Dear Oprah

by Madeleine Kando

You don’t know me but I know you of course. My name is Sabrina and I am a big fan of your show.

I have heard that you have difficulty finding enough room in your house for the $315 million dollars that you make each year. That you would need a space the size of a 35 car garage to keep all those dollar bills.

My brother and sister and I all have to share a bedroom, so I know what it’s like to have a space problem. I have read that you have given $52 million to charity. That’s awesome. (I asked my daddy why we don’t give a third of our $30,000 income to charity, like you. But he said that if we did that, we wouldn’t have enough money left over for food. That’s pretty stingy, don’t you think?)

So here is my suggestion: Why don’t you do the reverse? Why don’t you keep only the dollar bills that fit in a 2 car garage? That’s still a lot of bills, my dad told me. It would be so much, in fact that it could feed OUR family of four for the next 20 years.

You see, this way your space problem would be solved and you wouldn’t have to build a 35 car garage.

You could mention this brilliant idea to some of your celebrity friends. I am sure they have similar space issues. Will Smith, (I know, I have real a crush on him too), makes $80 million. He would have to build a 9-car garage. And Johnny Depp, who makes $72 million, would have to build an 8-car garage, poor man.

This idea would be very useful for some of my favorite actresses too, like Cameron Diaz, who makes $50 million and Jennifer Aniston who makes $27 million. So you see, they would save so much space by giving up anything that doesn’t fit in their standard 2-car garage.

In fact, if you and your celebrity friends sent that extra money to Haiti (they have lots of room there for dollar bills, and I am sure they would take it off your hands without charging you for storage), they could buy food for every single one of their 10 million inhabitants for quite a while. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

I think you should seriously consider my proposal, Oprah. This way, you would still end up with about 600 times more money than my dad. Granted, he doesn’t have your space problem, having only ONE old beat up car, but hey, you cannot have it all in life, can you?

Sincerely,

Sabrina

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Apples

by Madeleine Kando

Once upon a time there was a father and a mother who had ten children. They were all beautiful and smart. But one of the children was not only beautiful and smart, he was also big, strong and very wicked. He always wanted more than his fair share.

The children were very fond of apples (they were lucky, they lived in New England, so apples were aplenty). They each got one beautiful, red, shiny apple for their birthday. The beautiful, smart AND wicked boy was’nt happy with this arrangement. He really felt that he should get more. He eyed the other children’s apples and thought: ‘Why don’t I get all of them? I am smarter, more beautiful AND I am wicked!!’

Since he was extremely clever and manipulative, he convinced the father and mother that he really deserved more than one apple. He managed to get them to give him five of the apples! What with being so big and all, he really needed to eat a lot more than the other children, he said.

The other nine children were upset but they had to make do with the remaining five apples. They just had to cut them and got half an apple each.

The children grew bigger what with all the apples they had been eating on their birthday, especially the handsome, smart AND wicket boy. But one day, the mother and the father said: ‘Children, we have no money left. We cannot buy food. You need to give us five apples or we will starve.’

The beautiful, smart AND wicked boy was so clever! He said: ‘I will give you two apples because I love you so much.’ The other nine children had to chip in to make up the remaining three apples. They each gave a third of the half apple they had, which didn’t leave much, to be sure.

The father and the mother were so impressed with the generosity of the beautiful, smart AND wicked boy! He had given two apples, not just a measly sliver of an apple. (They all had forgotten that he still had three shiny, red apples left!) They gave him special privileges, and when their birthday came around and it was time for apples again, he didn’t not hesitate to take five of the ten birthday apples for himself once more.

The wicked boy had now eight apples, the three from his last birthday and the five that he took, all for himself. Since there were only ten apples total, the other nine children only got half an apple each. That and the sliver of an apple left from their last birthday didn’t even add up to one whole apple for each one of them!

The brothers and sisters realized that if things continued like this, the wicked boy would end up with all the apples in the world and there wouldn’t be any left for anyone else. They decided to finally take matters in their own hands.

They took the axe that they used to cut apple wood, went up to the beautiful, smart AND wicked boy’s room and, without hesitation chopped off his head. They cut up his body in many pieces, just like they had had to do with the few apples that he he had left them.

The deluge of apples they found in his room were devided amongst all of them, their children and grandchildren and they buried the apple cores in the orchard where soon new apple trees grew. They buried the beautiful, smart AND wicked boy under one of the apple trees and wrote on his tombstone: ‘Here lies the smart, beautiful AND wicked boy. He made the fatal mistake of wanting too much. May he rest in pieces. leave comment here Read more...

