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Montebello E-News

 June 30, 2010

The kind of thinking that will solve the world’s problems will be of a different order to the kind of thinking that created those problems in the first place.  Albert Einstein

Do you think that we need to think differently?  If so, how, when, where and from whom do we learn to think differently?

1. Announcements
 2. Legal versus Ethical
3. About Montebello E-News and “My Montebello”

Recent happenings and coming events in Montebello. Excerpts from Spotlight on Montebello, June, 2010. The Annual Women in Business Awards Luncheon attracts a group of diverse and self-motivated women who serve and play a significant role on our communities with positive leadership. ... Amy Tassio, general manager of Hilton Garden Inn Montebello, is this year's recipient. // The Montebello Women's Club holds weekly luncheon meetings at 12:00 noon on Thursdays. If you're interested in joining this long-time Montebello civic organization, please call Mary Kincaid, membership chairman, at (323) 728-7543. // This year, Event Chair Denise Sandoval kicked off the start of the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life held at Schurr High School. Relay for Life brings the community of Montebello together to celebrate the lives of those who have battled cancer, remembered loved ones lost and empower individuals to fight back against this deadly disease. // The American Cancer Society, business members, along with the community of Montebello turned out for this year's annual Relay for Life Car Wash held in the parking lot of Camino Federal Credit Union. // It's hard to believe that 10 years have passed since the Xtreme Youth Football and Cheer program became a nonprofit organization in Montebello. In gratitude of the community support received within the past 10 years, Xtreme is extending a discounted registration fee for all flag, tackle and cheer youth participants. Since its inception, the goal has been the same, to provide the youth with an alternative, allowing them to participate in a sports program that will deter them from the negative influences that too often prey around them. The program also extends on opportunity for families to bond and participate in a safe and exciting environment. // Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal hosted its very first Alumni Night at the Spring Carnival recently. // One hundred and eight fourth grade students and their teachers from La Merced Elementary School participated in this year's Fourth Grade History Day at the Juan Matias Sanchez Adobe. Sixteen students from Montebello High School were the student teacher-docents for this historical event. // Montebello High School Adult Transition Program for Special Needs Students will be sponsoring a swap meet (flea market, crafts fair) every second Saturday of every month throughout 2010 to raise funds for program supplies and enrichment activities. ... There will be a fresh fruit and vegetable stand, handcrafted jewelry, collectibles and other hand crafts. Other vendors will be selling clothes, shoes, toys, and house wares new and used along with other miscellaneous items. ...Spaces are available at $15 to $25. To reserve your space call (323) 356-0439. // The Montebello Rotary Club recognized three Macy Intermediate students for their winning entries in the school's United States Constitution poster contest. // Students from Montebello and Schurr High Schools spent three days courtesy of the Montebello Rotary Club at AstroCamp in Idyllwild, California, where they participated in team activities designed to promote leadership skills, communication and problem solving, cooperation, respect, tolerance and personal growth. // This summer, Beverly Hospital is offering three exercise classes and a nutrition class for people fifty and over. // Balloons, faces painted as butterflies, tigers, and zebras, the ... yelps for joy coming from an oversized blow-up bounce house. Just a glimpse at the way the Montebello-Commerce YMCA, "Put More Play in Your Day" at the annual, nationwide Healthy Kid's Day event hosted April 17 at the Montebello-Commerce YMCA. // At a special city council meeting on Saturday, April 17, city Administrator Randy Narramore briefed the Council and the community on the state of the city's current budget. // Montebello's interim fire chief, James Ballard, is a well known figure throughout Southern California's fire community. ... When asked of his initial impression of the Montebello Fire Department, Chief Ballard responded, "Montebello's firefighters are some of the very best in Southern California at fighting large brush fires an dare a proud asset for the citizens of Montebello." // Montebello Bus Lines is pleased to announce the return of bus tokens. // For the twenty-eighth consecutive year, the City of Montebello will offer a Summer Youth Employment Program. (SYEP). The program benefits local youths from 14 to 21 years of age by providing them summer employment within the city's various departments, such as City hall, Police, Fire, Park Maintenance, Street Department, Aquatics, and Recreation. The program is funded by an annual SYEP Golf Tournament. This year, the tournament raised over $31,000. // The Montebello Fire Department has a very active Explorer Program with approximately 40 members. Youths between the ages of 16 through 21 with an interest in the Fire Sciences are eligible to participate in the program. // Join us this July 10 for the First Annual Summertime Fun Festival and Open House at Reggie Rodriguez Park from 12:00 noon to 6:00 p.m., at 200 West Mines Avenue in Montebello. The event is free of charge and open to all ages! ... The featured entertainment includes "Chico" the bank, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. ...

