Category Archives: Politics and Culture

A Dog’s Death and a Company’s Responsibility

Politics and Culture, true story, , ,

The story of a dog left with a “trusted” sitter when his soldier owner was deployed, only to wind up abandoned and left to die by the sitter in the vehicle he’d stolen has become national news. A horror story and cautionary tale read by pet owners and dog lovers around the world as we all waited for news with diminishing hopes until the worst possible outcome was revealed.

The company Trusted Housesitters which “matched” the sitter and the soldier is cooperating with the police and has put out the usual corporate gibberish.

The sitter, Andrew Jansen is being sought by the police and was last seen apparently in Florida. Jansen didn’t “work” for Trusted Housesitters. Despite the name, THS is not a service but an exchange. Sitters exchange home and pet care for “unique home stays.: As a rule, no money passes hand between the parties.

So neither Jansen, nor the soldier were employed by THS. Both paid for “memberships.” Jansen as a sitter, and the soldier as a pet owner. Possibly a small “booking fee” was paid by either Jansen or the soldier or both. THS only recently started charging the fees and they are dependent on joining/renewal date and tier. It’s not clear what the fee actually covers, and it doesn’t seem to offer added protections for anyone.

What’s not being said in Trusted Housesitter’s statement is that they are in any way responsible for what happened. And maybe they aren’t legally although I would imagine that CEO Matthew Prior must be well aware of the recent US civil court case where a woman raped by an Uber driver brought suit against Uber and was awarded $8.6 million in dollars in damages. The driver didn’t technically work for Uber either, but the ride was booked through the app, and ultimately Uber was found responsible for the driver’s actions.

In the case of Trusted Housesitters homeowners are told to “vet” sitters, who apply to their “listings” but this wording is relatively recent. There aren’t a lot of guidelines offered on how. Sitters in most of the world go through an ID-verification process. In the US there is also a “criminal” background check though it’s unclear at least to most members what this encompasses and what it doesn’t. Convictions? Arrests? Apparently the sitter had many driving charges but it’s not clear if any were criminal or resulted in convictions. Maybe there is a level of convictions that still allows you to “pass” and get your membership? Who knows? If you look at the small print, the company isn’t “responsible” for anything that happens to either party or to the pets.

But wasn’t this Uber’s argument more or less? Drivers are independent operators paid by customers with Uber only taking a small cut acting as a middleman through its platform? Drivers don’t actually work for Uber in the conventional sense in this brave new “sharing” economy. There are ratings and reviews. If customers have issues they can bring them up or complain directly to the company. Similarly, THS has a rating system which if you pay attention to what’s publicly on the forums often involves both homeowners and sitters leaning over backwards to avoid mentioning anything short of the worst offenses lest they be scolded on the forums for being “petty” or receive a scathing public response from the person they reviewed. Homeowners know that writing a bad review could lead other sitters to avoid the site in the future since reviews are a big part of vetting.

I don’t have access to Jansen’s profile, but apparently he had 5-star reviews with no mention of any issues. If he had any problematic sits where homeowners decided not to review, the soldier would have had no way of knowing about them.

 I’ve been a member of THS for years. I signed up in late 2022 as a homeowner. In 2023, I upgraded to a “combined premium” membership allowing me to sit as well. It’s gone well. I’ve enjoyed hosting compassionate competent sitters in my home, and I’ve enjoyed free accommodations in Hudson Valley VRBO-ready homes, cities in the US like San Fransisco and Portland and even one time in a village in the south of France.

For me the “combo” has been a high-value asymmetrical home exchange. My Manhattan catsit  is considered a “highly desirable” one by THS standards. But clearly it doesn’t work out that well for everyone. Many homeowners find it difficult to find “free” sitters willing to stay in suburbs or take care of pets in need of extra care. Sitters vary. Some are part timers like me. Others are fully nomadic, and while most have steady income through remote jobs, passive income, retirement accounts etc, a large subset seem to be more sporadically employed, relying on sits for housing, and out there without a lot of support or resources when things go wrong.

