The hypocrisy of republicans

The hypocrisy of Republicans keeps surprising even those who, like myself, is almost no longer surprised.
Their new issue on the list for hypocrisy is the bill that pays for the health care for 9/11 volunteers.
9/11 was the biggest attack in American history, it happened under George W. Bush, a republican. They used it as a mantra, instead of being ashamed that they had were caught distracted, they wore it on their sleeves. Mayor Giuliani, in the words of the Vice president candidate Joe Biden, said “a noun, a verb, and 9/11.
But alas, all of the sudden all those volunteers who tried to either rescue victims or did the cleanup are not important, and unless the bill is paid for itself then they will filibuster it.
Taxes for the top percent of incomes do not need to pay for themselves, neither do the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This reminds me of what they do with their favorite expense in the budget, and the number one reason why we are in the hole that we are, the Department of Defense. And the point of it is that they do exactly the same with the injured in the wars that they not only encourage but shove down the rest of the country’s throat, once they come back screw them. Now it’s their own fault for volunteering, and getting injured. While they are in combat or being trained they are the pride of the country, but they become a drag on society if they come back alive and injured. They are better off dead, or it seems that way. Then they are buried with full honors in Arlington.
And the same thing will happen with the volunteers on 9/11. Now they are a “pain in the ass”, and let them fall through the way side.
What really amazes me the most in the silence on other networks about this issue.
The volunteers are not just New Yorkers, they are Americans.

Obama and tax cuts

Today President Obama has probably sealed his fate for 2012 by alienating his supporters in his own party, and leaving himself vulnerable to the wing of the party who want to have a primary instead of just making him the candidate for the Democratic Party. No incumbent who’s had a primary has been re-elected.
The President today caved in to republicans before they even took power.
If this is what we can expect for the next two years the republicans with only majority in only one chamber he will be an irrelevant president. Republicans will underfund, modify or even rollback the health care in which he invested almost half of his presidency, with tremendous use of political capital.
The next two years will demonstrate if this president will hold his own or capitulate in every piece of legislation that the opposition throws at him, and by then he will prove to the country if he should be re-elected.

Outrageous proposal in some southern states

I wrote some time ago about this country not able to move from its racial issues that so haunted its minorities and set this country back at the time.
But we are no any longer in the 50s and early 60s, this is 2010, and we have some state legislatures in the south who are trying to propose presidential candidates to prove their citizenship, and even though it does not say that they want proof that Mr. Obama is a native of the U.S., the language of that proposal is only short of mentioning the president’s name.
These are the same people who were against the civil rights legislation, and who cannot live with the idea that an African American is the head of the Executive Branch of government, a.k.a. president, that he is the commander in chief of the military, and that he is a democrat.
State Legislator Berman from Texas, the proposer of this requirement, first said that he wanted proof of the President’s place of birth, and then admitted that the reason he wants this is because of what he calls "the radical proposals" of our president.
It is amazing that almost 100 years after the end of the civil war in the United States, the defeated states have still not accepted the fact that they were defeated, and that this is a union.
I wonder what President Abraham Lincoln would say about these developments after all this time.

The Right's Intolerance

We read today that Andrew Shirvell, the Assistant to Michigan Attorney General, has been fired because of cyber bullying a gay student at the University of Michigan for the only reason that he was gay.
To no surprise Mr. Shirvell is a Republican.
The reason I mention his party affiliation is because we have seen during the last 18 months and especially during the campaigns of 2010 that the Republican Party has used methods of brutality, bullying and intolerance. The examples of this were in Alaska when candidate to the US Senate Joe Miller was being questioned by a reporter and one of his bodyguards (ala Sopranos) handcuffed the reporter, only because Mr. Miller felt uncomfortable with the questions. We also saw violence by employees of Rand Paul’s campaign towards peaceful demonstrator, pulling the woman to the ground and then kicking her head.
Since Obama has been sworn in as president we have also seen right wing militia arming itself. We also saw fanatics come to public events armed with AK47s, semi-automatic guns and all kinds of other weaponry. These do not belong at public events unless their owners have other plans, and are considering making use of them.
The amusing thing is that the right in this country says that these things happen to both sides.
I challenge Fox News, who stands to right of Attila the Hun, together with out-of-the-mainstream people such as Rush Limbaugh to show examples of events organized by or for Democrats where these things happen.
If memory doesn’t serve me wrong the last president assassinated in this country was a Democrat and he died to the hands of former marine.
Again, if I am not mistaken, the biggest domestic attack by an American was also a former marine, Gulf War veteran.
It is not a coincidence, I am only interested in the facts, or like former Senator Patrick Moynihan would say: your entitled to your opinion but not to your own facts.

The Resuslts of the election of 2010

As we witnessed last Tuesday November 2nd the biggest takeover by corporations through the Chamber the commerce with the with funds from foreign and national large corporations where Democrats were outspent 7 to 1 in many races we should stop and reflect why didn’t the Democrats loose the Senate as they lost the House of Representatives, and the main answer is because people are not convinced with the Republican Party either. If we just look at the candidates that the Republican Party had chosen to run for the Senate we can see that they had no qualifications, they were radicals and racists. There was one exception to that is that the candidate for the House of Representatives for Ohio who even dressed as a Nazi. I give him credit; at least he wore the uniform with whom he felt identified with.
Let us look at some of the Candidates for Senate, particularly Tea Party candidates, such as Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Ken Buck and Joe Miller. Three of them lost to Democrat candidates including 2 incumbents. We can leave out another unqualified Tea Party favorite Carl Paladino, candidate for Governor of New York state.
We cannot kid ourselves that this is a “grass roots” movement when people like the Koch brothers spent millions funding this supposed cause and gave to Republican candidates to defeat Obama, and we can never forget Karl Rove, whose support comes down to 3 billionaires.
Ron Johnson who defeated Russ Feingold for the Senate seat for Wisconsin outspent his rival 7 to 1. With unprecedented amounts of money being spent in this election, most of it for republicans, we have to thank this radical Supreme Court and its decision to allow unlimited amounts of money from unknown sources to fund campaigns.
We also have to face the facts, Fox News campaigns, raises money, endorses and contributes money to Republican Candidates, something that no other network does or allows of its employees. The amazing thing is they the management of Fox says that their employees such as Sean Hannity and Glen Beck disclose on TV that they contribute financially to the same candidates that they interview, that is absolutely a joke, they never do. Keith Olbermann contributed $2,400.00 to 3 candidates, and was suspended indefinitely. So let’s not kid ourselves that Fox News is fair and balanced. They are not. They are just simply a spokesman of the Republican Party. They should be ashamed of themselves for misleading the public.
In terms of the results of the election, the Republican Party picked up 60 seats, the biggest gain in over 60 years. But if they think that the gains were the result of people liking them better, unless we see substantial improvement in the market place in two years they will be voted out as well. People wanted to punish Obama and the Democrats for a chaos that they inherited with unfunded wars, the TARP fund proposed and passed during the Bush Administration, the meltdown of the financial system during the Bush Administration, the collapse of Chrysler and GM in the first month of the Obama Administration. The proposals of the Pledge to America don’t add up. How can you cut $100 billion from the budget and propose to extend the Bush tax cuts to the top 2 percent of income earners when that alone will create a hole of $740 billion. I guess they use a different math. The reason Democrats got voted out of office is because the economy has made very slow progress, not enough to absorb the big unemployment and thus the low turnout of democratic voters. Although exit polls showed that the government was doing too much to these folks it did not do enough.

