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Montebello E-News

 June 15, 2010

No one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy. Rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime. Young people must be included from birth. A society that cuts itself off from its youth severs its lifeline.

Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General, United Nations.

Have you heard this, City of Montebello and Montebello Unified?

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Some things should not change. During spring vacation, I witnessed a Boy Scout doing his Eagle project at an elementary school in Montebello. Scouts and Scout parents from Troop 330, and even Cub Scouts from Pack 45, were present to help. I wish there were more intergenerational community activities. I find it saddening that our schools prepare our youth to focus on college with so little regard for the welfare of our community. Is this somebody's way to halt population growth in Montebello?

A day at the Sanchez Adobe. History Day at the Juan Matias Sanchez Adobe will be on Saturday, June 26, 2010, from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM. This event is sponsored by the Montebello Historical Society. This event, free to the public, will include various displays. Our featured display will be on our local Gabrieleno Indians who lived in the Whittier Narrows. Everyone is invited to tour the oldest residence in Montebello. The Adobe is located at 946 North Adobe Avenue in Montebello. For further information, you can contact the Adobe at (323) 887-4592 or you can email the President of the Montebello Historical Society at gbrougher@sbcglobal.net. Gary Brougher, President

A good tradition continues. On Friday, June 18, 2010, the Lions Club of Montebello will install a new president. City Councilor Alberto Perez will become the eighty-sixth president. The installation will take place at the Quiet Cannon at 7pm.

If you have conservation on the mind. The Montebello Hills Sierra Club Task Force meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 P.M. For additional details, e-mail savemontebellohills@gmail.com.

What grade would you give them? MTA did a fair job of getting public comment about the proposed Gold Line extension through or alongside Montebello. However, there was gross negligence in a related area. From an e-mail to Metro dated April 12, 2010:  Yuki, good evening. What is needed is direct input by Metro passengers at a level which the MTA board has not permitted until now. The majority on the MTA board should be passengers. Does even one board member regularly ride the bus, light rail, subway or even the Metro Rail? Probably not. Understandably, it would be unwise to bring this matter up. Unfortunately, the potential of Metro to serve the public will always be less than what is possible because of this exclusion. ...

Separating fact from fiction regarding aspirin. If you believe that Snopes has integrity in separating fact from fiction, do see http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/aspirin.asp with regard to aspirin and heart attacks. Much good information. Here is an excerpt: ... In 1992 the American Heart Association began recommending a 325 mg aspirin dose at the onset of chest pain or other symptoms of a severe heart attack. That bit of advice is going unheeded, though; a follow-up report published in 1997 shows as many as 10,000 American lives a year could be saved if more people who thought they were having heart attacks took an aspirin at the start of chest pains. ... However, ... as the FDA also points out, only a health professional can safely decide if the regular use of aspirin to prevent a heart attack or stroke is right for any particular candidate for this form of therapy. It needs to be kept in mind that aspirin is a drug that can mix badly with other medicines (prescription and over-the-counter), vitamins, herbals, or dietary supplements. ...

More on health. How good or bad is this stuff for us? In the United States, heavy corn subsidies and sugar-import barriers have made high-fructose corn syrup some 20 percent cheaper than sugar. The United States accounted for nearly 80 percent of global production in 2004 and U.S. consumers swallowed 58 pounds of the syrup per person last year in various products, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Other producers include Japan, Argentina, the European Union, and China. From a newsletter of Worldwatch Institute, April 15, 2010.

