“Going Green” - Not So Cheap

It’s been researched and confirmed; humans have contributed to the slow demise of our planet. In response to fixing the problem – the national government, large organizations and individuals are doing their part to help keep the planet around for another million years.

But “going green” isn’t cheap.

Most of us can barely pay our bills, let alone invest in the latest technology to be environmentally friendly. Sure it’s the “in” thing to do these days, but who are these people kidding?

My grandfather isn’t going to get rid of his high-emissions gas-guzzling car for something that will cost him four times as much as his original vehicle. With the economy getting worse by the day, people are more worried about getting cheap-to-free health care rather than changing the light bulbs in their homes.

This is not to say people are not doing their part. We all have those bright blue recycling bins we utilize once a week. We’re doing what we have to do, and also that which doesn’t cost us much money.

This week, Newsweek released a list of companies that are the “greenest” this year. This means they have made changes to some of their locations and made them more environmentally friendly. They are investing big sums of money to upgrade their solar panels, installing equipment that will capture rainwater to be used within their facilities, and changing every light bulb to one that is environmentally friendly.

However, not every rich company is doing enough to go green. Hotels everywhere have cut their costs by asking us to use our towels a second or third time. They’ve just used the green hype to line their own pockets. They should invest some of that money in “going green” before the average Joe is required to do so.

But when did you see a hotel with solar panels? You’d think that they would be required to do more to go green. Political affiliations seem to be giving certain large organizations the okay to lag behind in the race to go green.

Instead we end up with Title 24, Part 6, of the California Code of Regulations – which basically requires all new homes to have expensive environmentally friendly lighting and even regulates how many windows the house can have. Don’t forget, we’re paying for it.

My point is, regardless of whether we like it or not, we will be forced to become more environmentally friendly. Nobody cares if this is being sprung on us at an economically bad time in our lives. Sure, we are not being forced to purchase solar panels for our homes (which begin at $7,000 +) yet, but we are heading that way.

The Cash for Clunkers program has been the latest incentive in the automobile industry to go green. Soon, we won’t have a choice but as to buy a new car that is more environmentally friendly (a small hybrid car currently starts at around $16,000).

Although the incentives to buy into the green hype are attractive, in this economy, they’re unrealistic. Environmentalists shouldn’t expect to see a huge migration by the people to become “greener” until the unemployment rate drastically decreases. For now, people are holding on to their pennies and keeping “going green” on the back burner.

Stolen Goods (Revised)

The best way to make quick money is to rent a bouncing castle for your child's birthday, then when you're done celebrating, take the castle with you! This is exactly what happened to my brother, Qumar, a few months ago. Having been in the bouncy house rental business for over three years, this was a first for Qumar.

On this particular Saturday, the phones were busy and the trucks were out in full force delivering the bouncing castles all over Sacramento. Qumar has nearly 20 bouncy houses complete with generators. Chuck, the employee that works for my brother, went to set up a jump house in McKinley Park. He set up the jump house and informed the renters that he would be back at 6:00 p.m. to pick it up, the normal routine for renting jump houses.

At about 5:45 p.m., Qumar got a call from Chuck exclaiming that the party and the bouncing castle had disappeared. Qumar, my nephew, and I went along to see what had happened. Upon arrival, we spotted the park police hanging about in the playground seemingly doing nothing important.

Qumar asked them if they had seen anything mysterious happen – especially with the bounce house that was set up earlier that morning. The police officer said that he had questioned the renters of the bouncing castle earlier, because they had deflated the castle immediately after it was set up and were stuffing it in their car.

As the officer continued to question them, a woman came running to him screaming "my son has disappeared; I think someone has taken him!" As the officer went to help the woman near the playground, the thieves had disappeared with the bouncing castle, worth $5,000 or more, including the generator. Qumar filed a report.

We returned home dejected. We devised a plan to locate the residence of the woman who had called to book the jump house. She had signed a rental agreement and had paid cash up-front for the jump house, the norm for renting a bounce house from Qumar. He illegally obtained the address of the woman through a friend who works for a major mobile phone company by giving him the phone she had called from.

At 9:00 am the next morning, we were standing outside the woman's house. The stolen bouncing castle was sitting in the doorway of their house; the door ajar. Men were removing the other stolen goods from the car and taking them inside.

Qumar decided to call the police and tell them that there was a man waving a gun at him at such and such location in an effort to get them there quickly. The police was there in a matter of minutes!

The officer who responded to the call was a female officer who could have easily been mistaken for a man. She had a mean look about her – a no-nonsense type of demeanor, complete with a short haircut and butch-like facial features. Immediately, she asked where the gun-wielding aggressor had gone. My brother shrugged and said, "he ran that-a-way," pointing in the general direction of nothingness. He then explained that he had gotten a tip on where the people who had stolen the bouncing house lived. Pointing to the rolled up purple blob in the doorway and saying “that’s it.”

The officer got angry and said, "you know you're not supposed to be taking the risk to come out here, this is what we are here for." I was pretty sure that if we waited on the cops to do anything in the case of the missing bouncy castle, we’d be waiting for eternity.

Upon entering the residence and arresting one person - the cops discovered that there was much more than Qumar’s stolen merchandise in the house. They discovered four to five large Ziploc bags full of marijuana, rolls of cash, and stolen electronics. They also found other generators besides Qumar’s and other bounce houses.

Unfortunately, even though we had done most of the “dirty” work in recovering not only our own merchandise but other people’s as well – we were not acknowledged for doing it. Instead, we were asked to produce official documentation (receipts) for our merchandise before we could take any of it.

There was a valuable lesson to be learned from this experience. If you want to get your valuables back from bouncy-house-thieving-parents, you have to do it yourself - and don't expect any niceness from the boys (in this case girls) in blue!

