Ticket Service Fees
Service fees tacked on to ticket purchases, averaging a third of the base price, have long been a source of grumbling from concertgoers.
Live Nation noticed when ticket buyers posted complaints on online blogs and message boards, said Jason Garner, Live Nation CEO for Global Music.
I’m posting it to my blog. Ticket service fees are the biggest rip off ever. It’s like going to the store to buy something, then having to pay a service fee to the store for selling you the product. What’s why you exist, you market and sell a product. It should be no different for tickets.
Macedonia Mayor’s Court
Makes a travesty of the justice system. The prosecutor explaining rights to the defendants, and encouraging them to plead “guilty” or “no contest”, a “magistrate” who may not even have a law degree, and the thinly veiled bigotry made me sick.
It was just a money trap. People are tricked into appearing, bamboozled into admitting their guilt, and given, sometimes substantial, civil penalties.
There were three people there on “failure to display handicap permits”. The first person, out at 3am was also white. Dismissed with costs. No questions asked. The second person. Out at 12am to buy MEDICINE. Was black. “Is this a real permit?”. They called the cops to verify the validity of the permit. “What were you doing out so late at night?” The last guy. White. Dismissed with costs.
When I got up there, “I see you come from a nice place. I’ll listen to what you have to say.” Excuse me, what the fuck do you mean by that? If I was poor, if I was downtrodden, you wouldn’t listen to what I had to say? This is a mockery of justice. Is this how far we’ve come in the last 200 years as a nation?
Ohio Citizen Action: Day 6, 7, 8
Wow. That’s a lot of days. So here’s what’s been going on. Last week, I was kind of lazy and figured that I’d blog about days four and five together at the end of the week. But then my personal life went to hell in a hand basket. And now I don’t remember things from specific days. So now I’m just mentioning what I learned last week, and then I’ll talk about this week.
Last Week
Last week I learned about the phone canvass and it’s importance to the organization. It’s important.
Day 6
Our briefing today was about the Mutt Wash Fundraiser
CLEVELAND – Ohio Citizen Action is holding a mutt-wash fundraiser at The Mutt Hutt in Tremont (2603 Scranton Rd.) to benefit their campaign to get mountaintop removal coal mining banned. The dog wash will be held on Saturday, June 20, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. The donation is $10 for a mutt wash and $5 for a nail trim.
I’ll be there. So all you people with doggies need to come or we can no longer be friends. Seriously.
Sarah W gave a very motivating talk about letters and they’re importance today.
I broke $100 today with my contributions raised. It’s not the best I’ve ever done, but it was exciting, I do my best, and I guess sometimes I do better than others.
Day 7
I came in early to listen in on a conference call between the higher-ups and listen to them discuss strategies. They asked for my thoughts on letter writing to House Representatives who have all ready agreed to co-sponsor H.R. 1310.
I went to the Cleveland Public Library and got a felafel for lunch.
There was a really cool briefing today. Like really cool. Did I mention that it was cool? It was about protest art. I took notes. We learned about
- +The fist as a recurring symbol of anger
+Humor - being good for attracting the attention of the apolitical, but running tie risk of driving away the undecided
+Propaganda versus Protest Art. The former is produced to change minds and provoke emotions. It tends to bend logic. The latter usually says “no” to an idea or course of action, no solution is offered.
+Simple is usually better
Very interesting stuff.
I broke $150 today, yay! And I collected 8 letters.
Day 8
There was supposed to be a briefing today in the form of a video. But we didn’t get to watch it because the computer in the Canvass bay was broken. It looked like it was being reformatted. Oops.
So we just drove out to turf early. I was in a small crew today. We drove in Sarah B’s car to North Royalton and stopped for some foodsies on the way there for about 20 minutes before 4.
There was a torrential downpour which made me very, very wet. And I didn’t get any sympathy contributions. Tough crowd. My scotty got ruined, and I had to salvage all the letter callbacks really fast (and I got some of the numbers wrong due to illegibility from wetness which cost me a lot of time). I think I lost a row of tallies too which threw off my door and contacts count.
