Tucson thoughts

We must be very, very careful that the current call for more civil discourse does not translate into any laws suppressing discourse. American politics have always been rough and tumble. Ain't nothin' new.

I'd rather have 10,000 talk show hosts on the right and the left screaming their throats out at each other, and politicians slinging mud like they were trying to dig down to China on a 3 p.m. deadline, than live one day in a place like, say, North Korea, where the official line is that nothing bad ever happens and Dear Leader can do no wrong. No mud gets thrown there. People just quietly starve to death.

Imagine

"Imagine there's no taxes,
It's easy if you try ..."
-- with apologies to the late John Lennon

I stood in the Wendy's line at lunch, lusting over a luscious salad. I had eight quarters and three one dollar bills in my hand. Should be more than enough to cover the cost of an item whose listed price tag is $4.79, right?

Wrongo, bucko.

Not in 2009, not in this city, not in this swiftly-sinking-to-h$ll country of ours.

With tax, it came to $5.25. That's .46 tax, or eight percent!

I didn't have the invisible two extra quarters the city/state/feds demanded so I had to use the credit card or get something cheaper or just starve. Sweetie will not be happy -- She doesn't like to use the card except for emergencies.

Unless you are a math genius with a tax table in your pocket, you can't hope to use a store price tag these days to determine how much you will pay for your merchandise.

Tax anger created this country. Tax anger just may be what drives out the current crop of slime that has oozed into all its positions of leadership.

We need taxes for public education, we are told. Well, public education in this country stinks. It's not the fault of the majority of teachers, highly over-worked and underpaid, but rather of badly-raised children, moronic parents and stupid administrative ideas such as recess elimination. So let's figure out a better way and maybe pay for it more intelligently.

We need taxes for roads, we are told. What, those same roads that our current taxes can't keep fixed? Why not sell stretches of freeway to big corporations and let them rename it, for example, Ronald McDonald Expressway and paint the happy clown's face on the pavement and pay a fat fee for the privilege of millions of drivers getting the craving for a Big Mac as they speed down the road?

We need taxes to pay the salaries of senators and such, we are told. I really, really hope that you don't believe that. Why not have communities pick local good guys and gals and compel them, George Washington-style, to temporarily serve their country as leaders, and pay them a living wage like honest folk make and no more? I'm sick up to my ears of all the arrogant political dirtbags who salivate over public office like a junkie craving his crack-pipe. Let 'em work off some of their bloated belly fat laying asphalt on our new, tax-free roads or dodging IEDs in Iraq.

Women in leadership ...

With permission from American Forum (please see link), I am posting this very profound editorial because I agree with it passionately.

Despite my reservations about President-elect Obama, I am not posting it as a chance to score points against him, anymore than its original author intended it to be thusly used, which obviously She did not. Please note that in Her column, She also points out Pres. Bush's egregious error in eliminating several means of Women's high-level contributions to White House political discourse and I agree emphatically with Her that that was indeed a serious error on his part.

Women absolutely belong at every level of government and in every corporation and organization, every place that They have a mind to be, fully active, fully equal, speaking Their minds freely, doing, being, achieving, not just on behalf of other Women but on behalf of all humanity. -- ECD

"To Achieve Change President-Elect Obama Needs to Bet on Women."
Posted by American Forum, written by Linda Tarr-Whelan


"President-elect Obama has now moved swiftly to name talented and creative people to Cabinet-level offices and the key members of the White House team. But a nagging thought keeps coming back to me: Why isn't he naming more women to bring our experience, creativity and energy to address the problems that face us?"
Until only recently it looked like Obama's Cabinet-level composition held only three women. But the announcement that Gov. Bill Richardson will not be taking the Commerce Secretary slot leaves an open position to fill, and one more chance for diversity.

Whereas the presidents of Chile and Spain, also elected as change candidates, appointed women to one-half of their Cabinet seats, Obama has named (including Richardson), 12 men of 15 Cabinet-level departments heads. Leaving his team very diverse in terms of race and ethnicity -- but not in gender. This is a diminished representation from both Bush presidencies and the Clinton administration.

More important than numbers is the talent that is missing and how out-of-step we are compared to the rest of the world in terms of who leads and why it matters. Since 1995 the global standard has been at least one-third women at power tables to revitalize economies and advance democratic participation.