...and Private Business is NOT inefficient?

By Tom Kando

We are incessantly reminded that much of the government consists of inefficient, featherbedding, useless job-retention programs. And you mean to tell me that the private sector is different? Ha! Go tell that to someone dealing with an insurance company.

I recently had a minor fender bender. So I first called my insurance broker, who had signed me up with my insurance company. I don’t know why I need a broker. The first and last thing Roberta, one of the broker’s assistants, told me when I called, was to get in touch with the insurance company directly.

Which I did. I called them, in Seattle or in Dallas, or some other far away place.

Okay, so I file the minor claim (for a repair of a few hundred dollars). Debbie in Dallas tells me that my claim will be forwarded to the adjuster in the San Francisco office - Susie so-and-so. She is the one with whom I will have to deal.

So for the next couple of days I exchange e-mails with Susie in San Francisco.

Then, I get a call from Bill, a local Sacramento adjuster. He is the one handling my claim, wanting to look at my car, etc. Again, we talk on the phone and e-mail each other for a while.

Today, I get an e-mail from Susie that my case is now in the hands of Mary, another gal in the San Francisco office. So I call and e-mail Mary. But her answering machine tells me that if she doesn’t get back to me within a day, I should talk to the head of her team, Linda.

See what I mean?

People say that, unlike government, private business has an incentive to be efficient, because it must make a profit.

American business has been working on improving its productivity for years. We have all experienced the massive job outsourcing, each time we talk to someone in New Delhi or in Manilla when we call customer service. Such outsourcing has caused a great deterioration in the quality of service. Getting to talk to a human being on the phone has become difficult, and when you are dealing with someone on the other side of the globe, you can’t drive to the customer service counter to air your complaint.

Do the seemingly unnecessary and bureaucratic duplications which I just described mean that even more American employees should be laid off?

I don’t think so. The problem is not “featherbedding.” It is inefficiency. Companies already fire people at will. Unions have lost 90% of the clout they enjoyed half a century ago.

Efficiency is not a prerequisite for profits and fat CEO compensations: Those can be achieved by (1) jacking up premiums (or the price of whatever you sell), (2) denying claims (or treatment, or whatever your product is), and (3) outsourcing jobs, i.e. making things more inconvenient for the customer. Efficiency, my foot! leave comment here Read more...

Why Do We Never Learn?

by Madeleine Kando

I come from a pampered country, a country that I call a ‘flopsy bunny’ nation. Many countries in Northern Europe are 'flopsy bunny' nations. We saw the French protest not too long ago, because their government wanted to raise their retirement age to 62! I do admire the French tradition of taking their demands to the street, but many of us here in the US were scratching our heads and wondering on which planet the French thought they lived.

Americans, you see, are hardworking, no-nonsense, pragmatic individuals. Their history is one of survival. Words like ‘pampered’, ‘lazy’, ‘spoiled’, don’t come to mind when I think of ‘Americans’. The reason they are like that is complex, but I suppose one of the reasons they work hard is that they think they can get ahead. They can improve their lives.

Unfortunately, this has turned into an illusion. The American Dream is dead. This simple expression, ‘The American Dream”, was alive and well for decades, when millions of foreigners came here in order to pursue it. But the definition of the American Dream is that "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone”, not just for the few.

The American Dream has turned into a nightmare. Americans work harder than ever. Women and wives work, not by choice but by necessity. Since there is no paid maternity leave in America, women barely have time to plop out their babies before they have to go back to work.

So what happened? What changed? If you work hard, spend energy doing something, like assembling a car, writing software, cleaning a restaurant.. aren’t you producing something? Who benefits from the value of that product? Shouldn’t it benefit the person that spends all that energy producing it by giving him money for his labor so that he can buy some of those products?

The American Dream turned into a nightmare when hard working Americans started to get paid less and less. They produced more because they worked harder, but they got paid less.

Since Americans are humans, they need shelter and food to live. They need a car to go to work. So the only thing they can do to just live, is borrow money. That’s fine and dandy as long as you are able to pay back the expensive money you borrow. But then the housing market collapses and your collateral vanishes overnight.

People get frustrated. You feel cheated. You see the government bail out the banks who lent you that expensive money while you have to foreclose on your house. No wonder you get angry. You get angry at the government. You don’t realize that you are barking up the wrong tree. Because, after all, if your salary had been adequate, had been a true reflection of what your labor is worth in a free market, you wouldn’t have had to borrow money in the first place.