But guess what? Guess.
I collected 18 letters which qualifies me for the leader board! I also collected around $125. I didn’t meet my weekly goal, but I tried very hard. And I think I was closer than last week.
This is the card that I made last night to put up on the leader board!
Ohio Citizen Action: Day 3
Everyday I go in and read a bit more of the training manual. Yesterday I got up to Day 6. There’s so much helpful information on each new day, I feel like I’m doing myself a disservice not to read ahead as much as possible. I learned about good responses to common answers yesterday. Such as “I’ll sign, but I’m not going to donate anything”
I hopped on board the re-train for the first time yesterday. I spent half the night in Olmstead Falls watching Kelly be awesome at organizing yesterday, and then the other half trying to do the same on my own. I raised $45 in about an hour and a half. I got three letters and 5 members. I guess that’s not that bad, I really tried and I met all my goals except the contribution goal; instead of being discouraged because I tried so hard and didn’t make it (*cough* Physics) I think I’ll give it a go today and knock it out. I did really well in Wooster last Tuesday, so I’m hoping that by going somewhere far away, I’ll have better karma or something like that.
Working for OCA makes me feel like I’m really doing something to better the world. I’m in a position where I can really effect how people view an issue and it really produced results! It’s political science from the bottom up, unlike lobbying which is like trickle-down politics. And like it’s economic counter-part, it never seems to work 
Now I’m going back to chomping on my Reeces Puffs, a hearty nutritious breakfast cereal. Loved my moms everywhere.
Ohio Citizen Action: Day 0, 1, & 2
Orientation Day: Day 0
Orientation Day is a day where I follow around a field manager, basically a senior canvasser who drives the burb to the turf.
I learned that Burb = Mini-van; short for Chevy Suburban. We don’t have a fleet of Chevy Suburbans, but the name comes from way back in the 70’s when some people who I don’t remember the names of apparently donated a plethora of Suburbans to non-profit organizations for grassroots work.
Turf = the area that the crew will be canvassing. Each individual receives a “turf” in the area that we head out to to canvass.
Before we leave the office we usually have a briefing of some sort and Monday’s briefing was a video briefing from Columbus about AMP Ohio’s attempts to build a pulverized coal power plant in Meigs county attempting to use the “green” practice of carbon sequestration. For those of you who don’t know, this particular method of emissions reduction just so happens to cause earthquakes.
I observed Kelly, one of the senior field managers. So I learned from the best!
At the end of the night I had one hour to be on my own and try my hand at canvassing. I feel like my work for Organizing for America really helped me when it came to knocking on people’s doors and talking to complete strangers.
I raised $18 and got 10 signatures in the hour!
Then we headed back to the office in Cleveland and I got hired as a Community Organizer for Ohio Citizen Action!
Day 1
I came back the next day, Tuesday to begin my official training. Tuesday is the “long travel day” and we packed up and left for Wooster without a long briefing.
I did really well for my first day. I raised a little over $200, meeting my goal of $150. I got about 17 signatures and about 5 new members. Not to mention I got 5 letters for our letter-writing campaign to Lisa Jackson. I could have probably had 7, but I started running out of time and then I couldn’t find the houses I was supposed to get to. So then that didn’t work out so well.
But everyone at the office was really proud of me. Carla, my field manager for that day was like “zomg NiCE JOB!” and Sarah, the Canvass Director, our boss, was like “zomg NICE JOB!” and Mallory, another field manager counted and rolled all my change for me.
Day 2
Wednesday wasn’t as good as Tuesday. I went to the middle of B.F.N. aka rural Aurora. My turf was about 2 square miles of lower middle class homes spaces about 80+ feet apart. I knocked on almost every single door on my turf at least once and I made about 20 contacts. Bah. Plus someone siced their dog on me. I was knocking on the door, with my happy knock (”shave and a haircut!”) and I heard some movement inside so I figured someone was coming, and I waited…. and then this BIG dog came bounding out from the back of the house barking madly at me and chasing me off the property. I think I could run in the olympics if they could get dogs to chase me.
