1.  They, They, They!

2. A Not-So-Divine Comedy, Part 20

3. Announcements

4. Fun Facts about North Dakota

5. The Flashback Quarterback:  Remember the Gordian Knot?

6. Be Aware and Share:  Questions without Answers?

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

They, They, They!  

In the community lesson from last week, we noted that there was a big hole in the chain of command when it came to preventing an accident here in Montebello.  But Montebello is not unique, not even atypical.  

In March, a large construction crane toppled and killed people in New York.  Ten days later, a crane in Miami toppled and killed people.  On the same day of the Miami accident, it was on the news that the United States had mistakenly shipped nuclear warheads to Taiwan.  Then there was a runaway train carrying lumber near Boston which ran into a passenger train during rush hour, injuring some one hundred fifty passengers.  A couple of days later, the Federal Aviation Administration was criticized for being too lenient with the airlines.  Before March ended, there was a report about a teen suicide possibly attributed to the allergy drug Singulare.  

All this is a continuation of the community lesson in the March 27, 2008, E-News.  

With regard to the suicide, the tearful mother said, “I wish they had done something sooner.”  

They, they, they!  Why do we look to government to save us?  Why do we put ourselves in the position of children and government in the position of a parent?  Good intentions notwithstanding, government does not have the resources to be our parent.  It would be healthy for us, our families, and our democracy if we learned to take care of ourselves.

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 is the problem here?

(a) There are not enough government inspectors.

(b) We the people are too dependent on government to take care of us.  

2. What is the solution here?

(a) We raise taxes so as to hire more inspectors.

(b) We the people acquire the authority and institute our own oversight, without depriving professional inspectors of their jobs.

  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.  

The town of Rugby is the geographical center of North America. A rock obelisk about fifteen feet tall, flanked by poles flying the United States and Canadian flags, marks the location. [Is not Mexico part of North America ?]  

North Dakota passed a bill in 1987 making English the official state language.  [Recall that New Mexico has two official state languages.]  

Milk is the official state beverage.  [Does that make Oreo cookies popular?]  

When Dakota Territory was created in 1861, it was named for the Dakota Indian tribe. Dakota is a Sioux word meaning “friends” or “allies”.  

Petroglyphs carved into two granite boulders give Writing Rock State Historic Site near Grenora its name. Though their origins are obscure, the drawings probably represent the Thunderbird, a mythological figure sacred to Late Prehistoric Plains Indians. Outlines of the bird, showing its wings extended and surrounded by abstract designs, appear on both boulders.  

North Dakota grows more sunflowers than any other state.  

Only one word is needed to describe Lake Sakakawea country – big. From the massive two-mile long Garrison Dam near Riverdale to the end of Lake Sakakawea near Williston, Lake Sakakawea is nearly two hundred miles long with a shoreline of countless bays and inlets that cover one thousand six hundred miles.  [In North Dakota ?]  

In 1982 Rutland hosted what was considered the grand daddy of all celebrations when the town went into the “Guinness Book of World Records” with the cooking and eating of the world’s largest hamburger.  That year, between eight and ten thousand people came to sample the tasty 3,591-pound burger.  [Did they set a record with the amount of cholesterol ingested?]  

Lawrence Welk left his home in Strasburg on his birthday in 1924 to pursue his musical career.  On July 2, 1955, he made his debut on national television.  “The Lawrence Welk Show” was produced for twenty-six years and today reruns of the popular program air weekly throughout the United States and foreign countries.  

The Lewis and Clark expedition encountered their first grizzly (brown) bears in North Dakota.  

A twelve-foot-high bronze statue of Sakakawea and her baby son Baptiste stands at the entrance to the North Dakota Heritage Center on the state capitol grounds in Bismarck. The statue, by Chicago artist Leonard Crunelle, depicts Sakakawea with her baby strapped to her back and looking westward toward the country she helped to open.  [On which coin do we have an image of Sakakawea?  By the way, her name is spelled “Sacajawea,” also.]

We talk in E-News about thinking outside the box to find solutions.  It is disheartening how infrequently such thinking occurs and how harmful such failure can be.

In the April 24, 2008, E-News, we took note of a man who had been wrongly jailed for about twenty-six years because two attorneys were kept from telling the truth about his innocence.  The attorneys represented a different person, who confessed to the crime, but because the attorneys were bound by the “attorney-client privilege,” they could not tell the court what their client had told them.

This sounds sickeningly ridiculous.  Could there not have been another solution?  

Yes, at least three possibilities come to mind:  

·        the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination;  the guilty person could have invoked the Fifth to protect himself and then told the truth to free the wrongly jailed man;

·        without the Fifth Amendment, a deal could have been reached with the judge for the guilty person to receive immunity in order to tell the truth;  while total justice would not have been served, at least the innocent man would not have spent about twenty-six years behind bars;

·        the two attorneys could have said that the attorney-client privilege prevented them from revealing certain facts, but that they knew that the jailed man was innocent and that a new trial should be held.  

Remember how Alexander the Great undid the Gordian Knot?  Why do we lack that ability?

Interesting viewpoint below.  My question:  what is the root cause of single-parent families?  Could there be two root causes, namely, job insecurity and the way in which wealth is distributed?  

Getting Poverty Wrong
On the presidential campaign trail, it’s almost as if the 1960s never happened.
by Steven Malanga, 21 March 2008  

Barack Obama’s much-discussed speech in Philadelphia earlier this week was not only about race.  It was also about economics and, specifically, about poverty.  Measures of group wealth, or the lack of it, are often used to support claims that our society is racist.  Obama’s speech revealed that though he may be, to many people, a refreshingly new kind of post-racial politician and a healer, when it comes to notions of poverty and economic advancement, his ideas are right out of the 1960s and 1970s. …  

Reading Obama’s speech prompted me to look at his larger economic policy proposals, especially those aimed at combating poverty. Clearly, he believes that our economy is failing many Americans, and to help the impoverished, he proposes everything from tax credits for the working poor to a higher minimum wage. In fairness, on these issues, he’s not much different than his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

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.