Cleanin’ out my closet: Detroit edition

[A couple of links out of the D to brighten your Friday]

IF A GOOD THING EXISTS IN DETROIT, AND THE CITY GOVERNMENT DOESN’T ACTIVELY TRY TO KILL IT, DOES IT REALLY EXIST?  The New York Times’s Mark Bittman gets excited about Detroit’s urban gardens:

But after spending some time here, I saw an alternative view of Detroit: a model for self-reliance and growth. Because while the lifeblood of Venice comes from outsiders, Detroit residents are looking within. They’d welcome help, but they’re not counting on it. Rather, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, they’re turning from seeing things as they are and asking, “Why?” to dreaming how they might be and wondering, “Why not?”

Food is central. Justice, security, a sense of community, and more intelligent land use have become integral to the food system. Here, local food isn’t just hip, it’s a unifying factor not only among African-Americans and whites but between them. Food is an issue on which it seems everyone can agree, and this is a lesson for all of us.

And City Hall seems to be snuffing it out:

Detroit residents say they’re frustrated with the city’s “Garden Permit” process. The permits, which do not include a permit fee, are supposed to allow residents to garden on city-owned lots in their neighborhood, provided they don’t build on or otherwise alter the site…

Riet Schumack organizes the Brightmoor Youth Garden program. She says the rules are counter-intuitive, and more stringent than previous regulations.

"There’s always been certain rules,” said Schumack. “In the past, they’ve made perfect sense. But now they’ve added these four or five specific points. One of them is you can’t sell off of a lot. We produced something like 120,000 pounds of produce that was sold in the city, that was grown in Detroit. So now, we can’t do that anymore?”

The permit forbids adding or removing soil from lots. That rule creates challenges for anyone trying to garden on a brownfield site in an industrial city once populated by nearly two million people.

I’m probably a little more skeptical about the transformative powers of these gardens than Bittman, but I still think they’re a positive force in a city that has far too few.  And I do think the people of Detroit could probably accomplish some wonderful things if the peons in City Hall would just stop strangling everything. 

BONUS:  Radley Balko covers the Detroit suburbs getting in on the fun!

THE GREATEST LINE EVER:  The opening paragraphs of this story on college freshmen returning home for the summer made me spit my coffee:

Steve and Cheryl Perkins of Detroit knew that college would bring a change in their 19-year-old daughter, Haille.

But they didn't realize how much.

"She's come back home with whole new ideas, holistic eating, green living to save the environment," says Steve Perkins, whose daughter came home from Spelman College in early May. "She expects everyone in the family to suddenly and automatically embrace this. So she wants me to trade in my pickup truck for a Prius. What part of her 6-foot-5-inch, 280-pound daddy does she think would fit into a Prius?"

Isn’t that just the college experience in a nutshell?

CHOKE IT.  CHOKE IT UNTIL IT IS DEAD:  I made my first DC food truck run the other week, and it was fantastic.  I’ve been searching for good BBQ food here in DC for six months, and the stuff I got for $10 off the side of a truck was the best I’ve had so far.  Farragut Friday is a weekly quasi-holiday, as dozens of food trucks draw thousands of hungry folks to Farragut Square. 

Meanwhile, in Detroit:

Jeff Aquilina and partner Justin Kava — chef veterans of Matt Prentice's restaurant operations — were inspired by effusive magazine articles, like one in Time last year, that described how gourmet street food sold from mobile trucks had become a multimillion-dollar business in Los Angeles. But when they revved up their $60,000 kitchen on wheels on the streets last month, they soon discovered that "innovation" and "entrepreneurship" in Metro Detroit were empty words when it came to selling fried pickles ("frickles") and a Southwest brisket taco served in a crisp won-ton shell with yellow tomato salsa for $6.95.

Licensed by Wayne County, eager to pay fees and follow rules, the pair quickly hit a wall of regulations and resistance, including Detroit ordinances that essentially ban mobile food operations from anywhere near the downtown stadiums or central business district.

"They're basically not allowed anywhere," says Chris Gulock, a staff member now drafting a new ordinance for the city's planning commission.

The rules prohibit even a fully inspected and licensed restaurant on wheels from public and private property in Detroit, as the law has been interpreted.

Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus:  If it’s a good thing, kill it with fire.

Yes, I’m going here

[As is usually the case with these things, I was more interested in the reaction to the Casey Anthony verdict than in the actual case itself.  I really didn’t want to write on it.  But it involved criminal law (cuz I’m a lawyer!) and my opinions seemed to be outside the mainstream.  And that’s all it takes to become blog-worthy.  So these will be the first and last words I will ever write on this subject.  In numbered, random thought format (12 of them! One for each juror!)].

A shot of my Facebook news feed moments after the verdict was read

1)  The difference in opinion between men and woman – and lawyers and non-lawyers – was incredible.  The lawyers I know basically said, “I saw this coming.”  The women picked up the proverbial pitchforks.  Proving, once again, that women hate women. 

2)  On that note, I’d like to welcome all my female friends back to reality.  How were you all able to take all that time off work to spend a month and a half down in Orlando watching the trial?

