Sermon on the 49 MUNI

San Francisco is a walker’s paradise, but after three consecutive days of logging 20,000+ steps, my dogs were tired. 

MUNI passport in hand, jumped onto the 49 bus headed to Mission & 21^st where my friends would meet me for dinner. I’m obsessed with punctuality; I left the hotel with ample time to spare. A traffic jam snarling Van Ness was not in my plan. Be stoic, I thought. It will clear up. But it didn’t. Not for a very long while anyway.

“We told you this would happen,” a man said in the front half of the bus. I could see him, but heard him continue, “Nobody would listen. ‘You’re just a bunch of dumb hippies.’ But we were right. There are too many of us. Gridlock! Chaos! Despair. Too many people; too bad no one listened to us dumb hippies.” 

People are human treasure. But looking at the frustrated faces of my fellow riders stuffed into this aluminum can, it was clear:  we are choking on our riches. Paul Ehrlich had the timing wrong, but he and this dumb hippie may have been right. 

Unabomber Does Not Fit Tylenol Murderer's Profile

I'm highly skeptical about today's news re:  the FBI seeking DNA samples from Ted Kaczynski, possibly connecting him to the unsolved Tylenol poisoning murders in 1982. Here's why...

1. Motive and modus operandi. The Unabomber targeted his victims, basing his actions on his own twisted moral code. The Tylenol killer's victims were the definition of random.

2. DNA revelations. Investigators have long said that they had no biological evidence connecting anyone to the crime. Has DNA technology advanced enough to uncover new evidence? The lack of specificity is troubling.

3. Does this mean James Lewis is no longer a suspect? Over the past few years, the FBI has raided the Cambridge, MA home of long-time suspect James Lewis, seizing computers and other materials. Later, Lewis, too, was asked to provide DNA samples. Yet nothing has come of any of that. And all court records related to those searches and seizures have been kept under seal by the courts. Or at least that was the case when I attempted to obtain the text of the search warrants issued.

4. How does this connect with the OTHER unsolved Tylenol murder? Investigators maintain their "one-guy" theory about the Chicago case. That someone took possession of capsules via retail stores, replaced the Tylenol with cyanide, then put the tampered Tylenol back on the shelves where it would later be purchased and consumed by unwitting victims. 

What if the tampering occurred somewhere else along the supply chain? Perhaps at the manufacturing facility? That theory received traction in 1986 when a young woman named Diane Elsroth died in Yonkers, New York, after consuming cyanide-laced Tylenol. Additional tampered boxes of Tylenol were discovered on store shelves subsequent to her death. 

It's all a bit strange. Like everything connected to this unsolved mystery.

Spotted: 434 W. 52nd Street

wonderful

genius

U.S. Banks: Serve More CoCo, Please

I like my financial advisor. I even trust the guy.

So when he called a month ago to see about adding more funds to my stocks portfolio, it pained me to say no.

Not because he's done a poor job managing my investments; he's kept me whole through the shattering economy.

"Nick, I won't give Wall Street more than the bare minimum. Not until I see actual change in how success gets measured and rewarded. If I fund the same old jackassitude, who's the real jackass? The one pouring the feedbag."

He didn't fight me on the point. We wondered if any bank would risk being the first-mover in restructuring compensation. Fast forward a few weeks and ding! We have a winner. Maybe.

Barclays Capital wants to issue contingent capital securities, or CoCos, as part of its compensation structure. According to Reuters Breakingviews, this is a good idea worthy of regulators' endorsement. I agree.

The CoCos pay a fixed return –8 percent annually, vested over three years - that would fall in value if the bank suffers big losses. So bankers would have an incentive to protect against losses, not just look for short-term hits of profit. Imagine that:  paid for long-term performance. Let's hope British authorities let Barclays have a go. And that the Yanks catch up and latch on.

Who Killed My Neighbor?

Someone murdered April Wagner and dumped her body beneath an exterior staircase behind St. Raphael’s Church on 41st St. – four blocks from my house. According to a New York Post police blotter column, a maintenance worker discovered her badly decomposed remains on August 18, 2009.

Did she die three days earlier or five? Did she die there, or did her killer shove her corpse into that shadowy spot? What caused her death:  stabbing, blunt force trauma, gunshot, strangulation, suffocation?

Who was this young redhead looking down her nose at me as I read the Crime Stoppers poster seeking information about her death?

I spotted several such posters around the Port Authority last fall. Each time I walked past April Wagner’s defiant face, I felt a chill crawl up my neck. No one cared about me when I was alive; no one is losing sleep over my homicide.

I wondered if April was right about that. Crime Stoppers and the NYPD printed posters; surely they wanted citizen-detectives like me to dig into this case and help solve it. Right?

The poster provided few clues. No cause of death, no information about April’s past, not even her age. Was she homeless? A sex worker? An addict? A Bon Jovi fan? A waitress? A mother? No answers.

Who was running this investigation? Tips could be dialed into a hotline, but who’s in charge? No names.

