Sunday, January 31, 2010

Where Are We Sunday January 31, 2010?

Howard Zinn has passed on.If you don't know who he is, please Google him and figure it out. I don't like to do all the heavy lifting.This man is a giant. Hint: He wrote the "History of the People of the United States", an alternative account of the traditional history. If and when you read( or have) please comment for this blog. He will be back shortly and we shall hear form him,her, it again. :-))

And so the President of the United States has with stood the worst two weeks of his presidency. My question to you is: Did you support him as your president? If not ask yourself why.

If we listen to the overload of real time TV and radio left or right, frankly we are confused!

It is not so much what the administration is doing;but the fact that it is being reported real time before there is any time for it to settle or take shape.

This man is not dumb, not a liberal, not conservative, not easy to define. If he has an issue it seems to be he won't settle into anyone's lexicon to be defined.

Stay tuned racing fans, he knows he has not got his agenda out there nor the people with him because he has been unable to articulate his agenda. Strange,Obama can not articulate? That's correct. He said he would take on the major ills of the country,the economy, run away Wall Street, unemployment, cost and choice of health care, wars and climate change. Question: has he not taken them all on head on? Yes, of course he has.

If you ask me I would say the mistake has been that he is not wrong on any of these issues; only that he has failed to GO TO THE PEOPLE ON ALL OF THEM! He expects congress to fix problems. His hero, FDR, knew that would not happen.

That'right. He preached change and instead went the conventional route: bipartisanship, congress, the supreme court, consensus.

The lesson he missed from his obvious idol, FDR, is go to the people, don't pander, don't look for consensus,EXECUTE, EXECUTE, EXECUTE what you believe.

Has he made mistakes? Yes, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Paulson. He should be listening to Paul Volcker and Joseph Stiglitz. Get Stigliz's new book, Freefall, to read a different view point.

So, now what? The Independents are the key. Where will they turn up? Much to learn and know before the November elections.

Why did the president choose health care costs as his signature issue? Do the research folks, find out for your self.

Or, just sit in front of the TV and listen to Beck, Limbaugh(radio),Olbermann, Madow and the rest. Awful!! Trust me. While it may be comforting to spend less than ten minutes in front of these people and think you get it, that is destructive for you and the nation. While you can sound informed and opinionated when you discuss with others; these people do you no service.

So where are we as a nation? DIVIDED, UNIFORMED, OPINIONATED, RIGHT, LEFT, INDEPENDENT? You tell me. Are you comfortable with your opinions? Comfortable that every one else is wrong or right?

Some say it is all about money. Don't bankrupt the nation, pass on the bill to the future generations. I wonder about that.

No one gave it a thought in the eight years of the last administration. If I am wrong here step up and tell me. If not, help make sure that does not happen again: wars unpaid for, tax cuts, prescription drug plan for Medicare and ear marks galore.

Has Obama done better? No! Ear marks are rampant, the wars go on, the costs go up,climate change is no longer fashionable since some scientists in England decided to fudge some data.

Our president needs to show the courage of his convictions: simple as that!

He should go to the people with his messages and plans. Execute and get it done. Get rid of the people who brought the financial disaster to us(read Stiglitz).

Well, that's it folks. My message: do not be content that the media give you what you need to know and that this administration is headed over the cliff. They may be, but know why.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

The Great Recession & A Commentary by Helprin

Zuckerman is a billionaire business man who owns the NY Daily News as well as U.S.News & World Report. I especially like his FDRish approach to creating jobs.

Please go on and read Mark Helprin's commentary on New York City and the super rich living in the city. Helprin is, in my opinion, one of the finest writers America has ever produced. His book "A Winter's Tale" represents a beautiful use of language and allegory.

Wall Street Journal
OPINIONJANUARY 21, 2010, 7:16 P.M. ET

The Great Recession Continues
Americans haven't been fooled by the Dow's rise. What they see ahead are more taxes.
By MORTIMER ZUCKERMAN

The December jobs report has doused the hope that we were at the beginning of a sustained economic recovery.

The unemployment rate managed to hold at 10% in December only because of an extraordinary shrinkage in the labor force: Some 661,000 gave up looking for a job.

Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) nonfarm payroll data indicate that December job losses totaled 85,000. But the bureau's household survey, a better and more comprehensive measure of both the unemployed and underemployed, indicated a loss of 589,000 jobs. Since the Great Recession began in 2007, some 8.6 million jobs have been lost, according to the bureau; and small businesses, the normal source for new jobs, are still shedding workers. Fewer than 10% added employees, while more than 20% cut back—and the cuts averaged nearly twice as many per firm as the hires at the expanding companies.

Unemployment, in short, has graduated from being a difficulty, a worry. It is now a catastrophe, with some 15.3 million Americans out of work, according to the BLS.

What about the future? The problem in the job market going forward is not so much layoffs in the private sector, which are abating, but a lack of hiring. The federal stimulus program is offset by a 2010 budget shortfall for state, city, county and school districts, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently estimated will be in the range of an astonishing $200 billion nationally. Since virtually all states and cities have to run balanced budgets, the result will be reduced services, layoffs and tax hikes.

The consequence is that the U.S. economy—for decades the greatest job creation machine in the world—is taking longer and longer to replace the jobs already lost. In the 1970s and 1980s, Jane Sasseen noted in a recent report in BusinessWeek, it took as little as one year from the end of a recession to add back the lost jobs. After the eight-month downturn ending in March of 1991, for example, jobs came back in 23 months. After the downturn from the dot-com bust in 2001, it took 31 months. This time it could take as many as five years or even more to recover all of the eight-plus million jobs lost since March 2007. That's because we would have to create an additional 1.7 million jobs annually beyond those for the 1.3 million new people who enter the work force every year.

Economists may see the recession as being over, but the man on the street does not. Roughly 60% of the public believes the recession still has a way to go, a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll reported last October. Even those who have not suffered know someone—a friend, a neighbor, a family member—who is being hurt. Two in three say the rally in the stock market has not changed their views.

There are sound reasons for this gloom. Consumers have learned a bitter lesson. They understand that increased consumption—private and public—will have to come from income and not borrowing, and income will have to come from employment.

Today, mainstream Americans are going on a financial diet amid deteriorating family finances. They know now that they cannot spend what they don't have, as the painful consequences of spending levels that were artificially pumped up by too much debt have hit home. The top 20% of the nation's households account for 40% of all spending, according to government data reported by Ylan Q. Mui in the Washington Post last September. But these households no longer trust their home equity or rising stock portfolios (up by almost $5 trillion this past year) as a basis for spending in lieu of saving. All they see ahead are taxes, taxes, taxes. So the dollars have not yet started to flow. This is the new normal.

What this means is that larger-than-typical head winds face two of the three normal engines of recovery: consumption and residential investment. Rather than pumping more cash into a fragile economy to make up this difference, the government will have to focus on its next big task: drawing up credible plans for bringing bloated budget deficits under control without triggering another downturn.

The prospect, therefore, is sluggish GDP growth; employment gains that are too slow to prevent further increases in the unemployment rate; and firms still very reluctant to hire vigorously.

How can we accelerate a substantial recovery in job growth that will generate additional labor income? There is no snap answer. But this is no argument for inertia.

We must have programs that create some degree of confidence that America can be rebuilt, and jobs can be created, especially since consumer spending will likely decline as a part of GDP for many years. The unemployed have to be supported. But it would be better if the financial support employed labor in rational, long-term, major infrastructure projects, processed by a newly created National Infrastructure Bank.

These wouldn't be entitlement programs, but regeneration programs. Government spending on infrastructure projects—broadband Internet access across the nation, restoring decaying bridges and canals, building high-speed railways, modern airports, sewage plants, ports—has a high multiplier effect for adding jobs to the economy. And we will be fulfilling a desperate national need.

A second avenue for increasing employment would be to enhance technology, the area of our greatest strength. We are depriving ourselves of productive talent by a fearful attitude toward immigration. We make it hard for bright people to come and we make it hard for them to stay, so once they have graduated from our universities they go home to work for our competitors. This is not the way to run a railroad.

Foreign students are a significant proportion of those with graduate degrees in the hard sciences in American universities. We should restore the quotas for H-1B visas to 195,000 annually (where it was in the early 2000s) from 65,000, where it is now.