Through the official forum and its feistier Reddit sister, I’ve become aware of numerous THS disasters: Indoor cats escaping through windows or doors never to be seen again. A dog drowned. Was it negligence by the sitter or should the homeowner have had a gate around the pool? We’ll never know because both parties seem to have signed NDAs in the settlement. And there was a story of some sitter who didn’t show up or maybe showed up once and decided not for me and two dogs starved to death. More recently a couple who somehow managed to join through another country so no background check and they burglarized their way through several California homes. Now this.

I get it. There are tens of thousands of sits going on throughout the world all the time. Things are going to go wrong somewhere. Maybe THS’s track record is better than Rovers. I know they’ve had incidents too. But I’m not a user of or sitter for Rover.  I’m feeling dirty somehow for my participation. I need to break my habit of giving helpful advice on the forum. I spent this morning looking up my history in case I said anything at any point to the soldier that could have encouraged him to make the fatal pick. I found that when he looked for help after his initial sitter cancelled just before his deployment, I flagged the thread and suggested that maybe given the circumstances THS could help him. I don’t know if they did or not but he confirmed a second sitter, and now the rest is history and tabloid news, and I wish I’d told him to do something else.

I am currently reading a sci-fi novel set in a future dystopia. The protagonist is a robot-valet who has killed his master for reasons he doesn’t remember or understand. He is programmed to want to be a valet and he seeks further employment hoping he can find something where killing only one master won’t be an issue. It’s an absurd premise because of course there is no acceptable murder quota. Just as there is no acceptable rape quota on Uber. But Uber was still found responsible and this despite taking many different kinds of actions to prevent rapes from happening once it became publicly clear that Uber-rapes were a thing.

It’s not clear that Trusted Housesitters will take any action to make sure that what happened to Maverick won’t happen again ever to any pet under the care of a Trustedhousesitter. It’s not clear what actions they could have taken in this issue, at least not publicly and not yet. 

It looks like the sitter  “passed” a criminal background check and had no problematic reviews had some kind of breakdown and did something terrible.  Some people are reporting the sitter had numerous driving infractions which presumably didn’t go into the report or maybe like murdering one’s employer in the novel I’m reading, didn’t count.

The soldier knew there was a problem when communication abruptly stopped. The soldier took action by getting in touch with his friends to find out what was happening. Police were involved early on.  But there is a lot we don’t know that isn’t public knowledge. What about all of the previous sits. Were there concerns people had that they didn’t tell anyone? Were there reviews not written that should have been? Or maybe there were concerns but the company did nothing.

So far we haven’t heard publicly from Trusted Housesitters CEO, Matthew Prior who is normally hands-on enough to feature himself in videos and post in the THS blog under his name.

Surely, this is a time for some public statements and internal discussions.  There are many changes in policy that might help in the future:

  • Videos to help homeowners to better vet sitters.
  • A change in norms around what information about sitters is offered to THS and what is shared with homeowners.
  • Some kind of crisis line for sitters that they agree to call if they become “afraid” on a sit or think they might be in danger.  (Some reports suggest Jansen was having a mental health crisis.)
  • Better tracking of sitter (and homeowner) cancellations and issues beyond the reviews to look for patterns that could indicate issues.
  • Post sit assessments that might be kept “private” in case homeowners or sitters have a bad feeling about something but are afraid to put it in a review.
  • Checking in with homeowners who don’t write reviews as this often happens when things go wrong but the homeowner is afraid writing a bad review will cause them problems.
  • Showing any sits “missing reviews” in a sitter’s history. This is not currently visible to homeowners. A sitter could have ten five star reviews and ten missing reviews, and the homeowner would have no way of knowing this.
  • Banning members who’ve had issues before those issues become tragedies.

