An email on Social Security

I received this email last week. I usually don't forward "stuff" but this was too.......... good not to pass it. Obviously, I have not verified all the numbers.

Subject: election 2006

WHY WAIT UNTIL 2008? THERE IS AN ELECTION IN 2006.

I HEREWITH FIRMLY STATE THAT I WILL NOT VOTE FOR ANY POLITICIAN, REGARDLESS OF THE OTHER ISSUES, IF HE DOES NOT SPONSOR AND SUPPORT THIS LEGISLATION. THAT INCLUDES EVERYONE STANDING FOR ELECTION IN 2006. LET US SHOW OUR LEADERS IN WASHINGTON "PEOPLE POWER"AND THE POWER OF THE INTERNET.

IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU ARE REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT!
2006 Election Issue!!
GET A BILL STARTED TO PLACE ALL POLITICIANS ON SOC. SEC.
This must be an issue in "2006" Please! Keep it going.

SOCIAL SECURITY:
Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years.Our Senators and Congresswomen do not pay into Social Security and, of course, they do not collect from it.You see, Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons of their rare elevation in society. They felt they should have a special plan for themselves. So, many years ago they voted in their own benefit plan.In more recent years, no congressperson has felt the need to change it. After all, it is a great plan.For all practical purposes their plan works like this:When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die.Except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments..

For example, Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect to draw $7,800,000.00 (that's Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand Dollars), with their wives drawing $275,000.00 during the last years of their lives.

Tom DeLay is slated to receive $4,795,000.00, Jon Corzine will only receive $1,140,000.00 because of his short tenure in the senate.

Bob Dole is already collecting on his $6,575,000.00 since he left the Senate. His wife is now in the Senate, working to build up her own pile of gold from us. These figures are in addition to the FREE medical, dental, optical, and hospitalization services given to these so-called public servants.

Let us clean up their act in 2006, use your votes.This is calculated on an average life span for each of those named Dignitaries.Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more during the rest of their lives.

Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00. NADA....ZILCH....This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick up the tab for this plan. The funds for this fine retirement plan come directly from the General Funds!!!!"OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK"!

From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid) into,-every payday until we retire (which amount is matched by our employer)-we can expect to get an average of $1,000 per month after retirement.Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal Senator Bob Dole's benefits!

Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made.That change would be to:Jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and Congressmen. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us, then sit back.....and see how fast they would fix it.If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe good changes will evolve.

Widening gap between rich and poor

"How many more times will it be necessary to repeat that the most destructive weapon of mass destruction in the world today is poverty?" said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula daSilva, who has campaigned for a worldwide assault on poverty since taking office in 2003.

In 2002, the median salary for CEOs at the top 100 U.S. corporations was $33.4 million. At the average large company in the U.S., the top dog pocketed $5.2 million. That means median CEO pay at large companies was a whopping $1,017 an hour.

The 13,000 richest families in the U.S. now have almost as much income as the 20 million poorest. "And those 13,000 families have incomes 300 times that of average families," liberal economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times Magazine. Today, the gap between the haves and the have-nots in U.S. society is as great as ever.

In the mid-1990s, the United Nations published a report showing that the U.S. had already become the most class-stratified society among all the advanced industrial countries. Now, wealth in the U.S. is even more concentrated in the hands of a few. "It’s remarkable how little growth has trickled down to ordinary families," Krugman explained.

This vast inequality today is part of a trend that grew throughout the 1990s. In the era of corporate globalization, billions of workers and poor people around the world learned that a country’s economic growth does not automatically result in rising standards of living for the majority. The U.S. ruling class lives well--as do the ruling classes of the less-developed countries--because workers everywhere are exploited. - Excerpts from an article by Tom Lewis

His smile will make heaven brighter

I got the news at work on Monday, October 24. Mike Duffy passed away on Sunday. Mike's jovial face appeared in my mind. Mike was about my age. First time I came across Mike was around mid '80. We both worked for the same company in Houston. He was in the employee development and training department. During one of the struggles and down sizing that our company was going through during the gas bubble and "take-or-pay" obligation days, he was assigned to my gas measurement group under pipeline operation.

During those days I realized that Mike was very special. He always had a smile. He could easily build a sweet relation with anyone. I never saw him mad or sad. I always wondered how a person could have such a positive outlook on life day in and day out. Obviously, I knew his stay with my group was temporary. He had the people skill. He was meant to help people help themselves through training and self-development. During my association with him, occasionally our discussion would drift into what a person ought to do when he or she was down. He came up with the idea of "Life 101". "Not everything is bad in life", he would say. "Create a folder. Label it Life 101. File any recognition notes, thank you notes, greetings, anything positive about you in there. When you are down, you just open the file. You will be amazed to know how many people love you, appreciate you, grateful to you, and so on. So, life is not as bad as you think. Life 101 can uplift you." Ever since I followed his advice. I had created a file called Life 101. It had birthday cards, congratulatory messages, thank you notes, and so on. In one of the office moves (and we had many through mergers, buy out, sell off, etc of the company) I lost that file. But Mike would not want you to worry over such things. So, I had created another one and started stuffing it again. Even to this day I have a file folder called Life 101.

After a short tenure with my group, Mike joined Southern Gas Association (SGA) in Dallas. It was the most appropriate place for him. He took charge of technical training coordination at SGA for the gas industry. At his request, I taught gas measurement for the gas accounting course for many years as a volunteer instructor. This also allowed me to stay in contact with Mike in person. Eventually, Mike became the president of SGA's training and development.