La muerte del ex-presidente Kirchner

La semana pasada el pueblo argentino vivió varios días de luto por la muerte del ex-presidente Néstor Kirchner, marido de la actual mandataria Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
Mucho puede decirse, como también mucho se ha dicho del ex-presidente Kirchner y de la actual cabeza del Poder Ejecutivo pero uno debe de mirar con asombro o con alegria, dependiendo de que lado del espectro uno se encuentre, de la gran cantidad de gente que fue a rendir homenaje, a despedir al lider del Partido Justicialista. Uno puede estar a favor o encontra del hecho de que los restos del ex-mandatario fueran velados en la Casa Rosada en lugar del Congreso, donde tal vez deberían haberse velado dado que no era el actual presidente, pero las puertas estuvieron abiertas desde las 10 de la mañana del jueves hasta casi el mediodía del viernes. Originalmente las puertas se iban a cerrar al público a las 9 de la mañana, pero a esa hora había más de 15 cuadras de gente esperando para pasar por delante del féretro.
Yo, desde la distancia, a pesar de no tener una posición favorable hacia los ultimos dos mandatarios, sus metodos de gobernar, sus posiciones y muchas de sus decisions, seguí por distintos medios tanto del internet como la television gran parte de los acontecimientos.
Hubo muchos aplausos, un hombre cantó el Ave Maria, gente daba apoyo a la presidenta, las madres de la plaza de Mayo estaban presentes, pero lo que me pareció muy importante, como sudamericano que soy, fue la presencia de un gran numero de los presidents de los paises de Sudamerica, incluyendo Lula, Mujica, Evo Morales y Chavez (cosa no sorprendente, dada la inclinación de estos últimos dos y del ex-presidente Kirchner), pero tambien estuvieron el presidente de Colombia, el de Ecuador, y el actual presidente de Chile Piñera Echenique, que viene de un partido de inclinación conservadora, lo que también demuestra que el futuro también pasa por Sudamerica, dado que todas son democracias, y eso produce estabilidad y crecimiento.
Con respecto al ex-presidente fallecido la television pasó una pequeña sinopsis de su mandato, algunas de ellas de character demagójico. Pero cuando la historia se escriba tal vez más importante será la del canje de la deuda externa, que a pesar de haber sido ideada y hecha por el entonces Ministro de Economía Lavagna, se hizo durante su administración.
Ahora vendran días muy interesantes desde el punto de vista politico como también del futuro de la Argentina, con muchas luchas internas del Justicialismo, y en que posición quedará la oposición, si podrá sacar provecho de esos momentos de incertidumbre y confusion. Mucho dependerá del mensaje, las alternativas y la unificación de esa oposición para hacerle frente al partido en el Poder Ejecutivo. Mucho también dependerá como maneje al Secretario de la Confederación General del Trabajo, Hugo Moyano, dado que éste tiene la capacidad de complicar la función de cualquier administración, como lo hizo con el Presidente De La Rúa.

It really comes down to the public

Until recently I thought that it came down to politicians to mislead the public into believing that this plan or the other would do the trick. It used to think that 2010 was a year of a very important election.
I thought that Democratic Party has lost a golden opportunity to level with the American people about the real picture of the country.
Don’t get me wrong there is still a clear choice. On a one hand we have a group of people who say that we, as insurmountable as the problems and the present status seem, if we stay the course we will see the light at the end of the tunnel. The other side believes in the same medicine for every illness: tax cuts.
I always say if doctors would prescribe every illness with the same medication, not only we would need them but we wouldn’t need the pharmaceutical companies as one would supply us with the one miracle medicine that would cure us.
But reality is different, and that applies to this as well. To make matters worse they encourage companies to export jobs to China, India and other Asian nations. A friend of mine believes that exporting jobs is good. He should tell that to all the people who have been unemployed for more than 99 weeks (99ers), and these people include PHDs, masters, etc., who have lost their house, their savings, and their livelihood. Our real unemployment is close to 20%.
So in that respect I think the choice is simple.
But my conclusion is that people don’t want to hear the facts. They behave like brats. They think that they are entitled to gas at 2.75 a gallon, pay low taxes, buy houses that they cannot afford, be the police of the world.
Let’s start with taxes, the Obama administration should tell the American people to grow up. Gasoline at 2.75 is unreal, because the moment that we add the cost of the Department of Defense to that, and the subsidies that the oil companies receive we are looking at probably the same amount that the rest of the world pays or higher, 6 or 7 dollars a gallon. Why do I mention the D.O.D. in this? Simple, we invaded Iraq because they have oil, not because of the weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein or any other excuse. If Iraq had just dust, like Sudan has, we would have never moved a finger.
Pay low taxes, another lie. By the time we add the federal income tax, state tax, social security, medical coverage, co-pays, etc., we are paying more than the Europeans and Canadians do.
And I don’t think I have to talk about housing as we will continue to see values deteriorate as far as the eye can see, especially when we are looking at possibly 3 million foreclosures in 2010.
The solution, in my opinion, is simple but unpopular. I don’t like to be deceived. In order to balance the Federal Budget, we should cut defense in half, roll back the age of retirement for social security, eliminate the cap for taxation of social security, eliminate the Bush tax cuts for everybody, not just the top, pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and possibly raise taxes if need be. We either do this now, or we can fool ourselves for years to come, until there will no longer be a United States.

Peter A. Diamond

Peter A. Diamond was given the 2010 Nobel Prize for Economics. To most of us he is not a renowned figure. He was the professor of the head of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernacke.
Mr. Diamond was nominated to fill one of the vacant seats in the Federal Reserve. Unfortunately some of the members of the minority party in the U.S. Senate that has hold hostage this country for the past 4 years have decided that they will not allow President Obama’s nominee to be confirmed. The main one leading this fight is Senator R. Shelby from Alabama, saying that Mr. Diamond is not qualified for the job. I guess Mr. Shelby thinks that he is qualified to decide who is best suited to be one of the board members of the Federal Reserve.
This is the same party and its new spin off the Tea Party that is giving us some unqualified, unprepared candidates that may very well win their races, during a time where people want to take revenge with their government officials for the downturn that they are living. I will not say that they are right or wrong in their anger. What I can say is that we should look closely at this candidates and what they propose: privatizing Social Security, in my book that sounds like doing away with the most successful program in American History, privatizing Medicare and Medicaid, same goes for this program, privatizing the V.A., dido, and we can go on.
This party is also proposing rolling back what they call “Obamacare”. That means re-instituting the clause that allows insurance companies to reject kids with preconditions. That sounds like a humane position. But we should never forget that the insurance companies’ bottom lines come before the health of its insured.
They are running on the pledge to America which is cut taxes for the wealthy, deregulation to banking and increase of military spending. That sounds like the Bush-Cheney dogma that sets us back 10 years.
A friend of mine has told me more than once that I try to figure out people, although I try not I guess it is my nature, and I fall victim to my own temptation probably because after 25 years it worries me seeing this great nation falling behind the rest of the world in every single aspect from education to infrastructure to technology. Having grown up in Argentina and being a neighbor to Brazil the thing we always found amusing about Brazilians was that whatever you would talk about with them they would always answer the same “O mais grande du mundo”, which translated is the greatest in the world, which was a fantasy because they had zillions of problem including 60% of population living in poverty. Now living in the United States American people remind of those Brazilians as I was growing up.

This past summer

I have not been writing much this summer, and there are several reasons. For starters I went earlier this year to Argentina than I usually go. Instead of going in August or September like I prefer travellin I decided to go in July. I’m glad I did, as I think that it was a productive 2 week visit to my parents.
I then went to Chicago, together with my wife and son, to drop off my daughter as she had been invited to a conservatory. We then went back two weeks later to pick her up. Both the first and second times were very good, as the weather was great and it gave us the opportunity to go to the two tallest buildings in the City of Chicago, the John Hancock and the Sears Tower. The latter has 4 cubicles that were mounted on the side of the building, and, as they are made of type acrylic, you are actually outside of the building on the 103 floor, and whether you look up, side or down you have no concrete blocking the view. It is both exhilarating and scary, depending on your personality. I had a hard time at the beginning but I got used to it after a few minutes. You just have to avoid looking down as much as possible.
We also decided, as we were coming back from picking up our daughter in Chicago, that we would go for during labor day weekend to Cleveland to the Museum of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We had been there in 2002. There is a lot to see, and the location right by Lake Erie is great, together with the fact that it is like a Glass Pyramid.
I have been very busy as well, as people are coming to the realization that with interest rates as low as 3.875 % and prices at their lowest in many years , it would be foolish not to buy a house. There is no doubt that many people are losing their homes, but for those who are able to they know that they cannot let this opportunity slide by.
Of course that something’s gotta give. And it has. I have not been able to get together with the person I was discipling for almost two years until my trip in July. I have spoken to him since I came back but I have not had the time to get together with him. Once this wave passes we will surely go back to our weekly conversations.

The Repeal of Don't ask, Don't tell

Today, the Party of the past has proved again that it is living in the past regardless of what the American people and the pentagon believe, which is that we should repeal Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Day after day we keep falling behind in the world, as we try to hold on to things that have become irrelevant. If we look around at what other countries do regarding gay and lesbians in the military we can see that they have embraced them. We think that we should keep them in the closet as if they were not homosexuals.
Not only is that a regressive policy, it is bad for morale, discriminatory and should be repealed.
It is time to think and live in the 21st century and not in the 1950s, which is what it seems the Republican Party and its faction, the Tea Party Movement, want us to go back to.
God help us if they take any of the two chambers of Congress in the next election.

