Montebello E-News

 October 16, 2008 

The hardest working people in the world are the congressmen and senators. We work from early morning 'til late at night and all weekend and everything else. But we're working now, not for the country, but for the campaign.
Ernest Frederick "Fritz" Hollings, born 1922,
 served as a Democratic United States Senator from South Carolina from 1966 to 2005.

[If true, this is a very serious problem, because so much in our daily life is dependent on Washington, D.C.  Where would the solution lie?  Restructure Congress?  Become less dependent on Washington, D.C.?]

 1.  The Truth Is Out There

2.  The Beat of a Different Drummer, Part 6

3. Announcements

4. Fun Facts about Humans and Animals

5. The Flashback Quarterback:  When Is Fair Not Fair?

6. Be Aware and Share:  The President Who Would Be King

7. About Montebello E-News and “My Montebello”

The Truth Is Out There

Was that not a line which we saw with every “X Files” episode in the Nineties?

Remember the “Flashback Quarterback” from the previous issue of E-News, about getting together to decide about health care?  An important part of getting together and deciding is having the facts.  The following can help.

“No Recent Improvement in U.S. Healthcare System Performance, Study Find”

Despite spending more on health care than any other industrialized nation, the United States continues to fall short on key indicators of health outcomes and quality, particularly in the areas of access and efficiency, a new report from the Commonwealth Fund,  http://www.commonwealthfund.org/, finds. Prepared by the fund's Commission on a High Performance Health System, the report, Why Not The Best? Results From The National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance, 2008, found that the United States scored an average of 65 out of a possible 100 across thirty-seven key indicators of health outcomes, quality, access, efficiency, and equity -- slightly below its overall performance on the 2006 scorecard. Perhaps most troubling, the study found that 42 percent of all working-age adults were either uninsured or underinsured as of 2007 -- up from 35 per-cent in 2003. According to the report, the U.S. could save up to 100,000 lives and $100 billion annually by improving its performance in key areas. On a more positive note, the report found that national initiatives focused on specific areas have yielded substantial improvement. In the wake of broad public and private efforts to assess and improve hospital safety, for example, hospital standardized mortality ratios -- a key indicator of patient safety --improved 19 percent over five years. Improvements were also noted in the areas of chronic care and acute hospital care quality, both of which have been the focus of reporting and pay-for-performance initiatives. …

As excerpted from RFP Bulletin, July 25, 2008, by the Foundation Center.

If you answer the multiple-choice questions below and e-mail to lessonanswers@mymontebello.com with “Lesson answers” in the subject field, you will be credited toward a “certificate of recognition in community affairs” to be awarded in 2008 by a local nonprofit organization.

1. What startling statistic does a 2008 report from the Commonwealth Fund give us?

(a) Forty-two percent of all working-age adults in America were either uninsured or underinsured as of 2007.

(b) The death rate of newborn infants in the United States is the highest in the industrialized world.

2. Where has the United States improved?

(a) The cost of health care has gone down.

(b) Hospital safety has increased, evidenced by a decrease in “hospital standardized mortality ratios”.

If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away.
Henry David Thoreau, July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862,
 was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, sage writer and philosopher. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, “Civil Disobedience”, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

…We have valued grades and scores more than learning. We have forgotten to teach you that all understanding begins with wonder and with following unexpected discovery in unknown directions. We have tried to stomp the wonder out of you by getting you to choose a track and stick with it. We have asked you to excel in every endeavor and to avoid anything that might diminish your record of excellence. When we rewarded you only for following all of our rules and not for making any of your own, we did more to close your minds than to open them. … I am sorry that we have taught you to value economic success over passionate engagement with your work. … http://www.theroot.com/id/46623
Melissa Harris-Lacewell

If you were to combine the two quotations above, what would you conclude?  That we have taken the “different drummer” out of the classroom?

Let us continue our respite from talking about problems by talking about solutions.  Another example from Tactics of Hope:

Roots of Peace is a leading innovator in the global eradication of land mines, which maim and kill over 26,000 people worldwide every year, nearly half of them children.  Its mission is to turn fields of death into prosperous farmlands, restoring community values and peace by helping former war-torn areas grow “from mines to vines”.  ... Together, through Roots of Peace, the Kuehns [Heidi and Gary] have achieved incredible success, including the removal of 100,000 land mines and unexploded ordnances, and the training of 10,000 farmers in Afghanistan alone.  With completed and ongoing operations in Afghanistan, Croatia, Iraq, Angola and Cambodia, Roots of Peace replaces seeds of destruction with seeds of life.

... To remove a land mine means not only to save a life, but also to give a family a vineyard, a community a soccer field and a nation its peace.  When I got started, I was attracted to the dream of being there in Angola, Croatia, Afghanistan or Iraq when the last mine is removed.  My work over the last seven years has only confirmed that our vision is absolutely possible. ...

FOR EVERYONE.  Historical Society events.  The Montebello Historical Society will hold its annual "Evening in Italy" on October 23, 2008, at the Montebello Senior Center.  Tickets are available for $20 per person at the Adobe each Saturday prior to the event between 1:00-4:00 pm.  The Juan Matias Sanchez Adobe Historic Site and Museum is open between 1:00-4:00 pm each Saturday. Free tours are available between 1:00-3:45 pm.  For more information, gbrougher@sbcglobal.net.

