It’s not just Pakistan and her questionable elections. Today’s news is out of Kenya, a nation holding only its second national elections since 1963. There is an estimated death toll, and the Washington Post is reporting that the police were authorized to shoot to kill to defend against rioters challenging the election results. It appears that incumbent President Mwai Kibaki has been reelected and immediately sworn in.
Rewind in the US to the election results of 2000. Even Vice President Al Gore, himself, did not display nor speak an outrage. Symbolically, perhaps that moment was the beginning of his path to the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Can you imagine being 19 years old and called upon to lead a national political party? Who were you at 19? What responsibility did you have – college papers, entry-level job?
Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s 19-year old son, Bilawal Bhutto Zarardi, was named the leader of the Peoples’ Party of Pakistan. There will be an interim executive council as he pursues his studies at Oxford, but the fact remains that he has now catipulted into the public spotlight as a leading figure for a nuclear nation.
At 19, in 1986, I was a Sophomore at Wheaton College (Norton, MA), studying economics and political science. Volunteering at Children’s Hospital in Boston. Spending my summer living on the MIT campus as I walked across the Charles to work at the Health Policy Institute, learning the intricacies of physician reimbursement rates by medical insurance companies and studying burgeoning self-insured corporations.
I had the good fortune of international travel growing up because my parents owned a travel agency. And I had the fluke of discovering a lifelong passion concerning nuclear armaments at age 15 through our high school debate team.
I think back to Amy Carter, daughter of President Jimmy Carter. She was attending Brown University (Providence, RI) when I was at Wheaton. She would be in the regional newspapers or on television from time-to-time, and she had friends at Wheaton. Would she have been ready?
Tension in the region mounts.
For a change, I am laughing at a New York Times article on Iran. It appears that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is hearing grumblings among his political supporters. It’s not that he has taunted the world with weapons-grade plutonium production. It’s not that he would “wipe Isreal off the map.” Nope. He is hearing dissatisfaction with his administration four months before public elections because of the rate of inflation, a whopping 19.8% on consumer goods. [By contrast, the 2007 estimated Consumer Price Index is 2.4%, according to the Federal Reserve.]
Perhaps instead of Congress paying private consultants to brief them on the advisability of launching surgical airstrikes against Iran, Congress could spend just a little of the deficit to purchase a McDonalds franchise. Strategically placed next to Ahmadinejad’s residence in Tehran, the rising price of french fries might accomplish what U.S. Secretary of State Rice cannot.
The details of the assassination of former Prime Minister Bhutto are blurring. Sniper’s bullet(s)? Concussion? It has become unclear, contrary to yesterday’s early newscasts.
Surprisingly, no footage or photographs emerge.
Whose death does this remind you of?
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.
A reminder that the voice of one can be perceived as so powerful as to incite violence, even when it is a voice for democracy and for peace.
(2:00 a.m.) The moon wakes me. The wind is swirling the tops of the trees. The white caps of Lake Ontario roll. The garden bench. The bird feeders.
Day-to-day obligations are suspended. Cookbooks and planning are going into family dinners.
I can sit up and wait for deer and fox to quietly pass, without worry of being tired at work. it is rare to enjoy this time and this scene. This untrumpeted silent night.
Peter & I were greeted with eager eyes, wide smiles, and empty hands at the Alternatives for Battered Women’s shelter and at the Open Door Mission in Rochester. We had a car full of food donated by the Webster Wegman’s. Our third year of heading out to the store before its 6:00 pm closing to transport food to those in need. Both locations were full of needy neighbors.
The only thing that could have made the evening more magical was delivery via green energy…via reindeer!
Amidst one-day coupons and CIA denials of withholding of interrogation videotapes from the 9/11 Commission lies a half-page ad from the General Manager of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Rochester, complaining against the efforts of the UNITE Here union to form a collective bargaining unit. His comment is that the union should go to the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”).
The NLRB consists of Bush Administration appointed Judges. It does not function as an independent judiciary. It is notoriously understaffed. And, its own website boasts its annual decline these past seven years in cases decided in favor of unions. Add to that the costs of litigation and the average multi-year case life.
Would you call that justice for workers?
My hand cramps. More than 300 holiday cards being mailed out by us to supporters finally done. Joy to the world to have an active campaign base.
(But, just how many cards will we need next year:!)
It’s the Rochester Area Labor Federation dinner. Unions from all across the region attend. Individual members are honored for their service. Testaments to the battles raging for working men and women. Camaraderie. Good-natured humor.