Kyler

On September 7th, 2010 Kyler Van Nocker succumbed to Neuroblastoma, a cancer that is found in children, and went to meet his creator. Although I did not meet personally this brave child who fought for his life for over three years and feel like I have. He is another victim to an insurance company and their “bureaucrats” deciding who lives and who doesn’t. I love when people during health care reform said that there would be government death panels deciding who lives and who doesn’t. I guess they are fine with a private bureaucrat but not one who works for the government.
I have criticized health management insurance companies and their defenders in the past, and will continue to do so until we have other options. The same people who say that they are fine with an hmo over charging and under covering us, seem to be the same people who are in favor of BP polluting the Gulf of Mexico. I wonder where they are now that another platform in the Gulf exploded a few days. I assume that we must trust Exxon, owner of the recent casualty, that there has be no spill in this case, just like we should have trusted BP when they said that there were only a few barrels leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.
Going back to the subject of this blog unfortunately Kyler will not be the first or the last victim to be in the hands of a clerk who is rewarded based on the amount of rejections that they make, so that shareholders can make money, even if it is will blood money.
At least Judas had the decency and the courage of realizing what he done and took his life for betraying his savior.

Withdrawing from Iraq

Today, President Obama fulfilled his promise that the war in Iraq would come to a conclusion, as so combat troops pulled out.
I am glad that he was able to keep his commitment, regardless of criticism from part of the population of this country.
The part of the population that was opposed to the conclusion of the war is the same sector that believes in a military power that is unsustainable with expenditures of more than 750 billions dollars a year, more than all industrialized nations combined, even though we are boroughing the money from the Chinese and the Japanese, the same people who believe that the top two percent of the population should get all the tax cuts at the expense of the national debt, because it is also given on boroughed money, so that the rest of us pays for those cuts, and the same people that want to do away now with social security and medicare, even though social security is capped at less than 100 thousand dollars.
It is also wonderful to see the same people demanding that the president give credit to former president Bush for the surge, although there is no proof that in itself it may any difference. These are the people, as I said earlier, who always have the same two prescriptions to every single problem in life, tax cuts for the wealthy and a big Department of Defense.
What they have to understand is that we would have never been there and lost all those lives, BOTH AMERICANS AND IRAQIS, if President Bush and Vice-President Cheney would have not lied to the world about weapons of mass destruction, and the “supposed” danger that Saddam Hussein was to the U.S.
Unfortunately it is not a total withdrawal of troops from Iraq as almost 50 thousand will stay there, so it doesn’t do the whole trick, but at least it is a beginning.
Now the next steps will be the eventual total withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan as well.

Friend

A little bit over 36 years we were starting our last year in high school, we were the seniors, just like we had been every year since 8th grade, as we were a new school and we were always the oldest. But this year different, we had lost some of our schoolmates, but we got two new ones, a girl who came from one of the best schools in town and a guy that had, in his words, had enough with the naval high school. It was too rigid for him, and he was ready for a different atmosphere. I eventually ended up falling for the girl, although nothing ever came out of the relationship.
On the other hand he seemed like a friendly guy but because he decided not to come with most of us to our graduation trip, so we never really had time to grow a deep relationship. He was a lot closer to another of our mates. Once we graduated I saw him again at our first reunion at one of our mates who was getting married the following year. Very shortly after I got a call from a common friend telling me that his older brother, just two years older than us, had passed away, and off we went to his brother’s wake.
We started dating each others’ wives around the same time, and together with a common friend we would go out the six of us. They came to our wedding and we were at theirs. Even with all this our relationship never seemed to be really deep. My father in law once said that in order for two couples to get along well the women need to get along well, if possible, be friends.
Then, my wife and I moved to the US. We saw them when they came to the area the following year, and although we only spent a couple of days together we had a nice time with them.
Then from 1986 through 1995 we did not see each other, my family’s visits to Buenos Aires were usually short, and we would spend most of the time with family, as part of my wife’s family was already living in the country, hours away from Buenos Aires.
In 1996 the school we had gone to was organizing a reunion, and we met again. But then after that there was a period of several years that we did not see each other.
Then one year I got his shop’s address and I went to see him. We spoke for a little while, talked about our personal lives, our struggles.
There was a spark that had just been sleeping. For some magic reason we starting communicating through messenger, over the phone, and our relationship starting building. I discovered what kind of a person he was, something that I had not noticed. I cannot blame it all on him, it was probably my fault as well. He showed me his true self, with his insecurities, his authenticity, his kindness, and our friendship blossomed. His heart is so full of love that everybody that he touches feels it. He also has a side that has pain, and possibly, to a certain degree, anger. A lot of it is to his parents, probably because, when he needed them, they were in such pain as he was, so they didn’t know what to do. It is very easy to be Monday morning quarterback, but many times we react in a strange way when tragedy hits us.
He told me once that the pain of the loose of his brother was just a strong as it was 35 years earlier when it happened. I could not believe it.
Talking to his parents once they admitted to me that they were in pain as well. The loose of a child is considered the most stressful event in a person’s life.
Although, as I said earlier in this blog, he was with us for the last year of high school, since we had our first reunion, and through the power of the internet and email, he has shared his love, his affection, his enthusiasm, with the rest of the classmates.
I tell him, whenever I have an opportunity, that I have received a lot more than what I have given him, I am thankful that he calls me his friend. I am proud to call him my friend, and even though he is still going through a bit of a bumpy road with his affections and his kids, he has a lot more to give than he realizes.
A few days ago I lost a friend to cancer, and although I am thankful that I was able to see him still alive, even though it was a heart braking to see him in the condition he was in because of his illness, my biggest regret is not having been able to tell him that, even though we had our many differences, I loved him, and valued him as a friend. So from now on I will not let the opportunities pass me by, so through this method I say, I love you brother.

Eduardo

I went to say goodbye to a good friend of mine today, he was only 68 years old and he had been sick with cancer for the past 3 years receiving chemotherapy and radiation.
I have to say that although I am glad that he is no longer suffering it was very devastating to see him in the condition that he was. He seemed to be way under 100 pounds. I left just a couple hours before he went to be with his creator, and at the time he was breathing with difficulty and what sounded like a snore. As I was leaving one of the people from hospice was arriving and she said that he was very close to his death.
It will take the family some time to recover from such a great lose, especially his daughter, as she took care and lived with him. His daughter was at his side day and night. But she has the reassurance that he was not alone at any time, even at the time of his departure, as God was there in the midst of all. His final wishes are to be cremated and that his ashes are poured on top of his parents graves in Spain, so she will take his ashes back to his place of birth and give him his place of eternal rest.
But there is also a different side to this story, and this is what gives us comfort and strength. God is compassionate, loving and omnipotent. My friend always would say that he was disenchanted with God and with everything that was related to Jesus Christ, he even went ahead and stated in his facebook page that he was an agnostic. In fact he was really disenchanted not God but with the Catholic Church, the institution itself, and its various positions. This goes back to his childhood, as my friend had been born after the end of the Spanish civil war, and, like he used to say, could see how the church had taken sides with the Nationalists, even though there were many abuses, including of civil liberties. This reminds me of the Catholic Church’s position during the dirty war in Argentina from ’76 and ’83 of staying quiet even though everybody knew of the all the abuses and disappearances. But that is the subject for another blog.
Going back to my friend, his daughter was telling me that for the last few years he had been praying every night, which goes to show that he had a relationship with his creator and his savior.
God uses every opportunity for the good, and uses every single of us as a tool to enlarge his kingdom.
Eduardo, you will be greatly missed, your “reprimands” as you used to call them, our conversations about the US, Europe, Spain, Argentina, politics, and many other subjects, but knowing that you are with your creator is of great comfort to those of us who loved you, appreciated your friendship, your thoughtfulness, as you always put other people first. It was a privilege for those of us who met you, and for those to whom you called a friend as you always had a caring heart.
The pain is over, the suffering has ended. Now you are in God's safe hands.
Rest your soul in peace.

Win or loose?

We saw today how a Federal Judge put some restraints on the Arizona Immigration Law, but it did not declare it unconstitutional. It is just a small delay for those who believe that this will end up in the Supreme Court. It will be interesting to see the five conservative judges deciding if they will rule based on their right wing beliefs or if they will enforce the constitution which says that the Federal Government is the one who sets the immigration policy of the country. This will create an interesting precedent if they rule in favor of Arizona as other states will try to follow with similar legislation in their own states, and it will upset many conservatives who feel that the Supreme Court is in their pockets if they do the opposite. It will also give plenty of ammunition to liberals if the court does not abide by the constitution as it specifically states that federal law supersedes any state law, thus making this Supreme Court a court that would, in the words of conservatives, legislate from the bench. They already have done this in the case of the first amendment, giving rights to corporations and labor unions the same rights as citizens to fund campaigns.
The next few months will let us see lots of back and forth until the Supreme Court takes the case. The only thing to look out is regardless of the decision of the Highest Court in the nation the Obama Administration and democrats may end up losing because a majority of Americans agree with the legislation, and may feel it from independents as early as November 2010.