    This particular case of course tugs on our heart strings because the soldier was called away to serve his country and was trying to do the best he could for his dog. This might be an issue beyond THS’s scope, one that local shelters could help with in providing temporary placement for instance. But THS could also take some responsibility, offering for instance, a special program free for military members or people involved in volunteer service who might not be able to run back home at the first sign of trouble, or might be suddenly deplory, or not be able to maintain regular  contact with the sitters. The company could offer extra support for those pet parents including maintaining contact with sitters or even replacing a sitter if there is an issue. THS itself could have even asked for help on the soldiers behalf from local shelters to see if they could arrange fostering until a great sitter could be found. This isn’t  even “altruistic” (a claim the CEO has made about the company on its website). The good publicity would have been a boon for THS, especially needed after they rolled out new fees and faced a backlash. 

    I don’t expect any of these changes to happen. The changes that have been happening seem to be geared toward bringing in more dollars quickly. New policies are announced that make things worse while members continue to complain about longstanding issues. Legacy members, including a great number of full-time sitters with consistently excellent reviews are leaving because of new fees and a changing culture. New members with less experience, and sometimes more desperation (housing insecurity in a time of scarcity) are joining.

    It’s a story happening in many sectors of the sharing or gig economy even though the non-monetary aspect would seem to place THS in a separate category. Based on some of the advertising, it’s beginning to look less my idea of an “asymmetrical home exchange with cute pets” and more like an ingenious scheme to provide housing for the desperate while they do low- wage sporadic remote work, and both sitters and homeowners pay the company for bringing them together in this wonderful mutually beneficial agreement.

    I hope I’m proven wrong soon by a message from the CEO along with announcements of serious changes to make the site  safer for sitters, homeowners and most importantly pets. Not holding my breath.

Murder on the Subway

death and dying, New York Stories, Politics and Culture, , , , ,

Honestly, I wasn’t going to write about this. I was going to write a post about the obvious fix that is needed to make the JFK Airtrain functional. But it’s insane now to write a post about first-world-problems — getting to and from the airport — while vigilantes are murdering homeless people on the trains.

So short and simple and with some links:

I challenge anyone reading eyewitness  reports of what happened on the train and looking at the photo of the chokehold to say that Neely wasn’t murdered. I’m not saying it was first degree murder, but the chokehold was wreckless, and any REASONABLE PERSON would know that. I say this as someone who is now often frightened on mass transit. The mass shooting in Brooklyn, and the more recent shooting of a single passenger — a man on his way to meet his brother for brunch —  are terrifying. Deaths caused by people pushed onto trains are terrifying. But you don’t react to fear by pouncing on an emotionally disturbed person with no gun, no knife, making no threat because he throws down a jacket, and then putting him a CHOKEHOLD which a reasonable person would know is deadly force. In photos it’s clear the marine was bigger than him and could have subdued him — not his job — without deadly force. Whatever his intent was, he was wreckless, and of course he should be charged.
Updating to add: Just found this, a statement by the alleged murderer’s lawyer: “Daniel never intended to harm Mr. Neely and could not have foreseen his untimely death,” the law firm of Raiser and Kenniff, P.C. said in a statement. “We hope that out of this awful tragedy will come a new commitment by our elected officials to address the mental health crisis on our streets and subways.”
Again, Man A puts man in a chokehold. Man B in chokehold passes out.  Man A continues to choke him.  A reasonable person would have foreseen the victim’s “untimely death.”  And yes, NYC prosecutors if you don’t overcharge, you will find a jury willing to convict on the evidence, and convicting a murderer is your job. Doing your job won’t cost you the election.
Updated to add:  Caught a NYTimes article contrasting the lives of the victim and his assailant. The mental health system (and other systems) failed Jordan Neely before his murder, but some of the failure wasn’t due to money or a need for “stronger” involuntary commitment laws. Some of the failure was simply the failure to track humans within the mental health and law enforcement system. There was a warrant for his arrest because he had left a program that he’d agreed to in court because of charges against him. He could have and should have been arrested and sent back to that program instead of simply being thrown out of the subway by cops — who didn’t check for warrants — weeks before.  Why didn’t the police check for warrants?
That failure will be exploited by his killer’s defense team  (if he’s ever charged) — as it should be because that is the defense team’s job. Ultimately, that failure didn’t cause Neely’s death,  but it is an example of one of many things that could have prevented the encounter from ever happening.
While I don’t think it is the job of NYPD to be psychiatrists or mental health workers, it is certainly their job when called in by mental health workers to CHECK FOR OUTSTANDING WARRANTS.