The seduction of empiricism. This is how science thinks presently: if we cannot see it or replicate it, it does not exist or cannot happen. There is a huge fallacy here, one which affects what our children learn and how our courts decide. The fallacy is that, at this point in time, we have all the tools to perceive or replicate and we need no more tools, because there is nothing more to perceive or replicate. Why is this a fallacy? A hundred years ago, we had optical microscopes and optical telescopes: we saw bacteria and galaxies. In recent years, we have been using electron microscopes and X-ray telescopes, enabling us to see viruses and otherwise invisible stellar phenomena. We have learned that, as our tools of perception or replication improve, we discover more, we learn more. Who is to say that, at this point, we have discovered and learned everything? And, yet, empiricism, a key part of science, is taught in schools as if there were no unknowns, no more things to learn.

Keeping children busy this summer. With the recent uproar about Facebook privacy, as well as with longstanding concerns about children's safety online, the launch of an innovative new social media site, Togetherville, seems very timely. Togetherville is an online community site designed for children under age ten. Although some parents might be reluctant to introduce children this young to a social network, Togetherville aims to help raise responsible digital citizens. Part of the impetus behind Togetherville is that children should learn to navigate online worlds in a safe environment alongside their parents, so that when they make a move into other social networks, they are better equipped to do so safely. Unlike other social networking sites, there are no strangers, avatars, or anonymous usernames in Togetherville. A parent must create a child's account and is encouraged to use a child's real name and picture. While this might be cause for concern on other social networking sites, Togetherville strives to make that safe. A child's network in Togetherville is solely comprised of existing relationships they have "offline" and ones pre-approved by parents. Togetherville uses a parent's existing Facebook account to connect with people parents know, which in turn is used to populate a child's network. Parents can approve the addition of other parents and children into their "neighborhood." ... http://www.justmeans.com/Togetherville-A-New-Social-Network-for-Kids/15656.html

Pinch me, this cannot be real. Imagine a world where you can buy electricity from your choice of vendor (not the utility) at prices that can be negotiated with the vendor. Kind of like shopping at eBay or Amazon. Want to buy a week’s worth (1,000 kWh) of power from SebaSolar at 9 ¢/kWh? Just click here. How about switching to WindyWelly for the weekend (300 kWh) at 8.5 ¢/kWh? Click! Wait, NeoGeo just announced it has a ‘fire sale’ at 7 ¢/kWh for next Tuesday through Thursday. Click! Well, imagine no more. This electricity world exists today. To see this new architecture of energy at work I went to Wellington, New Zealand. Powershop is a unit of Meridian Energy, the largest electricity generator and retailer in New Zealand. "The vision of Powershop is to be like eBay for electricity," says CEO Ari Sargent. "Any electricity generator in New Zealand, including Meridian’s competitors, can offer their own brands of electricity at different prices and different times." ... http://blog.cleantechies.com/2010/05/24/ebay-electricity-2-0/

If we had spent this money upfront? When all is said and done, how much will have been spent on cleaning up the Gulf oil disaster? How much will have been lost to the regional economy? If we had spent that money upfront on clean energy which would have reduced our dependence on oil? Why are we ready to spend such large sums to clean up a mess, but not to prevent it? Imagine paying over $300 for a gallon of gas. That was essentially what Exxon was paying in 1989 when their oil tanker, Valdez, split open and released over 10 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, Alaska. The cleanup alone is estimated to have cost roughly $2.5 billion and settlements over $1.1 billion. Divide $3.6 billion by 10 million gallons and Exxon paid well over $300 a gallon for oil they never even sold at the pump. Include all the bad PR and the total cost of the whole incident could easily double. If current estimates are correct about BP’s monster oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico then there is roughly 5 to 6 million gallons of crude floating around in need of some immediate attention. And immediate is the key word because statistics show that the cost to clean up a gallon of oil on land can run 10 to 30 times more than it does at sea. ... http://blog.cleantechies.com/2010/05/24/oil-spill-gas-exceeds-300-per-gallon/

One nation under God, with liberty and health insurance for all? The chief executive of UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation's largest health insurers, reaped almost $100 million from exercising stock options last year, the company reported Thursday. ... David S. Hilzenrath, "UnitedHealth CEO Reaps Nearly $100 Million from Stock Options", The Washington Post, April 16, 2010.