That is what I call ‘The Amerian Nightmare’. Slowly the earnings of Americans went down, even though the economy grew. It grew, but only for a small portion of the population. The super rich got richer. Like a balloon with a blockage: all the air got stuck in a tiny part of the balloon while the rest is being asphixiated.

Gone are the days when the hardworking American had bargaining power. Gone are the unions. The idea that one of the jobs of the Government is to protect citizens against the excesses of capitalism never gets talked about. Let’s be honest, Government SHOULD redistribute some of the wealth in a capitalist society. Redistribute it by offering affordable education, affordable health care, affordable housing.

All we hear is ‘Government is too big’. The Government is blamed for everything. After the latest mid-term elections, things have gone from bad to worse. With this new Republican majority in the House and so many seats gained in the Senate, we will see even more inequality in this nation. What blows my mind is that it is the hardworking American that I so admire that has voted to put the very people in power that will tighten the noose around their necks even more. leave comment here Read more...

Million, Billion, Schmillion...what’s the difference?

By Tom Kando

The political flap du jour is the accusation that President Obama is spending $200 million a day to visit India, and that the administration has ordered the navy to deploy 34 ships for the event, i.e. one tenth of the entire US Navy (See Sacramento Bee, Nov. 6, 2010). The source of this outlandish accusation is an obscure Indian agency, and American conservatives eagerly ran with it, and magnified it. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Backmann, the frightening candidate for House Majority Leader, has repeated these allegations as facts. Glenn Beck has multiplied the number by ten, to arrive at a total price tag of $2 billion for Obama’s entire trip. The problem, once again, is stupidity: We live in a culture which is increasingly illiterate and innumerate.

Most people - and this apparently includes radio and TV demagogues with millions of followers, and congress people who represent millions of people - barely understand the difference between words such as “million” and “billion.” After all, it’s only a one-letter difference.

In her blockbuster movie “Contact,” Jodie Foster says that “she traveled billions and billions of light years away,” or something to that effect. Of course she meant millions, since the total size of the known Universe is only about 10 to 13 billion light years.

But what the heck, a million and a billion are both “a lot,” so who cares if one is a thousand times larger than the other, right?

It’s the same with the current flap about Obama’s travel expenses. The trip may very well cost over $10 million a day. That’s roughly what President Clinton’s overseas trips cost. It’s a lot. But it’s one twentieth of the accusation.

In my book, even $10 million a day is extravagant. I know, security is very expensive, the President has a huge entourage, setting up such a trip takes months of expensive preparations, etc. Still, the extravagant expenses of today’s heads of state, CEOs and other big wigs will be remembered, centuries from now, the same way that we recall pharaohs, Roman emperors, the French Louis Kings and other despots from the past: squandering grotesquely, while the masses barely get by. But this is another topic.

My topic today is the cacophony of our illiterate and innumerate culture. And what else do you expect, when education is one of our country’s lowest priorities?

I realize that many people struggle valiantly to go to college, and that millions who would desperately want to get an education beyond high school are deprived of it due to circumstances beyond their control. At the same, radio and TV blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck announce the fact that they never went to college as a badge of honor. Even comedian Jay Leno proudly reminds us of this sometimes. They probably feel that this, somehow, makes them part of “the common people,” as opposed to pointy-headed intellectuals like Obama and all those liberal professors. The insinuation is that being uneducated is cool.

Years ago I read about a stone-age tribe in New Guinea called the “Dani.” They knew three numbers: “One,” “Two,” and “Many.”

But don’t worry, most of my students are way, way better at math than that. leave comment here Read more...

Whose Fault Is It All?

By Tom Kando

The election is a big Republican victory.

The near-consensus among voters was that everything is the fault of (1) politicians and (2) the government. The Right focuses on “Big Government” as the culprit, the Left argues that the government is too timid, and “centrists” say that the right and the left are too polarized, and unwilling to work together.

But EVERYONE agrees that the fault lies with politicians, i.e. with the government. They are all “on the take” (from lobbyists) and we must “throw the rascals out.”  Convenient.

Aren’t YOU and I the ones who ELECT the politicians? For a decade we elected George W. Bush and lots of Republicans, then we elected Obama and many Democrats, and now went back to electing a lot of Republicans.

In California , we recalled Gray Davis 8 years ago and elected Arnold, and now we elected a Democrat again. Have things worked out well for us? The economy, the deficit, unemployment?

People get the government they deserve. Thomas Jefferson’s words, quoted even by intellectuals like Jay Leno (sarcasm here). The cliché is true, as most clichés are. So it’s not the politicians’ fault or “the government’s” fault. It’s OUR fault.

