aid – Baghdad By The Bay

November 18, 2013December 18, 2021

Batkid Vs. The “Supervisor”

Pow! Zing! Bam! The Batkid managed to bring San Francisco together for the first time in a long time. Little Miles Scott did what no other fair or government sponsored event has done. He battled all the foes face to face except for one who hid behind his Twitter account — Eric Mar.

Oh dear. Maybe Eric was having a bad day or something, but seriously? Why the need to take a dump on a little kids day that moved the entire city? If you missed it and I doubt you did, Eric Mar posted a tweet that quickly turned viral and got everyone talking:

“Waiting for Miles the Batkid and wondering how many 1000s of SF kids living off SNAP/FoodStamps could have been fed from the $$.”

OK, at least he’s admitting to being there to grab a little bit of the spot light. He might even have been standing near Miles smiling as he sent the dastardly tweet out to all of his followers. Not so odd is that the tweet has been removed from his feed as if in these modern days of the internet anything you say won’t be archive and held against you at a later date [oh dear, did I really post that in 1994?] Here is an actually screen grab of said tweet:

Uhm, did someone say open mouth and insert foot? Batkid’s day was provided to Miles and the City of San Francisco by a private foundation known as the Make-A-Wish foundation. Miles has leukemia which is remission which is awesome in my book and the fact that Make-A-Wish put something together for Miles that also benefitted the City by helping boost the morale of everyone is a great thing that was much sorely needed.

Last time I checked government didn’t have to power to tell a privately held company what it could and could not do or how to operate. If Eric Mar wants more money to go to SNAP then it would be nice if he would step up to the plate and donate his yearly salary to SNAP instead of telling some other company to do it.

Oh wait, Eric Mar agrees that he can’t tell a private corporation how to operate. I found this little bit about Eric Mar Vs. The Happy Meal from not too long ago:

Is there really enough room in your mouth for both of your feet? While I will agree with Eric Mar that families on food stamps/EBT/SNAP aren’t able to properly feed themselves and their kids, if that’s really such a big deal then you should have found another venue than to bring it up instead of stealing the day from a little kid with leukemia.

Miles is a great kid from what I can see and he’s a fighter to have gotten to where he is today and hopefully when he gets older because of youtube and vimeo he’ll have something to look back on and he can just smile and say, I did a good thing.

Cheers to Miles Scott and the Make-A-Wish foundation for giving the City something to get behind for once.

May 15, 2013December 18, 2021

Mikaela Renee Lynch

Sometimes you get your heartstrings pulled in not a good way. Last Friday my daughter’s class attended the Special Olympics at Kezar Stadium. As I’m sure most of you are aware, my daughter is autistic. While we were waiting for her turn to perform we were all sitting and waiting with the kids just getting more and more excited having to sit still and not getting to run around like kids want to do. Sitting next to me was a girl who is all over the news right now — Mikaela Renee Lynch.

She attends my daughter’s school and is autistic like my daughter. She always has an aid with her because she can’t function on her own and like many autistic children and will take the first chance she gets to run off and explore. Mikaela, like my daughter is a curious little girl. She doesn’t run off like most kids, she runs off because she might see something she wants to take a closer look at. Parents of autistic kids know this and understand that you have to keep an eye on your children at all times and even turning your head for a second means you can lose them momentarily.

Well, this is a worst case scenario in that Mikaela wasn’t lost momentarily, they’re still looking for her. The information coming in while up to the minute hasn’t had enough time to be processed yet so no one really knows what is happening. What I do know is this, Special Ed teachers and aids from her school have gone up to help find her because they know her and she knows them which might help. While Mikaela likes water, it looks like there is now video footage of her away from the creek which is good. Most kids don’t learn how to swim early enough in my book, and autistic kids have a harder time understanding the concept of swimming. Add to this that we’re talking about a creek with running water that can be up to 11 feet deep and not a bathtub in a secure location makes it even scarier. So I’m glad that they don’t think she went into the creek.