Around Thanksgiving last year, I decided to ask three officers who were sitting inside Empire Coffee, discussing a favorite cop-talk topic – retirement – that offered me a way into my topic:  jurisdiction.

“Gentlemen, who handles homicide cases in Hell’s Kitchen?”

Their spines straightened, jaws clenched. They wanted to know why I was asking. I told them about April. One explained how the area got jigsawed.

“We’re Port Authority Police. We handle cases inside the building and around its immediate perimeter. Midtown South handles some Hell’s Kitchen crime; 10th Precinct handles others. Where was the body found?”

I told them. They conferred, not entirely sure which unit would be in charge of the 41st Street and 10th Ave homicide. The superior officer said, “10th Precinct. Chelsea.” I thanked them; they didn’t appear thrilled with my interest in the intricacies of their profession.

I went to the 10th Precinct station soon after. The detective in charge of the Wagner case, Det. Barberra (phonetic spelling), was not in. Another detective listened to my questions and answered none. “It’s an active investigation; we can’t discuss specifics.”

“How are citizens supposed to help the police if the police won’t provide any information about the murder or the victim?”

“If you want to leave your card with me, I’ll give it to Detective Barberra.” I left my card; no one contacted me. Not a big surprise. When it comes to information, law enforcement largely remains a one-way street.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I appreciate police officers, I do. The NYPD saved my life a few years ago. I know how awesome cops can be. They could be even more effective if the system allowed citizens to better understand (and potentially solve) cases like April Wagner’s murder.

It can be done. I saw it being done in Greenville, South Carolina.

A poster taped up at the Greyhound bus station there outlined multiple cold case murder investigations, listing the victims’ ages, professions, cause of death, and other details (not many, but plenty) that reasonably inform the populace. The GPD Web site does the same and provides complete contact information for officers in charge of each case. Kudos to Chief Terri Wilfong and her team.

Unfortunately, the NYPD’s Web site does not publicize its cold cases. We can study mug shots and grainy video stills of its “Most Wanted” criminals; we cannot learn about cases that do not have suspects.

I tried.

In June 2010, I called the 10th Precinct to check the status of the April Wagner investigation. Detective Barberra was not in. Lieutenant Burgos told me the case was still open and that officers, “were speaking to some individuals to help us with it.”

I wanted to make one more attempt to learn at least April’s age and cause of death. I filed a request for her death certificate from the city health department, enclosing the $15.00 fee. On June 16, the city returned my check along with a form letter, a check mark in the box that says, “A death record is not a public record.”

By July 2010 most of April’s Crime Stoppers posters had been taken down. One remained stuck to the front window of Project Find, a homeless shelter across Ninth Avenue from the Port Authority. I called the Crime Stoppers number to see if I could obtain some posters. The operator said I would have to ask Detective Barberra to request posters on my behalf. I didn’t think that would be a good use of his time.

Sorry, April. You’ve been dead for over a year, and that’s still all I know about you.

Equivalency Exam: Soybeans and Labor

Strong societies form, grow and improve through capitalistic activity. Up to a point.  A point Western society passed 20 years ago with the Internet’s arrival.

We’re now one global economy, people.  Mourn the atavistic American Dream all you want, but crying won’t change a damn thing. (I’m sad, too. But I’m a capitalist who hates delusional thinking more than I fear change.)

Modern capitalism mystifies. Owning the means of production no longer puts you in charge of your economic destiny. Being a worker – whether unskilled or multi-degreed – puts your labor on the global market to be priced, diced and sliced as a commodity. It’s galling. It’s also reality. Many of us have yet to accept this fact.

I winced while reading the August 17 NYT story about union workers fighting wage cuts at the highly profitable Mott’s factory:

Tim Budd, a 24-year employee who belongs to the union’s bargaining team, said he was shocked by one thing the plant manager said during negotiations.
“He said we’re a commodity like soybeans and oil, and the price of commodities go up and down,” Mr. Budd recalled. “He said there are thousands of people in this area out of jobs, and they could hire any one of them for $14 an hour. It made me sick to have someone sit across the table and say I’m not worth the money I make.”

I empathize with and share Mr. Budd’s plight. But so does the lawyer whose practice competes with Mumbai attorneys; the North Carolina chocolate artist whose livelihood is threatened by one guy, Anthony Ward, who’s managed to corner the world cocoa market; the sick-making Mott manager whose job can end any time the Dr Pepper Snapple board decides to shutter his plant.

We are all at the mercy of this merciless system. I don’t see how individuals can win within its confines. And I don’t know what will happen next. Revolution? Maybe.

Or maybe we’re asking the wrong question.

Mr. Budd laments having his worth diminished via lowered wages. True, in economic terms. But what if we started asking ourselves about worth-metrics outside the capitalistic system? Could societies improve through people uniting to increase worth that cannot be measured in dollars? It’s difficult to wrap our brains around the concept, so entrenched are we in money-minded methodologies.

I believe we should try. If global capitalism is a game we cannot “win”, let’s find another. I’ll play if you will.

Southern Comfort

Inscription on an old federal building in Asheville, North Carolina.

Amen.