Here we are stuck or moving backwards compared to the rest of the world.
The U.S. is ranked 27th on the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Report and 71st in terms of women's representation in Congress. Outside of government representation at the current rate increase it will take women 73 years to reach parity on corporate boards.

Why does Obama -- and all of us -- need more women making decisions?
Women "get it" about the importance of education and have gone to school in droves. Women now earn 58 percent of college and master's degrees and are at least even in professional and Ph.D programs. Women-owned businesses, despite persistent obstacles, generate sales equal to the gross domestic product of China. Women make 80 percent of the consumer decisions. As almost one-half of the workforce and the bulk of nurses and teachers, women are the secret to achieving improvements in the economy, education and health care.

Failing to maximize the power and potential of women as leaders for change is neither smart politics nor good business. Women were the majority of all voters -- and with a 7 percent gender gap over men voters, the majority of Obama voters. In part that was because the campaign specifically addressed pressing problems in women's lives where there has been little action for decades -- family and work, health care, equal pay and violence.

I've had my time to serve in government. Based on my experience, I would recommend a plan recently presented to the Obama-Biden transition by the heads of 38 prominent women's organization who represent 14 million women. They proposed the creation of a Cabinet-level Office on Women reporting directly to the president, an Inter-Agency Council on Women and an Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach.

As the former head of the White House Office on Women's Concerns for President Carter, I know first-hand the importance of the coordination between the president, the administration and women across the country.

In the Clinton administration, as the CEO of a nonprofit, I worked closely with Betsy Myers, later head of Women for Obama, and others who headed the Office of Women's Outreach. All of us found it difficult to deliver the president's agenda for women without Cabinet status. In my role as ambassador I met women ministers from around the globe and saw how their work informed progress for women and their countries and participated in the work of the very effective Inter-Agency Council on Women.

All of these offices were cut out by the Bush administration -- our next President will face a clean slate and a pressing need. President-elect Obama -- and all of us -- will be well-served by taking on board the full recommendation of an integrated approach on women led by a Cabinet-level Office on Women.

An Obama administration will move the whole country forward when it effectively tackles existing inequities, eliminates possible disparate impacts of supposedly "gender-neutral" policies and taps the full potential of our women. Women are not a special-interest group. We are the current and future talent for the economy, the anchors for most families and the change agents for a better future.

Women have embraced the Obama call for change. Now we want to be sure it happens.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tarr-Whelan is a Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow on Women’s Leadership. Her book, “Women Lead the Way: Your Guide to Stepping Up to Leadership and Changing the World” will be published in 2009. She is the former Ambassador to the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (C) 2009 by the American Forum. 1/09

http://amforum.blogspot.com/2009/01/to-achieve-change-president-elect-obama.html

Mind your c's and b's

Zahra Eshragi wants to see better days for Iran, but She doesn't see them anytime soon.

Eshragi is the granddaughter of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the 1979 revolution in Iran.

It is no secret that many Iranians are unhappy with the leadership of their country and with the fruits of the revolution that they so eagerly fomented nearly 30 years ago.

Iran, contrary to the understanding of many Westerners, is something of a democracy. But it has a flaw, a deadly flaw, the same flaw that doomed two previous revolutions in history, in France and in Russia.

No checks and balances.

The Soviets believed that if only the capitalists and the opiate of religion were swept away, the long-suppressed good nature of mankind woulod rise to the surface. Everyone would work hard and all would be well.

We know how that turned out.

In a previous century, the French believed that if they swept away their monarchy and broke the power of the Church, then a secular utopia of equality, brotherhood and fraternity would rise up.

That wasn't quite what happened.

The founding fathers of the American nation, by contrast, were not utopians. They did not believe that any man was above corruptibility. So they created a system of checks and balances -- the missing element in all three of the revolutions mentioned above.

It is by no means a perfect system. But it has worked for more than 200 years.

Why does Eshragi feel so gloomy about Iran? In a recent interview, she lamented the "hard-liners lock on power."

Well, there's the problem. In America, people unhappy with our current president picked the "candidate of change" this year. Imagine if a body of American authorities, religious or secular, had the power to disqualify Obama from having run.

In Iran, a body of clerics has exactly that power and they are accountable only to Allah.