My first 48 hours back at home

I have been back in the US for almost 48 hours and I am still feeling exhausted. I did not sleep well on the plane, and although I did not sleep on my way to Argentina either I was able to function normally the whole day with no exception. I guess I am finally suffering a bit the emotional and physical effect of having come and gone for two weeks with my parents, trying to help them with their doctors visits and also with some outings that we did together. I recognize that I am not 20 years any more.
I also feel something that I tend to feel almost every year when I come back and that is that I am not mentally here or there, I am sort in no man’s land. I guess it is part of the drainage of my emotions, and it’s not that I miss the place, the US is my home, and it’s been for 25 years, together with my family. But meeting with friends, although it gives me a tremendous boost at the time, it also drains me emotionally, especially this year as it was the night before my departure. By the time I am on the plane it feels like I’ve been shutting down, first by saying goodbye to my friends, then to my family, and last with a very good friend, who picks me up and takes me back to the airport, although I value his friendship and will never be able to repay all he does for me, it seems it is the last straw that breaks the camel.
I guess with a night or two of proper sleep and going back to my daily activities I will plug myself back into the routine, not that I will completely forget what I have gone through but reminding myself that life goes on. As all these things are in my head I come to appreciate why my mother’s sister and family only came back to Argentina twice in more than 50 years, not that I agree with that idea.

Notes from the plane

As I sit on the plane on my return flight from Argentina, not being able to sleep, I am going over on my mind about the few days that I spent there. Once it comes to an end you feel that it was probably too short, that you didn’t enough time to do some other things that you would have wanted to.
I am glad to have got together with some of the classmates from elementary school, two of them that I had not seen since 1969 when we graduated, the other one I had seen last year.
I am also happy to have met again with my high school class mates, and although we had seen each other last September we had had plenty to talk about. We spent 7 hours together and to be honest, we could have spoken another 7. This time instead of remembering our high school days many other issues came up, primarily of our 2010 lives.
But the main reason for this trip was to be with my parents, trying to help in anything I could with doctor’s visits, go out, and try to do things that ordinarily they do not do because of my father’s uneasiness with driving medium distances. What I mean by medium distances for him would probably be short distances to me, or to many Americans. I usually travel to Argentina during the months of august or September, but because of my mother’s lack of health I felt that moving forward that trip would help. I also felt that although my stay would be short it would relieve my sister from having to carry all the wait on her shoulders which she does 11 and a half months a year. I give her tremendous credit for that and I am very thankful for everything she does for them. When one moves to another nation far away most of the times these are the things that we tend to overlook. God bless my sister for all the hard work, support and guidance she gives my parents, her hard work does not go unnoticed.
Before I conclude this short blog I would like to talk just a little bit about my mother’s health, she has lost some of the energy that she had even up to last year when I visited with Ian, I feel that she made some progress during my stay there, and I do not take any credit for it, as I am not a doctor, just a son trying to give back a small portion of what my parents gave me. Apart from her weakness my mother’s biggest issue is, like she says, her fear of returning to the hospital again, a place that she has been many times in the last few years, and especially during 2010, but there is no doubt that her last stays there have left some scars, so her fears are substantiated.
The thing that I tried to remind her and to a certain degree reinforce is that she needs to trust her creator in this, come to the realization that she is not alone in the storm, that God is always faithful, even when we are not, that he was present in his son’s crucifixion and his resurrection. So the whole idea is trust and surrender, we always belong to God.
I asked my mother as I was leaving to fight, never give in to her feelings of anxiety, and that I want to see her get better in the next months until I come back in a few months. I can say with no hesitation that I entrust my parents to God, like I do myself every day of my life.

My trip of 2010

As I start today a new trip to visit my parents, full of uncertainty as to how are they holding, primarily my mother who was hospitalized a few times this year, I do it full of mix feelings. For the first time in many years I will go completely by myself. I think the last time I went by myself with no family members was in 1986. Since 2007 we haven’t traveled to Argentina as a family, but I’ve had my son Ian as my companion in 2008 and in 2009. This year I felt that because of my mother’s lack of health his presence, although he is very good, would just put more stress on my parents. This is where my mixed feelings come into the picture. I know that he looks forward 11 months a year to traveling and visiting family members. He reminds my parents and friends when we talk over the internet that he will come to visit them in “xyz” month and year. He is not conscious of my parents aging, so he thinks that they will always be there when he goes to Argentina, and he gives them dates way into the future.
He was still at the summer camp when I left so at least for the next few days he would be enjoying himself. My wife would pick him up Saturday morning, and as of Monday he starts his July classes at school. When I get back I will try to give him something to hold on to, the hope that next year we would be going back the two or the four of us. In the meantime I pray that God helps me put my feeling of guilt aside and make the best of this short but hopefully productive trip, trying to boost my parent’s morale, and help them in whatever way I can, allowing God to use me in whatever way he sees fit.
(written 07/08/10)

Thy will be done

As I reach a certain age in my life I come to appreciate certain things. One of the things that comes to mind primarily is the image of my grandfather. Here is a man that lived until he was 86 years old.
He passed away when I was in my late 20s. Many things have been said about him, that he was a good a man, that he was caring, that he was a good husband, a good father, but I think the thing that talks to me the most is the fact that he lived his life with one rule that guided him from The Lords Prayer: “Thy will be done”. It is inscribed in my grandparent’s tomb stone. Many people say the same thing as my grandfather said. But it doesn’t come down to just saying it, you need to live it, feel it, be convinced of it, and that is what stands out the most with my grandfather. When we are in our 30s, 40s, 50s, it seems easy to say “Thy will be done”, but when you are 80 years old, and you have just lost your wife, you are reminded of how precious life is, and the decision of our creator of calling one of us to be with him in eternity, those words become a lot harder to accept. But those were the first words my grandfather uttered when the doctor told him that she had just passed away. And he accepted God’s will, if not with great enthusiasm, at least knowing that God was there, just like he was at the crucifixion, and at the resurrection of our lord and savior Jesus Christ. It is this mystery that is at the core of our belief that God is always present, no matter the circumstances, and that we have the reassurance that we are never alone, that as his children he will never abandon us, no matter what.
During my early years I never came to understand, appreciate, value, and possibly respect my grandfather’s beliefs, as they didn’t seem to mean much to me. With what appeared to be great frustration he would tell me time and time again why not come to church. Maybe it was his disappointment that he could not reach me, no matter how hard he tried.
I would love to be able to tell him today that I have come to understand all those things. I guess it takes maturity, life’s experiences and primarily the love of God at work through us to come to respect and value other people’s lives and beliefs. I also believe that it our generation responsibility to pick up where they left and continue the good works being good ambassadors of our creator, and doing what Christ told us in the Great Commission: “To go out there making disciples of all nations”.

Paterson Habitat for Humanity

A little bit over twelve months Ed Smith, my main contact at Paterson Habitat for Humanity packed his bags and moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan. He had been volunteering at Habitat for many years. I say volunteering because he was already retired and the salary that he got paid was not based on his experience, it was much lower than what he used to make before working there.
He was honestly my last true contact there, even though I had some contact with the director. He was criticized by many people for being at times rigid, inflexible. I find that to be in many cases a plus, because the criticism came from having expectations from people, the same that he had from himself, and one of the issues was that he was rigid about schedules. I, for one, am always running late, not by much, but punctuality is not my biggest asset. But I do not criticize those who are on time.
The thing I liked the most of Ed was that when we went out to see a property in just a matter of minutes he knew exactly what he wanted from the property, what had to be done. All of this came from this many years of experience in construction. So I did not have to waist a lot of time going out with him. The same thing with the listings that I sent him, he would say this one yes and this one is not for us. He would always tell it as he saw it.
I had had a very productive relationship with Habitat for several years. But over twelve months ago the organization decided to head in a different direction. They “pushed” Mr. Smith out the door for somebody with less experience but with the gift of the gab. She could make the director believe that it was summer in the middle of a snow blizzard. I am not a great believer in talkers, I like doers, even though they don’t communicate well, they don’t sell every project that they finish, in other words they don’t have to cackle every time they lay an egg.
For many months I heard nothing from Habitat although I would email everything new that came on the market to Ed’s replacement. I even went ahead and started forwarding emails to the director. In the meantime they always asked for support whenever they would sell one of their properties, by asking for comparisons so that they could justify what they were asking for their properties. If I would take a few days they would follow up with calls and/or faxes.
So I decided to call the director one day and see what they were purchasing or if they had been looking at new properties, vacant land, etc. To my astonishment she told me that they had been purchasing properties through another real estate company, even though they would ask me for support. I felt that I was being taken advantage of my time and my generosity. So I felt that it was time to move on and cut my relationship with the organization as far as a customer was concerned.
The greatest surprise to me was that a few months later one of the employees of Paterson Habitat, with whom I kept in contact with, told me that they were finishing a condo complex in Paterson and that he was purchasing one of the units for his own use. To say that I was disappointed, disillusioned, is putting it mildly. I went as far as to say to him that I was always under the impression that the goal of Habitat was to help low income people purchase their own homes, and through donations of people of faith with financial resources and materials for building, and volunteers helping build the houses this was a success story. God at his best. He said that in some instances employees were able to purchase some of the units. As I write this I am still amazed at the answer.
I wonder if it’s the same at all Habitat offices, or if this is the exception. I am not naive, but I am very disappointment with the organization. I don’t think that I can ever support an organization with these values. And it all comes from the head, down.