First of all, half of us don’t even vote. Then we gripe about “the rascal” politicians. And most of those who vote are ignorant and brainwashed.

When I see skits like Jay Leno’s “Jaywalk,” I feel like crying. Poor source for my argument, you say. Jay probably selects the dumbest people he can find. True.

But even if the public level of stupidity is only ONE TENTH of what we see on Jay Leno, it’s a disaster. Some recent answers given to Leno: (Young interviewees seem to be the most abysmally ignorant).

No idea who the Vice President is;
no idea how may Supreme Court Justices there are;
...or how many senators;
no idea which two countries border on the US;
our enemy in World War Two was France;
World War Two was in the 19th century.

With such an electorate, is it a wonder that the country is politically dysfunctional?

I am no beacon of knowledge either. I have a PhD, but even I can’t answer all of Leno’s Jaywalk questions. I recently thought that there were 11 Supreme Court Justices (Oops).
When I went over my election ballot recently, I had no idea who about one third of the candidates were (local school board candidates, etc.). But at least I try.

The problem is that we are lazy (or too busy; good excuse). We vote on the basis of the ads which bombard us, instead of doing our homework. Negative ads influence us the most, and campaigns are bought by the richest corporate contributors. It’s all about $$$.

And another problem: There is no viable populist alternative to the Democratic Party. Our tweedle-tweedledum two-party system is totally unsatisfactory. Proof: the ever-growing number of independents.
When we get angry at the Democratic Party because it is cozy with the plutocracy instead of speaking up for us, our protest vote goes to the Republicans - who are even more corrupt. In a recent telethon, Glenn Beck urged all the little Tea Party people to send their checks to the US Chamber of Commerce. Maybe he should have specified his favorite Fortune 500 recipients. Nuts!

The solution? Education. Without an educated electorate, democracy doesn’t work.

Look at what just happened: We are in a severe economic recession, so we go BACK to the party and the policies which CAUSED the problems in the first place. It’s like picking up smoking again to cure your lung cancer. Good luck with that! leave comment here Read more...

My Doctor

by Madeleine Kando

I commiserate with a friend at my health club about all sorts of things. That’s one of the advantages of relating to someone on a ‘locally specific basis’. You know, someone you only meet at the supermarket, or when you get your coffee at Starbucks every morning at 9 am. It’s a safe way of letting off steam because you know you won’t see that person anywhere else that day.

My locally specific friend talks a lot about her ‘doctor’. She is so enamored with him that her choice of words borders on adoration. ‘He is very very famous, you know, MY doctor. He is in the paper and on t.v. He really likes me.’

I thought of her when I went to see MY doctor yesterday. Of course he is not MY doctor at all. He is so many people’s doctor that his three secretaries have to go through terrible contortions to try to cram the enormous amount of patients’ charts onto the shelves behind their neatly lined up workstations.

One of them was wearing a Micky Mouse hat with a big red ribbon that matched her red sweater stretched tight over her expansive bosom. It was Halloween, you see. As I was waiting, I was watching her step onto a wobbly stool, one hand holding a chart, the other holding onto a cabinet. She was engaging in her daily struggle to squeeze one more patient onto the already overstuffed shelf.

MY doctor is a very famous spine specialist. He doesn’t know my name and I doubt he remembers any of his patients’ names. To him, I am an L5 with a bulging disk.

I have been whisked into one of the many examination rooms, waiting for MY doctor to come in. My ‘friend’ at the club would be proud of me. He only made me wait an hour.

He comes in, shakes my hand without looking up from the sheet that he is holding in his hand. He asks ‘how are you?’ in a tone that does not expect an honest answer. So, when I answer him truthfully that I have seen better days, he looks up, a bit surprised.

He is very laconic, with a flat affect. I recognize this as a trick of the trade, a way to discourage patients from asking too many questions. That would risk extending our meeting and an L4 with narrowing disk space is waiting in the next examination room. I know how she must feel and with a guilty conscience I ask MY doctor to at least look at the expensive MRI that I brought with me.

Ten minutes later I am back in the hall, wondering what happened. I had a shitload of questions, but somehow the person that I was talking to in there did not seem very interested in me. I had the distinct feeling that my condition didn’t pose a special challenge. He was either thinking of his next patient or what he would eat for lunch.

I was really open to the possibility of getting to know him. I could have told my ‘friend’ at the club, that I too had a nice, famous doctor. But I think there is a point in some doctors’ career where the patient load reaches a critical mass, where there are just too many patients squeezed on a shelf. They must start blending together, like pureed potatoes.

