Montebello E-News

 December 11, 2008

Special interests have a stranglehold on Sacramento. Here's how it works.  The money comes in.  The favors go out.  The people lose.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California

 [The Governor has signed AB 583.  If approved by popular vote in June 2010, the measure will establish a pilot project for voluntary full public financing for Secretary of State candidates in 2014 and 2018.  Do you see two major problems with this?]

1.  A Bug Which Bugs

2.  Are We Going to Lose This One?, Part 6

3. Announcements

4. Fun Facts:  Say That Again

5. The Flashback Quarterback:  We Are Puppets on a String

6. Be Aware and Share:   Remember “From History to Hysteria”?

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

A Bug Which Bugs

There are bugs which move and bugs which do not.  This is about a bug which does not move, but bugs me, nevertheless:  the electoral college.  How about you?

The following was e-mailed on August 7, 2008.  The bill made it to the governor’s desk and was vetoed.  Is it not odd that the governor would do that, in light of the quote attributed to him above?

Honorable Arnold Schwarzenegger

Dear Governor:

Please advocate for, then sign, SB 37, an agreement among the states to elect the president using the national popular vote.

I remember when, during a "Sixty Minutes" interview several years ago, the reporter asked Russian President Vladimir Putin about the weakness of democracy in his country, to which he rejoined by pointing to the 2000 US election.

There are a number of antidemocratic features to our democracy. Yesterday there was a post online about America needing to take moral leadership around the world. One way would be to remove the antidemocratic features, beginning with SB 37.

Make history. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Van Ajemian
2112 West Whittier Blvd. , Suite 203
Montebello, CA 90640-4056

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 was SB 37?  (a) Eliminate the electoral college.  (b) Let non-citizens vote.

2. Who criticized American democracy?  (a) Barack Obama.  (b) Vladimir Putin.

Libertarian ideologues and moneygrubbers stand aside. Make room for the people.
Statement of August 19, 2008, by Don McCanne,
retired physician and an advocate on behalf of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of fourteen thousand American physicians advocating for single-payer national health insurance.

What does the following, frightening assertion have to do with American democracy?  We know that money has great influence in legislative houses, locally, statewide, and nationally.  If there are people whose aim in life is the pursuit of wealth, they will use their money to ensure their wealth, even if that means manipulating or retarding democracy.

Vulture Funds: A New Category in Capitalism
A new capitalism – brutal and conquering – is moving in. It’s the capitalism of a new category of vulture funds: private equity funds with the appetite of an ogre that command colossal amounts of capital.  
Ignacio Ramonet, 05 Aug 2008
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/76/vulture_funds.html

A new capitalism – brutal and conquering – is moving in. It’s the capitalism of a new category of vulture funds: private equity funds with the appetite of an ogre that command colossal amounts of capital.

The names of these titans – The Carlyle Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR), The Blackstone Group, Colony Capital, Apollo Management, Starwood Capital Group, Texas Pacific Group, Wendel, Eurazeo, etc. – remain little known to the general public. And, sheltered by that discretion, they’re in the process of taking possession of the global economy. In four years, from 2002 to 2006, the sum raised by these investment funds, which collect the money of banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and the assets of the richest individuals, went from $137 billion to $524 billion. Their financial firepower is phenomenal, exceeding $1.6 trillion. Nothing withstands them. Last year, in the United States, the main private equities firms invested $424 billion in repurchasing companies, and more than $322 billion during just the first semester of 2007, thus taking control of 8,000 companies. Already one American employee out of four – and close to one French employee out of 12 – works for these mastodons.

The phenomenon of these rapacious funds erupted about 15 years ago, but is now on steroids. Thanks to cheap credit and ever more sophisticated financial instruments, that phenomenon has lately taken on a worrying scope. The principle is simple: a club of wealthy investors decides to buy up companies that they then manage privately, far from the stock market and its restrictive rules, and without having to account to fussy, fuddy-duddy shareholders. The idea is to circumvent the very principles of the capitalist ethic by betting on the laws of the jungle only. ...

FOR EVERYONE.  Our library’s “open house”.  Saturday, December 13, from 12 to 3 p.m.  Check out some great books for the holidays.  Make a card and decorations to take home.  At the Montebello library.  For more information, 323.722.6551.

FOR EVERYONE.  By the numbers from Thanksgiving Day.  As reported by Montebello Kiwanis President Robert Chaffino.  [On Thanksgiving Day,] we served 172 people at the [senior] center and 90 meals went out to the home bound.  The real measure of success this year was in how much our community, as a whole, responded to those in need. It is my understanding that thousands of people received help this year; help was available in the form of food give-aways before Thanksgiving and hot meals on Thanksgiving Day. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving.  The Kiwanis Club of Montebello along the Kiwanis Key Clubs of Montebello High, Schurr High Schools and the Rotary Interact Club represented the youth of our community with pride.  For more information, 323.722.3400.