Section 8 in New Jersey

Today I will go over a topic that I have discussed in the past. Back then I included it with another issue.
I have since then come to the conclusion that it deserves a whole blog. As the title says, the issue is Section 8.
For those who know me they know where I stand, I consider myself a liberal in the true sense, with government helping those who cannot help themselves, and looking at government as the overseer in many instances, regulating, defending the interests of the have nots.
But Section 8 is a program that I believe does not help. It may have had a good intention originally, but it is not serving the interests of society as a whole.
I know a few people who are on the program. In many instances it is doing what it should, helping people who help themselves. What do I mean by this? I am all in favor of somebody who is working, may have a disability and with their work they are paying the majority of the rent, while Section 8 pays a small part of it. This is how it should be.
Now let’s look at the other side of the coin. We have lots of people who are not paying anything out of their pocket except for a few dollars a month. Now these are, in many instances, single parents with several kids. First, where is the father? If there is one, how come he is not living in the premises? If the couple is divorced how come the father is not paying his fair share of Alimony?
I know that people say, well… he gets paid cash, he lives in another state, and it is very hard to do anything. I find that to be a bunch of bull. If I don’t pay Uncle Sam what he considers his fair share in taxes, the federal government doesn’t care whether I moved to Hawaii, to Massachusetts or to Florida. They will make me pay. Why don’t we put these fathers on the wanted list? They are defaulting, not only those children, but also society, as we all have to pay for that. Second, is the parent living at home capable of working? If that parent is capable why is he or she not working? Third, do they have kids in a working age living at home? I’m not saying high school age, but if they are working why aren’t they paying for part of the rent? I don’t think we should encourage parasites.
I agree that people don’t want to live in a drug infested area, but they should live in an area based on their income. I would love to live in a very affluent area of New Jersey, but it is out of my reach.
I have also seen many instances in which a man calls me about a rental, and then he tells me that it’s his wife who is going to be renting the place with Section 8.
As a realtor I have had many cases in which the listing agent or the owner will say ‘no section 8”, and even though it may be illegal to say no, that owner will do what it takes not to rent to a Section 8 tenant. Why? Very simple, because it becomes impossible to get them out. Judges will always side with the tenants, because they have, in many instances, small kids.
And I have to side with the owners on this one, because they are not a good investment. I will help owners find alternatives. The system is setup so that the day that you take them in you are stuck until they feel like leaving. If they don’t, good luck.
A friend of mine always says that I don’t understand conservatives. I do in this case. He also says that I cannot generalize because you have bad apples, and that they tend to be a minority. I respect his point of view, but because my experience in this industry over the last 6 years, and the horror stories that I hear from other colleagues in the industry, I have to say that they are the majority.
I think it also comes down to the people that run the public housing that I think that are many times at fault, they seem to encourage parasites, they defend them against all odds, and they are not teaching people how to fish, they are just making them dependent on somebody providing that fish forever.
This friend also says where is the love of Christ, where is your compassion, the compassion of God? I am all for the love of Christ, but I don’t believe that Section 8 has anything to do with compassion or love, it has more to do with enslaving people into a trap system, and it also has to do with people abusing the system.

Women in Tuesday's Primary Elections

Last Tuesday’s primary elections across many states in the country showed, what I would call, interesting results.
We should say that it was a great night for women.
In Nevada Sharron Angle won the primary for the Republican Party. Let’s look closely at this candidate that will challenge the majority leader next November. She is the Tea Party candidate. She supports the elimination of the Department of Education and the elimination of Social Security. This last program is arguably the best program that the United States has, covering many senior citizens.
She defeated the chicken candidate, the woman who believed in bartering for health care with chickens.
In California two women were elected to the Republican Party, one to run for governor and the other to run for the senate.
Meg Whitman, former CEO of Ebay, who spent at an average of almost $50 per vote in the primary of her own money will be a formidable candidate against Mr. Brown, as she is worth almost 1 billion dollars.
Carly Fiorina on the other hand, who won the primary last Tuesday for the Senate seat, and who will run against incumbent Barbara Boxer, is a different story. She was arguably the worst CEO HP ever had, to the point that she was fired by their board. She outsourced to Asia over 5000 jobs. She merged HP and Compaq in what was questionably the worst decision during a period when other companies were shrinking in labor force. That was the reason why the board fired her. She is running as a very conservative in a fairly blue state, she is pro-life in a state that is very pro-choice. She will still be a tough candidate because of the mid-term election, and primarily because of a climate of uncertainty, high unemployment and apathy in the electorate.
In South Carolina Nikki Haley almost won the gubernatorial candidacy as she finished with 49%. There will be a runoff in South Carolina because no candidate reached the 50% threshold, and Nikki Haley will possibly win that primary, and therefore, will likely be the next governor, as South Carolina is a very conservative state.
And I left Blanche Lincoln for last. I did so purposely. She won easily in the runoff even though she had the unions, the White House and many progressives against her because she is considered a “corporate democrat”, and because she was one of the few democrats who voted against the public option. I was one of the ones who wanted her out because of that vote. She will have her work cut out for herself in a state that Obama lost heavily in 2008, and that in this midterm election is full of unhappy people voting against incumbents, so it is very possible that she will not be reelected to the Senate for Arkansas. Nevertheless she will have the party behind her including figures such as Bill Clinton, just like she did during the runoff election, and anything can happen between now and November.

FIFA Soccer World Cup 2010

Today the FIFA World Cup 2010 starts in South Africa. It will be the first time that the event takes place in the African continent. Soccer is the number one sport in the world. Possibly the only exception to that rule is the United States, where baseball is the number one sport.
It is the event with the largest following in the world. People across the globe will be connected watching the 32 national teams that reach the finals.
We always talk about the World Series for baseball, when there are only two countries playing baseball in Major League Baseball, and really only one team from the second country, Canada, that team being the Toronto Blue Jays. All the other teams are from the United States. Calling it the World Series is just as amusing as when we call the winner of the Super Bowl the World Champions. In Football it’s even more ironic as the teams are only Americans.
We also tend to think of the Super Bowl as the most viewed event of the world with a viewing of less the 200 million worldwide. The final game of the world cup on the other hand is viewed by more than 1 billion people.
You can draw your own conclusion with that comparison.
The only event with comparable viewership to the Soccer World Cup is the Summer Olympics.
Both events share the same sentiment of competitiveness and camaraderie.
Let us hope that these games are free of any terrorist incidents.

Israel and its power in the region

As we see the tapes and read what seemed to have happened off of the coast of Gaza we need to stop and take a step back before we have a rushed opinion.
It looks like the Israelis attacked a group of ships and boats with Turkish flags. They were in international waters. If that is the case and Israel had no proof that its security was being threatened the international community should be just as harsh on them as they are on the Palestinians when they blow themselves up.
Netanyahu says that it will stop any shipments sent to Gaza in order to avoid Iran arming Hamas. I agree that Israel should be able to defend itself, but there is a difference between defending itself and attacking ships from one of the nations that support Israel such as Turkey.
Israel’s policy sounds very much the same as former president Bush’s policy of attacking first. That is a dangerous policy and instead of gaining the support to its cause, you have the international community saying that what Israel did was not the right thing; instead of being more secure this will guarantee its insecurity.
Conservatives in the United States say that president Obama is not supporting the stability and security of Israel. Not only this is not true, it is just simple politics. We should support Israel when they are right and point out when they do things like they did the other day, or when they invade neighboring countries such as Lebanon. This is not anti-Semitism, it may be anti-Zionism. We should not confuse them.
The United States needs to start taking a position that is good for its citizens and not for the interests of Israel, unless they coincide.

