It's very late and it's been a long time since I've posted anything, but it didn't seem right to let this event pass me by.
I remember the day very clearly. I remember the unbelief and the confusion and the fear. It's a cliche, but I really do think that everyone in my generation will remember where they were when they heard that the towers had fallen.
So, now that we're five years after the day that was supposed to 'change evrything', we should ask: are we braver now than we were then? More wise? More understanding of the world we live in? 'Safety' and 'security' are such feeble, external things. The real strength comes from within.
So say a prayer, wave a flag, light a candle, honor the memory of this day however you see fit. But if adding another Event Day to your calendar was the only change you've made, try again.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Saturday, August 26, 2006
More Alarmism, Please!
There must be something deeply unpleasant about being a high-ranking Republican that I'm just not getting. Maybe they wear hair shirts under their three-piece suits. Maybe every Friday they have to gather at Speaker Hastert's house and perform unnatural acts. Whatever it is, it makes them grouchy. For the last six years or so their party has been in control of the White House, Congress, and the Courts, almost continuously. But are they happy? Not at all:
From the Washington Post
From the Washington Post
U.S. Spy Agencies Criticized On IranHonestly. With the nation going deeper and deeper into debt to finance the ruins of neoconservativism, you'd think they'd welcome the chance to avoid a war. Ah well.
GOP-Led Panel Faults Intelligence
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 24, 2006; Page A01
A key House committee issued a stinging critique of U.S. intelligence on Iran yesterday, charging that the CIA and other agencies lack "the ability to acquire essential information necessary to make judgments" on Tehran's nuclear program, its intentions or even its ties to terrorism.
The 29-page report, principally written by a Republican staff member on the House intelligence committee who holds a hard-line view on Iran, fully backs the White House position that the Islamic republic is moving forward with a nuclear weapons program and that it poses a significant danger to the United States. But it chides the intelligence community for not providing enough direct evidence to support that assertion.
...
The report relies exclusively on publicly available documents. Its authors did not interview intelligence officials. Still, it warns the intelligence community to avoid the mistakes made regarding weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq war, noting that Iran could easily be engaged in "a denial and deception campaign to exaggerate progress on its nuclear program as Saddam Hussein apparently did concerning his WMD programs."
Friday, August 18, 2006
Beirut Blues
In recent days I've shifted my employment from the halls of CET to the basement of a consulting firm run by an elderly Jewish fellow who also has a medical-relief charity. Most of his business and philanthropy is centered around the middle East, and with children and grandchildren having served or currently serving in the IDF, the situation there is of keen interest to him.
When he saw the recent Reuters article on Hezbollah's effort to rebuild Lebanon, he got mad:
"The Israelis have been outwitted again... Hezbollah is ten times as strong as they were before this conflict started. We can't be afraid of lessons like this."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060817/wl_nm/mideast_usa_rebuilding_dc_1
Israeli society is more than a little disillusioned about the war which was so widely supported only weeks ago, and governmental heads are set to roll.
Any further invasion of Lebanon would further weaken the country's infrastructure and almost certainly strengthen Hezbullah.
Mr. Kramer's idea is that the U.S. and Israel ought to take the lead on Lebanese reconstruction. my knowledge of Lebanon is quite limited and I have my doubts about whether such a plan could ever get off the ground.
But really, what fair-minded perosn would expect Israel to do such a thing? This isn't the Marshal Plan; Lebanon never surrendered. Hassan Nasrallah was never tried at Nuremberg. The idea that they (Israel) might be expected to pour billions of dollars into a country which not only recently attacked them and still holds several of their soldiers hostage, and has every intention of doing so again, sounds like a bad joke.
When he saw the recent Reuters article on Hezbollah's effort to rebuild Lebanon, he got mad:
"The Israelis have been outwitted again... Hezbollah is ten times as strong as they were before this conflict started. We can't be afraid of lessons like this."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060817/wl_nm/mideast_usa_rebuilding_dc_1
Israeli society is more than a little disillusioned about the war which was so widely supported only weeks ago, and governmental heads are set to roll.
Any further invasion of Lebanon would further weaken the country's infrastructure and almost certainly strengthen Hezbullah.
Mr. Kramer's idea is that the U.S. and Israel ought to take the lead on Lebanese reconstruction. my knowledge of Lebanon is quite limited and I have my doubts about whether such a plan could ever get off the ground.