This increase has been blocked by shortsighted special-interest groups that fear jobs will be taken from Americans. On the contrary. The kind of people we should be striving to keep are those whose work in technology and engineering provides more than their share of new jobs.

Technology and innovation have long given us our greatest job growth. Just think: In 1800, about three-quarters of the U.S. labor force was devoted to agriculture. Today, it is less than 3%. Manufacturing employed one-third of the work force at the end of World War II. Today, it is down to about one-tenth. Americans are accustomed to economic transformation.

We must follow rational economic policies in the interest of the nation and not in the interest of narrow parochial groups who lobby legislators. Otherwise, as illustrated by the sorry journey of health-care legislation, we will see more of the politics of corruption.

Mr. Zuckerman is chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report.



OPINIONJANUARY 22, 2010, 10:06 A.M. ET
A Non-Delirious New York
Recovery should not mean a return to the excess that betrayed so many.
By MARK HELPRIN

Midway between the first intoxications of borrowed money that does not exist, and the red-hot bearings of presses that roll to correct such inconsistencies, lies a wonderland in which human nature can become a subsidiary of the making and spending of money. Not steadily and honorably in furtherance of well being, charity, and art, but at the speed of summer lightning and for its own sake.

When pay-out exceeds pay-in, balance is maintained only by the weight of illusion—as in real-estate bubbles, or welfare states in which benefits vastly exceed contributions. Within such failing systems one finds nevertheless highly visible concentrations of wealth, like lumps in tapioca, that persist in setting a tone that has long gone flat.

Take Manhattan, but first take the Hamptons, where symptoms are readily apprehended, just as the pulse at the wrist is a telltale of the heart. Mere multimillionaires cannot afford anymore to go where within living memory actual people made a living from the farms, clam beds, and sword-fishing grounds. Now the potato fields are covered with houses that look like the headquarters of Martian expeditionary forces, ice-cream factories, vacuum cleaners on stilts, the Seagram building on its side, or shingled New England cottages monstrously swollen into something you might see after eating a magic mushroom. In simple and quiet towns that once deferred to the majesty of the ocean, the streets are now clogged with a kabuki theater of Range Rovers and $35,000 handbags.

In Manhattan the knock-the-wind-out-of-you rich used to be a relatively silent freak of nature who could easily be ignored, but of late they are so electrically omnipresent, jumping out of every flat screen and magazine, that they indelibly color the life of the city. Having multiplied like Gucci-clad yeast, they have become objects of impossible envy.

You cannot ignore them as you sit in your $2,000 a month 7 x 10 "efficiency," eating your $5 street pretzel. Or when private schools—where scholarships are reserved for peasants who subsist on $300,000 or less, and where if you haven't been admitted by the time you're an embryo you're toast—have become like the class redoubts of Czarist Russia.

Or when Mayor Michael Bloomberg spends a hundred million of his own money, $175 per vote, to crown himself like Napoleon, perhaps forgoing the purchase of the presidency because at that rate he would have to fork over $22 billion. What if he had spent comparably to his predecessors—Fiorello La Guardia, or even Jimmy Walker, whose corruption when compared to Mr. Bloomberg's well-established honesty seems nonetheless like the innocence of a fawn? (It is possible that he would not have won on his own merits.)

Ostentation has always been a hallmark of mankind, and part of the price of freedom and power in ascendant nations. But the day the baubles shine most brilliantly is the day when the civilization, distracted from what made it, begins to go down the drain. This is not an argument for restricting economic liberties, but rather a lamentation of circumstance and a condemnation of taste. The right may envy by competition and the left by expropriation, but the objects of such envy are not worthy of its ruinous influences, and the city is at its best when the fury of acquisitiveness is least.

Now that New York may be exiting yet another of many eras of irrational exuberance, it presents an opportunity in the midst of defeat, for when it is quiet it is far more lovely and profound than when it is delirious. For a long, clear moment, September 11 blew the dross away and the real city appeared. When such things arrive, as they always have and always will—whether in the form of conquest, riots, depression, epidemics, or war—they and their aftermath should be the cause of reflection.

Whenever New York has endured a blow, its real strengths have emerged. If it is now on the verge of a long-term diminution of wealth, or at least a roughly attained sobriety, all the suffering should not be for nothing. Recovery should mean not just a return to the fascination with excess that betrayed so many. For one, excess is too limited a thing to be genuinely satisfying. Grab the first billionaire you see (it should be easy) and he will tell you that stuff simply doesn't do the trick.