FOR EVERYONE.   Fixing What Is Broken.  E-News does not take sides on issues, but does advocate reform in the process of democracy, that is, how we go about choosing elected officials and making policy decisions.  (How important is the process of democracy?  Pause to consider all the time, energy, and money being expended by proponents and opponents in Montebello on the refuse-hauling contract because our process of democracy is not sufficiently open.)  With that in mind, see http://www.caclean.org/letters/index.php for one possible reform of the process.

FOR EVERYONE.  Get published in special edition.  …The Union of Concerned Scientists and Penguin Classics—along with bookstores across the country—are encouraging all aspiring writers and photographers to submit their personal stories and images about global warming for publication in a new online book to be published in 2009, Thoreau's Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming.

The submission process is open to anyone in the United States through November 15, 2008. A panel of judges will select the top essays and photographs to be included in the book. Writers and photographers whose submissions are selected for publication will receive a limited edition printed copy of the book and will be invited to participate in book promotion activities. ...  http://www.ucsusa.org/americanstories/

FOR EVERYONE.  Holloween fun for free.  Stories and art activity on Saturday, October 18, 2008, at the Montebello library, 1550 West Beverly Boulevard.  For more information, 323.722.6551.  Then, on Tuesday, October 21, at 6:30 p.m., scary stories “for brave middle school students”.

FOR PARENTS, TEACHERS, COMMUNITY LEADERS, YOUTH.  Who is Seth Godin?  A teacher from Santa Barbara High School e-mailed me an essay by Seth Godin entitled “Is Effort a Myth?”  The essay pertains to all of us, and is worth reading and discussing with high schoolers. www.mymontebello.com/young_thinkers_tc_ieam

FOR EVERYONE.  City-council meeting.  The next regular meeting of the Montebello city council will be in the council chamber at city hall on Wednesday, October 22, 2008, at 6:30 p.m.  If you wish to speak during orals, come before 6:30 p.m. and sign up.  If you have more to say than there is time allotted, prepare a one pager, make copies, and hand out before you speak.  For more information, 323.887.1363.

There are two hundred six bones in the adult human body and there are three hundred in children.  As children grow, some of the bones fuse together.

Fleas can jump one hundred thirty times higher than their own height. In human terms this is equal to a six-foot person jumping seven hundred eighty feet into the air.  [And if she or he were on the moon?]

The most dangerous animal in the world is the common housefly.  Because of their habits of visiting animal waste, they transmit more diseases than any other animal.

Outside-the-box thinking is promoted by E-News. What outside-the-box thought is not being discussed below?  And which question is not being asked?

Sacramento—Major civil rights groups and Southern California district representatives says Proposition 11, also known as the California Voters FIRST Act, could harm ethnic representation if voters approve it in November.

The initiative would allow citizens unaffiliated with legislative processes to draw their own state legislative and congressional district lines, a process incumbents are currently responsible for ev3ry 10 years following the U.S. census.  The initiators of the Voters FIRST Act intend to relieve partisan gridlock and shift state legislators’ focus from re-election to being accountable to voters.

However, Southern California district legislators such as Assembly man Hector de la Torre, D-South Gate, say the commission selection process will undermine ethnic representation.

“It doesn’t respect communities of interest and because of that you’ll have less chance for minorities to get elected into legislature,” de la Torre said.

Trieu, Rosa, “Redistricting Initiative May Hurt Latinos, Blacks”, Montebello Comet, July 24, 2008.

As for the outside-the-box thought:  if it is so important that so many different “communities of interest be represented”, why are there not more legislators, instead of the eighty members of the Assembly and forty members of the Senate presently?

And the question:  “How far must we go to accommodate diversity, as humankind naturally will continue to diversify, meaning that (1) it will be difficult to accommodate all interests and (2) any interest itself will diversity, no longer retaining its identity?”

Have you wondered why we scrutinize Presidential candidates ad infinitum, ad nauseam?

We look into their personal lives, their trips to the doctor, their misstatements made under stress and fatigue.  We criticize them for what they do and what they do not do.  We expect them to be prophets, meaning that they may not change their minds on an issue.

Why?  Because we have vested so much power in them.  We want to be able to trust them, to know that they would be healthy, ethical, and wise.  They are the most powerful people on the planet.

And why have we permitted them to become the most powerful people on the planet?

Part of the answer is that large corporations prefer dealing with one person instead of a multitude like Congress.  But why do we the public tolerate this antidemocratic phenomenon of one very powerful President?

Because we want somebody to decide for us.  Because life is complicated, and making decisions is hard and time-consuming.  And there is more than a remote chance that the decision would be wrong—better to blame the President and his pandilla of pundits, rather than to blame ourselves.

We are not democratic.  We do want a king.

To learn about this newsletter, Montebello E-News, and the accompanying, growing Web site, “My Montebello”, visit www.mymontebello.com.  Also, you will find instructions and contact information for submitting announcements for publication in this newsletter, and for submitting stories to “Montebello Memories” at the Web site.