Category: Current Affairs

World Water Problems, YouTube and a Great Organizing Tool

Experts tell us water will be the “new oil.”  Las Vegas, running out of water, is already paying residents to replant their lawns with desert plants to save water.  It’s getting really scary here; it’s been scary in many other countries for a long time.  In some of those countries, the situation is desperate.  Killer dysentery is rampant; babies die, children die, parents die.  And it’s not so hard to help.

Today I received an email from Ramya Raghavan, from “CitizenTube“, announcing some new tools to help deliver video messages for nonprofits.  Here’s the example she sent along – it raised $10,000 in one day.  “That’s enough to build two brand-new wells in the Central African Republic and give over 150 people clean drinking water for 20 years!” 

Ramya urges others to take a look; you can make it work for your nonprofit too.  Here’s the link.  Some days I really love the Internet.  This is one.

Obama Staffing Issues: Where IS Everybody?

Uncle Sam
How many times have you received an email with a signature including "Be the change you want to see in the world"?  Gandhi said it and it's a treasured thought to many including my friend and sister blogger Catherine Morgan, who write a blog she calls "Be the Change You Want to See in Yourself."  That's the feeling, the sense of purpose, that created so many committed Obama supporters, who surrendered their work, their time and their futures to make sure he was elected.

Today I read the following in the Washington Post: 

This, about HHS:

After
Daschle's departure, other top prospects, such as neurosurgeon and television
reporter  Sanjay Gupta, lost enthusiasm. That also may have been the case
withDonald Berwick, president of the Institute for Healthcare
Improvement, who had been talked about as a strong contender for the
Medicare-Medicaid job.

And
this, about finding a U.S. Ambassador to Mexico:

They've been trying: Clinton
administration transportation secretary and early Obama backer Federico Peña
turned down an offer, we hear, as did Clinton White House deputy chief of staff
Maria Echaveste. Given the Senate's upcoming two-week recess, there's
little chance an ambassador will be in Mexico City to greet Air Force One.


It's happening in the Treasury Department too, where is sounds like, in addition to the enormous challenges Secretary Geithner,  he's also working without much substantial staff support.  Between tax and other issues, several potential deputy and assistant secretary people have reportedly either dropped out or been eliminated.

Call me crazy but it seems to me that people should be knocking down doors, walls and White House fences to help.  Those with great gifts should be volunteering the way GIs did in World War II.  Yet at least from what's been reported, the opposite is true.  People are pulling back, especially near the top.

I understand that much of this gap is not refusal to serve but instead the intense vetting process that makes it tough to get anything done.  And that the Republicans in Congress are being so tough that often people wonder if it's worth it.

But this is an emergency.  The Treasury Secretary is "making do" with a skeleton staff and, I''ll bet, some uncompensated patriots who are helping him until they can unscramble the nomination mess.  And I'm a big girl.  I understand that more than patriotism motivates many who choose to serve — or not to.  But I keep thinking about my mom's funeral.  I said to one of her friends, "You guys really were the Greatest Generation.  You went through so much and were so brave."

His response:  "We just did what we had to do.  You will too."  I hope he was right.

Blogging Boomers #108: the Economy Hits Home

SO BABY BOOMER header
The very wise John Agno of So Baby Boomer suggested at all the Carnivalistas write about the economy this week and so we have.  For a Boomer perspective that, of course, mirrors what everyone is feeling, this is the place to go.  It turns out we're a pretty wise bunch, writing about everything from the "alternative economy" to keeping things less stressful at home to dealing with the market.  John ha a good idea and Carnival posts rose to the occasion.  

Education, National Security, Charlie Rose and Arne Duncan

Dunca Obama kidsThe man sitting next to President Obama is our new Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Wednesday night he spent an hour with Charlie Rose. I've inserted some excerpts below; you can watch the whole hour here.  Chuck Todd has summarized the interview as well, here.   If you have time though, I recommend that you watch one or the other; this is not a usual man.

Maybe this position is one that allows for more exceptionally unambiguous appointments by Democrats; Secretary Richard Riley, who served President Clinton, was also extraordinary.  Named by TIME Magazine as one of the ten top cabinet members of all time, he presided, along with the unstoppable Linda Roberts, over the Internet wiring of all our schools.  He also worked to build up early childhood education, community colleges, parent engagement,higher standards and much more.  So I admit from the get-go that I have a soft spot for this kind of education leader.  Even among such excellence though I suspect this man is going to raise the bar even higher. Watch this.