Are the words of modern-day prophets coming true? No longer able to depend on water imported from Northern California, one major Los Angeles water agency is starting to look elsewhere for its supplies. For the first time in its history, it has put out an open call for water from anyone who is willing to sell it to them and deliver it to their door. "The situation right now is we don't have any water and we needed to see if there was anybody out there who had water," said Water Replenishment District Board Member Albert Robles. With groundwater levels in the district at their lowest in 30 years, the district board members say they are serious about their open call for water, which does not put initial restrictions on quantity or source. Potential sellers could range from farmers to other water agencies, according to Robles, who is hoping with the going rate of water nearly doubling in recent years, people might now have the "incentive" to conserve more of their water and sell off their surplus to water agencies like theirs. ... Recent events have the replenishment district worried that imported water supplies will only become increasingly expensive and unreliable, prompting them to look at more unusual strategies such as making the call for water, only one component of a larger goal by the district to gain "water independence". ... "South Los Angeles Water Agency Looks Beyond Imported Water", Montebello Comet, May 20, 2010.

How bad is it, really? Can the future of the water supply in Montebello be predicted? For the short term, probably. For the long term, I would not bet any money. But a lot of the water being pumped out of the ground is as nonrenewable as oil. ... http://www.mymontebello.com/water.htm

Are we ready for a tsunami on our shores? China’s hidden borrowing may push government debt to 96 percent of gross domestic product next year, increasing the risk of a financial crisis in the world’s third-biggest economy, Professor Victor Shih said. "The worst case is a pretty large-scale financial crisis around 2012," said Shih, a political economist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who spent months researching borrowing transactions by about 8,000 local-government entities. "The slowdown would last at least two years and maybe longer," the author of the book "Factions and Finance in China" said in a phone interview March 1. ... http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601089&sid=aN94MF7BDx_A

What is our first reaction? Foreign Policy's Turtle Bay looks back over the top 10 worst UN Security Council resolutions in history, a mix of poorly considered decisions that range from ineffective to indecisive to contradictory. A 2006 resolution called for the deployment of a UN peacekeeping mission in Sudan authorized to use force to protect Darfur is -- so long as the Sudanese government approved the mission. The ambiguous UN Security Council Resolution 242, which called for a broader transfer of land seized by Israelis during the Six-Day War back to Arabs when the resolution was rendered in French, is still the subject of debate. As abstracted in UN Wire, May 25, 2010, from ForeignPolicy.com/Turtle Bay blog of May 21, 2010. Is our first reaction to say that the UN is ineffectual? If we think about this a bit, do we conclude, instead, that there are situations in which democracy does not work, at any level?

A silver lining in a very big cloud? In the remote interior of Congo, the news was buzzing around the villages: a Canadian company needed workers for a seed farm to produce jatropha plants, a new biofuel for global markets. The company asked for 20 workers to arrive at 7:30 on a Wednesday morning. "You wouldn’t believe it – there were 800 people who showed up, some of them a few days before, and they slept on the road," says Louis Tourillon, founder and CEO of Carbon2Green, a Montreal-based company. "Those people need the work. They need what we’re bringing there. And without climate change, we wouldn’t be there doing that. The potential impact of what we’re doing is just mind-boggling." Africa has long been known as the biggest victim of climate change: the region of the world most vulnerable to the droughts and floods that are expected to increase in the coming decades. It’s a serious threat: water scarcity alone could affect 250 million Africans by 2025. But some entrepreneurs and financiers believe that Africa can also benefit from the economic opportunities of climate change. They hold a radically different vision of the climate trends, seeing the chance for jobs and development, instead of just doom and gloom.

As the world adapts to climate change, it will need carbon sinks – such as the vast rain forests of Congo – to absorb the rising emissions from fossil fuels. And it will need cleaner sources of energy: renewable alternatives such as wind power, geothermal, biofuels, hydroelectricity and solar power. All of these resources can be found in abundance in Africa. Mr. Tourillon’s company, for example, would employ 180 full-time workers at its Congo operations, where it plans to grow 35 million jatropha plants on 14,000 hectares of land. Another 3,000 farmers would get indirect jobs by harvesting the jatropha and selling it to the company. The project could be a boon for an impoverished region of Africa where unemployment is about 60 per cent and average wages are about 35 cents a day. The company says it will spend $2-million annually to buy jatropha seeds from the 3,000 farmers, while the full-time employees would get $500 to $2,000 a month. The seeds of the jatropha plant can be converted into oil that can fuel generators and produce electricity. "This is not new, but we’d be the first to do it in Congo on this scale," Mr. Tourillon said in an interview. "We’ve put together a business model where everyone makes money." Traditional fossil fuels, primarily diesel for power generators, are currently providing 80 per cent of Africa’s energy, he said. "There’s a business opportunity to replace that 80 per cent. The market could be huge. The market is already there – they are buying fuel – so you don’t need to create a new market." ... http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/africa/
the-seeds-of-change-in-africas-economic-climate/article1579190/

