NOTES OF CONCERN....
... JACK BLAIR
“ BULLY “
Is there a man or woman anywhere who was not bullied at some point in their lives? I don’t have any statistics on this other than my own trek from youngster to adult. But I suspect everyone has been bullied and many have actually been a bully at one time or another.
I think there is bullying to one degree or another on most elementary playgrounds. Big kids tease small kids. Skinny kids run up against the muscled kids. Fat kids get called ugly names.
It is not right.
However, it does occur.
It has been in the past a part of growing up. Some would argue it toughened you up for the life you would face. Others would counter it undermined your self confidence.
My teachers were vigilant but, as you know, you cannot be everywhere all the time. So human nature being what is is, these things took place.
The papers today carry stories of a different level of bullying. This bullying is taking place at the adult level and it speaks to a whole different sort of problem. When adults behave badly a very poor example is set for the children who are either observing or reading about it.
Adult bullying at its worst can result in loss of life. Suicides are reported amongst people who are regularly bullied.
Men bully women.
Bosses bully subordinates.
Husbands bully wives and, yes, wives bully husbands.
Politicians seem to bully everybody! Many try to bully the president.
Most recently we read about two football players on the Miami Dolphins team. These guys are big. These guys are tough. One would have thought it impossible for one big successful highly paid thug to bully another. One would be wrong.
So let us agree that there is bullying at all levels in our society. Some of it is obvious and comes to the attention of society. I suspect a much larger percentage of bullying just goes unnoticed and unreported.
We could invent some bracelets to wear to show we don’t like bullying. We can pick a color, make up some T-shirts, and start an anti-bullying campaign. We could hold some rallies. We could get out and protest.
But it can be simpler than that.
Friends, bullying is not going to stop until we learn to act civilly in all aspects of our lives; teach respect for all persons from the kindergarten through right up to the end of life.
We need to model this kind of respect every day.
Each of us must have as a personal goal not to be a bully and not to be bullied.
Women need to leave husbands who bully them.
Employees need to find new employment when they are bullied by bosses in the workplace.
Senior citizens who are bullied by their adult children need to report it to the authorities.
Youngsters should quit teams that are coached by bullies.
Anyone bullying in the social media should be banned from those websites, which means websites must be required by law to monitor what transpires on their pages.
People who bully have some sort of unmet need to be superior to others. This needed superiority could be sexual, physical, mental or even career oriented.
When the majority of people look down on bullies the number of bullies will significantly decrease. If instead of thinking they have a prowess to be admired they are like the lady of the novel who must wear a Scarlet Letter when out amongst others in society, there will be fewer bullies.
Maybe we could agree today to just simply not tolerate any more of this stuff?
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Monday, November 11, 2013
"Madam Secretary"
NOTES OF CONCERN....
... JACK BLAIR
"Madam Secretary"
Secretary Sibelius,
Congratulations on being part of trying to deliver affordable healthcare to all Americans. It is indeed a noble idea.
Unfortunately, in spite of all your good intentions, the program was never popular with a great many citizens and your department’s amateurish execution of the President’s signature legislation have made it even less popular.
On balance, I think what we have is an agreement that affordable healthcare for Americans is a great idea.
At the same time, I think what we have is pretty significant agreement that the plan as presently offered is not the answer.
So let us keep the goal in place. And let us go back to the drawing board and revisit the best way to reach the goal.
It appears that all the highly paid advisors and consultants in DC are not able to put “Humpty Dumpty together again.”
Perhaps looking to a different source for advice could be helpful. So I nominate myself as advisor to your department. Here is my advice:
You should have picked up the telephone and called Bill Gates at the outset. You could have told him you have no idea what you are doing and that you are not a computer/website whiz kid. Given his success, might he be able to secund to his government the top ten brains in his company who know how to put together a computer program at this level. Bill is a patriotic American, and he will most assuredly agree to take on this important task.
Problem solved.
Now Gates will probably send you ten boys and girls in their twenties who will solve this national problem in a “New York second.”
If you do not like that idea, let me introduce you to another solution. I like to call it Blair’s “Paper and Pencil Initiative.”
This involves abandoning the sexy computer approach to signing up for government programs and relies instead on tried and true use of pencils and paper.
I know you are not an elderly lady with no recollection of working with pencils and paper, and I suspect you have some familiarity with those tools. They have been around a long time, and neither tool has ever been associated with an “error message.” They work in a simple and effective way and have been of historic importance.
In fact, Wikipedia tells us that with reference to paper:
“Paper, and the pulp paper-making process, was said to be developed in China during the early 2nd century AD” (like I said-around a l -o -n -g time. No need for a “roll out.” Tested by time!)