I met two nice people who were willing to donate a little bit and write letters to Lisa Jackson, the Administrator of the EPA, to urge her to pressure the Obama Administration to ban mountaintop removal. She was on Ohio Wednesday at the statehoue.
ONFORT HEIGHTS, OH — “After dodging questions about mountaintop removal from Ohio Citizen Action activists at an event in Columbus Wednesday morning, U.S. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson proceeded to an afternoon event at a Cincinnati area school. Upon learning that the group’s local activists were also in attendance at the second event, Ms. Jackson’s staff and school officials attempted to prevent them from addressing what they termed the ‘controversial’ issue at the second press conference. When the activists unfurled a banner exhibiting the handprints, names and ages of 161 Cincinnati schoolchildren and the message, ‘Helping hands say – stop blowing up our mountains”, they were asked to leave school premises. The request was backed up by armed Colerain Township police,” Melissa English, Southern Ohio Campaign Director, Ohio Citizen Action.
But yeah, I didn’t come close to meeting my goal. However, it seemed like that rainy, dreary day wasn’t really a hit for anyone else in my crew either. Except Kelly.
I look forward to more success next Monday.
*facepalm*
How would you pronounce this child’s name:
“Le-a”
Leah?? NO
Lee - A?? NOPE
Lay - a?? NO
Lei?? Guess Again.
This child attends a school in Detroit, MI. Her mother is irate because everyone is getting her name wrong.
It’s pronounced “Ledasha”!
When the Mother was asked about the pronunciation of the name, she said, “the dash don’t be silent.”
SO, if you see something come across your desk like this please remember to pronounce the dash.
If they axe you why, tell them the dash don’t be silent.
Sonia Sotomayor
This was truly a genius move by the Obama administration. They nominate this person who is super-liberal and simultaneously a woman and hispanic. So the republicans are going to oppose her (because she’s liberal) but they’re going to look like the white-males club while they’re doing it.
My Best Friend
Am I wearing off on him?
I feel like an idiot
I planned on attending Kung-Fu this morning because I haven’t been able to meet my two-day-per-week quota that I impose upon myself recently due to the plethora of things that I have been up to.
So I got up this morning, with the full confidence that class starts at 11:30 on Saturdays. Class starts at 9:30. Whoops.
Then I went to the bank, and forgot to check the “savings” box on my deposit slip and waited for 10 minutes for the lady to confirm who I was, etcetera. Whoops.
Then I came home and thought that I’d be a good son and bring in the mail and garbage cans. I tucked the mail under my left arm and picked up both empty cans and began walking down the driveway. Unfortunately the glossy magazine caused the mail to tumble out of my arms unto the concrete. Whoops.
Then I walked in the door and somehow managed to run face-first into a wall that’s been there since I was born. Whoops.
Graduation Speech
“I am not afraid of tomorrow for I have lived through yesterday and I love today.” Our class motto suggests that we should perhaps follow the inherent wisdom in Carpe Diem, a Latin phrase meaning “seize the day”. The Great British Poet Robert Herrick reminds us to “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”. Settle not then for the mundane and ordinary in your life, be not content with mediocrity, for like Ulysses in Tennyson’s poem, we are all outward bound and we must strive to reach our fullest potential.
In the words that follow from Walden, Henry David Thoreau tells of his motivation for leaving his small cabin behind and blazing yet another path to self-discovery.
“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spend any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves… The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!”
We must, like Thoreau understand that the time has come for us to leave the familiar behind, to walk “the highways” of the world, and look ahead to the “several more lives” that await us. But we must walk those highways with confidence in our own identity.
We all have something unique, something special to share with the world. Despite the obstacles which undoubtedly lie ahead, remember the words that Ulysses would live by until the end of his life.
Ulysses sought “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,” and so should we.