How wrong priorities hurt the people with no voice

A couple of months ago my wife and me, the case manager of the school where my son goes to, and the case manager of the district where we live had our annual IEP (Individualized Education Program) meeting in which we go over the plans for what Ian will be trained and/or educated during the next school year.
Due to the fact that there was an issue with the 20 hours that the district has paid for the last 8 o 9 years we had to go to mediation. Now we are not talking about thousands of dollars, we are talking about around one thousand dollars.
So two weeks ago we had our mediation. Our next door neighbor is our attorney, she has for quite some time and we have been very happy. The district hired a very tough attorney. They probably spent more on the attorney than what that it would have cost to pay for the hours in august that he receives as re-enforcement. We decided not to pursue any legal action because the benefits would not have justified the cost of it.
This leaves a bitter taste in our mouths. The districts position is that they don’t have to go any further than what to law says.
What I find amazing is that the district has only one regional school shared by three towns with a superintendent, a principal, a vice-principal and a business administrator, all bureaucrats with high incomes. The superintendent makes $120,000, the principal makes over $133,000, the vice-principal over $115,000 and the business administrator makes $80,000. That is for the proposed budget 2010-2011. There are only 836 students under the umbrella of the school. That should insult most people’s intelligence. Without counting teachers we are already spending $448,000. That does not give those students anything. I can find $1,000 for my son’s 20 hours very easily right there.
The new Governor that the citizens of this state voted for, the flagship of the Republican Party, somebody who campaigned under the promise of not cutting teachers, has decided to do away with this promise and has gone after the teachers viciously. Just in Paterson almost 900 will be made dispensable as of July 01. This will only force more kids per classrooms, in a system that is already over burdened. Going after teachers that make $45,000 will not resolve the budget issues. There are many other places to cut. We have too many layers of government, too many bureaucrats that don’t produce anything.
Through my job as a realtor I have been exposed to people who live on section 8, and one of the institutions that coaches, protects them, the Passaic County Public Housing. We are not helping people by providing free or assisted rent. Many of the people that I have met are, in the words of Winston Churchill, disingenuous about the people that will live in the house. They only mention a wife with two small kids, and many times they have a husband or a lover living in the house, grown kids in age for living, all living at the taxpayers’ expense. I am a liberal who believes in a second, and third chance, but when we have people living who for many years at the expense of others, with excuses for not working, and/or not being truthful about their present marital conditions, they become a burden to the rest of us, and because of them we end up losing valuable resources that could be put to good use.

U.S. Senate candidates

So far this year we seem to be having some very interesting candidates on both sides of the aisle running for the senate.
On the democrat side we have a candidate in Connecticut that has talked about his career in Vietnam even though he never left the shores of the United States. This should not be a surprise as he would not be the first politician that talks about a military career that never took place. If we just go back to the previous president he has never been able to justify where he was during his period as a reserve pilot. So this seems to be the ordinary, not the unusual, thing with politicians. They like to take credit for stuff that they never did.
Let’s turn to the republican side and look at some of their candidates.
In Utah a conservative incumbent that had supported the bailout of the banks proposed by President Bush was voted out. In his place a tea party choice was elected to run as candidate next November.
In Kentucky Rand Paul, a libertarian, was elected in the primary. He is also a choice of the tea party movement. The interesting part of this is that Mr. Paul, right after the primary, starting stating his points of view, which are not in the mainstream of the country. He says that if he would have had to vote for the Civil Rights Act in 1964 he would have voted for most of it, except for the fact that private business cannot discriminate who walks through their doors. This is a fundamental condition as African Americans were denied entrance at privately owned businesses such as Wolworth. Mr. Paul compares this part of the bill to the idea that owners are entitled to decide if customers can bring guns to a privately owned business.
This comparison makes absolutely no sense at all, as he is comparing gun possession with race discrimination. Other senators are now saying that he was very naive with the “liberal media”, and that he is not a professional politician, so he needs coaching.
Nevada has also an unusual candidate. Sue Lowden said that we should be able to reduce health care by bartering. She made a statement that said that we should be able, like in the past, to barter with doctors by given them chickens. First she stood by her statement and then, at the last debate, she said that she was not standing by it, and that she had been taken out of context. I really admire her point of view, but I don’t think that my doctor would accept bartering. I don’t chickens or painting her house or office is going to do the trick.
Now republicans say that Blumenthal, the Connecticut democratic candidate for senate, and his “misspeaking” about is role in Vietnam, and Ron Paul’s idea of doing away with part of the Civil Rights Act are the same. I have to disagree because the Civil Rights Act has served us well for almost half a century, allowing the same rights to African Americans that the white population have enjoyed since the founding of this nation. The Vietnam conflict has been over for over 30 years. It left nothing but bitterness and pain, 58 thousand Americans dead, over 1 million Vietnamese dead, and a memorial on the Washington DC Mall.
I’m not going even include in this comparison the Nevada candidate because she must live in a different world than the rest of us. I don't think I have to add anything to what she has already said.
Let’s hope that people at the voting booth can vote for the USA and not for the divisions that have had a stronghold on our government for the many years.

Family values

As we see the people who tried to impeach President Clinton in the ‘90s resign in disgrace we stop and think what really happened to these people.
Many of them were elected in the midterm elections of ’94 with the slogan of Contract with America, and with the concept of “family values”, as if it belonged to a particular party.
I always look at the impeachment that took place over a decade ago as the drug dealers being jury of a drug addict. My savior said two thousand years ago “he who’s without sin cast the first stone”.
Many of the members of congress involved in the impeachment had children out of wedlock like Henry Hyde; others were having affairs during the impeachment process such as the Former Speaker of the house Newt Gingrich, and Congressman Bob Barr.
Now we here that Congressman Mark Souder from Indiana resigned for having an extra marital affair, even though a matter of which he is not proud of, at least we can say he has the honor of making the right decision based on his conservative beliefs, not like other members that campaigned in ’94 under the same “values” and have had affairs such as Senator Ensign from Nevada and Senator David Vitter from Louisiana.
The party that thinks they own the “family value” label will have to do a better job in not only campaigning about it but actually living it.

The explosion of the oil rig and its implications

After weeks of the explosion of the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico we still see on TV the disaster that it is causing to the environment with no end of the spill in the foreseen future.
We have had BP first say that the leakage was 5000 barrels a day when it looks that in reality it was more like 70000 barrels a day.
In the meantime the chairman of BP has said that this is a minor problem.
Rush Limbaugh said first that the sea will take care of the leakage, then a few days later he said “where is the oil” referring to oil spillage hitting the coast of the states on the Gulf of Mexico, and lately he says that the Sierra Club should be paying for the damages that BP, Transocean and Halliburton have caused, alleging that institutions like the Sierra Club have caused deep oil exploration. He is not the only media figure to say "where is the oil" as Britt Humes has said the same. They should go to Key West and to Louisiana to see oil washing on the shores.
Unfortunately you have politicians of both sides of the aisle who still believe that drilling off the coasts of the US is safe.
Americans have been misled for a long time into believing that the only way of having or maintaining a certain standard of living is by destroying the habitat in which we live in by burning fossil fuels provoking global warming, polluting the seas and rivers that surround us and cutting forests that produce oxygen.
The only way that we will survive in this world is by finding alternatives such as solar power and wind turbines.
It is appalling that the United States cannot break this vice with oil, when other countries that are not considered industrialized are using other combustibles such as ethanol from sugar cane for Brazil and Natural gas for Argentina to fuel automobiles.
I always tell my kids that addictions and bad habits are meant to be broken. The addiction is so strong here that we are willing to bankrupt the country into wars just for oil, not realizing that in reality we are funding the same “enemies” that we are fighting by purchasing the oil that they produce.
We are stuck in the past holding on to a technology of the mid 20th century instead of taking the leadership and moving the country into the 21st century, and not allowing another opportunity to go to waste.