More than 250 cards are signed to be sent through A Million Thanks to the United States armed services.
Lines are starting to be drawn for one union or another relating to this
race or that. Different combinations emerge, whether Democrat or Republican,
Incumbent or Opponent, Senate or Assembly or United States President. The
one consensus that 2008 will be a field of labor participation.
Campaigning is constant scrambling. The moment you breathe, you realize something else needs doing.
Today, it was sorting out the holiday card situation for tomorrow night’s ALF-CIO dinner. Some 350 expected to attend, and I asked to harness that energy into signing cards for recovering soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital.
All systems go, we’ve been signing cards are campaign events for two weeks.
Bump in the road? You bet! You cannot send cards directly to the hospital; they have to go in through a program. Scramble. Find the program. Grab the guidelines, which includes no envelopes for homeland security purposes to guard against anthrax. Scramble. Take all the envelopes out. Next it was the collection boxes. Then it was will people have pens?
As with most campaign “planning,” we have to laugh. At least we have developed some expertise in improvisation. My classical piano teacher would be quite proud; with him, I was taught to stick to the written music.
Gasoline sells for as little as Seven Cents per gallon in oil producing nations such as Iran. A recent report finds “soaring internal rates of oil consumption” in Russia, in Mexico, and in OPEC member states. Indonesia has already flipped from exporting crude oil to importing it, and the same may happen within the next five years to our second largest supplier, Mexico. Developing nations’ demands will exceed those of OECD nations within the next ten years.
The race clock has started. There is no greater threat to our nation at this point than the need for homegrown energy. Timelines of five years and ten years are fleeting blips of time to develop new technologies and ramp up production and dissemination for the general public.
I need the voice of J.F.K. at the launch of the space race.
Note: “OECD” is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, est. 1961.
Wayne County Democratic Committee has much to celebrate this holiday season, and the turnout is sparkly for their holiday dinner. Dennis Money brings us lessons on river otters and Peregrine Falcons, the Seneca White Deer.
I put forth to the room that we must not only care about but act upon the issues of the animals, the environment. No, the deer can’t vote. No, the deer can’t lobby. But we can elevate these issues into political issues.
Our children cannot vote. The homeless do not form coalitions. The poor do not make fistfuls of campaign contributions. And, yet, we care.
It is time to put the soul back into our government.
It’s Beatniks-2-Bushnix at a political poetry open mic at Geoffrey’s Bohemian Bistro in Palmyra (Wayne County). It’s a broad circle of friends and new friends, from farmers to professors to lawyers to teachers, from teenagers to retirees. More than sixty years of poetry represented. Poems about war, timeless. What is said about Bosnia was true about Korea about the Gulf War about Vietnam. Profound and sad, all at the same time.
After three days, the winds stop and all the world is a snow globe. Through every window, gently dancing snowflakes, touches adorning evergreens, blankets upon the ground. Rush here! Rush there! slows as layers of clothes are mandatory, footsteps are intentional, cars can go only so fast.
Math is generally an activity that I enjoy. There is a truth to numbers that isn’t found elsewhere. There are correct answers. Estimates, percentages, averages, mean, medians, modes, deviations.
But this evening I am near cross-eyed on a global database integrity check for contributors and contributions. My kitchen looks like an accounting firm. Categories of documentation are arranged, deranged, and cross-checked. My ever favorite tool of numbers, multi-colored highlighters, are running the full spectrum from pink through purple; the sign of serious work.
The Wayne County Democratic Chairwoman calls, and offers her knowing sympathies.
Grassroots. Transparent. Family and friends. The list of data reads like a photo album of the campaign, events, and call time.
The cold roars on 50 mph winds, stripping off the snowflakes that yesterday fell, leaving us a crusted layer of Earth. A tree down across the driveway. A tree down in the backyard. LEDs blink notice that the power had gone off.
We have entered HEAP season. With gasoline prices well over $3/gallon and medical insurance again up over 10%, it is the annual local measurement of the economy of the middle class. Working, but struggling to pay bills. Working, but dancing credit cards from December’s shopping well into May, a pas-de-deux that begins when the first full month’s heating bill arrives, along with the holiday shopping bills.
The effects of this cold will flow through the struggles of the winter into the bankruptcies of next Fall.
From one season to the next, the struggling middle class of our region.
Note: “HEAP” is the Home Energy Assistance Program.