3)  Please stop with the “Casey Anthony is going to spend less time in jail than [somebody who was convicted of a crime].”  We know this.  This is because she was not convicted of a crime.  Also, it might not even be true – she’s spent 3 years in jail.  That’s longer than Kwame. 

4)  Lawyers: How long would it have taken you to strike every woman from that jury pool during voir dire?  Five seconds?  Three seconds?  This case was won during jury selection.  (Yes, I know the jury was gender-balanced). 

5)  More substantively, I'm not sure how is a "perversion" of the justice system.  The standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt."  That standard has been around for a couple hundred years.  It was deliberately chosen because we decided, as a nation, that in the inevitable clash between guilt and innocence, we would err on the side of caution.  The standard is not, "probably," or "I don’t like her face," or "is a terrible mother," and as much as you would like it to be one of those right now, you would not want to live in a country where the standard was that flexible.  This is not Project Runway.  If anything, this was a validation of our justice system. 

6) Speaking of perversions of the justice system, the flood of angry tweets and statuses in the minutes after the verdict was read reminded me of that one time we experienced a real miscarriage of justice.  Or, you know, the last couple hundred.  Or not.

7)  Seriously though, the ease with which people screamed for this woman’s head – literally, as she probably would have received the death penalty if convicted – without being privy to any substantial amount of evidence makes my head hurt.  You are literally calling for somebody to die based on stuff you heard from Nancy Grace.  That is sick.  The Ancient Romans think you’re barbaric. 

8)  Speaking of Nancy Grace, I’m not touching that.  But Brian Dickerson of the Detroit Free Press already smoked her.   

9)  Despite all that, I do understand some of the venom – at least if you spent more than 10 minutes following the case.  But for the people who paid as much attention as anybody else, this case wasn’t even close.  The jury deliberated for 11 hours...but only found Anthony guilty on four counts of lying to a police officer.  This wasn’t exactly a “12 Angry Men” situation.  I don’t necessarily trust anybody else on this planet, but I will put a little more stock in the opinions of people who watched every day of this trial in person than those of people who caught bits and pieces between episodes of Pawn Stars (to paraphrase a friend).  That, more than anything else, makes me pause before calling for blood. 

10) Speaking of, how on earth is it a crime to lie to a cop?  That would be like a hooker prosecuting you for paying for sex.

11)  I guess, in the end, I get the emotional reaction.  I get the “she’s a terrible mom” and “she probably killed her kid,” and the anger over the fact that she’s not going to prison.  But man…we’re really trying to stay away from the mob justice system around here.  And when we start pretending that we want one, bad things happen.  When twelve people who watched every minute of this trial decide without much hesitation that the state had not proved its case, and we sit around and say, “You don’t know squat.  She should die” based on snippets we picked up on the evening news, that’s not good.  We designed this system with the explicit knowledge that something like this could happen.  There’s no sense in blowing a gasket when it functions exactly as planned, no matter how unsettling that result may be. 

12)  If I even have a point here (not sure I do), it’s this: It’s a little irresponsible (and a bit crazy) to be calling for somebody’s death based on so little knowledge of a case, especially when the people present seem to have no doubt that the burden of proof was not met.  The trial lasted over a month with I don’t know how many witnesses. But, given the time these examinations usually last, every time you read something like, “Witness X said Y,” you are literally missing about 99% of what that witness actually said.  And condemning somebody to death based on an incomplete understanding of the case and your personal burden of proof is not a justice system.  It’s a recipe for disaster. 

 

And that’s all I have to say about that.  At least until somebody calls me a baby killer in the comments. 

Cleanin’ Out My Closet: DC Edition

[Cleaning out the link backlog from the past couple months.  Here are a couple interesting links brought to you by our overlords in Washington, DC.]

BANANA REPUBLIC: IT’S NOT JUST A STORE, IT’S A WAY OF LIFE: The longer I live in DC, the more I realize it is just like Detroit, except we have the ability to force everybody else in the country to buy our exports which makes the entire DC area richer than holy hell.  In the ongoing Walmart saga, DC’s own Kwame Kilpatrick, Mayor Vincent Gray, is gettin all bribe-y on us:

D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray delivered an ultimatum in a face-to-face meeting with Wal-Mart officials at a real estate convention here Monday: If the chain wants to enter the District at all, it had better commit to opening at Skyland Shopping Center, the long-delayed redevelopment project in Gray’s home ward that he considers the most important development project in the city…

“They’re interested in developing four stores,” the mayor said in an interview after the meeting. “All of us said, ‘What about a fifth store?’ They hemmed and hawed, and it ultimately came down to — you have a choice. You can do five stores or you can do no stores.”

Half of me wants Walmart just to publicly say “screw it, we’re going somewhere else.”  But the District could use this type of retailer.  Instead, this happened:

Wal-Mart and its charitable foundation are giving $25 million to support summer programs for youths across the country, including $665,000 in grants for school nutrition, jobs and learning programs in the District.

Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) is expected to announce the local funding Thursday morning in a news conference at a Columbia Heights recreation center.