A friend running for office

A friend of mine who lives in Maryland is running to a House seat as a republican. This seat is in the hands of a democrat in a district that tends to vote democrat. I do not have a crystal ball but he does not seem to have the best of chances for a win.
When I read what he stands for it reminds me pretty much what most republicans will likely say: lower business taxes, lower capital gains taxes, and tax reduction and simplification.
Everyone who reads that would pretty much agree with it because it makes a lot of sense, who wouldn’t like to pay lower taxes.
He goes on to talk about smaller government. That also sounds like something that I can agree with as well.
But, and there is always a but, we tend to forget that the largest growth of federal government in the last 40 years happened in the 80s under Ronald Reagan, and then with George W Bush, with not only an exorbitant growth of government but of huge deficits, primarily because of lowering of taxes, after inheriting surpluses . And of course the biggest cause of those deficits was the almost doubling in defense budget size plus two wars. So my point here is that you cannot bake the cake and eat, we cannot have lower taxes AND big military expenditures. The US spends 49% of the world’s military expenses. More than all the other industrialized nations combined. We spent close to 700 billion dollars during 2009 between the war on terror and the Department of Defense.
A good friend of mine, that I respect and value his opinion, says that I do not understand, care to understand or respect conservative views.
As much as try to I just cannot understand them.
I understand my friend’s view even though I disagree with him, as I like to base my opinions on facts. And the facts do not back the conservative views. Probably because they are not really conservative views but neo-cons.
Conservatives like Eisenhower and Goldwater would not belong in today's republican party.

The Arizona Law against "undocumented" people

I have been tempted to write about the new law in Arizona, and to be honest, I have been biting my tongue, but I can’t hold it back any longer.
This touches me to the core as a Hispanic and as an immigrant myself.
First of all, what a joke. I am being both facetious and serious at the same time. Where the hell is this country going to? I love when people say that they are against illegal immigration. Let’s be honest they are really against Hispanics; they are against the largest groups of immigrants that have been coming to this country for the last 20 or 30 years.
But why are Hispanics still coming even though white Americans are against them, or they say they are against them. They are against the fact that they have to educate their kids, provide them with health care, and the fact that we are in a downturn and jobs have dried up.
But I wonder if the vast majority of those who are against Latin Americans are willing to pay 5 dollars for a head of lettuce, are willing to work in the farms of this country, clean hotel rooms, and do a lot of the dirty work that the average American is not willing to do.
People will keep coming even though legislators always go against the people that cross the border. They are easy targets to demagogue about because until recently they didn’t vote.
It’s always easier to step on the weakest. They are blamed for the violence on the border.
Why don’t we start looking at the cause of the violence on the border?
There is a small minority that is involved in the trafficking of drugs; it is not the majority of undocumented people. Most of them come to make a living, to give their love ones a better future.
We have gone after countries like Colombia, Bolivia and recently Afghanistan to control the poppy production, but we are not willing to look in the mirror. The problem is not the rest of the world that is trying to sell us or smuggle the drugs. The drugs come here because we are the biggest consumer of drugs in the world, we cannot get enough of them, from the junkie in the streets of any city in the US to celebrities like Rush Limbaugh.
That is for the drug side of it. As far as the main reason why Latin Americans, and other countries as well, are coming to this country is because employers LOVE cheap labor. They rather pay somebody who is undocumented, doesn’t ask the employer for health care coverage, doesn’t care about working conditions or being part of a union. It’s music to any business ears.
If legislators would be honest about controlling the flux of undocumented people they should go after employers with high fines. No wall or fence will ever stop people from coming here. The high rewards are worth the risk.
I didn't even want to address the fact that the police will have to use their judgment to discern who is an undocumented and who is not. Just with that I can write a new blog.

Honor the victims of Kent St. University

This week we pay tribute to Jeffrey Glen Miller, Allison Krause, William Knox Schroeder and Sandra Lee Scheuer.
These names don’t seem to mean anything except for the fact that they were gunned down by the Ohio National Guard in a repressive act order by President Richard Nixon in May of 1970.
These students were doing nothing but exercising their right to demonstrate (included in the first amendment) against the policies taken by the Nixon Administration to extend the war in Vietnam to neighboring Cambodia.
Candidate Nixon had campaigned in 1968 under the premise of ending the conflict in what he called the "Lyndon Johnson war" in Vietnam. But in May of 1970 his administration decided to expand that war.
These students felt that they had no interest in keep on sending American kids to a region they new nothing about to a conflict that was not in the interest of this country.
The students that were demonstrating were unarmed, the Ohio National Guard starting shooting at the crowd with no respect to life.
There were 4 killed (previously mentioned), 9 who were injured, that fortunately survived the incident and many others were left physically but not emotionally unharmed, as this was an example of how our elected officials would try to silence its citizens.
I think of the 60s as a great period, as it was a time of great growth in this country. Although I wasn’t living here at the time, and I was a child, it showed how the younger generation confronted publicly the previous generation, and their policies, as they were in the mindset that this country should send its youth to fight, even though the reasons were not justifiable.
Unfortunately many times with growth comes pain, as there was a lot of blood shed during that period, with figures like President Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy gunned down, but the youth of the United States went from being kids to adults.
It would have been nice if today’s youth would do the same with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, two conflicts that this country has no part of.

Matthew chapter 5

The last few times we have been meeting with the person that I am trying to disciple he seems to be stuck in the idea that the New Testament is a story of some events that happened two thousand years ago.
As I was reading Matthew chapter 5, I cannot find anything that Jesus says that could not be applied today.
Regardless of the fact that I am a Christian, I try to step back and read the wisdom of those verses.
I love the beatitudes, I find them moving. They give me comfort, peace, strength and hope. I feel the love of God, his compassion and his reassurance in them.
I also find some of those commandments to be extremely challenging, especially when he tells us to love our enemies, not that there isn’t any truth in it, but it is still challenging.
I love when Jesus talks about settling matters with your adversary. I feel these verses talk to me personally.
And even though, as I said earlier that Jesus challenges us, you can feel God’s love at the end of the day.
He is a patient father teaching what is right for us, just like we try to do with our own kids, strict but fair, giving us the base from which we build the rest of our lives, with a structure, and knowing that God is always with us, until the end of the ages.

John Kooreman

This week we said goodbye to a fellow coworker and father in law of one of the office brokers. He was a good Christian.
What is a good Christian? Is it somebody who leads a good life? Is it somebody who does good deeds?
These are often the wrong answers to what a good Christian is. You can have a good life and be a good citizen and not be a good Christian or even be a Christian.
Being a good Christian is somebody that accepts Jesus Christ as his lord and savior, and loves his neighbor as he loves himself.
That is what John Kooreman was.
He would wear his religion on his sleeve. Tried to a live a Christian life based on what the bible said, and use every single opportunity to present the gospel, regardless of who he was dealing with.
He came from a solid Christian background, lived through hard times during the depression, but always kept the faith that Jesus Christ was at his side.
He served as an elder, deacon and a Sunday school teacher at Midland Park Christian Reformed Church.
I will always remember him for sending postcards of encouragement to people who were going through low periods in their life and needed support, for making phone calls and talking to people who needed somebody to talk to.
My friendship time was not a very long one because I only met him 5 years ago, but his presence, his humor and his optimism will stay with those of us who had the fortune to have crossed paths with him.
He is safely in the arms of his beloved savior, safe from the pain of the illness that made him suffer during the last few months.
God bless you, John.

Why Tea Partiers are fighting back

I look at the recent Tea Party demonstrations, to the speeches of both Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, with inflammatory rhetoric and I try to think what is the purpose of all this, who is feeding all this and who are the people attending these demonstrations.
If people look at what they have submitted to the federal government in income tax, they can see that 95% of the population has seen a reduction of their taxes, unless you are making $250,000 or more.
We also look at the recent poll of tea party demonstrators and it shows us that they are satisfied with medicare and with social security, they feel that what they paid this year in taxes is fair, they don’t feel that Sarah Palin is qualified to be president, they are college educated people, who would vote republican if they had the chance, they view Obama as a socialist. This is what I find the most amusing of all. I don’t think they know what socialism really is.
Nine out of ten are white.
This, more than anything else is where the issue is in my honest opinion.
What, I think, it really comes down to is that they feel that minorities are getting a better deal under this administration.
This, again, is ironic, because in many places 50% of young African Americans are unemployed or under employed, and the same can be said about Hispanics.
But the biggest issue that Tea Partiers feel, some of whom have gone to wars for this country , is that it is changing. That in many states minorities have a bigger say in the outcome of elections.
Hispanics helped Obama win the last presidential election in several states, not just the usual ones such as in Florida, California, New York, but also in states such as Nevada and Colorado.
I have had friends of mine tell me that one of the reasons they were not happy with the Health Care reform was because now, when they wanted to go to the doctor, they would have to wait longer.
I find that not only discriminatory but also offensive.
This country has had a history of embracing people from different countries and backgrounds, but it seems because the physiognomy of the country is changing, in other words white people are feeling that in a generation they will be a minority they are trying to fight back. Unfortunately the methods by which they are doing this, such as spitting at Representative Lewis, a figure of the civil rights, insulting or threatening other members of Congress, calling Gangster this administration, carrying guns to demonstrations will only insight violence. They remind of people in the Middle East fighting back against the West.
My savior said many years ago that “Those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword”.