This is why New York has for too long been a city in which even the rich are poor. To the contrary, it should be a place in which even the poor are rich. How to accomplish this is a riddle to which public policy often proves inadequate and is anyway just a distant follower of forces of history that assert themselves as far beyond its control as the weather. As the waves of history sweep through the present what they leave will depend in large part upon how they are perceived and how each individual acts upon his perceptions, which law and regulation follow more than they shape.

How things will turn out is anyone's guess, but it would be nice if, as in the quiet during and after a snow storm, Manhattan would reappear to be appreciated in tranquility; if cops, firemen, nurses, and teachers did not have to live in New Jersey; if students, waitress-actresses, waiter-painters, and dish-washer-writers did not have to board nine to a room or like beagles in their parents' condominia; if the traffic on Park Avenue (as I can personally attest it was in the late 1940s) were sufficiently sparse that you could hear insects in the flower beds; if to balance the frenetic getting and spending, the qualities of reserve and equanimity would retake their once honored places; if celebrity were to be ignored, media switched off, and the stories of ordinary men and women assume their deserved precedence; and if for everyone, like health returning after a long illness, a life of one's own would emerge from an era tragically addicted to quantity and speed.

Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, is the author of, among other works, "Winter's Tale" (Harcourt), "A Soldier of the Great War" (Harcourt) and, most recently, "Digital Barbarism" (HarperCollins).

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit
www.djreprints.com

Friday, January 22, 2010

Getting Hotter!!!

Folks are weighing in. Here is one from Europe from an expat:

Lee Iacocca did his corporate thing well, in his time.
I hear so many people complaining, and in their frustration, they want to hang their “very new leader”
I am fed up with all the moaning, and yet, indeed, where are the leaders, where are their brilliant suggestions for getting us out of the mess that
the wonderful “Republican President” put us in. He’s the one who took care of all the fat cats, bankers, businessmen, oilmen etc.
He’s the one who ran the country’s budget into the ground. Does anyone remember where America was financially when Clinton left office??
Short memories, and panic, and mobs crying for blood is not the response to a critical situation.
Replace the name Obama with any other politician, statesman, rocket scientist, celebrity or intellectual, and they lay out in detail what they would do to fix everything.....(an in a short time if you please, I want to get on with my comfy life)
Personally, I don’t think the ‘job’ is doable....certainly not in the foreseeable future anyway.
What a fickle country....Just a short time ago, we all had tears in our eyes during Obama’s inauguration, now we’re calling for his head...
Sophomoric behaviour if ever I’ve seen it.
Grow up America, there is NO quick fix, hard times are ahead (something alien to us lucky Americans)
Get out of the pioneer mode, it’s the 21st G-D century, carrying guns, and everyone looking our for themselves was in the lawless, wild west days.
The world has moved on. John Wayne is also dead. The good guy in the big hat (who by the way was never a good guy) who saves everyone is fiction.
If the United States does not change its paradigm of thinking and acting......it really will be over, and America will have to give up its Number One status!
Personally, I’d like to give Obama the benefit of the doubt. At least let him have a go.....
Americans gave that moron, Bush 8 years to lead the country....I still can’t comprehend how he was ever, ever re-elected!
Shame on all the whiners........

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Still Another Perspective

Folks,

It is just starting to get interesting. Put on your seat belts:

Remember Lee Iacocca, the man who rescued Chrysler Corporation from its death throes? He's now 82 years old and has a new book, 'Where Have All The Leaders Gone?'.

Lee Iacocca Says:

'Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage with this so called president? We should be screaming bloody murder!
We've got a gang of tax cheating clueless leftists trying to steer our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even run a ridiculous cash-for-clunkers program without losing $26 billion of the taxpayers' money, much less build a hybrid car.
But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'trust me the economy is getting better..'

Better? You've got to be kidding. This is America , not the damned, 'Titanic'.
I'll give you a sound bite: 'Throw all the Democrats out along with Obama!'

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore..