See what I mean? What impresses me is not only the exceptional story of growing up in the home of a mother who ran an inner-city tutoring program; of seeing for himself what a decent education, which he calls a matter of social justice, can enable. Not only listening to him describe the educated friends from the program who "made it" and those who didn't learn – and "died." Literally. 

It's his vision of serious ways to meet the obligation we have to our kids – and our economy.  His belief in the school as a potential center of the community, as a resource, run, perhaps, by the school during school hours and the Y or Boys and Girls Clubs afterward, remaining open late into the evening, six or seven days a week.  Recession, depression or apocalypse, we aren't going to have a very attractive 21st Century if we don't return our schools to their role as engines in the production of innovative Americans who keep us economically and creatively at the vanguard. So even if we can look away from the substandard schools, the ridiculously high drop-out rates and the lousy physical plants as someone else's kid's problem, the loss of those kids hurts us all. It's a national security issue. 

No Good News

DSC00246
I keep telling myself that nobody's sick and nobody's dead.  But I am completely afflicted by Economy Angst.  I don't want to be.  I want to be positive and hopeful but damn!  I keep telling myself to turn off Morning Joe before they go the European/Asian markets report and watch Angel on TNT instead.  Pretty pitiful.

Anyway, I'll be back with a real post soon.

Oh and this photo has nothing to do with anything.  It's a peaceful beach on the Jersey Shore and nicer to look at than the headlines.

Behind Every Stimulus Package Are People Who Need Help

Stim 2
I spent part of Thursday sitting in Starbucks on the GW (George Washington University) campus after a meeting, loving being around all these students buzzing and working and laughing.  I loved college; could feel my head growing.  It's an amazing time in a young person's life and one that forms much of who we are later.  Now, though, the carefree collegian is a thing of the past.  Everyone has jobs and student loans.  Instead of leaving school with a "sky's the limit" ambition, many must look first for the job that will help them pay off their loans, and only then for the one they'll really love.

Here are some stories:

  • When my husband graduated from medical school we had under $4,000 in loans to pay off.
  • One of my son's friends left undergraduate school with over $100,000 in debt
  • A wonderful friend who is a born teacher went to law school and then to a firm.  I asked her why.  She told me she would only be able to consider teaching once her loans were paid off – and they were enormous.
  • As I've written before, both of my parents were formed by the Depression.  Each hoped for a career they were never able to pursue; instead they took the subject-related scholarships they were offered and were grateful to have them.  A would-be artist became a teacher; an architect a lawyer.  Neither complained overtly about this; I learned these facts in passing and both were quick to add how glad they were to have been able to go to college at all.
  • My sisters and I were blessed to have college paid for; we were told that our education was our inheritance and not to look for much more, which was fine with us.  But most families just can't do that anymore.  It's too expensive.
  • Many political observers posit that there would have been no anti-war movement in the 60's if college students had had to work while in school.  Most of us had our tuitions taken care of; that meant that we had time to organize and raise hell. 
  • I remember a good friend, at dinner, saying to me bitterly, "Jim and I never had time for that stuff.  We were both working to get through school.  You guys were so righteous but you had no idea what we were doing just to be able to stay through the semester." 
  • I told a recent college graduate how impressed I was with what he'd accomplished.  His response:  " didn't do anything.  Colin slept in his van for a semester because he couldn't pay both tuition and rent.  Be impressed with him!"

So.  This is kind of a random list but when we're arguing over stimulus packages, we need to remember the people behind them.  Like these. 

Remember That Old Saying “Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it?” Well, Look at Our Economy and Believe

Stock crash newspaper
OK here's my question.  Did you go to high school?  Didn't they teach us all that one of the major causes of the Great Depression was leveraging, buying "on margins": buying stock for a percentage and paying off the rest from sale of the stock at a higher rate, until price slides caused the crash?  AND didn't they teach us that we had rules and regulations now that would prevent such a thing from ever happening again?  And that our government kept an eye on all that sort of investment?  And that we were safe?