And with reference to pencils Wikipedia tells us:
“Pencil, from Old French pincel, a small paintbrush, from Latin penicillus a "little tail" ... is an artist's fine brush of camel hair, also used for writing before modern lead or chalk pencils; the meaning of "graphite writing implement" apparently evolved late in the 16th century.[2] Though the archetypal pencil was an artist's brush, the stylus, a thin metal stick used for scratching in papyrus or wax tablets, was used extensively by the Romans,[3] and for palm-leaf manuscripts.” (again, rolled out by the Romans and no complaints in centuries!)
Many leaders have had good results with paper and pencil. Many countries have benefited from work done with paper and pencils.
So let's get back to basics. Print up applications for healthcare. Head over to the post office and ask them to mail and deliver these applications to all Americans. At the moment, the post office is having trouble making money, so they will be pleased to have this chance to earn a few bucks. And as you know, they have been pretty successful in delivering our communications to one another since the earliest days of our Republic.
So people will receive an application in their mailbox. They will read the pamphlet of information and directions. They will execute the document, answering all the questions, and return it to the government. (The people get a lot of practice with stuff like this every April 15).
At that point you can review the submissions and make recommendations to the citizens on what government or non-government plan will work best for them.
Madame Secretary, thank you for letting me intrude on your busy day. I am pretty sure you make many attempts each day to log on to your computer program. It must be very discouraging to get “error messages” so many times each day, day after day. And then there is that whole but of having to go down to the Hill and testify.
You will be well served by the Gates team of whiz kids, or you may prefer to execute a purchase order for a gazillion pencils and reams of paper. But either of these ideas will bring you great comfort.
Continuing on the path you are currently following will bring you the same results: disappointment and unhappiness.
All the best,
Jackson Blair, Citizen and Pencil & Paper Man
... JACK BLAIR
"Madam Secretary"
Secretary Sibelius,
Congratulations on being part of trying to deliver affordable healthcare to all Americans. It is indeed a noble idea.
Unfortunately, in spite of all your good intentions, the program was never popular with a great many citizens and your department’s amateurish execution of the President’s signature legislation have made it even less popular.
On balance, I think what we have is an agreement that affordable healthcare for Americans is a great idea.
At the same time, I think what we have is pretty significant agreement that the plan as presently offered is not the answer.
So let us keep the goal in place. And let us go back to the drawing board and revisit the best way to reach the goal.
It appears that all the highly paid advisors and consultants in DC are not able to put “Humpty Dumpty together again.”
Perhaps looking to a different source for advice could be helpful. So I nominate myself as advisor to your department. Here is my advice:
You should have picked up the telephone and called Bill Gates at the outset. You could have told him you have no idea what you are doing and that you are not a computer/website whiz kid. Given his success, might he be able to secund to his government the top ten brains in his company who know how to put together a computer program at this level. Bill is a patriotic American, and he will most assuredly agree to take on this important task.
Problem solved.
Now Gates will probably send you ten boys and girls in their twenties who will solve this national problem in a “New York second.”
If you do not like that idea, let me introduce you to another solution. I like to call it Blair’s “Paper and Pencil Initiative.”
This involves abandoning the sexy computer approach to signing up for government programs and relies instead on tried and true use of pencils and paper.
I know you are not an elderly lady with no recollection of working with pencils and paper, and I suspect you have some familiarity with those tools. They have been around a long time, and neither tool has ever been associated with an “error message.” They work in a simple and effective way and have been of historic importance.
In fact, Wikipedia tells us that with reference to paper:
“Paper, and the pulp paper-making process, was said to be developed in China during the early 2nd century AD” (like I said-around a l -o -n -g time. No need for a “roll out.” Tested by time!)
And with reference to pencils Wikipedia tells us:
“Pencil, from Old French pincel, a small paintbrush, from Latin penicillus a "little tail" ... is an artist's fine brush of camel hair, also used for writing before modern lead or chalk pencils; the meaning of "graphite writing implement" apparently evolved late in the 16th century.[2] Though the archetypal pencil was an artist's brush, the stylus, a thin metal stick used for scratching in papyrus or wax tablets, was used extensively by the Romans,[3] and for palm-leaf manuscripts.” (again, rolled out by the Romans and no complaints in centuries!)
Many leaders have had good results with paper and pencil. Many countries have benefited from work done with paper and pencils.
So let's get back to basics. Print up applications for healthcare. Head over to the post office and ask them to mail and deliver these applications to all Americans. At the moment, the post office is having trouble making money, so they will be pleased to have this chance to earn a few bucks. And as you know, they have been pretty successful in delivering our communications to one another since the earliest days of our Republic.
So people will receive an application in their mailbox. They will read the pamphlet of information and directions. They will execute the document, answering all the questions, and return it to the government. (The people get a lot of practice with stuff like this every April 15).
At that point you can review the submissions and make recommendations to the citizens on what government or non-government plan will work best for them.
