, non-violently as much as can be managed
I haven't slept in two days. NOT the time for purple prose.mSearing cement pinned me to the bed and I was weak, unable to fight gravity for hours at a time. The pain was once partly manageable and managed--and no news of the elusive MJ Co-ops.
My Infectious Disease Doctor has moved to the troubled state health system and it doesn't look like they will replace him. A remaining doctor is actively hostile to the disabled and frail in the county. Rents are extreme and we get $890 in SSI unless disabilities began long after you started working at a well paying job. You get a bedsitter for that in California now. We lost our rent control in 1998. That's the difference between dubious Democrats and Republicans in the USA.
You have to sign up with a COOP and with a regular Doctor by September the 15th, and there is a freeze on changing California HMO's on the same date in some or all Counties or HMO's--the news is scant about how to do this.
I have had an autoimmune disease for 47 years. Within a few days
there will be drama, desperation--boredom and humiliation. The
new Clinic Doctor has no training in infectious or chronic disease.
For now a reprive--I'm bobbing along in the sea of red and green--
wondering who and how many people will die because I may not be
able to work tomorrow or for an uncertain, indeterminable length
of time. It takes a lot of Meds to lull the slow savage beast that is
CFDD/Myalgic Encephelomyelis. Mary Jane's a strong girl, but
she does not come cheap and she can't do it all herself.
If you try to use her to allow continuance of academic or literary pursuits,
you may find that you are asleep before you get much done. No Humvees
or other heavy equipment, particularly while weaving among disarmed
non-combatants, not even in your dreams.
And then there is the problem of Iran...that one person out of perhaps thousands that would be alive if you had been there. So I'm going to post this and put on the sleep promoting self hypnoses videos and see if that doesn't help some. Sometimes it does--over the top provided and f-l-o-a-t g-e-ntly down, and re-l-a-x then deeper--for the moment nothing is important, you find it hard to resist, yes that's right,
forget the world--deeper, now deeper--but Iran? Deeper, now twice as deep ........