Random Thoughts: Serial novels, serial television and Is Dennis Franz still alive?

New York Stories, Politics and Culture, Theater, Movie, Event, Misci Reviews, true story, writing/blogging/publishing related, , , ,

This morning, I broke a mug. I had rearranged some spices on a shelf above the sink.  They were precariously balanced. Some bottles fell into the sink, smashing the mug.

I thought, “We can’t just keep buying more mugs.” I have some mugs I had made to promote Blood Diva, a near-porn, vampire, novel I self-published years ago, which didn’t exactly become the next big thing.  Those mugs are just sitting around.

Mugs, for sale! Books too!

My husband is off on an adventure, so I imagined explaining to him when he gets back, “Since we’re not using those mugs for anything, we might as well just replace broken ones with them!” He would say, “Oh honey!” in that way he does, which basically means, “You’re not a failure to me.” And it’s awesome I have that.

But then I asked myself: What on earth (aside from the MFA from Sarah Lawrence) made me think I could just hall off and publish my novel without a team of editors to tell me to change it? The arrogance!

And then I thought about how novels used to be written in olden times, and how it was probably easier to get published on account of not everyone in the world thought he or she could write a novel, and how a lot of the classics were serialized in newspapers. Besides the classics, there are probably a ton of long forgotten serials. I wonder how many were canceled and never completed because readers lost interest?

Was it like with network shows where if the ratings weren’t at a certain level pretty damn quick the editor would pull the plug? Did writers beg? Did they suddenly decide to kill someone off or have a heroine get kidnapped to add some spice?

Some of the classics were written as complete novels and broken up, but many (Count of Monte Cristo to name one) were actually written serially, with authors scrambling to get chapters in on time for the next publication. If a series was popular, the author was encouraged to keep it going and stretch it out, which is why some of these classics are very, very, long.

What did this mean for the stories? For one thing it meant that if the author killed off a character, and the audience got angry about it, there wasn’t much that could be done — unless of course the character had perished in a shipwreck or something and the body hadn’t been found. That may be why we find so many cases of “is he or isn’t he dead” in so many old novels. The writers were hedging their bets.

Working with these deadlines, I doubt authors — especially established ones — got too much interference from newspaper editors and publishers, who were probably relieved when an installment was in time, and didn’t get too involved in content.

It’s not like the process (these days) where, by the time a novel gets to publication, decisions have been made that may be very different from what the writer originally envisioned. Do the people pushing a writer for changes always know best? And best for whom? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Lisa Geneva, the author of Still Alice, initially self-published her bestseller about a professor with early onset Alzheimer’s. When it was picked up by an established publisher, she was forced to change the ending. She’s quoted as saying the new ending was the better one, but I wonder if there are good or even great novels that didn’t get published because authors were sure they knew best.  And sometimes a change might not be because it’s “better” but simply because someone feels it will sell better.

In any case, serialization meant that novels used to be more like the present day television series, which have become less episodic and more concerned with seasonal or series-long story “arcs”. The creators of the shows may know in advance where they want to go, but unforeseen factors along the way, including how well a story line plays, become important. Take the Jesse Pinkman character on Breaking Bad. He was supposed to be killed off during the first season, but Aaron Paul’s performance was so charismatic that they kept Jesse around and he became the moral center of the show. That character, and the audience’s reaction to him, changed how the show got to its endpoint. The show, however, retained that original elevator pitch, its creator’s vision of “turning Mr. Chips into Scarface.”

The minor character who wasn’t minor.

In the case of modern genre novels that are written as a series, you still have room for the audience/reader reaction to influence what comes next, but for a single “literary” novel, you don’t. The editors and others who help the author “craft” the book serve that purpose, not popular opinion.