I don’t feel terribly sorry for MY doctor. He has chosen the path of least resistance to fame and glory. But his secretaries… well, that’s different. I have a suspicion that my chart will start gathering dust. I can already hear the sigh of relief when, instead of stepping onto her wobbly stool, the big bosomed secretary will toss my chart in the wastebasket. Phew! One less potatoe to worry about. leave comment here Read more...

Risk

By Tom Kando

After our recent return from Europe, a friend asked, “Weren’t you afraid of terrorists?” My first impulse was to guffaw, but instead I explained patiently to the dear old woman that she was actually in greater danger driving to the supermarket than we were flying to Europe.

The irrationality of fear is all around us. And it is being stoked by the media, by homeland security, by politicians. When we were in Europe last month, the authorities announced a “red alert.” International travelers were supposed to be more vigilant. We were not given any hint as to what we should DO to make ourselves safer. Essentially, we were simply told to be more AFRAID. Read more...

Geopolitics: Why Aren’t we more with India?

By Tom Kando

I was thinking: We got sucked into a never-ending war in Afghanistan and a costly alliance with a very questionable ally - Pakistan.

But next door to Pakistan is a much bigger, more powerful and more benign country whose interests coincide with ours - India. The logic for an alliance with that country is inescapable:

1. Like America, India is the target of vicious terrorist attacks. The November 2008 Mumbai attacks killed 173 Indians and wounded another 308. This was just one of the many acts of violence that have pitted Indian Hindus against Muslims from India, Kashmir and Pakistan over the years.

2. Some ally, Pakistan! While American boys and girls are dying fighting the Taliban, the Pakistani Intelligence Agency (ISI) is known to actually control the Taliban and its leader Mullah Muhammad Omar (Sacramento Bee, October 20).

3. 27% of Pakistanis believe that the US government perpetrated the 9/11 attack, vs. 2% who believe that it was al Qaeda (most said they don’t know). (see Bret Stephens, European Wall Street Journal, September 29).

4. This is what $3 billion a year of US economic aid to Pakistan buys us! (In addition to the staggering cost of our Afghan war). Our alliance with Pakistan is an obscenity.

5. India is a huge and powerful country. Its culture is peaceful, it is democratic and (largely) capitalistic. It will also become increasingly important as a counterweight to the next superpower - China.

Granted, South Asia is a tinder box. Both India and Pakistan have nukes. The region could be the Balkan of the 21st century. It is where World War Three could be ignited, as World War One was ignited in Serajevo. I am not suggesting rash action by our government. But why we are aligned with a corrupt, weak, ungrateful and nearly failed state (Pakistan) instead of a much more powerful and benign country whose interests coincide with ours (India), is beyond me. leave comment here Read more...

Rightward Ho!

By Tom Kando

There is a race in the Western world today as to who can move to the political right farther and faster. I find it amusing that America can no longer be blamed for being exceptionally right-wing, conservative, racist, capitalist, etc. In other words: All those things which intellectuals and Europeans have so long enjoyed accusing us of.

I returned from Europe a week ago, and I can report that they are (also) moving to the right, big time! Here, we have the Tea Party, and a major right-wing electoral victory coming up. In Europe it’s the same, if not worse:

1. In the UK, of course, the Conservatives won the May election and Prime Minister David Cameron has taken over the government from Gordon Brown and the Labor Party.

2. In the Netherlands, the Balkenende government has fallen, and it is being replaced by a Center-Right coalition cabinet. The Socialists are now in the opposition, while the Christian Democrats and the Business Party rule, with the support of Geert Wilders’ “Freedom” Party. This party is the new kid on the block, a controversial but increasingly popular “anti-Islam” party.

3. In Sweden, the Center-Right Alliance has just won the election, while the far right also gained strength. There, too, immigration played a major role in pushing the electorate to the right. This is quite unprecedented, in a country which has always epitomized the extremely tolerant and liberal European social democracies which American conservatives demonize.

4. In France, President Sarkozy recently began evicting thousands of gypsies, a move which has gained him popularity in his country.

5. Italian authorities are also evicting some gypsies.

6. In Hungary, the right-center Fidesz party has just scored a major electoral victory, and the far-right neo-Nazis are now also in parliament.

These are just some of the examples which I have recently come across. But there is a silver lining to this: European intellectuals and liberals (of which there are plenty left, fortunately) can no longer wag their finger at evil, capitalist, racist, reactionary America. That would be the pot calling the kettle...leave comment here Read more...