1.     Would You Turn Down Millions of Dollars?

2.     A Not-So-Divine Comedy, Part 10

3.     Announcements

4.     Fun Facts about Minnesota

5.     The Flashback Quarterback:  Suffocating on Our Idealism

6.     Beware and Share:  Hospital Germs as Cause of Death?

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

Would You Turn Down Millions of Dollars?  

We continue to see major failings of our system of government as presently structured.  We lost a large sum of money at a time when we needed it, as reported below.  What would you do to ensure, to ensure, that such a failing not recur?  

Most Katrina Aid from Overseas Went Unclaimed  

By John Solomon and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post staff writers, April 29, 2007  

As the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina were receding, presidential confidante Karen Hughes sent a cable from her State Department office to U.S. ambassadors worldwide.  

Titled "Echo-Chamber Message" -- a public relations term for talking points designed to be repeated again and again -- the Sept. 7, 2005, directive was unmistakable: Assure the scores of countries that had pledged or donated aid at the height of the disaster that their largesse had provided Americans "practical help and moral support" and "highlight the concrete benefits hurricane victims are receiving."  

Many of the U.S. diplomats who received the message, however, were beginning to witness a more embarrassing reality. They knew the U.S. government was turning down many allies' offers of manpower, supplies and expertise worth untold millions of dollars. Eventually the United States also would fail to collect most of the unprecedented outpouring of international cash assistance for Katrina's victims.  

Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.  

In addition, valuable supplies and services -- such as cellphone systems, medicine and cruise ships – were delayed or declined because the government could not handle them. In some cases, supplies were wasted. ...  

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 2007 by a local nonprofit organization.  

1. What are the problems reported here?

(a) The United States did not have enough resources to make use of all the aid offered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

(b) Our country did not appreciate the help which was offered.

(c) America was lying to countries who were trying to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.  

2. What would you do to ensure that this not happen again?

(a) Repeat what the Bush Administration did, namely, accept the resignation of the FEMA director and appoint a new director.

(b) Restructure disaster response so that more people at the disaster site be able to make key decisions.

(c) Authorize nonprofit organizations to step in immediately and exercise authority on the same level as government agencies.

  No one can earn a million dollars honestly.
William Jennings Bryan, 1860 – 1925,
an American lawyer, statesman, and politician, three times the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States.

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.
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Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest [sic] of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
John Maynard Keynes, 1883 – 1946,
a British economist whose ideas, called Keynesian economics, had a major impact on modern economic and political theory, as well as on many governments’ fiscal policies.  

So far, we have noted many deficiencies in the capitalism which we practice.  The purpose behind such a look is to encourage thought and action about how to make capitalism work better.  So we look at more deficiencies. 

We have explored the problem which economic libertarians would create if their wish of the unfettered pursuit of wealth became reality:  as they worked without constraint, they would restrain employees and consumers by taking wealth, through exploitation, regulation or deception.  

Civil libertarians want to ensure that the state and society not trample upon individual rights.  The First, Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments of the Bill of Rights (side note:  is it not remarkable that we capitalize these words, as if they were accorded sanctity?) are within the panoply of weapons which civil libertarians use to protect individual rights.   

Yet, civil libertarians would create a problem because of the unfettered pursuit of wealth.  There are people in our society who are very incapable of resisting the exploitation, regulation or deception of economic libertarians.  The situation of such vulnerable people is aggravated because of the desire of civil libertarians to protect the individual to the extreme.  Such protection of the individual leads to dependence on public welfare, to the sale of illegal drugs, and to the disintegration of the family and homelessness.  

To illustrate, let us glance at an obvious example:  vulnerable individuals who need monitoring.  These could be people who have irreversibly damaged their brains because of drugs.  Economic libertarians, through their pursuit of wealth, which makes drugs immoderately and imprudently available, and civil libertarians, through their interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, which limits search and seizure by authorities, create a situation in which harmful drugs become available and there is insufficient monitoring, leading to harm, even extreme harm, to many individuals.  When these individuals be irreversibly injured, the only recourse is public welfare to maintain them.  So, in promoting individual rights, civil libertarians make many individuals welfare-dependent.  

It is strange that economic and civil libertarians might not be cut of the same cloth and might not sit at the same table, but, together, intentionally or inadvertently, conspiratorially or coincidentally, they combine forces to assault many individuals to the benefit of the few.  Their agendas combine to become a juggernaut, irresistibly trampling upon a large number of people.

Minnesota inventions:  masking and Scotch tape, Wheaties cereal, Bisquick, HMOs, the bundt pan, Aveda beauty products, and Green Giant vegetables.  [The processed foods, in light of their lack of nutrition, are not as noteworthy as they might have been fifty years ago.]  

Minneapolis’ famed skyway system connecting fifty-two blocks, nearly five miles, of downtown makes it possible to live, eat, work and shop without going outside.  

Minnesota has ninety-thousand miles of shoreline, more than California, Florida and Hawaii combined.  [Woah.  Read that again.]  

The first open heart surgery and the first bone marrow transplant in the United States were done at the University of Minnesota.  

For many years, the world’s largest twine ball has sat in Darwin.  It weighs seventeen thousand four hundred pounds, is twelve feet in diameter, and was the creation of Francis A. Johnson.  

The first automatic pop-up toaster was marketed in June, 1926, by McGraw Electric Co. in Minneapolis under the name “Toastmaster.”  The retail price was $13.50.  

On September 2, 1952, a five-year old girl was the first patient to under go a heart operation in which the deep freezing technique was employed. Her body temperature, except for her head, was reduced to seventy-nine degrees Fahrenheit.  Dr. Floyd Lewis at the Medical School of the University of Minnesota performed the operation.  

Rollerblades were the first commercially successful in-line roller skates. Minnesota students Scott and Brennan Olson invented them in 1980, when they were looking for a way to practice hockey during the off-season.  Their design was an ice hockey boot with three inline wheels instead of a blade.  

Candy maker Frank C. Mars of Minnesota introduced the Milky Way candy bar in 1923.  Mars marketed the Snickers bar in 1930 and introduced the five-cent Three Musketeers bar in 1937.  The original Three Musketeers bar contained three bars in one wrapper, each with different flavor nougat.  

Minnesota’s waters flow outward in three directions:  north to Hudson Bay in Canada, east to the Atlantic Ocean, and south to the Gulf of Mexico.    

At the confluence of the Big Fork and Rainy Rivers on the Canadian border near International Falls stands the largest Indian burial mound in the upper Midwest.  It is known as the Grand Mound historic site.  

Alexander Anderson of Red Wing discovered the processes to puff wheat and rice giving us the indispensable rice cakes.  

In 1898, the Kensington Rune stone was found on the farm of Olaf Ohman, near Alexandria.  The Kensington Rune stone carvings allegedly tell of a journey of a band of Vikings in 1362.  [A PBS documentary speaks of Vikings reaching Baghdad in order to do trade.  They must have been quite adventuresome!]