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Montebello
E-News
March
20, 2008
Man once
surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the
most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.
Thomas
Jefferson, 1743 – 1826,
was
the third President of the United States
and
the
principal author of the Declaration of Independence.
(Al
Gore inserts this quote in his The Assault on Reason as he talks
about Americans’ support for the war in
Iraq.)
1.
Guaranteed Failure
2.
A Not-So-Divine Comedy, Part 13
3.
Announcements
4.
Fun Facts about Nebraska
5.
The Flashback Quarterback:
Teaching the Teacher
6.
Beware and Share: We
Are in Big Trouble
7.
About
Montebello E-News and “My
Montebello”
Guaranteed
Failure
Recently,
a newspaper called Orthodox New has been coming to the Armenian
apostolic church in
Montebello. Looking through the February,
2008, issue, I was a bit surprised to see an article entitled
“Congresswoman Proposes Stripping USDA of Safety Oversight after Largest
Ever Beef Recall.”
Because
our democracy has not adapted to the twenty-first century, this
Congresswoman’s proposal would not work.
But when I went to her Web site to send an e-mail to say as much, I
was met with
Please
Note: This service is for current 3rd Congressional District constituents of
Connecticut
only and will not accept messages from zip codes located outside of the 3rd
District. Congressional courtesy dictates that Representatives be given the
opportunity to assist their own constituents.
It
is right for a member of Congress to prioritize her constituents.
It is wrong for the member to ignore solutions to problems which she
is addressing. How would you
solve this contradiction?
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. The Congresswoman from Connecticut
is responding to which problem?
(a) The scandal in February, 2008, at the
slaughterhouse in
Chino, California.
(b) Some problem at Foster Farms in Arkansas.
2. What do members of Congress do?
(a) Set up a system to ensure that constituents receive
priority.
(b) Discourage people who are not constituents from
communicating with them.
3. What is a possible solution to the roadblock placed
by the Congresswoman?
(a) Write to the Congresswoman instead of e-mailing
her.
(b) Pretend to be a constituent and, thereby save paper
and time, so as to get an important message to her.
[As for a message, see “Flashback Quarterback” in this issue.]
A
Not-So-Divine Comedy, Part 13
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.
-----
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.
Before beginning to
write here, I looked at my notes. There
still are many examples of deficiencies.
What would be the point of reciting them?
Would a recitation of more deficiencies help persuade us that we must
fix capitalism, lest the day come when, in a paroxysm of revulsion and
repugnance, we the people castrate capitalism beyond recognition?
Health
Net Inc. Must Pay Client $9 million
February 22,
2008
LOS
ANGELES, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Health Net Inc., a major California health
insurance group, was ordered by an arbitration judge Friday to pay one of
its clients more than $9 million.
Arbitration
judge Sam Cianchetti found that by canceling the insurance policy of Patsy
Bates, a breast cancer patient who used Health Net for her health insurance,
the company violated numerous California laws, the Los Angeles Times said.
In
his 21-page opinion, Cianchetti also criticized Health Net for rewarding its
employees for saving insurance funds and canceling insurance claims like
Bates's. ...
And the health-care
industry is not the only one which does not work under current capitalism.
One might argue that our culture would be infused with the desire to
acquire:
As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this
single question: how much money will it bring in?
Alexis de Tocqueville, the Frenchman who authored Democracy in America.
The problem boils down
to this: capitalism is based on
inequality, while democracy is based on equality.
Remember Robert Reich,
who was the Secretary of Labor under the Clinton Administration?
He authored Supercapitalism not long ago.
While I have not read the book, I saw an interview in which he said
that we should not try to improve on the relationship between politics and
corporations, but, rather, should keep corporations out of politics.
That is an interesting approach.
Perhaps we would have an equivalent to the separation of church and
state: we would keep
corporations and the state separate.
However, are there less
visionary, more feasible ways to enable capitalism to operate without
harming democracy as much? We
will explore possible ways in coming issues.
Announcements
FOR EVERYONE.
Commission meeting. The
Montebello Civil-Service Commission is having a regular meeting on Tuesday,
March 25, 2008, at 6 p.m. at city hall,
1600 West Beverly Boulevard. The meeting is open to the
public. For more information,
323.887.1200.
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, March
26, 2008, at 7:30 p.m. If you
wish to speak during orals, come before 7:30 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.
FOR BUSINESSPEOPLE.
Sponsorship opportunity.
City of
Montebello
annual community clean-up day on Saturday, April 19, 2008, from 8 a.m. to 12
p.m. Corporate sponsors are
essential to the overall success of the program.