And that got me thinking more about the differences between novels and television shows and how in addition to the decisions made by the writers, such as “Hey, let’s kill off the wife!” television shows are subject to events beyond the control of the writers and producers. What happens when an actor dies? Or refuses to come back? Or has to be fired like Kevin Spacey on House of Cards? Changes can be forced upon a series, which change everything.

Like NYPD Blue for example. The first season of the series starred David Caruso as John Kelly. Caruso, despite the name was a very Irish-looking ginger, and that ethnicity — Irish-Catholic — was a big part of his character’s backstory.

 

Famous quitter.

The series became very popular and Caruso wanted a big fat raise, which he didn’t get, and so he was written out, making his last appearance in the fourth episode of the second season. The writers brought in Jimmy Smits, an actor who was already popular with television audiences from the show LA Law, and the show ran successfully for many more years, Supporting actor, Dennis Franz, who played partner to both Caruso’s John Kelly, and Smits’s Bobby Simone, stayed with the series throughout its run and through two more partners.

Franz probably got the job in the first place because of a memorable small role on Hill Street Blues, in which he played Norman Buntz, an ethically-challenged but somehow lovable cop. Buntz proved popular enough to get a spin-off series, but not popular enough for that series to last a season. Andy Sipowicz, his character on NYPD Blue, was more of a “by the book”, stand up guy, then Buntz, but there was a resemblance.

So I asked myself, “Whatever happened to Dennis Franz? Is he dead?” I was pretty sure he was dead because I couldn’t remember seeing him in anything for years. But I looked him up. He’s still alive, just enjoying retirement.

 

(If the porny-vampire novel with opera, is too much for you, the rest of Marion’s oeuve may be more to your taste. You can check them all out here.)

My Life as a Welfare Queen

New York Stories, Politics and Culture, true story, , , ,

(This was originally posted in 2010. I’m reposting for the 4th of July 2018.)

It’s time for me to come clean and admit how much I scam and rip off the government. Yes, it’s people like me that keep your taxes high (not as high as all the other industrial nations, but still, it’s your money).

First, I should tell you, I’m a third generation grifter. My grandparents arrived on these shores via Ellis Island. They were even given an alias. You think Stein is our real name?

They immediately benefited from soft immigration policies, “give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.“Yeah, baby! They couldn’t wait to come in and start working that system. Soon they were having anchor babies and sending them to public schools on the taxpayers’ dime.They also enjoyed all those freedoms — religion, expression, press.They even got involved in trade unions and collective bargaining!

Then came the Great Depression. That could have set things right, invisible hand of the market and all that, but noooo! They used their vote to get that disabled guy and his commie cronies in and before you could say WPA, tons of people were grifting the government, building roads and dams, even making art — all kinds of nonsense that the feds had no business going near.

The feeling of unity was downright socialistic! Despite the Depression, both my parents got college educations without paying a dime in tuition! They didn’t even have to fake transcripts or forge checks. The local government made it easy, only requiring they do well enough in high school to get a spot in its city university system. Back then the powerful actually believed that educating the masses would help make life better for everyone and prevent political extremism. The naivety is astounding!

Then World War II came and all that touchy-feely propaganda actually helped strengthen the country. I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day.

My father, always the schemer, joined the army.What did he get out of it?A little something called the GI Bill.That’s right, folks for a couple of years of service, (more like a paid vacation to the exotic Philippines) my father came back to find graduate school paid for AND a rent subsidy.Talk about living high on the hog!

He was then able to grow a business because he hardly paid any rent! Not only did New York come up with a sweet scam called “Rent Control,” but they also had housing projects, which before they were allowed to fall into decay and dangerousness, provided housing to plenty of opportunistic ex-army guys and their baby mommas.

As for my mother, she put her “education” to good use getting herself a cushy job as a “teacher” in one of those public schools. Union benefits! Set up for life. Sweet.

With that government tit to feed us, my father continued to build his business. He didn’t even complain about the “tribute” his Uncle Sam wanted every April 15th. Figured it was his duty or something. Guess he was getting soft.