Proposal of Wall Street financial reform

It is wonderful to see the leadership of the Republican Party taking sides with Wall Street, which is what they always do, take the side of big business before taking the sides of the public.
But what makes it even more interesting is how they are twisting the facts so that the American public, confused and still bitter about having to bail out the big banks and other institutions that caused the crash of 2008, doesn’t know that what the GOP is trying to defeat is a bill that would protect the public from future bail out.
They have spent the last few weeks quoting GOP pollster Luntz: that the Democrat financial reform bill will lead to more bailouts. Unfortunate for the republicans, as this may seem, the reality is the opposite, the party that proposed the largest bailout, and who does not want to reform the financial system is the Republican Party.
The Democratic reform bill passed by the house proposes that if large institutions collapse Wall Street will be held accountable, not the taxpayer. Any cost of dismantling a firm will be paid first with the assets at the expense of shareholders and creditors.
Republicans, it seems, will not go ahead with that. They have decided to filibuster any proposal of reform.
It is time for the Democratic leadership to make the GOP members in the Senate stand there and filibuster, in front of the cameras, and tell the American people that the reason they want to defeat this proposal is because Wall Street has then in their pocket.
It is very sad to see a party that has had no proposals, no ideas, and who’s only intention is to try to defeat, not just the White House’s ideas but also anything that would help this great country move forward after the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and that has broken every record of filibustering since it lost the majority in the Senate in 2006.

Nuestro 28o aniversario de matrimonio

Al acercarnos a nuestro 28o aniversario de casados me paro a reflexionar: donde fue a parar el tiempo? Como es que pasó tan rápido?
Supongo que estas son preguntas que toda pareja que ha estado casada por un cierto periodo de tiempo seguramente se debe preguntar. Pero nuevamente parece que el tiempo ha pasado rápido.
Durante los primeros años parecía que estuviésemos en las nubes. Como yo trabajaba para una compañia aérea, y porque teníamos pasajes gratis ilimitados nos daba la oportunidad de viajar a los EEUU en cuanto teníamos algo de tiempo. En el año ’83 viajamos a Nueva York 15 veces. Muchas de ellas eran por unas pocas horas. Partíamos el viernes a la noche desde Buenos Aires llegando a Nueva York el sabado a la mañana, hacer compras, ir de regreso al aeropuerto, y viajar esa misma noche arribando en Buenos Aires el domingo a la mañana. Un amigo me dijo en una oportunidad que la única forma de poder charlar conmigo era tomar un viaje conmigo a Nueva York.
Pero como muchas cosas en la vida, no duró mucho, en realidad eso tuvo un final abrupto.
Asi que, luego de analizar nuestras perspectivas, decidimos mudarnos a los EEUU. Un nuevo desafío en un país que conocíamos unicamente como turistas. Con la ayuda de la iglesia que nos adoptó, con fé, y con el amor por el otro nos embarcamos en este cambio.
Hubo altibajos.
Luego vinieron los chicos. Victoria era hermosa, todo lo que uno puede imaginar como padre.
Luego vino Ian. Se puede decir que casi desde el principio yo note que algo no estaba bien. Después de 4 años fue diagnosticado como parte del espectro de autismo. El mundo pareció detenerse. Perdí mi rumbo. Estaba intoriermente destruído. Dí vueltas en el “desierto” por un largo tiempo. Furioso, resentido, sentí que Dios me había abandonado.
He escuchado en television que 83% de los matrimonios con una criatura con autismo terminan en divorcio.
Decir que le pone presión, que produce un gran desgaste a la pareja es decir parte de la historia. Muchas veces uno piensa: ésto es todo lo que da el matrimonio? Es ésta la forma que tiene que ser?
Y un día llegue a la conclusion de que la vida, el viaje, la travesía, es donde está la alegría, el placer, con sus bocacalles, con sus altibajos, es lo que la hace interesante. También llegué la conclusion que nuestros dos hijos, con sus exitos y algunos golpecitos, y los llamé golpectios específicamente, porque no me gusta la palabra fracaso, es lo que es importante.
Y parece que no he hablado de mi compañera en esta travesía. Decir que es una roca, una persona fuerte, que es firme, con fe en su creador, sería ponerlo suavemente. Tiene defectos? Quién no los tiene. Se puede decir que tiene menos que yo. Otra persona en su lugar hubiese abandonado hace mucho tiempo. Es una gran madre, con grandes valores, que nunca se da por vencida. Ella ha enfrentado todo lo que la vida le ha tirado en su camino. Y lo ha hecho de pie.
Asi que antes de seguir escribiendo mucho más puedo decir que estoy orgulloso de decir que es mi compañera, mi socia.
Durante nuestras caídas hemos permanecido juntos. Nos hemos caído y parado juntos.

Our 28th marriage anniversary

As we are approaching our 28th wedding anniversary I take the time to reflect and think, where did the time go? How come it went by so quickly?
These are questions that I can imagine that every couple that’s been married for a while must ask themselves. But again it seems the time has gone by very quickly.
During the first few years of our marriage we were in the clouds. As I used to work back then for an airline, and because we had unlimited free tickets it gave us the opportunity to fly to the US whenever we made some time. Just in 1983 we came to New York 15 times. Many of those were just for a few hours. We would leave on Friday night from Buenos Aires, arrive in New York Saturday morning, go shopping, go back to the airport and fly back that same night to arrive in Buenos Aires Sunday morning.
A friend of mine would say that the only way he would have a chance of chatting with me was to take a flight to New York with me.
But like many things in life it did not last long, as a matter of a fact it pretty much came to an abrupt halt. So, after analyzing all the alternatives we decided to move to the USA. A new challenge in a place we only knew as tourists. With the help of the church that adopted us, with faith and with the love for each other we embraced this move.
There were ups and downs.
Then came the kids. Victoria was beautiful, all you can imagine as a parent.
Then came Ian. From pretty much the beginning I noticed that something was not right. After 4 years he is diagnosed as P.D.D., pervasive development disorder, a type of autism. The world came to a complete halt. I lost my way, I was torn inside. I wondered in the wilderness for a very longtime. Angry, resentful, thinking that my God had abandoned me.
I have heard on TV that 83% of couples that have a child with autism will end up in divorce.
To say that this put a strain, pressure on our relationship is putting it mildly. Many times you would think: is this what marriage is all about? Is this the way it is supposed to turn out?
And then one day I reached the conclusion that life, the journey, is where the fun is, with its side streets, with its ups and downs, is what makes it interesting. It is not the final destination where the fun "will be". I also reached the conclusion that both our kids, with their challenges, with their successes and unsuccesses, and I specifically called it unsuccess because I don’t like the word failure, are what really matter.
It seems I have not spoken about my companion in this journey.
To say that she is a rock, a strong individual, with faith in her creator, would be putting it mildly. Does she have shortcomings, who doesn’t. She arguably has less than me. Somebody else in her shoes would have call it quits long time ago. She is a great mother, with great values, who never gives up. She has taken everything that life has thrown at her, and she has taken it standing.
So before I go much longer I can proudly call her my teammate and my companion.
During all our falls we have always stuck together. We have fallen and got up together.
That, I think in a nutshell, is what marriage is supposed to be.

Farewell to Joanne

Yesterday I went to the funeral of a friend from church that I’ve known for almost 25 years.
When I first moved to the US and I attended my first funeral I was shocked, to say the least, as I came from a culture that viewed wakes and funerals as a somber moment, and here I was at a celebration. I am not saying that there isn’t any pain, because that would not be truthful, honest. There is always the feeling of final farewell, but this was a joyful “adios”.
Coming back to my friend, the thing that everybody who gave a testimony about her agreed on was the fact that the thing that you would always get from her and from her husband was love. The love that God through his son Jesus Christ had shared with them. Even in the midst of a painful illness there was still joy.
Many years ago a friend told me that joy stands for “Jesus, others, and last yourself”. And that in a nutshell is what Joanne and David have shared with us, the whole idea of putting others first. We can go down the list of things that they have done, but probably the one that illustrates it better is the Homeless Sheltering. They gave shelter to homeless men on Saturday nights for 20 years.
And yes, yesterday was a celebration, to her life, to her love, to her faithfulness, cut short because of the illness that afflicted her for over a year. And in the midst of everything God always reveals himself, he is always present.
Now she is at peace.
Farewell my friend.
God bless you, Joanne.
The Lord bless you, and keep you; The Lord make His face shine on you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.