Your cash or in-kind contribution will be recognized with your
business logo on the volunteer t-shirt and with a certificate of
appreciation presented at the barbecue following the event.
To ensure recognition of your company, w require a copy of your logo
in PDF format on a CD disc, as well as the donation, no later than Monday
March 31, 2008. In addition to
monetary donations, we are requesting assistance with donations of the
following items for one hundred fifty volunteers:
pastries, give-away goods, water bottles, soda cans, visors, and
t-shirts.
For more information, Michele Haro, Public Works Manager,
323.887.4611.
FOR EVERYONE.
Animal rescue and more. There
are six related Web sites: hunger,
breast cancer, child health, literacy, rainforest and animal rescue.
You can access them all through http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/
. These Web sites have been
around for a while. You click on
an icon and sponsors donate to the cause.
You do not have to pay or register anything.
I have DSL at the office, and in less than thirty seconds, I clicked
on all six icons, meaning that donations from sponsors went to all six
causes.
Fun
Facts about Nebraska
Nebraska
was once called “The Great American Desert”. [I
wondered why until I read the next two facts.]
The state nickname used to be the “Tree Planter’s
State”, but was changed in 1945 to the “Cornhusker
State”.
The world’s largest hand-planted forest is
Halsey
National Forest
near Thedford, Nebraska. [This might no longer be true
in light of the worldwide billion-tree campaign.]
The Lied Jungle located in Omaha
is the world’s largest indoor rain forest.
[This is part of a zoo.]
Nebraska
has more miles of river than any other state.
Mutual of Omaha
corporate headquarters is a public building built with seven floors
underground. [Take a guess as to
why.]
This origin of Nebraska’s name is an Oto Indian word meaning “flat water.”
In Nebraska
in 1986, for the first time ever, two women ran against each other for
governorship of a state.
Kearney,
Nebraska,
is located exactly between
Boston
and San Francisco.
Father Edward Flanagan founded
Boys
Town
in
Omaha, Nebraska,
in 1917.
http://www.fun-facts.com/item/86115
The
Flashback Quarterback: Teaching the
Teacher
The
following was e-mailed on February 25, 2008, to Connecticut Congresswoman
Rosa L. DeLauro. (No reply has
been received. Do you think that
the message deserves a reply?)
Dear Congresswoman:
I applaud you for turning attention to the USDA's failure at
inspection. However, I am
saddened that the fundamental problem is not being addressed.
There is too much power in the hands of one person.
It would be good to do three things:
(a) post online all citations by USDA inspectors;
if there is no budget to do so, there are volunteers who will do so;
by doing so, you enable Americans to learn, plan, and be proactive;
our democracy needs far more of that;
(b) authorize and empower nonprofit organizations to "watch the
watchers" and to carry out undercover investigations in the public
interest, according to rules which would keep them from overstepping and, on
the other hand, from being intimidated;
(c) have the commissioner answerable to a commission which would have
the authority to overrule him or her and take action on its own, and which
would be comprised primarily of consumers.
If you proposed such legislation, you would be setting a historical
precedent which should be emulated by other watchdog agencies.
Thank you.
Beware and Share: We Are in
Big Trouble
If
the following does not concern us, we are in big trouble.
... Now, television commercials and many action
sequences on television routinely activate that orienting reflex [in us
humans] once per second. And
since we in this country, on average, watch television more than fours and a
half hours per day, those circuits of the brain are constantly being
activated.
The constant and repetitive triggering of the
orienting response induces a quasi-hypnotic state.
It partially immobilizes viewers and creates an addiction to the
constant stimulation of two areas of the brain:
the amygdale and the hippocampus (part of the brain’s memory and
contextualizing system). It’s
almost as though we have a “receptor” for television in our brains. ...
Television’s quasi-hypnotic effect is one reason
that the political economy supported by the television industry is as
different from the vibrant politics of America’s first century as those
politics were different from the feudalism that thrived on the ignorance of
the masses of people in the Dark Ages.
Our systematic exposure to fear and other arousal
stimuli on television can be exploited by the clever public relations
specialist, advertiser, or politician. Barry
Glassner, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California,
argues that there are three techniques that together make up “fearmongering”:
repetition, making the irregular seem regular, and misdirection. By
using these narrative tools, anyone with a loud platform can ratchet up
public anxieties and fears, distorting public discourse and reason. …
From The Assault on Reason by former
Vice-President Al Gore.
About
Montebello E-News and “My Montebello”
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.
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