The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs.. While we're fiddling in Afghanistan , Iran is completing their nuclear bombs and missiles and nobody seems to know what to do.
And the liberal press is waving 'pom-poms' instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of the ' America ' my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have. The Biggest 'C' is Crisis! (Iacocca elaborates on nine C's of leadership, with crisis being the first.)

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with thumb up your butt and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. A hell of a mess, so here's where we stand.

We're immersed in a bloody war now with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. But our soldiers are dying daily.

We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the world, and it's getting worse every day!

We've lost the manufacturing edge to Asia , while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs.

Gas prices are going to skyrock again, and nobody in power has a lucid plan to open drilling to solve the problem. This country has the largest oil reserves in the WORLD, and we cannot drill for it because the politicians have been bought by the flea-hugging environmentalists.
Our schools are in a complete disaster because of the teachers union.

Our borders are like sieves and they want to give all illegals amnesty and free healthcare.

The middle class is being squeezed to death every day.

These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: 'Where have all the leaders gone?' Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, omnipotence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo?

We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping the government will make it better for them. Now, that's just crazy.. Deal with life.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when 'The Big Three' referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen, and more important, look what Obama did about it!
Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debit, or solving theenergy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the Chicago gangsters in Congress. We didn't elect you to turn this country into a losing European Socialist state. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bonehead on NBC or CNN news will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

Had Enough? Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope - I believe in America . In my lifetime, I've had the privilege of living through some of America 's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises: The 'Great Depression,' 'World War II,' the 'Korean War,' the 'Kennedy Assassination,' the 'Vietnam War,' the 1970's oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years since 9/11.

Make your own contribution by sending this to everyone you know and care about. It's our country, folks, and it's our future. Our future is at stake!!
***********************************

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The Meaning of the Massachusetts' Election

After President Obama's victory and that of the democrats in the U.S. House and Senate, I began to worry. Why, you might ask? The democrats' history and reputation is that their worst nightmare is to have to finally govern. That is, work together, support a common legislative agenda, support their president and actually create the change the American people said they wanted.


Republican wins in Virginia, New Jersey and now Massachusetts are telling us that the average American does not define "wanted change" the same way the administration does and does not approve of the administration's agenda or direction. Those elections also went republican because the independents who supported the democrats just 15 months ago are disenchanted and at least in those three states abandoned them.

If the democrats don't get it well before this year's mid-term elections, they will have taken themselves out of the game.

Please read David Brook's column from Tuesday, January 19 in the NY Times printed below for a rather fare, unprejudiced opinion of where the democrats may be going wrong.


19, 2010
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Pragmatic Leviathan

By DAVID BROOKS
When I was in college, I was assigned “Leviathan,” by Thomas Hobbes. On the cover was an image from the first edition of the book, published in 1651. It shows the British nation as a large man. The people make up the muscles and flesh. Then at the top, there is the king, who is the head and the mind.

When the Pilgrims left Britain to come to America, they left behind that metaphor as well. For these settlers, and the immigrants who have come since, the American nation is not a body with the government as the brain. Instead, America has been defined by its vast landscape and the sprawling energy of its entrepreneurs, scientists and community-builders.

In times of crisis, Americans rally around their government, but most of the time they have treated it as a supporting actor in national life. Americans are an unusual people, with less deference to central authority and an unparalleled faith in themselves. They seem to want a government that is helpful but not imperious, strong but subordinate.

Over the years, American voters have reacted against any party that threatens that basic sense of proportion. They have reacted against a liberalism that sought an enlarged and corrosive government and a conservatism that threatened to dismantle the government’s supportive role.

A year ago, the country rallied behind a new president who promised to end the pendulumlike swings, who seemed likely to restore equilibrium with his moderate temper and pragmatic mind.

In many ways, Barack Obama has lived up to his promise. He has created a thoughtful, pragmatic administration marked by a culture of honest and vigorous debate. When Obama makes a decision, you can be sure that he has heard and accounted for every opposing argument. If he senses an important viewpoint is not represented at a meeting, he will stop the proceedings and demand that it gets included.

If the evidence leads him in directions he finds uncomfortable, he will still follow the evidence. He is beholden to no ideological camp, and there is no group in his political base that he has not angered at some point in his first year.