The revolution was meant to bring freedom to Iran, Eshragi said. Well, if so, instead of taking American hostages, its architects should have studied the American Founding Fathers.

Instead, she says, "with this trend, nothing remains of the republic. And they have left nothing of freedom."

If you are reading this as a rant about American superiority, you have totally misunderstood me. It was precisely because they recognized that their fellow citizens were no more superior than people anywhere else, no less likely to become corrupted and do evil, that the U.S. Founding Fathers did what they did.

Checks and balances. You gotta have em.

Where do I fit in?

It is only within the last few months, or even weeks, that I have come to realize where I stand politically.

I am a Libertarian.

That is the party, which unfortunately wins very few major votes in America, that basically believes government should defend us from foreign enemies but otherwise get the %$$%^ out of the way.

That party differs from conservative Republicans in believing that government should not be in the marriage business. I've also become a convert to the reality that we are losing the war on drugs -- that our prisons are filled with drug offenders and our national parks are riddled with their secret gardens.

Prohibition didn't work for alcohol -- instead, it lined the pockets of Al Capone and other gangsters. So today we don't ban alcohol but we punish drunken driving and other genuine crimes that spring from irresponsible use of the product. So should we also do for the other drugs that people choose to use.

If people are stupid enough to ride motorcycles without helmets or drive without seatbelts, then let them suffer the natural consequences of their actions. But, some say, then society has to pay their medical bills. No. It. Doesn't. Not if society is free of socialist entanglements.

I still need to do more research but I think one area that I might still have differences is in protecting the helpless. I believe abortion is wrong and should not be legal except in certain cases. I believe that if the last population of endangered whatevers is on someone's property and he wants to clear the land for a parking lot, government should be able to intervene and protect it -- although the discussion should have begun long before that time.

Harry on Politics

"I think we would lose something important to our political life if the conservatives were all in one party and the liberals all in the other."

-- Former U.S. Pres. Harry Truman, "Harry Truman Speaks His Mind," p. 81.

This Ortega doesn't taste good to me

In my country, the name "Ortega" means Mexican food.

Browse http://www.ortega.com/ for a little while and if you don't start to salivate, then you're either dead or insane.

But there is another Ortega in the world, and he's not a relative, to my knowledge, of those food-making folks, and he tastes foul, to me.

I recently cut out a column from the paper by Mary Anastasia OGrady.

Her bio: http://www.opinionjournal.com/bios/bio_ogrady.html.

The first part of the column: "Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega wants to party like it's 1979. And why not? He's back at the helm of his country, which is once again prime real estate for enemies of the U.S.
Three decades ago it was the Soviets who financed Mr. Ortega's fiesta, in which he and his closest commanders executed the famous "pinata" property grab and ran the country into the ground. His backers this time are a new bunch: Iran and Venezuela. But his hungering for another power trip looks very much the same. After a visit to Tehran last week where he denounced the Yankee imperialists, so too does the threat he presents to U.S. security interests."

The whole thing: http://www.hacer.org/current/Nica25.php

I'm not going to get too much into politics in this blog. I have readers from all over the world, who are going to be of differing political backgrounds. I don't expect them to wave American flags or agree with me all the time or even ever, at all. And I am capable of recognizing that my country has made many mistakes in its history.

But I think any rational person is disturbed by the global problem of Islamic fundamentalism. And this article reveals a disturbing new front in its battle to overthrow modern civilization.

Castro, Chavez and now Ortega-redux. A scary alliance if ever there was one. Granted, there is terrible poverty in these lands below my nation's borders. Granted, the machinations of the US over the years have done a lot of harm down there. But since when have these populist caudillos ever accomplished anything except to enrich themselves? And now, courting terrorists?

Not good at all.

India makes history

Perhaps I haven't been paying enough attention to the news this week. In fact, if my eyes hadn't caught the small paragraph on some back page of the metro paper, I wouldn' t have known that India has inaugurated its first Female president this week, Pratibha Patil.

The article states that Her post is largely ceremonial and that Her election "has elicited only a lukewarm response from many women who ... don't feel that she represents them."

Still, it's history and it's something to celebrate. How many Women did this reporter query to come up with that line?

Pres. Patil vows to empower Women and to end the practice of aborting Female fetuses.