Category Archives: Government

Keeping busy

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I've been tutoring a Somali refugee.
He's been in Pittsburgh four years. His spoken English is pretty
good, but he wanted help with reading. He's taking classes at a
community college, both ESL and preparation for the citizenship exam.
We have been going over a printout (from a Powerpoint) of 100
questions that might be on the exam, such things as “What are the
three branches of government?” “Who do we pledge allegiance to?”
Evidently they repeat these in class without explaining the meaning.
So we read, repeat, and I explain. I still remember the pledge of
allegiance, which irritates me. I'm sure my brain could be put to
better use. I am loyal to this country, but to a flag? That's just
nonsense.

I found a mistake in one of the
answers. “Name one of the states that borders on Canada.” They
included Pennsylvania. Unless we've ceded all of Lake Erie to Canada
there is no way PA borders it. New York is in the way. There may be
other mistakes. Some of the answers are fairly obscure, such as,
which amendment to the Constitution does what. I don't want to make a
research project out of this, that's the government's job.

This Somali family lives in an
apartment they have decorated by hanging fabrics and rugs on the
walls and fabrics from the ceilings. It's quite marvelous. Last week
when I went there everything had been removed, and it looked pretty
bad. They are preparing to move. I think they will be in a new place
when I return next week. I hope it will look as good. Maybe I can ask
to take pictures.

AIG question

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News about the bonuses to AIG executives has been annoying me all day. I don't understand about these so-called contracts they seem to have. I understand a contract as an agreement between two parties: one does something, the other one pays. Surely those contracts don't say these people get paid, lavishly, for running the company into the ground; for creating losses; for doing stupid things. Why are these people still employed, let alone getting bonuses? I'd like to see those contracts. Liddy, the government appointed CEO is worried about retaining  talented workers. They shouldn't be retained. They should be fired for malfeasance, at the very least. With talent like this you can be out of business in no time at all.

Open letter to John McCain

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 Dear Senator McCain,

Last night in the debate you said:

Well, I want to make sure we’re not handing the health care system over to the federal government which is basically what would ultimately happen with Senator Obama’s health care plan. I want the families to make decisions between themselves and their doctors. Not the federal government.*

So, Senator McCain, what I want to know is:
How do you reconcile this with your stand against a woman's right to choose?
Do you not consider women part of families?
Or do you think women are not capable of making decisions between themselves and their doctors?

What about
providing information about contraceptives? We keep giving men more
ability to produce babies. Shouldn't we be giving women the right not
to have those babies? And having their health insurance pay for contraceptives just as it pays for Viagra?

I haven't seen anything in the media about this. I know it's not the most important issue facing the country at this time (women's issues are never the most important). But I think it speaks to your judgment when you can blithely make a statement without considering all of its implications. Women want to know what you really mean when you say you want families to make decisions together with their doctors.

*This quote is taken from the New York Times transcript of the debate found here.

Let’s build a new train service

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After wonderful experiences taking trains all over Japan, I thought about all the benefits we would derive from a good rail system and wondered why no one was talking about it. Each time I mentioned it the responses were something about being in love with our automobiles, or how awful Amtrak was. I took the train, once, from Pittsburgh to New York. The trip was so nasty I returned by bus–cleaner and faster. A high-speed rail system, like they have in Japan, would get me to New York in two and a half hours; Chicago in three hours. One of my recent flights from New York took seven hours. I could have driven in that time.

David Bear, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, had an article, last Sunday, about the situation; first time I’ve seen anything about it. He goes into all the statistics and concludes with some hope for improvement, but not much. I followed the link in the article and found there is some interest in US rail travel. With some Googling I found articles that had been broadcast on NPR and also found that the Japanese rail system is both private and publicly owned and makes a PROFIT. So, now I have this fantasy that Bill Gates will look at the situation, decide he could make money this way, and build high-speed rail service throughout the country, or at least from Pittsburgh to New York and Chicago.

Remembrance, understanding and forgiveness

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After the Post-Gazette article appeared I received a very moving email from Masashi Narita, a medical trainee here in Pittsburgh:

On Dec.7th 2006, I was asked the same interesting question from
different persons " Do you know what is the day today?"  I can recall
immediately that the day is unforgettable memorial day for Americans,
especially veterans at VA hospital. I talked this episode to my fellows
and friends of Americans and Japanese. Some of Americans understand
that Pearl Harbor attack is the same memorial event as 9/11. Some of
Japanese did not know the date of Pearl Harbor attack.  From this
experience, I understand that the importance to keep remember what has
happened in our country’s history regardless of glorious or shame for
us, as well as to think about the loser’s view point. 

