Category: poverty

By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Ethics in Government, Politics, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

A self-styled “Don Quixote,” Juan Del Rio ran for County Board of Supervisors in a conservative district near San Diego. These are his reflections just before the election (he lost, but the Democrats cumulatively got enough votes to force a November vote).

Guest blog by Juan Del Rio

May 28, 2010

Dear friends and supporters,
There’s a great write-up about my campaign on the front page of today’s La Prensa (Click here to read it). Daniel Muñoz compares me to Don Quixote – he even says I look the part! I’ll take that as a complement. These days, as I watch the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico unfolding, exacerbated by the deceit and greed of multi-national corporations and the failure of our government to protect us and our planet, before, during and after this man-made catastrophe, I think we will need an army of thousands of Quixotes to fix the mess we’re in.

As we move into the final week of my first foray into politics as a candidate, I have my doubts about “fixing the mess” via our election process. This experience has given me a more realistic perspective about how our democracy works, a new respect for those few who go into the electoral battle for the right reasons and a heightened disgust for the deceitful machinations used to manipulate the outcome of our elections. Here are some of the lessons I’ve reluctantly learned over the past few months:

Lesson #1: Elections have little to do with qualifications to perform the job. 

One might think that the job of running our county would require someone well-versed in urban planning and social services, who understands and cares about the present and future ramifications of decisions on human beings and the environment, and who has the proven ability to quickly size up a situation and to propose fair and viable solutions. But that’s not what wins elections. In order to win an election, a candidate must have money, time, connections, charisma and public speaking skills. Actual experience, qualifications and genuine concern are helpful but not essential.

During the course of my career in public service, I have been appalled by the pervasive incompetence of most of our elected officials. Government is supposed to exist to serve the people, but decisions are more often made based on what will advance an official’s political career than what’s the best solution. I understand now why so many unqualified people occupy public office. A campaign should be a job interview where voters get to evaluate which candidate is best qualified to perform the task, but that’s not how it works – see Lessons #2 -4.

Lesson #2: Campaigns cost gobs of money and how you get that money may be limited by the law, but not the true spirit of fairness.

There are only two ways to get the funding you need for a campaign – put in your own money or beg other people for contributions. If you are a working-class person who is running for office because you think you might be able to do a better job than the lying, scheming, arrogant slimeball who is currently in office, the first thing you need to do is to find people willing to give you the money to finance your campaign. Unless they share your altruistic motives, you’ll be hard-press to convince anyone to invest in wistful windmill chasing. That’s why I strongly support Prop 15, which would be the first step toward public campaign financing.

Needless to say, since I am campaigning to represent the needs of the poor (including unemployed and under-employed workers), I haven’t raised much money. I’m painfully aware that my supporters’ $5 contributions are a stretch for them and their faith in me keeps me going, but it won’t cover the cost of yard signs, or mailers, or much else. You might have noticed that there is no candidate statement for Juan del Rio in the Sample Ballot – that’s because it costs $1,310 to have your statement listed (in addition to the $1,430 filing fee). That was my first tip that the odds are decidedly stacked against a candidate who has an intimate understanding of what life is like for the majority of citizens. If you have a few dollars to invest in this campaign, it would really help in these final days. Please send your check to Juan del Rio for Supervisor 2010, 6675 Linda Vista Rd. #2, San Diego, CA 92111 (include your occupation and employer if your check is $100 or more!)

Lesson #3: Campaigning is a full-time job.
If you are a working person who needs to work a full-time job to pay the bills (or like myself, a person holding down two jobs just to make ends meet) you probably shouldn’t even consider running for office. I haven’t had the luxury of time to walk precincts, and to make things worse, many interviews and events are scheduled during the 9-to-5 workday, so participation means the loss of a day’s pay. I can’t help but wonder if these things are planned this way to cull the working class from public life. In any case, I now appreciate the personal sacrifice candidates and their families make to run for office. I think I’ve come a long way in my public speaking skills and I really enjoy talking to voters, especially when I have a conversation with Spanish speakers who are delighted to talk with a bilingual candidate. I can see where this would be much easier if I was retired or wasn’t trying to keep up 2 jobs.