The down side to this is that it is now Wednesday and she went missing on Sunday. Even for a non-autistic child that’s a long time. Where is she is what we all want to know. Reports have said that Mikaela has the mental state of a one year old. While that’s a convenient starting point there’s more to her than that. She’s ridden horses. She knows she loves peanut butter and crackers. She can walk and run. She can run very fast too. While I’m no expert I have noticed that autistic children tend to be rather strong and seeing as Mikaela is built like my daughter only older and bigger she’s a lot of work to keep from running if she doesn’t want to go along with it. Aids have switched off watching her because she can tire a person out quickly. This isn’t a bad side so much as it is just the way some autistic children are wired. When you hear the word autistic, don’t think retarded. While there is some developmental delay in some autistic children it’s not the same thing as metal retardation. Speech is frequently a problem with autistic children and when they do start to speak they tend to have problems enunciating words so as a parent or someone who works with autistic children have to learn a new language to communicate with them. My daughter is six and doesn’t know how to swear, but she needed something to say when she was upset and so she mutters, bugga-digga. That’s her swear word she invented to express herself. We don’t really know what that means to her, but we understand the context.

Unfortunately context is something that is being left out in many of the reports. If you’ve never been around an autistic child you aren’t able to see these things. While Mikaela is non-verbal there are little ways she uses to express herself. She flaps her arms wildly when she’s excited like many autistic kids. She falls to the ground when she’s tired of being held to get away, not because she can’t stand. There are lots of people out there trying to find Mikaela and I hope that they find her soon. She’s a sweet little girl that needs help and I hope for the best for all of those who are out looking for her.

UPDATE: It is with a heavy heart that I have to report the following information received from the Clearlake Police Department:

Clearlake Police Chief Craig Clausen has confirmed that the body of nine year old Mikaela Lynch has been found in Cache Creek about forty five minutes ago.

The family did not offer a statement and has asked that everyone respect their privacy at this time.

October 18, 2011December 18, 2021

An Answer to Prop 13

Many people [including #SFMayor candidates] who haven’t owned a home for more than 10 years are against Proposition 13 that capped property taxes for home owners in California and took money from the schools. There are lots of people who want it repealed either because either they don’t like the the fact that people who have owned homes for a long time don’t have to pay as much taxes as new homeowners or because they’re parents with kids that see them suffering in the school system. I think I’ve come up with an answer and I hope at least one person besides myself will forward this on the our Governor Jerry Brown.

I have a friend who lives in New York and his mother recently died leaving him with a house in upstate New York. It’s not a big house, two bedrooms I believe, but it’s on 12 acres of property. He pays $8000 per year in property taxes and he asked me when we were talking recently how much I paid in school taxes. School taxes? I don’t pay school taxes. He pays $4000 per year in taxes used solely to benefit their schools. This started my mind thinking and as I usually do I started to run the numbers. Here’s the formula if California started collecting taxes for schools and I’m going easy on y’all. I’m rounding down numbers.

California has a population of 38,000,000 people [rounded down]. The median income adjusted for cost of living is $44,000 per year [rounded down]. If California charged every person a 1/2% tax off the top before everything else was taken out of their paychecks that would give the State of California 7,357,000,00 per year just for the schools [amount adjusted for 12% unemployment]. For those who have trouble reading numbers that is 7.357 billion dollars per year. There are 9324 public schools within California. I’ll let the private schools fend for themselves since they charge parents to send their kids there. If you divide the income by the number of public schools each school would receive $789,000 per year [rounded down]. Think about what the schools could do with that money.

Say I’m Joe SixPack who wants to be able to make $250,000 per year without getting taxed too much. If you were making that much per year how bad would it hurt to lose $24 per week when you’re bringing in $4800 per week [rounded down]? California is the 8th largest economy in the world. Don’t you think we could put into effect a tiny tax that would help our schools immensely? I know I am simplifying the allocation of funds incorrectly as say Los Angeles County has more students than say Bell County, but still, it would better serve our students educational needs.

If you pull Prop 13 it won’t drop prices on homes in California. We’re called the Golden State for a reason. Everyone wants to come here. If anything it might actually raise the property taxes for new home buyers and that new income isn’t guaranteed to go to the schools. It would probably go into more pork barrel politics where the politicians are trying to get the biggest piece of pork out of the barrel [yes that is where the term comes from for you young whippersnappers]. If we had what I call a polite tax to benefit our schools, no one would go hungry for it. Schools wouldn’t have to keep asking parents to purchase supplies and our own state and local governments wouldn’t have to worry about why our great state has schools that are in such need and cannot supply a decent education to our children.

PLEASE! I urge you to think about this and pass this article along to your friends, neighbors and especially politicians. I know I am going to. We might just change the quality of education in our state and step forward to show other states how to do it right. We are the most populous state in the Union so we should be able to convince everyone regardless of part that a polite tax like this would help give California the leading edge in education it needs. Besides, it will also mean that everyone you interact with at the businesses you interact with will be better educated.

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