I had expected  that someone may ask me the same question on August 6th or 9th this year. Nobody did it.

I can
understand  your emotional issues at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. I
also visited there after 9/11 attack. I could not make any difference
between the tragedies, the terror and the war.

Masashi put into words what I was feeling: there is no difference between these tragedies.

When I wrote my original post about visiting the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima I certainly had in mind the controversy over whether we should have dropped the bomb. I knew too many veterans of WWII who were certain they would have died in the Pacific, had the war continued. Regardless of how we might feel about the issue there is no going back. The important thing is to learn the lessons of the past and there are many of them here. Over the years I have gone from feeling, as a child, that we Americans were on the side of the angels, to knowing that we are capable of the same horrifying deeds our enemies have visited upon us. There are no angels on earth, at least not in any government.

Stacie, an artist who blogs at Nomadic Creations, wrote a profound piece about a conversation with the Rwandan owner of a nearby gallery.

It was a unique opportunity to really see the world through
someone else’s eyes, and to understand how so much alike we all are,
and not always in such a good way. Like many people, I have filters on
my senses. Something like the Rwandan Genocide couldn’t possibly happen
here, or our country would never get into another civil war. It can
happen though. When an economic divide becomes so great…terrible things
can happen.

Yozefu said he had been back to Africa two years ago, and that the
thing that most impressed him was the capacity for forgiveness that
many villagers have embraced as the survivors have returned home. It is
unimaginable for me to think about that level of forgiveness.

Read the entire post here, and learn about the Rwandan genocide, here. Honor all of the victims of these atrocities with understanding, forgiveness and remembrance.

Who owns your elected representatives?

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If you think your elected representatives are representing you, or concerned with your needs and wishes, you are sadly deluded. Unless we are able to change our electoral system, those boys are working for the big corporations that pay their election expenses. None of them have your interests at heart. Each time I have posted about healthcare or other political problems I realize that no change will occur unless our huge corporations are behind the change. I had a brief flicker of hope when I realized that one of GM’s biggest problems is employee health coverage. Who better to fight a large industry like healthcare insurance than another large industry. But, somehow the problem has been assuaged if not resolved, so that hope is gone.

All of this is detailed in a wonderfully researched and written post by Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By. Beginning with an AP-IPSOS poll showing 75 percent of respondents think the country is off on the wrong track, Ronni goes through many of the problems we are having in this country and sums it all up with

…I believe the one solution is to remove them [corporations] from politics and
government. That means outlawing lobbying and most of all, creating
publicly funded elections.

Read it all here.

I think this is the single most important thing we can do to take back our government. Let’s start a movement.

Things I don’t understand

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Last night, 60 Minutes did a story about the No Fly List. They obtained a copy of the March list which has 44,000 names on it, including Osama bin Laden with strange spellings, 14 of the 9/11 hijackers, Saddam Husein and other dead people, and doesn’t even include another list of 75,000 people who should be pulled aside for additional questioning. There are also several international dignitaries like Nabih Berri, the head of the Lebanese
parliament who recently met with Condoleezza Rice and  Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia.

Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent, says in the headlong rush to get a list, they forgot
quality control. "And, we forgot what this was about. This is to
prevent an Islamic terrorist who is associated with al Qaeda from
getting on a plane. It lacks efficiency and, it makes us, look
ineffective and ill equipped"

60 Minutes went on to discuss the aggravations suffered by people with the same names as people on the list, for instance, men named Robert Johnson. CBS found twelve of them for the show. All had been subjected to long delays, humiliation and, in one case, a strip search. Having on a couple of occasions been subjected to little-old-lady-as-terrorist scrutiny I certainly sympathize.

The most outrageous part of the whole thing is:

some of the some of most dangerous terrorists never even end up on the
No Fly List, because the intelligence agencies that supply the names
don’t want them circulated to airport employees in foreign countries
for fear that they could end up in the hands of the terrorists.

"They’re not given all of the names for security reasons because
the government doesn’t want to have that information outside of the
government."

So we have a list of thousands of people we can harass, but the people most likely to be terrorists are not on the list because, what? The government doesn’t want them to know they are terrorists? The government doesn’t want them to know the government knows they are terrorists?  The government wants another incident? Does anyone remember Catch 22?

Much of the time when I have things to say about healthcare, Social Security, politics, etc., I realize that real change depends on changing our electoral system to get corporate lobbyists out of power. But I can’t imagine that anyone other than terrorists could profit from this mess. You can watch the show here.