Madame Secretary, thank you for letting me intrude on your busy day. I am pretty sure you make many attempts each day to log on to your computer program. It must be very discouraging to get “error messages” so many times each day, day after day. And then there is that whole but of having to go down to the Hill and testify.
You will be well served by the Gates team of whiz kids, or you may prefer to execute a purchase order for a gazillion pencils and reams of paper. But either of these ideas will bring you great comfort.
Continuing on the path you are currently following will bring you the same results: disappointment and unhappiness.
All the best,
Jackson Blair, Citizen and Pencil & Paper Man
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Don't Let the People Know
NOTES OF CONCERN....
... JACK BLAIR
“ Don’t Let the People Know “
There has been way too much information about spying lately to permit any of us to feel secure. We are told that every time we place a phone call internationally, it is noted by our government. We are told that everything we type on our computers is probable information shared with our government. We are told our closest allies have had their private phone calls monitored.
To make matters worse, we have a second-tier employee of a non-government company (a management consulting firm) being used by the government to help get the work done that seems to be far too challenging for the millions of real government employees we already pay.
This guy, Snowden, not only got to do the highly secret work, he got to download and copy and take out of the building all the nation’s most sensitive secrets.
Then he got to board a plane and take those secrets across the globe to a place where he could safely hand them out to our enemies and our shocked friends.
So far, twenty-one nations have approached the United Nations over our spying on their leaders. And that number will just grow.
The accepted defense against the U.S. wearing the “BAD BOY” label is that spying has gone on since the beginning of time, and no one should be surprised. With that kind of defense in this international game of perception-vs-reality, we are sure to lose.
I am far less concerned with our spying than I am with our historical involvement in keeping important facts from our own people. Our government has gotten so good at hiding truth that we citizens do not even attempt to get the real information.
Between playing at “smoke and mirrors,” and classifying material to be kept secret for 50 or more years, our government really can, and does, keep information from us.
The stories are plentiful, and my readers could have a lot of fun trying to uncover the real truths of almost any government claim, but when you are constantly being told that things that happened really didn’t happen, and being advised that only “kooks” buy into conspiracy theories, you distance yourself from the hunt for truth.
For instance, down deep somewhere do you not probably think something unusual really did happen at Roswell? Aliens? Who knows?
In your saner moments, do you really believe there is not sustainable life on other planets? It is much harder to assume there is not.
Are you still buying the “one shooter” theory from the Kennedy assassination? Even when Governor Connally, riding in the same car, said there were more?
Are you not suspicious that “way back when,” we might have actually sunk the “Maine” for our own purposes?
The list is endless.
But what I want to highlight in this column are times when seriously important stuff is kept from us...stuff that would alter the way we think and the decisions we make.
Recently, information from 50 years ago has been released on President John F. Kennedy. Let me share a small portion of it with you (you can read much more in the historian Robert Dalleck’s most recent book: Camelot’s Court: Inside the Kennedy White House (from which I have gathered much of the newly released information informing this column).
John F. Kennedy, when running for president of the United States, suffered from Addison’s disease, which is described as a potentially fatal malfunctioning of the adrenal glands. He suffered from chronic back pain and had endured major unsuccessful surgeries in his young life. He endured spastic colitis that brought on bouts of diarrhea, prostatitis, urethritis, and allergies.
According to the recent release, Kennedy also suffered from peptic ulcers and osteoporosis of the lumbar spine. He had been hospitalized 44 days between 1955 and 1957. And he was only 43 years old when he ran for the presidency.
Was this the “mind picture” you had in 1960 when he was asking to be the president?
We were treated to a picture of touch football, brave Navy service, writing of books with major impact, and a huge extended and rich family life.
Why did the voter never hear about any of the weaker sides to a presidential candidate? The medical issues alone would have called into question his suitability for high office.
When you add these conditions to the information about infidelities and rash actions, you could build a pretty good case that the Democrats should have fielded a better candidate.
It is not my intention to demean John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
It is my intention to call to your attention that the citizens of this great nation are the recipients of a very long existing cover up of truth, perpetuated at the highest levels of government, abetted by the national press, and sealed under classification for a period designed to outlive the primary players by the government.
I am not naive enough to believe this was limited to information about John Kennedy. The release of this information now does make me wonder how much more information on others of our leaders is filed away somewhere, marked “Top Secret--Eyes Only,” and scheduled to see the light of day when we are long gone and our grandchildren are disinterested.
What about Franklin Roosevelt’s possible advance knowledge of an attack on Pearl Harbor?
What about Dwight Eisenhower’s gift farm from wealthy businessmen?
What about Harry Truman’s cozy relationship with the mob bosses in Missouri?
What about Richard Nixon’s acceptance of funds from wealthy Californians in 1952?