And why Physicians for a National Health Program do not support the President's health reform. Although the compensation of UnitedHealth's Stephen Hemsley may be enough to motivate and retain him, it is difficult to see how it affirms his role in enhancing an ethical culture at the top. The behavior for which he is being rewarded is precisely what should have been eliminated with the recently enacted health care financing legislation. The ethical culture we should have would be one in which our health care dollars would be used to ensure that everyone receives the health care that they need. Instead, President Obama and Congress have ensured that Mr. Hemsley and his ilk will continue to be richly rewarded (for what?), while tens of millions are left without coverage, and the rest of us will have difficulties paying our premiums and our-of-pocket expenses. UnitedHealth's version of "ethical culture." What BS! From Don McCanne, MD, April 16, 2010

Out of sight, out of mind. Should we care? A garbage patch of plastic debris is endangering marine life in the Atlantic Ocean and there is little possibility of removing the pollution, researchers warn, because much of the material is broken down into small particles. Researchers hope to use their findings to increase awareness around ocean pollution. From The Toronto Star/The Associated Press, April 15, 2010, as abstracted in UN Wire, April 16, 2010 (Did you see "Oprah" on April 22? Apparently, there are five such garbage patches around the world.)

The iPhone advances human rights around the world? I received a PowerPoint in which the author claimed that Spain's General Franco had said that there must be no evidence of the atrocities during the Spanish Civil War of the Thirties, so that one day it could be said that those atrocities never happened: El General Franco tuvo razón al ordenar que no tomaran fotos ni films en los campos de concentración españoles... Y así explicó los motivos: "Que se tenga el mínimo de documentación,

elimimen testimonios, y a todo aquel contrario al régimen, porque ha de llegar un día en que se va plantar y decir que esto nunca sucedió". ... el Holocausto Español fue eliminado de nuestro plan escolar porque 'ofendia' a la población, que afirma que el Holocausto nunca sucedió... Does the proliferation of iPhones and other recording devices which can transmit around the world make a difference? Not by themselves, because there is one more element needed to prevent atrocities, you and me. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing", synthesized from a statement by philosopher Edmund Burke.

Well, should we care? Some of these long-lasting plastics end up in the stomachs of marine birds and animals, and their young, including sea turtles, and the Black-footed Albatross. Besides the particles' danger to wildlife, the floating debris can absorb organic pollutants from seawater, including PCBs, DDT, and PAHs. Aside from toxic effects, when ingested, some of these are mistaken by the endocrine system as estradiol, causing hormone disruption in the affected animal. These toxin-containing plastic pieces are also eaten by jellyfish, which are then eaten by larger fish. Many of these fish are then consumed by humans, resulting in their ingestion of toxic chemicals. Marine plastics also facilitate the spread of invasive species that attach to floating plastic in one region and drift long distances to colonize other ecosystems. ...From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

Was it subtle humor or mindless mumbling? Conservatives seized on a March 25, 2010, statement by Congressman Hank Johnson made during a committee hearing in Washington, D.C. The Congressman expressed concern that the island of Guam would capsize if more Marines were stationed there. Many thought that the Congressman was ill-educated. His Web site said: ... "I wasn’t suggesting that the island of Guam would literally tip over," said Johnson. "The subtle humor of this obviously metaphorical reference to a ship capsizing illustrated my concern about the impact of the planned military buildup on this small tropical island. With the addition of 8,000 Marines and their dependents – an additional 80,000 people during peak construction on the tiny island – could be a tipping point which could adversely affect the island’s fragile ecosystem and could overburden its stressed infrastructure. Having traveled to Guam last year, I saw firsthand how this beautiful – but vulnerable island – could easily become overburdened, and I was simply voicing my concerns that the addition of that many people could tip the delicate balance and do permanent harm to Guam." Whom do we believe? Rather, whom do we want to believe?

Defining genocide. Should it matter? Defining illegal drugs. Should it matter? How about the woman whose remarks online caused a teen to suicide. We have lengthy legal codes and continually find that people commit unconscionable acts which fall outside of the codes, meaning that there is no punishment. Are we straining too much to be a society of “law”, inadvertently allowing the clever and cunning among us to find ways to circumvent the law, without their being compelled to think of the ethics of what they are doing? Are there not virtues which transcend law and by which we must abide when the law does not cover an action?

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.