Need Money? Steal A Bouncy Castle Today!

The best way to make quick money is to rent a bouncing castle for your child's birthday, then when you're done celebrating, take the castle with you! This is exactly what happened to my brother a few months ago. Now normally, he gets parents calling him up and reserving a bounce house for a party they are throwing. Sometimes, he even gets calls from the children directly - promising that they will break open their beloved piggy banks to pay for the bounce house. Unfortunately $3.45 is rarely enough to rent a bounce house, regardless of how much you want it.

On this Saturday, the phones were busy and the trucks were out in full force delivering the bouncing castles to expecting little children all over Sacramento. Chuck, the employee that works for my brother, went to set up the jump house in McKinley Park. He was surprised when the parents wanted the jump house placed near the road rather than further down in the park. He set up the jump house and informed them that he would be back at 6:00 p.m. to pick it up.

At about 5:45 p.m., my brother gets a call from Chuck exclaiming that the party and the bouncing castle had disappeared. My brother, my nephew, and I went along to see what had happened. Upon arrival, we spotted the park police hanging about in the park, swinging from the monkey bars in the playground. After asking them if they had seen anything mysterious happen, the police officer said that he had questioned the renters of the bouncing castle earlier, because they were packing up the inflatable castle and stuffing it in their car.

As the officer's curiosity grew, a woman (the mother of the child for who we had set up the bouncing castle earlier) came running up to the officer screaming "my son has disappeared, I think someone has taken him!" As the officer went to help the woman near the playground, the thieves had disappeared with the bouncing castle, worth $5,000 or more, including the generator.

We returned home distressed. How can someone plan such a web of lies to steal something that is not theirs? Everyone in the house was upset about this. Least did they know, my brother is the badge-less investigator of Sacramento. He's like the annoying sidekick of Jackie Chan in the movie Rush Hour (trust me, he knows all the dialogs too).

After making a few calls, my brother illegally obtained the address of the woman who had called earlier to book the bouncing castle. Then he proceeded to make a plan of action throughout the night. At 9:00 am in the morning, we were standing outside the woman's house. The bouncing castle they had stolen was sitting in the doorway of their house, with the door open. Men were removing the other stolen goods from the car and taking them inside.

Since my brother has had experience with the Sacramento Police Department's delayed response to non-serious issues - he decided to call the police and tell them that there was a man waving a gun at him at such and such location. The police was there in a matter of minutes!

This is when the mother of all living-by-the-book police officers arrived. Immediately, she asked where the gun-wielding aggressor had gone. My brother shrugged and said, "he ran that-a-way," pointing in the general direction of nothingness. He then explained that he had gotten a tip on where the people who had stolen his bouncing house lived and that the rolled up purple glob in the doorway was his merchandise.

The police officer got extremely angry. She said, "you know you're not supposed to be taking the risk to come out here, this is what we are here for." "Were you going to call us when the thieves had sold off our merchandise," I thought. Upon entering the residence and arresting one person - the cops discovered that there was much more than my brother's stolen merchandise in the house. They recovered four to five large Ziploc bags full of marijuana, rolls of cash, and stolen electronics.

You would think someone would say 'Thank You' to us who spent most of the night figuring out a way to get our stuff back, and probably helping other people to get their stuff back too. Instead, we were asked to produce official receipts for our bouncy house and generator. This required us to drive all the way home and finding the paperwork to bring back to the officers. Even then, we were not thanked! How rude!

There was a valuable lesson to be learned from this experience. If you want to get your valuables back from bouncy-house-thieving-parents, you have to do it yourself - and don't expect any niceness from the boys (in this case girls) in blue!

Empty Bullets Fly At Rally

There was a lot of heat, both outside and within the crowd, at Wednesday's rally in the quad at California State University Sacramento (CSUS). Despite the heat, however, there was no fire. Approximately 150 students, professors and faculty attended the rally to voice their opinions about the recent student tuition fee increases, pay cuts for professors, and unpaid furlough days for faculty and staff.

The State Capitol has took it upon themselves to sort out the deficit in the budget, making CSUS a target in their rampage. The student fees for this fall semester have rose a grand total of 32% since last semester. Students within the crowd are feeling the pinch in their pockets. Some students stated that although they do not have to pay the fees directly, being supported by their parents, they still felt that the fee hike is excessive. The universal complaint being that students were getting less for their money.

Speakers included Student Association President, Roberto Torres and members from the California Faculty Association (CFA). There were chants that got the crowd pumped up such as "they say cut back, we say fight back!"

From some students perspectives in the crowd, the rally is not going to make much of a difference. There's a quiet consensus that most of what was said at the rally is just the reaction to the drastic changes at the campus. Some also related it to the bad economic times - excusing the rate hikes as being part of the grand scheme of things that need to be done to recover the economy.

One of the more concerning parts of the rally was the speakers' failure to mention anything about the next steps. None of the people sent out a call of action to march at the State Capitol. The CFA seemed to be more interested in collecting "complaint forms" that would be submitted to some higher power that would stop increasing fees and do something about the pay cuts and furloughs. What they should have been saying is when and where they should be meeting as a large group at the Capitol's lawns. There were calls to the students to "go talk to the legislators" or "write to your legislators;" however this was not followed up with a formal plan of action.

The rally seemed unorganized in what it was trying to accomplish. It seemed more like a awareness rally for the students that the fees had increased - as if they had not realized their empty pockets or declining bank accounts already. All the 'we should's' that were being said became tiring after a while. One of the speakers mentioned that at CSUS, fees had increased 187% in the past seven years. So what makes them think that the increases will not continue?

Some students in the crowd were optimistic; throwing out phrases like "every voice counts." Seeing the way that the rally turned out, fuming participants and no flames, its difficult to predict if anything would happen with the budget problems anytime soon.