Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Baseball

Being from Cleveland, I'm certainly enjoying the Cleveland Indians knocking off the two biggest payroll teams in baseball. OK, I might regret posting this since the Indians have not won, but a guy can dream, yes?

Meanwhile, MLB players seemed shocked shocked! that George Mitchell, while investigating performance enhancing drugs in MLB, might actually show them the evidence.

Update: Damn.

1 comment:

Seth Patinkin said...

Dear Oprah,

I am writing to you about discrimination which has been expressed by the selective enforcement of city ordinances against me with respect to my rental business in Southern Indiana once city officials discovered that I am a Jewish person.

More about me: I was named to the "30 under 30" list by my alma mater and did my PhD work at Princeton Univ. under John Nash. I am a applied mathematician/ entrepreneur in my day job.

In the years since I completed my undergraduate work at IU in 1998, I proceeded to buy a small number of rental properties in Bloomington, Indiana, which I have successfully run as a side business for a number of years.

However, about 2-3 years ago, the normal flow of my side rental business ran into some serious roadblocks.

It started when two housing inspectors made a number of explicit anti-semitic statements to me and to a Jewish tenant at one of my rentals.

Soon thereafter, four (4) groups of my otherwise law-abiding and happy tenants were threatened with $10,000 + fine (assessed PER tenant) for alleged ordinance violations.

Long story short, I was soon stuck with numerous vacancies and left paying the mortgage payments on these properties which were subsequently burglarized and vandalized. At the same time, the Housing Department caused complaint inspections to take place at these properties, identifying dozens and dozens of "defects" in the properties not otherwise noted in previous move-in inspections and causing me to incur thousands of dollars of needless "improvements".

And then the Legal Department went to work on me, filing at least five (5) lawsuits against me for alleged ordinance violations, and at the same time, the Legal Department Chief's wife, over at Student Legal Services, encouraged my erstwhile tenants to sue me for recovery of their security deposits, in spite of their breaches. I was soon dealing with about ten lawsuits at once.

So in April 2007, I filed a lawsuit against the City of Bloomington for violating my right to equal protection of the law, and a number of other civil rights violations. For reasons unbeknownst to me, I have become of the despotism of city government in small town Indiana. My attorneys have recently discovered that my case is not unique. Another Jewish landlord also has a case pending in federal court against the City, regarding the improper withholding of a building permit based upon the impermissible consideration that the prospective buyer of the commercial property in question was a Jewish investor from New York.

My life has been turned upside down by the systematic abuse of ordinances and
judicial proceedings. I find it outrageous that such a negative spirit still thrives in modern America. I would love the opportunity to talk about my story on your show, as I think it is in the public interest.

Seth Patinkin

~~ NEVER STOP LEARNING ~~

jan-p-szatkowski.blogspot.com
markkruzan.blogspot.com
bungerlaw.blogspot.com
billbeggs.blogspot.com
lawbr.blogspot.com
martha-szatkowski.blogspot.com
martha-c-szatkowski.blogspot.com
bill-beggs.blogspot.com
kevinrobling.blogspot.com
patriciamulvihill.blogspot.com
cityofbloomington.blogspot.com
studentlegalservices.blogspot.com
stacee-evans.blogspot.com
marthaszatkowski.blogspot.com
bunger-law.blogspot.com
staceeevans.blogspot.com
margieschrader.blogspot.com
margie-schrader.blogspot.com
jan-szatkowski.blogspot.com
janszatkowski.blogspot.com