A happy Thanksgiving after all

From today's NY Times,* a story of delayed, but timely, remuneration for thousands of households who struggle to make ends meet.

A class-action lawsuit filed in the 1990s and settled in 2006 charged that thousands of people were illegally denied food stamps after they moved to receive Social Security disability payments instead of welfare benefits. Roughly $12 million in awards being distributed to nearly 9,500 households in the five boroughs in the form of credits to electronic benefit cards.

"Monica Ryan learned of her good fortune when she went to her corner bodega in northern Manhattan to buy bread and milk. She was picking up just the necessities because she was conscious of having less than $5 in her account. But when the clerk swiped her card, it appeared that she had hundreds left. At first, Ms. Ryan, who says that she has been barely getting by with a monthly benefit of $107, thought it was impossible. In shock, she called the automated food stamp line, which confirmed that $888 had just been placed in her account. “I didn’t believe it,” she said. “They make so many mistakes.” It was not until days later, when a government letter arrived confirming that the money was part of the settlement, that she finally relaxed and went out and bought a steak. “It was so delicious,” she said. Now she is planning on buying a turkey to share with her son, something she had not done in two years because, she said, “it takes half the monthly allowance to buy the groceries for that one meal.”

Happy Thanksgiving!
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*NY Times, 11/27/08, "A surprise bounty from a food stamp lawsuit," http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/nyregion/27stamps.html?th&emc=th

"Cowboys" and "Indians," branding and iron-eyes

If you're as old as I am, you probably remember the Marlboro Man. A rugged "cowboy" who represented both the glories of the American West and of smoking tobacco products. Several years ago, I found out that he died of emphysema as a consequence of smoking. That's quite an endorsement for a product! Now I've learned that the "Native American" whose commercial image was etched into millions of American minds (including mine) as he surveyed littered and polluted highways and waterways created by careless and uncaring people, reacting with a single, solemn tear, was a fraud. (You can watch the ad on YouTube*.) The man under the fake braids was an Italian-American character actor named Espera Oscar DeCorti, who went by the name Iron Eyes Cody. More egregious is that the ad was produced by a fraudulent environmental organization called Keep America Beautiful (KAB).** Fraudulent, you say? But KAB is one of the most trusted "environmental groups" in the US, and that ad is credited with inspiring America's fledgling environmental movement! Next I'll find out that Mr. Rogers was a sex addict! (Please God, NO!!!) Turns out that KAB is a trade group for bottling and can companies and soda makers, and it opposes reuse and recycling legislation. As pointed out in an article on the Container Recycling Institute's Web page*** , through industry lobbying KAB has helped defeat bills in many state legislatures that would institute a deposit-based system on plastic beverage containers. Hence, the massive collection of plastic bottles in landfills and littering the highways and waterways. What an iron-eye...
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*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OHG7tHrNM
**Great article in Orion magazine, "The crying Indian," by Ginger Strand, Nov/Dec 2008, http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3642
***"Keeping America cluttered: the big fight over bottled water litter," by Kevin LeShane, September/October 2007, http://www.container-recycling.org/mediafold/newsarticles/plastic/2007/9-E-KeepingAmericaCluttered.htm

Obama, Lawrence Summers, and illegal immigration

Obama has chosen Summers, former Treasury Secretary and undersecretary under Clinton, as his chief economic advisor. Obama's choice of Summers doesn't bode well for his vetting process. Mr. Summers has a history that I find alarming and distressing and that makes me not a little bit squeamish. Not only was Summers one of the key architects of our current economic crisis* , he also played a key role in the mid-90s in the economic fiasco in Mexico by increasing interest rates to unmanageable levels, driving thousands of farms and businesses to bankruptcy.** If you ever wonder why immigration became a big issue in the 90s, look no farther. Ok, there are other contributing factors as well, including NAFTA, but bottom line is the economic situation created by Summers drove people into deep economic desperation. Summers also helped wreak his special brand of havoc on Lituania and Russia, driving their economies into the toilet and creating social turmoil leading to the rise of Putin. But I digress. Illegal immigration is a hot-button issue in the US, with people frequently blaming the victims. I think it's time to understand the forces that led to the mass immigration problem in order to attempt fix it.
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*see The Nation article of 11/10/08, "The Summers conundrum," http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081124/ames
**A detailed article can be found at http://americas.irc-online.org/, "Larry Summers, champion of Wall Street greed attained by impoverishing the Mexican people."

The point of all this

I'd like to use this forum to bring some vision to the events and social phenomena I witness, in order to help calm the nightmare effect of this crazy world we live in. At least for myself. The phenomena to which I refer are political, social, national, and global. I want to be part of the solution. Trying to connect dots might have to suffice.