Lesson #4: Anything goes – except, it seems, honesty.
Judging by some of the trickery going on with Ron Roberts, you’d think elections were all about winning and keeping the people in power who will preserve the status quo. Every day I get another slate mailer in my mailbox that makes me furious. These are designed to look like they come from the Democratic Party. They have titles that say “Voter Information Guide for Democrats” and “Democrat Election Guide”. They have almost all Democratic Party candidates featured, so it’s easy to think that the mailer is coming from the Democratic Party. One even said: “OFFICIALLY Featuring Every Statewide Candidate and Proposition Endorsed by the CA DEMOCRATIC PARTY”! The catch is that the Supervisor’s race is NOT a “Statewide” race, and it’s not even a partisan race. So the fact that these mailers all have Ron Roberts listed as the candidate for Board of Supervisors, implying that he is: 1. a Democrat and 2. endorsed by the Democratic party, is as close to outright fraud as you can possibly get without getting arrested. Unless a voter is actively involved in politics, they probably won’t realize that they are being deliberately misled. That’s what money buys you in politics. But what does it say about Ron Roberts, that he has to resort to such fraudulent, deceitful practices?

Remember all that stuff they taught in civics class about how even a poor kid can grow up to be president… that a democracy is a government of the people, by the people, for the people… that we have a say in our government… As I said, this has been a very enlightening experience and I think Mr. Muñoz nailed it; I do feel a bit like Don Quixote! If you live in District 4, you can vote for this windmill-tilter of San Diego – Juan del Rio.

Warm regards,
Juan del Rio

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, poverty Tagged with , , ,

You’d think, by 2010, with some 50 years of bad experience, that the question of nuclear power’s suitability would have been settled long ago. You’d think that anyone with a lick of sense would have figured out that nuclear power brings with it enormous risks to…

  • Health
  • Safety
  • Environmental contamination
  • Vulnerability to terrorism (and in order to protect against that, major threats to our civil liberties
  • Unreliability
  • Economic disaster (including significant danger of default by utilities on our US government investment)
  • Vast power losses in the course of mining, milling, fuel rod production, transmission, and waste processing (including transportation)–turning the industry, by some accounts, into a net consumer of energy

    Yet President Barack Obama announced $8.33 billion in loan guarantees to build two new nuclear power plants in Georgia, and projects another $36 billion in the 2011 budget, or enough for seven to 10 reactors.

    Nuclear power is something I know something about. I did a major research project on it in college, and several years later, wrote first a monthly column, and then my first book on it. Yes, the new plants would be a new and better design—but not better enough!

    You cannot convince me that the waste products can be safely isolated from the environment for a quarter of a million years (think—pretty much the oldest human artifacts in existence are only 1/10 as old)…that centralizing so much energy, and the powerful, highly toxic fuels that power these plants, does not present unacceptable risk at the hands of our enemies, who could create a disaster that made 9/11 look like a fender bender…that driving these toxic stews around the country doesn’t present grave risks just from normal everyday road behavior…that these plants with their terrible reliability record, frequent outages, gross safety violations, and multiple complexities of power generation, plumbing, electricity, and computer systems can be expected to solve our energy problem…that the nuclear power system as a whole, with its dirty mining and milling, its very imperfect waste processing, its reliance on transportation of dangerous substances over very long distances is going to significantly lower either our carbon footprint, our emissions, or our power needs.

    Nuclear power is not necessary. It is not sensible. It opens great risks for small returns that can be much more easily achieved in other ways. It is a gift to the terrorists, a robbery from the taxpayers, a diversion of resources away from better and far more proven technologies that could meet all of our energy needs safely, and a serious threat to the well-being of future generations.

    This “plan” must be stopped.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, People Helping People, poverty, Social and Economic Justice, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , ,

    Horace Mann, founding President of Antioch College, famously said “Be ashamed to die until you have won one victory for humanity.” Neither Nicholas Negroponte nor Iqbal Quadir will ever have to worry about shaming themselves in front of Horace Mann’s ghost.

    These two M.I.T. professors have both made substantial contributions in developing countries, bringing life-changing technology to villages that don’t even have electricity or running water.

    Negroponte is the key mover behind One Laptop Per Child, an initiative to develop and distribute rugged but cheap (like $100 per unit) laptops to school children, in 18 countries so far. Quadir convinced Bangladeshi microlending pioneer Grameen Bank (founded by Mohammad Yunnis, who received the Nobel Peace prize for his efforts) to underwrite Grameenphone, a business providing cell phone services to villages with no telephone at all.