Mid-men, the male versions of mid-wives, are called accouchers.

One that speaks two languages is bilingual and can be said to be diglot.

Ducks are never male. The males of the species are called drakes.

Shoemakers are commonly called cobblers but correctly speaking a cobbler is a shoe repairmen. A shoemaker is a cordwainer.

In the early days of film making, people who worked on the sets were called movies. The films were called potion pictures.

Someone who uses as few words as possible when speaking is called pauciloquent.

Compulsive shopping was identified by a German psychiatrist almost a hundred years ago. Clinically it is known as oniomania. Shopaholics are the people who do not suffer from chrematophobia, which is the fear of touching money.

Someone who habitually picks their nose is called a rhinotillexomaniac.

The practice of eating insects is called entomophagy.

http://www.didyouknow.cd/whatsit/whatisitcalled.htm

Jim Fitzgerald: Gordon, you were in a private industry, business, and you decided to leave that and pursue another calling. What changed? What caused that to happen?

Gordon Pennington: Well, I used to work in the field of marketing. I still do. (chuckles) And when you work in marketing, advertising and communications today, you begin very quickly to see how powerful the influence is that can extend into people's homes, into their very psyches and can influence them in their behavior. Influencing consumer behavior is something that billions of dollars are devoted to every year. This is a country that's become very, very sophisticated at communicating and influencing people's thinking. Unfortunately, we haven't been equally prepared, and education today has not afforded us the level of critical discernment that we need to understand how we're being manipulated. It's one of the most volatile and dangerous situations that human history has probably ever concocted.

JF: How much today are people that are led by others influencing their behavior as opposed to people carefully screening and developing their own sense as who they are as a person?

Gordon: Well, in advertising and marketing very often we played at people's insecurities, and we determine what it is they think they need. If someone has a keen sense of identity, has a strong sense of themselves, it is less likely that we can reach them easily. But for the person who is insecure, it's much easier to manipulate those insecurities, to cause them to feel that a product or a service or a particular brand is going to give them something they feel they lack inherently or something that will give them a sense of identity that they're not getting otherwise.

JF: How much of the resources of advertising are targeted to people that are 18 to 30, a range, 35, you know, what the spread is of the youth, and why is that amount of money put into — why are those resources put into that age group?

Gordon: Billions of dollars are spent every year advertising and marketing and creating messaging to shape and influence people's behavior. And young people are of particular interest to marketers and brand building and the commercial enterprises that want to turn them into customers for a lifetime want them to adopt a brand and make it their own for many years to come.

Gen-x, gen-y, millennials, mosaics — no generation has ever been more manipulated than the generation that lives today, and they know it, and they're savvy, and they're adept at living in the technological environment that they also distrust even as they feel compelled to use it. User be used, or use and be used.

JF: What do you think about the lack of reflection, a time to reflect, that exists today because of the constant availability of distraction. How will that shape the thinking of people that live today?

Gordon: We live in an era of psychotic distraction. The level of psychosis that affects people's behavior is difficult to measure because people are so reactive. They are simply responding to — people are responding to an array of stimuli that is simply overwhelming today. And to filter that out and to protect oneself requires a kind of understanding consciousness, awareness, discipline and resistance that's very rare. Teaching people resistance will result in people acquiring a new level of individuality as human beings.

JF: And if you don't acquire that skill?

Gordon: It's pretty — it's quite evident today that people are easily conformed, and they want to experience groupthink. And the level of instant polling and constant reflection that — without reflection that causes people to feel that they want to be part of a movement — they want to be part of a trend; they want to reflect what's hot rather than what's not; they want to be a part of an in-group; they want to be seen as moving in the right direction — is fatally dangerous.

JF: Where will that lead them? Where will that lead us conclusively and ultimately, if we fail to recognize the times we live in?

Gordon: We're in the process of being dehumanized. The most extraordinary thing a person can acquire is a keen and clear sense of their humanity, and that is exactly what's being challenged and threatened and increasingly taken away from people. They are being shaped in ways that create a conformity, and conformity is critical to the advance of the kind of consumer culture that has its tentacles all the way around most people's souls.

JF: What kind of pathologies are you seeing in the culture as evidence of this happening?

Gordon: Well, one of the most distinctly evident pathologies is the disconnect between people's sense of responsibility, reality if you will, on a day-to-day basis and the desire to jettison that and live in fantasy. And then the lines become blurred and they live out those fantasies in a world where people depend upon one another to react and to act responsibly, conscientiously.  http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/
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