Are we on a fast train on the road to perdition? The opinion piece below is related to "The Great Disruption and the Need for Meaning", in the graduation special edition last week. ... To address current trends, our culture must develop a new generation that will move toward a different concept and process of attaining success or "making it." This new concept is based on connectedness with culture and has a broader perspective of inclusiveness. It also involves having less sense of entitlement, more realistic expectations, and more willingness to regulate one's own behavior and the marketplace we live in. These are the components need to develop a Generation of We. To effect these changes will mean challenging basic economic assumptions and the elevated status of established economic theories and principles. In turn, we must challenge our current definition of success. The transition from a "me" society to a "we" society can be framed as the classic dichotomy of individualism versus collectivism. But it is a larger and more complex issue than that. The literature in social psychology is extensive in arguing about the issue of what comes first in order to change. Is it necessary to change behavior first, for change to occur - or is it necessary to change attitude before behavior change can occur? The dichotomy of behavior versus attitude for individuals to change is also applicable to our culture. Changes in individual behavior will principally follow changes dictated by policy. Our mass consumption society will only redirect when forced to. Narcissistic entitlement is too high - self-control is pummeled and expectations of voluntary change are naive. The cycle and patterns of the culture of excess are too ingrained. As a result, regulation in policy will be an important factor in the change process, and replace the conscious efforts of deregulation and no regulation. As discussed earlier, the cultural deregulation and no regulation movement has deregulated our inner mechanisms of individual self-control. Changes in attitude and thinking will also be related to policy; however, confrontation must occur between current attitudes and thinking that is "me based." Challenging some existing and entrenched beliefs about economics and economic growth will be necessary for change to occur. ... [Emphases mine.] http://www.cultureofexcess.com/ As excerpted in an e-newsletter by Don McCanne, M.D., May 18, 2010.

Who would have thought? The vaccine used to successfully eradicate smallpox worldwide may provide some protection against HIV/AIDS, researchers report in the journal BMC Immunology. Researchers hypothesize that the vaccine promotes long-term changes to the immune system that increase resistance to both diseases, and the end of its use as the smallpox virus waned may have contributed to the spread of HIV/AIDS. As abstracted in UN Wire, May 18, 2010, from a report by the British Broadcasting Corporation, May 17, 2010.

We can do without fish, right? The world is on course to empty Earth's oceans of fish as early as 2050 unless measures are taken to curb fishing fleets and give fish stocks a chance to develop, the United Nations Environmental Programme warns. An absence of fish would unleash economic and social upheaval for the 1 billion people worldwide that rely on the sea for their livelihoods and main protein source, UNEP projects. As abstracted in UN Wire, May 18, 2010, from a report by Google/Agence France-Presse , May 17, 2010.

Business opportunity? A green global economy will require much high recycling rates of specialty metals like lithium, neodymium and gallium, says a new United Nations report. These metals, needed to make wind turbines, solar panels and hybrid car batteries, are scarce in nature and expensive yet only about 1% of them are recycled, according to preliminary findings by the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP). It will publish the final version later this year. Unless recycling increases dramatically, the report warns that specialty and rare earth metals could become "essentially unavailable for use in modern technology." ... http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/05/
un-report-metal-recycling-is-needed-for-green-tech/1

What can our schools and we do about this? ... In many cases, pencil wood production has depleted forest reserves, contaminated waterways, and choked the air with pollutants. Herbicides are often sprayed over the forest to kill plants that compete with saplings. Several companies have developed more responsible methods and have sought Forest Stewardship Council certification, widely considered the international standard for sustainable forestry. After approving each step of harvesting, extracting, and processing the wood, the Council has granted certification to 41 pencil manufacturers across the world. Forest Ethics, an environmental organization that lobbies against unsustainable logging operations, has recently begun dialogues with pencil manufacturers to encourage more widespread FSC certification. But the Council has also been accused of being too complacent. Certification has been granted to logging companies that cut down old growth forests, for instance, and to those who rely on monoculture plantations. Due to concerns over "mixed label" products, which contain wood that may not be 100-percent certified, Norway last year banned any Council-certified wood products in public buildings. Some pencil manufacturers have completely avoided the need to cut timber in recent years through the use of recycled materials. Examples include pencils made from old newspaper, dollar bills, denim, and rubber tires. ... From Worldwatch Institute, April 30, 2010. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6422

Do we really want to scratch under the surface and burst the bubble of bliss? WASHINGTON, D.C., May. 18 - Hershey's has declared today, May 18th, to be the official, national "I Love Reese's Day." With separate holidays for peanut butter and chocolate, Hershey's thought they needed a separate, official day to celebrate Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. But the marriage of chocolate and peanut butter is hardly reason to celebrate, when Hershey's sources chocolate from western Africa where some of the poorest cocoa plantations are plagued with forced and child labor. That is why our organizations are sharing the top three reasons why we do NOT love Reese's and why all chocolate lovers should not love Reese's today, or any day:

(1) Hershey's Sources From Countries With Abusive Child Labor ... In 2009, Interpol rescued more than 50 children between the ages of 11 to 16 from Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana who were trafficked into these countries and forced to work under extreme conditions without pay and with no access to education. http://www.interpol.int/public/News/2009/CotedIvoire20090803.asp;

(2) Hershey's Sources From Countries With Forced labor, Last fall, the US Department of Labor included cocoa from Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea and Nigeria on a list of goods produced by child labor and/or forced labor. http://www.dol.gov/ilab/programs/ocft/pdf/2009tvpra.pdf; (3) Failure to Adopt Transparent and Responsible Sourcing, ...

In 2008 Fortune magazine reported that Hershey's is not playing a direct role in reforming the cocoa industry in the Ivory Coast, which is plagued by child labor practices and other labor violations. Instead, Hershey's (and the cocoa industry in general) contributes to the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), which is supposed to address labor issues in the Ivory Coast. However, critics maintain that the ICI has limited staff in the Ivory Coast and has done little to end child labor. http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/24/news/international/chocolate_bittersweet.fortune/ ... http://www.justmeans.com/press-releases/Organizations-Question
-Hershey-s--amp-quot-I-Love-Reese-s-Day-amp-quot-/5416.html

Should we in the US be doing something different so that this war not be lost? Brazil's environmental protection regulations, including goals of a reduction in deforestation by 70% over the next 10 years and the preservation of some 300,000 square miles of rain forest, mark the nation as a leader in environmental conservation -- on paper. In reality, enforcing these regulations proves much more difficult, with illegal logging, farming, ranching, hunting and development compromising the rain forest. At the current rate of deforestation, half the Bom Futuro National Forest will be razed in five years and it will disappear entirely by 2021. As abstracted in UN Wire February 6, 2010, from a report in The Washington Post, February 6, 2010.

So, there is a method to the madness.    ...(Former House Speaker Newt) Gingrich's comments came at a health-care industry sponsored conference held by Center for Health Transformation, a project of his consulting firm. Gingrich argued the federal law has been intentionally designed to encourage businesses to drop health care for their employees, incurring a new fine in the law for not offering insurance. Employees will then enter new individual health exchanges, Gingrich argued, but find them so expensive that they will clamor for a nationalized health care system. ...

So, soda companies do not want to meaningfully help reduce childhood obesity. Profit over ethics. Here is an interesting perspective on "responsibilities" versus "rights".

Robert Bookman from the restaurant industry was quoted as saying that it would violate the free speech rights of restaurant owners if they had to post a health department grade of their cleanliness in the window. More and more, businesses and businesspeople talk about their rights. It seems, though, that organizations and individuals that focus more on their responsibilities and less on their rights tend to outperform. You're responsible to your community, to your customers, to your employees and to your art. Serve them and the rights thing tends to take care of itself. Another thought: If I worked at Pepsi, I'd be actively lobbying for the obesity sweet soda tax (a penny an ounce) being proposed in New York. Instead, in a no-surprise knee jerk reaction, almost everyone in the industry is lobbying like crazy to stop it. This is dumb marketing. The benefit of a tax is that it affects you and your competitors at the same time, so you all benefit from doing the right thing, as opposed to having to compete against someone who doesn't care as much as you do. Once people realize that excessive use of your product makes them sick and then die a long and painful death, it's probably time to stop lobbying and time to start doing something about it. This industry should stop thinking it is in the corn syrup delivery business (which brings nasty side effects along with it) and start focusing on delivering joy in a bottle. Lots of interesting ways to do that without giving up profits. If your success depends on sickening the poorest and least educated portion of your customer base (and the ones that buy the most from you), it's time to redefine success.  [Emphasis mine.] http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/04/rights-and-responsibilities.html
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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.