So what happened?  Wasn't the SEC supposed to regulate speculation?  Weren't banks, like stock investments, supposed to be monitored?  Weren't bank boards supposed to monitor housing loans?  How did we land here again?

I wish I understood better the deregulation that I know has been implemented over time.  I know that some of the housing regulatory let-up was designed to make it easier for less affluent Americans to buy homes and ended up making many of these same people vulnerable to predatory lenders.  I know that some people simply bought homes they couldn't afford, and banks let them do it.  I know that there have been stories about this for years, yet it continued.

I know that regulation has been substantially lifted from our entire market system.  I know that our crisis is infecting other countries and taking the global economy with it.  That the American consumer has kept our economy strong for years and that now, as consumers lock up their money and cancel their credit cards, that vital tool is fading.

As a US website, America.gov, explained in December:

Goods and services purchased by Americans make up
one-fifth of the global economy, but the third quarter of 2008 saw the
largest drop in consumer spending since 1980.

As the financial-market turbulence prompts U.S. households to cut back spending, economies around the globe feel repercussions.

Even after all this time, it's so hard to think about this – about how clear it is now that the deregulation and even the push for an arguably necessary but overdone easing of credit for housing purchases, how between politics and greed, banks lent to many who had no business entering into the debt that has rendered them homeless now. And that doesn't even begin to consider the careless greed of much of the financial community.
Nothing new here.

But I'll bet I'm not the only one whose anger continues to grow, whose frustration continues to grow, whose sadness overpowers. The futures of my honorable, hard-working children and their friends, and the younger ones who come after, are rendered fragile and discouraging. The future of the ideas and principles that were the Obama campaign are endangered by debt and the need to rescue the economy.  The debts of the Bush years have eliminated alternatives.  And as usual, when politics gets ugly and institutions become careless, the future of those who most rely on government support or protection, the weakest and less established among us, are hurt the most.

If I were my friends PunditMom Joanne or Jill, at Writes Like She Talks, I would have lots of policy citations to back all this up.  But this is a piece built more of mourning than reporting.  Some days recently, as I think about all this, I can literally feel myself in my seat in AP American History reading about the Great Depression and the checks put into place to prevent its recurrence.  I can literally feel myself listening to my parents describe their lives in the 1930's and the permanent scars those years left.  And in some ways, I can't believe it, can't believe that carelessness and greed and ignorance and an arrogance beyond describing has threatened us with those times once again. 

Women’s Health Care Takes the Stage on the Hill

Women's health report
It makes sense.  On the heels of the announcement of a new committee (H/T Writes LIke She Talks and Punditmom) to oversee protection of women's rights, the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and
Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy, and Global Women's Issues, Rep. Jan  Schakowsky (D-IL), U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) have introduced the “Health Care for Women Resolution.”  The resolution outlines a "new framework
for women’s health" and ensure that women’s needs are a key part of the
national health reform debate.  At a newsconference today, where they announced the resolution, members of the Columbia
University Mailman School of Public Health released a report that makes it clear why such a resolution is necessary.

The report, “Women’s Health and Health Care Reform: The Key Role of
Comprehensive Reproductive Care,” explores the importance or reproductive health in women’s overall health
and urges that the promotion of reproductive
health be part of any national health plan. Thirty-eight of fifty deans of
schools of public health have endorsed the recommendations in
the report. 

At a news conference announcing the resolutions, Rep. Schakowsky said:

"Any debate on national healthcare reform must address the healthcare
needs of women who are often the primary caregivers and decision makers
for their families," said Representative Schakowsky. "We know that
women face exceptional challenges and have a very personal stake in
fixing our broken health care system — they know we need to act now.
The current economic crisis is not an excuse for delay; it is a
persuasive argument for an immediate response.

With new leadership on the Hill and in the White House, let's hope these are the first of many positive developments.

Bloggers Support Kim Gandy for Women’s Bureau Leadership,

Women's buro
Despite the unpleasant posturing of the New Agenda, leading feminist bloggers are lifting their voices (or keyboards) in support of Kim Gandy, currently President of NOW, as the best and most effective candidate for leadership of the Labor Department's Women's Bureau.  Among those speaking up are Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen, Veronica Arreola at Viva La Feminista, PunditMom's Joanne Bamberger, Jill Miller Zimon at Writes Like She Talks, and me.  We need more!