But really, what fair-minded perosn would expect Israel to do such a thing? This isn't the Marshal Plan; Lebanon never surrendered. Hassan Nasrallah was never tried at Nuremberg. The idea that they (Israel) might be expected to pour billions of dollars into a country which not only recently attacked them and still holds several of their soldiers hostage, and has every intention of doing so again, sounds like a bad joke.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Seen in my Barrio
I haven't had much time to be at the computer lately, so just enjoy this, located not three blocks from where I live:
Sunday, July 09, 2006
The Minimum Wage is Your Boss's Way of Saying 'I Don't Care'
Last month, I started working at a non-profit group called CET - the Center for Employment Training. This organization provides job training to people who lack the skills or the opportunity to earn at least $10 an hour plus benefits.
Why is a program like this necessary? The minimum wage in this country is $5.15 an hour. Not long ago, Congress voted down an proposition to increase it to $7.25 an hour. What do those numbers mean? Simply this: that it is perfectly possible to be fully employed and still live in deep poverty, and that the lowness of the minimum wage combined with the lack of a comprehensive welfare system encourages people to stay out of the workforce.
Take, for example, somebody who earns $8 an hour - on the high end of the unskilled-jobs scale. Multiply $8 an hour by 40 hours a week by 50 weeks a year, and we get the paltry sum of $16,000 gross income. Clearly, such a person is one unexpected expense away from total insolvency. And this assumes a single person with no chronic costs such as children, a medical problem, or major insurance fees.
A couple of weeks ago, the secretary of HHS showed up at CET and announced new restictions on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) - what most people know as 'welfare'. This was part of the completely bogus 'Deficit Reduction Act' which sought reduce ever so slightly the gargantuan defecit Bush has accumulated by cutting the miniscule amount of money spent on social programs. It might've escaped his notice that when people are denied basic assistance they end up costing the government more, due to the icreased need for emergency services.
Reducing welfare benefits is supposed to encourage people to get off the welfare rolls and find work. The effect, however, is usually just the opposite. Receiving public assistance in the U.S. is such an exercise in humiliation that those who receive it find their will being methodically broken.
It is useless to tell them they should 'look for decent work'. There is no such work to be had, and everyone knows it. Even with a high school diploma - and 1/3 of Americans students drop out - the well-paying bluecollar union jobs of yesteryear are long gone.
The result of this is plain: the vast majority of people who are forced off of welfare are worse off once they are in work than when they were out of it.
In most - though not all - European countries with expansive welfare systems, unemployment is much higher. But there, unemployment is rightly taken as the natural outcome of economic factors and not as some kind of wrenching personal shame. I may be young and ignorant, but I am not so ignorant as to the think that American laborers could ever compete against Chinese laborers forced to work for 0.50 an hour twelve hours a day. That is one example among many.
If we are ever going to deal with unemployment in this country, we shold first admit that it is going to happen, and try to do what we can for those afflicted with it.
Why is a program like this necessary? The minimum wage in this country is $5.15 an hour. Not long ago, Congress voted down an proposition to increase it to $7.25 an hour. What do those numbers mean? Simply this: that it is perfectly possible to be fully employed and still live in deep poverty, and that the lowness of the minimum wage combined with the lack of a comprehensive welfare system encourages people to stay out of the workforce.
Take, for example, somebody who earns $8 an hour - on the high end of the unskilled-jobs scale. Multiply $8 an hour by 40 hours a week by 50 weeks a year, and we get the paltry sum of $16,000 gross income. Clearly, such a person is one unexpected expense away from total insolvency. And this assumes a single person with no chronic costs such as children, a medical problem, or major insurance fees.
A couple of weeks ago, the secretary of HHS showed up at CET and announced new restictions on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) - what most people know as 'welfare'. This was part of the completely bogus 'Deficit Reduction Act' which sought reduce ever so slightly the gargantuan defecit Bush has accumulated by cutting the miniscule amount of money spent on social programs. It might've escaped his notice that when people are denied basic assistance they end up costing the government more, due to the icreased need for emergency services.
Reducing welfare benefits is supposed to encourage people to get off the welfare rolls and find work. The effect, however, is usually just the opposite. Receiving public assistance in the U.S. is such an exercise in humiliation that those who receive it find their will being methodically broken.
It is useless to tell them they should 'look for decent work'. There is no such work to be had, and everyone knows it. Even with a high school diploma - and 1/3 of Americans students drop out - the well-paying bluecollar union jobs of yesteryear are long gone.
The result of this is plain: the vast majority of people who are forced off of welfare are worse off once they are in work than when they were out of it.
In most - though not all - European countries with expansive welfare systems, unemployment is much higher. But there, unemployment is rightly taken as the natural outcome of economic factors and not as some kind of wrenching personal shame. I may be young and ignorant, but I am not so ignorant as to the think that American laborers could ever compete against Chinese laborers forced to work for 0.50 an hour twelve hours a day. That is one example among many.
If we are ever going to deal with unemployment in this country, we shold first admit that it is going to happen, and try to do what we can for those afflicted with it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)