But his has become a voracious pragmatism. Driven by circumstances and self-confidence, the president has made himself the star performer in the national drama. He has been ubiquitous, appearing everywhere, trying to overhaul most sectors of national life: finance, health, energy, automobiles and transportation, housing, and education, among others.

He is no ideologue, but over the past year he has come to seem like the sovereign on the cover of “Leviathan” — the brain of the nation to which all the cells in the body and the nervous system must report and defer.

Americans, with their deep, vestigial sense of proportion, have reacted. The crucial movement came between April and June, when the president’s approval rating among independents fell by 15 percentage points and the percentage of independents who regarded him as liberal or very liberal rose by 18 points. Since then, the public has rejected any effort to centralize authority or increase the role of government.

Trust in government has fallen. The share of Americans who say the country is on the wrong track has risen. The share who call themselves conservative has risen. The share who believe government is “doing too many things better left to business” has risen.

The country is now split on Obama, because he is temperate, thoughtful and pragmatic, but his policies are almost all unpopular. If you aggregate the last seven polls on health care reform, 41 percent support it and 51 percent oppose.

Many Democrats, as always, are caught in their insular liberal information loop. They think the polls are bad simply because the economy is bad. They tell each other health care is unpopular because the people aren’t sophisticated enough to understand it. Some believe they can still pass health care even if their candidate, Martha Coakley, loses the Senate race in Massachusetts on Tuesday.

That, of course, would be political suicide. It would be the act of a party so arrogant, elitist and contemptuous of popular wisdom that it would not deserve to govern. Marie Antoinette would applaud, but voters would rage.

The American people are not always right, but their basic sense of equilibrium is worthy of the profoundest respect. President Obama has shown himself to be a fine administrator, but he erred in trying to make himself the irreplaceable man in nearly ever sphere of public life. He erred in not sensing that even a pragmatic government could seem imperious and alarming.

If I were President Obama, I would spend the next year showing how government can serve a humble, helpful and supportive role to the central institutions of American life. Even in blue states like Massachusetts, voters want a government that is energetic but limited — a servant, not a leviathan.


Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
Privacy Policy Terms of Service Search Corrections RSS First Look Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

More Special Insights

As promised this blog is about ALL OF US. It is a place for us to share our opinions and insights. Yesterday we posted Lisa's thoughts and today Fred H and Gary T. First Fred:

"I share many of the thoughts posted lately about the difficulties and frustrations in seeing so much suffering, desiring to do what we can, and watching what appears to be limited responses from groups and individuals with the means and/or power to act positively. Disasters such as the recent earthquake bring these issues to our attention, and also remind us of some of the chronic conditions, as there are in Haiti, which so many innocents around the world have to endure as their lot in life. I thought some readers may be encouraged to hear one story (of millions) of someone who has devoted much time and effort to help improve the conditions of those much less fortunate, coincidentally in this case Haitians. I can't help but be proud to say this person is my daughter Mae, who 5 years ago bravely joined me as a 12 year old on a medical mission to the Dominican Republic organized by the UMDNJ School of Public Health to provide care for Haitian immigrants who work there in sugar cane fields under what most all human rights groups agree are slavery conditions. I won't go into many details of how deplorable the situation is there (nothing quite like seeing people scour a garbage dump for food), but offer the link to the Dominican Republic Outreach Program in case anyone is interested. The orphanage that the school sponsors is an especially heart-warming effort.

http://sphweb02.umdnj.edu/sphweb/outreach/

Anyhow, Mae brought along backpacks full of simple art supplies and taught scores of children drawing over the course of the week, and has urged me since that we return again to help more, which we will do in April. In Public Health we consider Health to be a combination of physical, emotional and spiritual aspects, and for me there's nothing better at addressing the health of the spirit than the practice of art. My kudos to all those like Mae who routinely go far from their comfort zone to directly assist those much less fortunate.

Lastly, my suggestion for donations to help in Haiti:
Partners in Health, the group started by a fellow named Paul Farmer who was the subject of a Tracey Kidder biography, Mountains beyond Mountains, a few years ago (great book if interested) http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti

Peace.

fred h"



And here is Gary T:

"Lisa's got it right!!!!

Gary Tomei"

Thanks folks for paying attention and helping to energize not only thought; but I hope action.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Yet Another Insight

One reader of the blog sent the following response. It sure resonates with me. How about you?