The list of unproven rumors and potentially false accusations is limitless.
But the practice of concealing, securing, and the release decades later of information is not one which, in my opinion, serves us well.
And then there are the campaigns of disinformation. But that is the subject of a future column.
Perhaps the bottom line here is that we are right to be suspicious, to ask questions, to demand truth.
Let's do more of that.
... JACK BLAIR
“ Don’t Let the People Know “
There has been way too much information about spying lately to permit any of us to feel secure. We are told that every time we place a phone call internationally, it is noted by our government. We are told that everything we type on our computers is probable information shared with our government. We are told our closest allies have had their private phone calls monitored.
To make matters worse, we have a second-tier employee of a non-government company (a management consulting firm) being used by the government to help get the work done that seems to be far too challenging for the millions of real government employees we already pay.
This guy, Snowden, not only got to do the highly secret work, he got to download and copy and take out of the building all the nation’s most sensitive secrets.
Then he got to board a plane and take those secrets across the globe to a place where he could safely hand them out to our enemies and our shocked friends.
So far, twenty-one nations have approached the United Nations over our spying on their leaders. And that number will just grow.
The accepted defense against the U.S. wearing the “BAD BOY” label is that spying has gone on since the beginning of time, and no one should be surprised. With that kind of defense in this international game of perception-vs-reality, we are sure to lose.
I am far less concerned with our spying than I am with our historical involvement in keeping important facts from our own people. Our government has gotten so good at hiding truth that we citizens do not even attempt to get the real information.
Between playing at “smoke and mirrors,” and classifying material to be kept secret for 50 or more years, our government really can, and does, keep information from us.
The stories are plentiful, and my readers could have a lot of fun trying to uncover the real truths of almost any government claim, but when you are constantly being told that things that happened really didn’t happen, and being advised that only “kooks” buy into conspiracy theories, you distance yourself from the hunt for truth.
For instance, down deep somewhere do you not probably think something unusual really did happen at Roswell? Aliens? Who knows?
In your saner moments, do you really believe there is not sustainable life on other planets? It is much harder to assume there is not.
Are you still buying the “one shooter” theory from the Kennedy assassination? Even when Governor Connally, riding in the same car, said there were more?
Are you not suspicious that “way back when,” we might have actually sunk the “Maine” for our own purposes?
The list is endless.
But what I want to highlight in this column are times when seriously important stuff is kept from us...stuff that would alter the way we think and the decisions we make.
Recently, information from 50 years ago has been released on President John F. Kennedy. Let me share a small portion of it with you (you can read much more in the historian Robert Dalleck’s most recent book: Camelot’s Court: Inside the Kennedy White House (from which I have gathered much of the newly released information informing this column).
John F. Kennedy, when running for president of the United States, suffered from Addison’s disease, which is described as a potentially fatal malfunctioning of the adrenal glands. He suffered from chronic back pain and had endured major unsuccessful surgeries in his young life. He endured spastic colitis that brought on bouts of diarrhea, prostatitis, urethritis, and allergies.
According to the recent release, Kennedy also suffered from peptic ulcers and osteoporosis of the lumbar spine. He had been hospitalized 44 days between 1955 and 1957. And he was only 43 years old when he ran for the presidency.
Was this the “mind picture” you had in 1960 when he was asking to be the president?
We were treated to a picture of touch football, brave Navy service, writing of books with major impact, and a huge extended and rich family life.
Why did the voter never hear about any of the weaker sides to a presidential candidate? The medical issues alone would have called into question his suitability for high office.
When you add these conditions to the information about infidelities and rash actions, you could build a pretty good case that the Democrats should have fielded a better candidate.
It is not my intention to demean John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
It is my intention to call to your attention that the citizens of this great nation are the recipients of a very long existing cover up of truth, perpetuated at the highest levels of government, abetted by the national press, and sealed under classification for a period designed to outlive the primary players by the government.
I am not naive enough to believe this was limited to information about John Kennedy. The release of this information now does make me wonder how much more information on others of our leaders is filed away somewhere, marked “Top Secret--Eyes Only,” and scheduled to see the light of day when we are long gone and our grandchildren are disinterested.
What about Franklin Roosevelt’s possible advance knowledge of an attack on Pearl Harbor?
What about Dwight Eisenhower’s gift farm from wealthy businessmen?
What about Harry Truman’s cozy relationship with the mob bosses in Missouri?
What about Richard Nixon’s acceptance of funds from wealthy Californians in 1952?
The list of unproven rumors and potentially false accusations is limitless.
But the practice of concealing, securing, and the release decades later of information is not one which, in my opinion, serves us well.
And then there are the campaigns of disinformation. But that is the subject of a future column.
Perhaps the bottom line here is that we are right to be suspicious, to ask questions, to demand truth.
Let's do more of that.
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