And even into old age, both my parents kept up their ripping off the government ways, benefiting from those major giveaways — social security and Medicare. They didn’t lose all the money they’d saved when they got old and sick. My mother cleaned up in the end, selling the house, cashing out, and spending her golden years in a swanky assisted living facility. Give me dignity or give me death, baby!

With this kind of background, of course I was heading toward a life of stealing from hard working American taxpayers!

Not only did I attend public universities, I also didn’t have to shell out much for cars because here in New York, we’ve got a little thing called mass transit. There aren’t as many opportunities to feed at the trough as there used to be, but thanks to the “education” I was able to acquire, I found some creative ways to beat the system. There are little things that I hardly even notice most of the time like the fact that I have “protection” in the form of police, fire fighters and even sanitation workers who work for “the public”. Yup, that’s me! Jane Q Public, enjoying those services! Hey, unlike most of “the little people” in those poor countries, I even get safe drinking water and a system that keeps people from selling spoiled and unsafe food. It’s like having a personal food taster or something!

So given that it’s a beautiful Memorial Day, I think I’ll go out and enjoy myself.Maybe head over to a nearby locally supported park like that big one in the middle of Manhattan, or the state park they built over the sewer treatment plant a mile or so north. Sewer treatment! That’s something. My government even cleans my shit! What a country!

Or perhaps I’ll just head a couple of blocks west, pay my respects at the national park which happens to be a government supported mausoleum for some old President who was himself a welfare king who never made a dime at his failed business attempts, but managed to graduate  from a publicly supported military academy and went into politics — that last refuge of the scoundrel — after his army stint.

Tom Friedman is A Idiot, Again

Politics and Culture, , , ,

NY Times columnist and trophy husband, Tom Friedman, managed to spew out a column with his signature combo of obliviousness and obviousness.

The topic was how Trump wrapped up America as a very nice present for Putin. What a clever metaphor. How did he ever come up with it at Christmas time? He brings up some VERY IMPORTANT points.

Did you know that Trump lies about everything? Have you heard that he’s eroding our institutions and that Republicans are absolutely going along for the ride, or that the Republican tax scam is guaranteed not to make America great again or ever? Are you aware he’s destroying our trust in government agencies, gutting the State Department, disparaging the FBI etc?

Friedman manages to tell us more about how we’re heading down the wrong track in case we’ve been comatose since November 2016.

Like did you realize how screwed the blue states will be when they lose state tax deductions? Bet you haven’t been mulling that one over for weeks as you’ve been camped out playing scribbage in Susan Collins’ office?

But does Friedman blame Putin for all this? Or Trump for that matter? The word collusion doesn’t seem to be in his vocabulary. He does call what Putin did a “hack” but says it was done on the cheap. Some ads on Facebook, a few gazillion fake-twitter accounts. The word kompromat isn’t mentioned, nor are any of the recently or soon to be indicted. In Friedmanlandia, Putin just made a lucky “investment.” and never could have imagined his good fortune, kind of like marrying into money maybe. It’s not like he was a master spy working for the KGB for a hundred years and actually planned any of this!

But Friedman does blame someone for the wrong track we’ve taken. There is someone at fault,  someone who was even more important to Trump’s victory than Putin, someone who is to blame for all that followed. Who would that be? Could it be Steve Bannon? Or soon-to-be-fall guy and fired-from-the-family Jared Kushner? Of course not, silly! It’s Hillary Clinton.

Hillary, he tells us early on is way “more responsible” for Trump’s victory than small-time investor Vladimir Putin!

Gee, if only she had warned us that Trump was Putin’s puppet. If only she had won three million more votes than Trump. If only the New York Times hadn’t equated her emails with Trump’s lies, lack of experience, bankruptcies, general sliminess, and oh yeah those connections to Russia they barely mentioned. Let’s hope that after this Mueller fiasco ends (on Friday) they appoint a new special prosecutor to examine her role in Trump’s victory, and then they should lock her up!

(Marion will no longer say, “Hillary wasn’t my first, second or third choice, but she was the only choice” because at this point, it’s not the point! The fucking building is on fire! Also you really should check out her novel about gentrification in the East Village or the rest of her works.)