"I am not content with the world, and the way it has been run. I hear everyday how lives have been ruined because of the incompetence of people we put in office. I look at how Obama is trying to do SOMETHING, which is more than our past President did in 8 years. Cleaning up a mess doesn't happen overnight, yet people feel it should. Where were all of these people over the past 8 years, when the mess was piling up. How dare they request an immediate fix.

I look at the people of Haiti, and how they can still sing and dance in the streets - they have it right. They know what is important - God, Family and Friends. The rest is all just "Stuff", yet the price we put on it creates wars, bankruptcies and pain.

I, like many Americans feel "stuck" - we want to do more, we want to help but it just does not seem to be enough. We can help in our volunteerism, our contributions - but there is SO much to do, and in my opinion, not enough help. For all of those people sitting on the side line, yelling at the game - GET UP and play - get up and participate in any way you can. We all need to help get us out of this mess..."




Thanks,

Lisa Piccolo

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Yet Another Insight

My dear friend Chris Weyant is a political cartoonist whose work appears regularly in a paper in D.C.,called The Hill as well as in publications such as The New Yorker.

He recently did a cartoon that drew many comments. Here is one worth repeating:

"When Cheney was in office, he said public criticism of a war-time President was akin to TREASON. But when he does it, as a former VP no less, it's acceptable? How can you continue to support such morally bankrupt, political gamesmanship? Not only did he and his administration bring America to financial ruin, but he is personally responsible for the deaths and injuries of thousand of American soldiers by leading us into two wars without end or objective. But I guess conservatives never really cared about average Americans who go to war. It's so much easier to just wear their flag pins and sit back as the rest of the middle class does the fighting for them".


Below is the link to the Hill where you can see the cartoon.

http://thehill.com/opinion/weyants-world/74445-weyants-world-january-6-2010(you may have to cut and paste to your browser's address bar)

Question: does Cheney offer any thing supportive to any one or any group? Does he have any of his revisionists facts right? Like many in the ultra right, he does not allow reality or results to get in the way of his opinions.

That said, it is interesting to observe that when in power at the federal level one may do and say as one wants until the next regime does so. Then it is is okay to denigrate and deride what the current administration is doing or saying.

Less any one forget the party of NO, brought us eight years of financial, regulatory,diplomatic and legislative disasters.

So, have a thought and let me hear or see it. Unless of course you are content not to have opinions so long as your life is safe.









http://thehill.com/opinion/weyants-world/74445-weyants-world-january-6-2010

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Need Some Help

Like you I am over whelmed with the disaster in Haiti. I am also over whelmed with the response that most able countries in the world have expressed.

I have a question. Some one respond and tell me which Muslim country has stepped up? The Saudis, Kuwaitis? UAEs, Iran, Iraq?

I know that being politically correct is what current Western diplomacy is about. So you may express your views as best you can with in that frame work, or not.

Please understand, this is not a sarcastic post. I have not been able to find any response except for the Islamic Relief Fund that I tracked; but am unable to see a commitment only an appeal for funds.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Holiday Season Over, Back to Work

Wait a minute, not so fast! The real purpose of the season is to get us to slow down, move away from the usual routine and to focus on each other. That focus should carry us into the new year and beyond. Here is a tip. When you are under pressure, for what ever reason, think back to the eve or the day of what ever your favorite holiday was this recent season. Hold that thought and ask your self what made it special? How did you feel? Take a moment, relish and recapture the feeling. It is there for the reliving.

Be careful not to let the January blahs get you. All the wonders of family, friends, holidays are with us all the time. Perspective on things is what makes the difference. If you don't like the reality you have created, change your perspective which will change your behavior and that in turn, folks, changes the reality you create. Sounds simple? It is and it isn't. I think this ability we have to change our reality is what traditionally is called New Year's Resolutions. Few make to February because it is hard work

The process I am talking about takes practice, concentration, mental work, and courage. Try it.

Here is another tip: do something new in your life that is physical and requires some discipline and regularity. I recommend yoga for example. Recently I went back to my practice and find new clarities of thought and a feeling of well being.

Running, gyming, cycling, walking, any thing that requires physical and mental discipline will do wonders for you.

A final thought for you: do something for some one else.