Montebello E-News

A restful and reflective holiday, everyone.

 December 25, 2008

 Education is the ability to listen to almost anything
without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963,
was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.  His work frequently employed themes from the early 1900s rural life in New England , using the setting to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. …

  1.  Who’s in Charge?

2.  Are We Going to Lose This One?, Part 8

3. Announcement

4. Unusual Fact about Teen Pregnancies

5. The Flashback Quarterback:  Trust the Oil Companies?  

6. Be Aware and Share:  We Need a Quarterback

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

 Who’s in Charge?

You have to see these figures.  Then try to have a happy holiday.

2008 Bailout Costs As Much As Several Large and Famous Government Projects Combined
via Consumerist by Ben Popken on 12/3/08

...Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, the Moonshot, S&L Crisis, Korean War, and even The New Deal, which has been derided by some as being like the most expensive socialist thing ever, can't hold a candle to the payouts from the attempts to fix the current economic crisis. Take NASA. As Meg pointed out to me over IM, there's never been any fun beach excursions provided by NASA. The same, however, cannot be said for the current bailout, especially if your name begins with an A, ends with a G, and there's an I in there.

Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion

Louisiana Purchase : Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion

Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion

S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion

Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion

The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)

Invasion of Iraq : Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion

Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion

NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3,920,000,000,000 [Emphasis by E-News.]

2008 BAILOUT TOTAL AS OF NOV 2008:  $4,616,000,000,000. [Emphasis by E-News.]

 [...Voltage Blog based on a BoingBoing post which was based on data crunched by Jim Bianco of Bianco Research]

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. Why is this comparison useful?

(a) To put the current bailout in perspective.

(b) To show the severity of the problem which the bailout is trying to remedy.

2. What is a key missing ingredient?

(a) Increased oversight, public oversight, before, during, and after, so that such a problem not repeat and the solution not be misused.  (How is the bailout money being misused?)

(b) A public trial of the decision-makers who led us into this crisis.

 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.

Let us end this essay on an optimistic note.  Do you share the writer’s optimism?

Perhaps we’re on the verge at getting much better at making useful things, spreading ideas that matter and helping people, and not quite so good at leveraging capital for financial institutions. Imagine what would happen if 5,000 investment bankers or 500 M & A lawyers put their talents to work doing something else…

As I look through all the notes and applications I received for the program I’m running next year, I’m not just optimistic. I’m thrilled. There must be hundreds of thousands of movers and shakers out there, people of all ages who are smart and get things done. And more and more, they’re being motivated by the quest, or the outcome, or the people they work with, not just the cash payout. It’s exciting beyond words. The ten people I’ve chosen are just astonishing, each and every one of them.

If you can’t find people like these, you’re not looking in the right places. And if you can’t figure out how to work with them, you’re missing out. http://www.culture-making.com/post/not_just_optimistic/

FOR EVERYONE.  Why Have We Not Thought of That?  From http://www.culture-making.com/post/wallpaper/. 

Nate: “Graffiti (whether the restroom kind or others) sits on this weird junction between creation and vandalism, between anonymity and community. In this particular case, something undertaken primarily to reduce business expenses wound up making a space not just for alternative cultural expression, but for better—and self-improving—forms of community: "the clerk also told me that the men had cleaned up their language quite a bit in five years. The tone of their scribbles had changed from gross and inappropriate to polite and sincere."”

During a long road trip between California and Missouri , I stumbled on a gas station on Interstate 40 in Adrian , Texas , that had come up with an ingenious way of protecting the walls of their restrooms. In an effort to reduce the number of times the restrooms needed to be painted, someone came up with the idea to tape sheets of butcher block paper to the walls. The sheets were inside every stall and on the walls in both the men and women’s restrooms. On the top of each piece of torn white paper was written “Please tell us about your trip”. What followed on every sheet were stories about why people were traveling across the country. Some stories were sad, some were happy, some were angry. The whole gamut of emotions was posted on these sheets. (I wish I had a picture.)

The amazing thing was that the real white walls of the restroom were not defaced in any manner, not one piece of graffiti.  After asking at the checkout who came up with the idea, the clerk told me that, to clean up graffiti, the owners had been stuck with a painting the walls of the restrooms twice a year. Since they had put the butcher block paper up five years ago, they had never painted the restrooms.  Yet they remained clean and sparkling white. Obviously, the management nudged the public for everyone’s benefit.

Dollar a day. Teenage pregnancy is a serious problem, and girls who have one child, at, say, 18, often become pregnant again within a year or two. Several cities, including Greensboro, North Carolina, have experimented with a “dollar-a-day” program, by which teenage girls with a baby receive a dollar for each day that they are not pregnant. Thus far the results have been extremely promising. A dollar a day is a trivial amount to the city, even for a year or two, so the plan’s total cost is extremely low, but the small recurring payment is just enough to encourage some teenage mothers to take steps to avoid getting pregnant again. And because taxpayers end up paying a significant amount for many children born to teenagers, the costs appear to be far less than the benefits. Many people are touting “dollar a day” as a model program. http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Provocations/
tricking_people_into_doing_the_right_thing

Veco executives plead guilty to bribing officials
by Richard Mauer and Lisa Demer
Anchorage Daily News
published May 7, 2007

Bill Allen, a welder who took the Veco Corp. from a small Kenai oil-field company to a billion-dollar international contractor and a major political force, pleaded guilty Monday to bribing at least four Alaska legislators, including former Senate President Ben Stevens.

In a plea bargain with the U.S. Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, Allen and Rick Smith, Veco’s vice president for community and government affairs, each pleaded guilty to three identical felony charges - bribery and two counts of conspiracy.

Both men accepted responsibility for making more than $400,000 in illegal payments and benefits to public officials or their families. More than half the money went to Stevens in the form of phony “consulting” fees, the government charged.

Stevens, son of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, has not been charged. He was named in the plea documents as “State Senator B,” but his identity was unmistakable. … http://dwb.adn.com/news/politics/fbi/story/8863305p-8765669c.html

We have been told repeatedly what to do, but we do not do it.  What will you do after reading the excerpt below?  I will forget, frankly.

So where lies a solution to ensure that we do what is prudent?

... Fire officials recommend that, following a major earthquake, people be prepared to be without emergency services for up to seventy-two hours.  During that time, a correctly assembled emergency kit will provide adequate supplies of water, food, light, medication, batteries, money, a fire extinguisher and tools. ...  “Surviving the Shaking Is Only the Beginning”, Montebello Comet, July 31, 2008