Montebello E-News

 September 4, 2008

In a museum in Havana there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,
one when he was a boy and one when he was a man..
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835 – 1910,
better known by the pen name "Mark Twain", was an American humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer.  Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the "Great American Novel", and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He is also known for his quotations. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists and European royalty. 

[Hah!  Is Twain making light of Cubans?  Of American tourists?  Of museums?]

1. The Bogey Man    

2. Social-Impact Report, Part 10

3. Announcements

4. Not-So-Fun Fact about Earthquakes in Southern California

5. The Flashback Quarterback:  Where Do You Draw the Line?

6. Be Aware and Share:  Why Is This Not Headline News?

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

The Bogey Man  

In July, my parents received the following in the mail:  

In the Bad Old Days before Proposition 13, an assessor would use the prices of houses recently sold in your neighborhood to mark up the value of your home.  Then you’d see a comparable increase in your next property tax bill, so …  

Without Prop. 13, you’d now pay triple your recent property tax bill … or seven times?  …ten times?   … certainly many thousands of dollars more every year!  

I’m writing today to warn you that those very bad old days could come back soon, because ... [i]f we don’t act now, the State Legislature could soon weaken {Prop. 13 and allow BIG property tax increases on your home, along with every house in your community. …

I’ve enclosed an Official Petition for your use to help protect yourself from HUGE property tax increases. ...  

My parents’ English is limited.  Compound that with a lengthy mailing in relatively small type.  Add the stunning realization that the mailing says nothing about pending legislation, but, rather, talks about what might happen if such legislation were introduced.  

How many people received that mailing?  Playing on people’s fears with ethereal accusations.  Five sheets of paper which would head to the trash can in most homes. 

Just what is the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association thinking?  

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 did the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association mail to people in July?

(a) A petition for them to sign to protect Proposition 13.

(b) A pen-and-pencil set.  

2. What is egregious about this mailing?

(a) It is lengthy—unwanted—and in small type—unreadable, meaning that it will head for the trash can.

(b) The enclosed letter does not point to any legislation which threatens Proposition 13.

When most companies close the year, they assess their financial performance and thank their customers for sales. While we definitely succeeded on that dimension this year with over 1,000 retail locations across the United States and 300% sales growth, our far more important impact was increasing the quality of life for thousands of women and children across the globe – and we want to thank you for making that possible.  ...
Priya Haji, Co-founder and CEO
“World of Good” Social-Impact Report 2006, http://www.worldofgood.com/impact/index.shtml  

A “social-impact report”?  We have heard of “environmental-impact report”;  for example, one has to be filed with regard to the disposition of our Montebello Hills before a decision be made about the hills.  A social-impact report would talk about the probable and possible social consequences of a planned or existing activity.  

What would happen if we took a message of hope out of a harangue or homily?  That sounds odd, but an article has appeared this summer which makes me wonder what the social impact would be in a society without hope.  

Obama, Shaman
by Michael Knox Beran, summer, 2008, City Journal, http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_3_obama.html  

...The country, or much of it, has longed for such a figure, a man from the once-oppressed race whose rise to power will atone for the sins of slavery and racial stigmatization. But Obama’s rhetoric encompasses more than a promise of racial healing. He is not the first politician to argue that politics can redeem us, but in posing as the Adonis who will turn winter into spring, he revives one of the more pernicious political swindles: the belief that a charismatic leader can ordain a civic happy hour and give a people a sense of community that will make them feel less bad. ...  

It is a sign of growing maturity in a people when, laying aside these beliefs, it acknowledges that suffering is an element of life that sympathetic magic cannot eradicate, and recognizes a residue of pain in existence that even the application of technical knowledge cannot assuage. Advances in knowledge may end particular kinds of suffering, but these give way to new forms of hurt—milder, perhaps (one would rather be depressed than famished), yet not without their sting. We do not draw closer to a painless world. ...

Unlike the English Whigs and the American Founders, the modern liberal regards suffering not as an unavoidable element of life but as an aberration to be corrected by up-to-date political, economic, and hygienic arrangements. Rather than acknowledge the limitations of our condition, the liberal continually contrives panaceas that will enable us to transcend it. ... 

FOR PARENTS, TEACHERS, COMMUNITY LEADERS.  “Grade-school Lolita: ‘So Sexy So Soon’”.  An informative article about the challenges faced by parents and teachers in dealing with the American media’s sexualization of children.  http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26037851/from/ET/   [Why do we let the media get away with so much?  Commercial speech under the First Amendment is not accorded the same status as political speech.]

FOR ELECTED OFFICIALS, COMMUNITY LEADERS, VOTERS.  The Vulcan raised eyebrow?  Centinela Valley Union High School District needs money, but is having trouble getting a bond measure on the ballot.  …[School board member] Salas said he voted against a bond measure because of the district's shoddy past. "To ask our voters to carry our share when our history is what it is, is not fair," Salas said. "We haven't been transparent or accountable to the voters who will carry this until 2058. I can't vote for that." ...At the Monday meeting, John Clem, senior vice president of TELACU Construction Management of Los Angeles , presented a proposal for the bond money.  Clem said modular classrooms would be replaced by two-story buildings; classrooms would be modernized with new paint, desks, cabinets, floors, ceilings and desks; and science and computer labs, bathrooms and libraries would be upgraded. "The actual scope of all of this will be defined after the bond has been passed, when we will go from a broad brush picture to specifics," Clem said.  Excerpted from “Centinela Bonds Get Last Chance”, August 5, 2008, http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_10110561?source=email.  [Reading those two statements, I would vote against a bond measure.]