Which…good for Walmart.  And the District.  Really.  But the manner in which this is going down has to make you a little uneasy.  I’m sure Grey won’t be having a news conference to announce all the jobs and money that don’t materialize in DC because various businesses say, “screw it, it’s not worth our time or effort.”

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE BURRITOS:  From “The Hill is Home,” a local blog covering events in the Capitol Hill area of DC, a sad tale of the eternal quest to get a Burrito: 

The other hot item was a request from Chipotle for a special exemption to open a location on the 400 block of 8th Street SE.  There is currently a ban on new fast food restaurants in the area, although exemptions have been granted in other areas.  The big issue raised was that fast food restaurants are a large contributor to the abundance of trash on that block of Barracks Row.  In addition, the existing national chains have rarely contributed to neighborhood events, joined neighborhood business associations, and have been fairly unresponsive to requests to help improve trash and loitering issues on the block.  The ANC asked that Chipotle would work with neighborhood groups such as Barracks Row Main Street, and asked how they would address recent criticism about their hiring processes.  Deliveries and trash pickup, which need to come through the front of the restaurant, was another concern, which representatives from the chain promised to work with the neighborhood to ensure that the hours would be best in line to address neighborhood concerns.

The commission determined that there was not enough time to thoroughly discuss the concerns with Chipotle, so the decision will be held until July.  In the meantime, the ANC and neighbors will meet with representatives from the restaurant to see what agreements can be reached and to allow the restaurant to work on bringing a case for why they should be granted an exemption.

I have so many questions here.  How does a fast food restaurant “contribute to the abundance of trash”?  Do you mean the restaurant dumps trash in the street?  Do the employees throw garbage on the sidewalk?  Or do you mean that some of the patrons of fast food restaurants are slobs, and therefore, we’re going to take it out on Chipolte?  And what on earth does “fairly unresponsive to requests to help improve trash and loitering issues on the block” mean?  Do you want them to engage in community trash pickups?  Should the guys filling burritos at Chipolte be obligated to go outside and clean up the street for one hour a day?  And how would you like Chipolte to help out with “loitering’ issues.  Yell at people standing outside the store?  What does this even mean?

Of course, I know exactly what this means, and you might as well.  Grosse Pointe has a ban on fast food restaurants as well, and I suspect both bans are in place for similar reasons.

Anyway, the last sentence is just perfect.  You want to sell burritos to people who want to eat burritos?  You better be prepared to "bring a case.”  Ahhh, freedom!

TAKE IT EASY, RAY.  WHY DON’T YOU STOP TALKING FOR A WHILE:  On a list of my least favorite government figures – a very, very long list – Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood comes in near the very top.  This guy just does not shut the hell up about anything.  And apparently, he and one of his minions are “challenging” everybody:

The government's top safety regulator warned that he will challenge unsafe infotainment technologies that try to convert automobiles into smartphones on wheels.

"I'm just putting everyone on notice. A car is not a mobile device," David Strickland, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, told about 200 people at the Telematics Detroit 2011 conference in Novi. "I'm not in the business of helping people tweet better. I'm not in the business of helping people post on Facebook better."

Strickland and his boss, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, have challenged automakers, suppliers, wireless providers and software developers that minimizing driver distraction must be a priority as drivers are offered more information services in their vehicles.

This article is one of those regulator-meets-crappy-journalist to produce some half-assed case for why we need to be protected.  The next paragraph notes that “33,000 people died in traffic accidents in the U.S. And 995 of those fatal accidents involved someone using a cell phone while driving.” 

For starters, nobody in the damn article even mentions “cell phones.”  The concern is apparently over “unsafe infotainment technologies,” although the author fails to actually define that phrase anywhere in the piece. 

But more importantly, simply Googling the NHTSA’s own crash statistics reveals that this fatality number is the lowest it has been in seventeen years.  So as our cars have become more like smartphones, and more cars have popped up on our roads, the fatality rate in auto accidents has been falling.  Fatalities per 100 million miles traveled have dropped from 1.73 in 1994 to 1.13 in 2009.  Fatalities per 100,000 population have dropped from 15.64 to 11.01. 

I’m sure there’s a fantastic reason why this Freep reporter seemingly failed to Google anything of relevance in this article.  But I’m not holding my breath to find out.

DON’T BITE THE HIPSTER HANDS THAT FEED YOU: These regulators better be careful.  You can beat up on Exxonmobil and Boeing and Walmart, because those companies suck.  But once you start messing with PBR, you’re going to have some angry hipsters on your hands:

Two advertising executives on Wednesday reached a settlement with securities regulators over a Web site that purported to raise $300 million via ”crowdsourcing” on Facebook and Twitter to buy Pabst Brewing Co., the maker of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Lone Star, Colt 45 and other beers.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Michael Migliozzi II and Brian William Flatow agreed to a cease-and-desist order after they allegedly failed to register their offering before seeking to sell shares to the public. They did so without admitting or denying wrongdoing.

Another fun fact: According to DC Law, PBR is the only non-craft brew allowed to be sold on H St. NE.  I have no idea if that’s true, but it might as well be.