    Both men spoke at a panel during the Boston Book Fair, coincidentally on Climate Action Day, October 24, 2009. And both have had a major impact.

    Negroponte’s rugged, lightweight laptops can be thrown or dropped with no bad consequence, use only three watts of power (he’s aiming for just one watt on a forthcoming redesign), and both the battery and the computer are designed to last at least five years—about double the typical laptop lifespan—and to minimize waste impact when they are finally past their useful life and life extensions such as use as a TV. With no electricity grid, they’re recharged with hand-cranks, solar photovoltaics, or car batteries.

    Each laptop comes preloaded with not only productivity software, but also 100 books whose creators have agreed to make their content available. That means that if a village receives 100 laptops, it suddenly has a library of 10,000 titles (a larger collection than many small-town physical libraries in the United States).

    These computers are designed directly to foster social change: newly literate school children use satellite wi-fi to access the Internet, learn literacy as well as research skills, and even teach their parents to read. For many of these kids, their first English word is “Google.”

    In October, 2009, Uruguay became the first country to get these laptops into the hands of every single school child; Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Peru are among the other countries with a program. Negroponte would love to “take one day of [the cost of war in] Iraq and Afghanistan and do the children in those countries.” In Afghanistan, where many girls are prevented from going to school, the plan he has worked out with the Afghani Minister of Education is to seed the laptops first to girls, so they can learn outside of the classrooms they’re not allowed to attend.

    But his vision is much grander: “It would take $30 billion to do every kid in the world. We gave away more than twice that much to AIG.”

    Grameen Phone     uses a very different business model: funding new small businesses through microlending, and then changing the society as that business rewrites the entire village culture. “Connectivity is productivity,” says Quadir.

    In 1993, there was one (land-line) telephone for every 500 Bangladeshis, and 73 percent for the phones were in Dhaka, the capital. Grameen came in and began lending small amounts of capital to entrepreneurs, who provided and operated a village telephone, where residents could rent time whenever they needed to make a call, and paid back the loans out of profits.

    The benefits are “inclusive, egalitarian, and immediate,” and the results are astounding. Each 10 percent increase in cell phone penetration corresponds with a .8 percent increase in the country’s Gross Domestic Product. By 2005, the company had 250,000 retailers, 22 million subscribers, and 50 million cell phones (many of them smart phones that bring computing power to these remote villages). It expects to have 5 billion phones in place by 2015, which will be near-total penetration of the population.

    Yet the magnitude of change from this initiative may not even be apparent for some time. Rural electrification in the U.S., says Quadir, didn’t happen immediately after the development of electrical utilities. It went to rural areas decades later, when refrigeration made it possible for farmers to store food much longer, and therefore shift perishable food production and distribution from regionally to nationally based.

    Telephone service, he says, is “the low-hanging fruit. From the juice of the low-hanging fruit, you get the energy you need to climb the tree and take the higher fruit.”

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics, poverty, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized

    Talk about death panels! Physicians for a National Health Program is calling attention to a just releases–and very shocking–Harvard study that found…

    Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.

    The new study, “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults,” appears in today’s online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

    The Harvard-based researchers found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.

    In an e-mail blast, the doctors group calls for President Obama to “start from scratch”: to ditch the unpopular, badly thought out, solves-nothing proposals floating through Congress and bring the US into alignment with the rest of the developed world: a single-payer health care plan.

    And the group’s leader, Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. of Harvard University, gave a great interview on this on Democracy Now.

    Retired Senator (and former presidential candidate) George McGovern notes in a recent op-ed that all it would take is a one sentence law, extending Medicare coverage to all Americans.

    I think all these folks are correct. I’ve been saying for months that the time for single-payer (something I started supporting in 1979, when I was a community organizer for the Gray Panthers and this was their main plank) is NOW.

    If you’re in the US, tell your Senators and Congressional representative. And tell your state government to push for it.

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics, poverty

    Not only did George W. Bush preside over the largest destruction of wealth in history, he also left the poor and middle class reeling, even before the Wall Street collapse. So says a new Census Bureau report that shows, according to the Atlantic Magazine article about it:

    While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country’s condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton’s two terms, often substantially.

    The article goes into substantial detail about all of these. It makes for vital, if sobering, reading. And adds up to yet another reason why I believe George W. Bush was the worst president in US history.

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