FOR YOUTH, TEACHERS, PARENTS.  Mini-Grants for Youth.  Deadline: September 15, 2008.  A program of the Pay It Forward Foundation  Pay It Forward Mini-Grants are designed to fund one-time-only service-oriented projects identified by youth as activities they would like to perform to benefit their school, neighborhood, or greater community. Projects must contain a "pay it forward" focus -- that is, they must be based on the concept of one person doing a favor for others, who in turn do favors for others, with the results growing exponentially -- to be considered for a mini-grant. Mini-grants of up to $500 are available. Because funding is limited, projects requesting smaller amounts will be given priority.  Visit the Pay It Forward Foundation Web site for complete grant program guidelines and information on the Pay It Forward concept. RFP Link:  http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/15014740/payitforward.  From “RFP Bulletin”, August 22, 2008.

FOR EVERYONE.  Garage sales this coming weekend.  Montebello’s quarterly garage sales, Friday, September 5;  Saturday, September 6;  Sunday, September 7.  For more information, http://www.mymontebello.com/lists_tc_garagesales.htm.

FOR EVERYONE.  Can China’s Government Be Trusted?  Have we so locked ourselves into globalization that we no longer could exert influence on China?  Apart from the problems with toys and food from China, there is the apparent problem of the government going back on its promises.  See http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0806gs.html.

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, September 10, 2008, at 6:30 p.m.  If you wish to speak during orals, come before 6:30 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.

The following fact means that residents of the Palos Verdes Peninsula are relatively safe, while we who live around the San Gabriel River and Rio Hondo are relatively unsafe.

It was recognized as early as 350 BC by the Greek scientist Aristotle that soft ground shakes more than hard rock in an earthquake.

Where should we draw the line on diversity?  What is happening in Europe is going to happen in the United States, if it has not already.  Is it natural that it happen?  Is it just?  In accordance with American ideals?

"Italy Grapples with Polygamy"
by Tracy Wilkinson, July 15, 2008  

ROME -- A few miles from the Vatican, Najat Hadi kept house with her husband, his other wife and their assorted children, an unhappy home with a hateful woman 10 years her junior and a cruel spouse who left her with a jagged scar peeking from her collar.

Finally, she says, her Egyptian-born husband, who worked in Rome making pizzas, beat her so badly that she left him. But he kept her children.

Thousands of polygamous marriages like Hadi's have sprung up throughout Italy as a byproduct of a fast-paced and voluminous immigration by Muslims to this Roman Catholic country.

Despite the obvious culture clash, Italian authorities largely turn a blind eye, leaving women in a murky semi-clandestine world with few rights and no recourse when things go especially badly, as they did in Hadi's case.

"It is absurd that in a civilized country like Italy, so little is acknowledged about this," said Souad Sbai, a Moroccan-born Italian lawmaker who has emerged as a one-woman champion of female Muslim immigrants here.

Italy is one of several European nations faced with the issue of polygamy. In Britain and Spain, where large Muslim communities have also settled, some officials favor recognizing polygamous marriage as a way to ensure the wives' access to pensions, medical care and other state benefits.

But Sbai, who has lived 27 of her 47 years in Italy, thinks that misguided attempts at cultural sensitivity backfire when customs that stray into illegality are tolerated. Italian law sanctions marriage between a single man and a single woman only. ...

She is convinced that the polygamists in Italy are practicing a more fundamentalist and abusive form of multiple marriage. Because they feel so threatened by the Western culture around them, the men often imprison their wives and confine them to a life of solitude wholly dependent on the husband.

"They are kept in a kind of ghetto," Sbai said.

When Sbai recently created a hotline for Muslim immigrant women, she was inundated with 1,000 calls in the first three months. To her astonishment, she had tapped into a hidden community of women desperate for information, many trapped in violent, polygamous households, isolated and lonely. …
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/
la-fg-polygamy15-2008jul15,0,293378.story

Different interests are presenting different views on where we should go with health care in America.  How to sort fact from fiction?

While we should do our own research with a group of friends or family—remember, Sunday at Starbuck’s—it does not hurt to see who has endorsed which health plan and then to ask, “What interest does this group have in such a health plan?  Money?  Compassion?  Magnanimity?  Fairness?  Pragmatism?”  Also, as you look at what is below, do you share this question with me, “Why is this not headline news?”

Single payer was recently endorsed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, and the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalists. A resolution in support of HR 676 was passed unanimously by the Conference of Mayors, representing towns with populations over 30,000. The Presbyterians proclaimed single payer, universal national health insurance "the program that best responds to the moral imperative of the gospel." ... From the e-mail of July 9, 2008, of Physicians for a National Health Program, www.pnhp.org.

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.