Mike made anyone who came in contact with him happy with his smile. He was a perfect gentleman. He brightened everyone's day. "How are we doing this morning", he would say.

Now Mike is gone from us. His smile will make heaven brighter than ever.

A Memorable Week

Last Saturday (October 15) I got some new clothes and shoes from my wife. I knew the reason although she did not say it. On Sunday I participated in the Houston Striders 20K run in downtown Houston as in the past. The weather was perfect. I completed although I did not have much training. Besides, I could tell that this dude was slowing down with age. I struggled the last couple of miles, but completed in 1:50:51 (chip time) and received my "Finisher" T-shirt. Monday was a busy day at work. Tuesday early morning, I left for San Diego for a two-day business meeting with Solar Turbines. The weather was gorgeous, but we stayed indoors. I came back on Wednesday evening just in time to watch the Astros play the Cardinals. Our Astros made it to the World Series for the first time in its franchise history. How sweet it was!

Thursday I was back at office. It was my "official" birthday. Did I mention earlier about those new clothes and shoes from my wife? She greeted me with a "happy birthday" in the morning. I had a card signed by coworkers and had seafood at lunch with some colleagues. When I checked my email at home in the evening, there were birthday wishes from our daughters and a few others. Our younger daughter from Tokyo sent an egreetings that had a cow mooing "happy birthday to you".

Friday was a half workday for me. It was a beautiful sunny, cool day. So, after work I went to Skydive Houston at Waller (approximately 50 miles northwest of Houston) and did that tandem dive that I had been thinking about for a long time. It was awesome. I was floating freely. I could see far, far away including the Houston downtown skyline. There was another skydiver who was taking video of us. Suddenly Nicolai (a Russian immigrant from Kazakhstan who I was latched onto) launched the parachute. It seemed like I was going upward fast. Actually, the parachute slowed down our freefall and it was the sensation that made me feel that way. Nicolai even let me handle the parachute as we were coming down. By tugging on the parachute one way or another I could change course. In no time we landed safely. I felt light headed. I got out of the diving suit, waited for a while, picked up my DVD and headed home. It was a birthday treat to myself. When I got home, my wife was a little upset at my midlife craziness.

Today, my wife and I went out to dinner at Landry's. She did not say anything about yesterday. We drove back home listening to some favorite music. Then we talked to our daughter in Tokyo. She is coming home for Thanksgiving.

About those who are not so lucky-PORTRAIT OF POVERTY:Earth provides enough to satisfy everybody's need, but not for anybody's greed. - MAHATMA GANDHI

After my posting ("Where is the outrage") on what's going on at the homefront, I thought it might be proper to mention about a serious root cause of turmoil in the world. If the "haves" continue to exploit or ignore the "have nots", it is just a matter of time that the "haves" will be drowned in that turmoil too.

The State of the World's Children 2005: "Childhood Under Threat" UNICEF report shows half the world's children are devastated by poverty, conflict and AIDS

According to The State of the World's Children 2005, "Childhood Under Threat," more than 1 billion children are denied a healthy and protected upbringing.
"Too many governments are making informed, deliberate choices that actually hurt childhood," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy in launching the report at the London School of Economics. "Poverty doesn't come from nowhere; war doesn't emerge from nothing; AIDS doesn't spread by choice of its own. These are our choices."

UNICEF concludes that more than half the children in the developing world are severely deprived of one or more of the necessities essential to childhood:
640 million children do not have adequate shelter
500 million children have no access to sanitation
400 million children do not have access to safe water
300 million children lack access to information
270 million children have no access to health care services
140 million children have never been to school
90 million children are severely food-deprived

The State of the World's Children also makes clear that poverty is not exclusive to developing countries. In 11 of 15 industrialized nations, the proportion of children living in low-income households during the last decade has risen.

Those children can not get out of the cycle of poverty, become cynical of the unjust world if they survive, and hate, revenge, terrorism, disease, depression, survival by any means become the norm. The cruel, hypocritic world push them to the limit.

I am a lucky man

I must say I have a wonderful family. My wife is an electrical engineer from an era when women engineers were few and far between. She is beautiful, smart, and caring. She loves flowers and she has a collection of pretty African violets. Here is her Christmas cactus in bloom.






However, my wife and I are empty nesters. Our older daughter is a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University and loves outdoors. Here she is getting ready for the swimming leg of a triathlon in the bay at the Treasure Island near San Francisco, California.



Here is our older daughter at her boy friend's graduation from Harvard Law School. He is currently teaching law, loves outdoors, and is into Ultimate Frisbee. This promising young man has become an integral part of our family.






Our younger daughter graduated from Princeton University and is currently in Tokyo on a two-year fellowship attending the International Christian University. She loves dancing. The picture on the right shows her (center) in an Indian classical dance group that she had started with a few other friends at Princeton. She is also into singing, juggling, and art. She along with her Princeton Chapel Choir group performed at the Carnegie Hall earlier this year. Her blog site (Love in Tokyo: bibhatsu.blogspot.com) is Bibhatsu, another name of Arjuna (friend of Lord Krishna) of the epic war story, the Mahabharata.





Obviously, our family is not complete without Tigger, the seniormost member of the family. He is adorable.


Am I lucky or what!

Where is the outrage?

No offense meant to anyone, just a personal observation and commentary:

A country is divided, election process becomes a laughing matter, the Supreme Court installs a president, terrorists level twin towers, Iraq war starts (and continues) with lies and deception, close to 2000 US soldiers die (thousands of Iraqis die, but that doesn't count, some lives are more valuable than others), a black 3rd world appears right in the heart of Big Easy after a hurricane, gap continues to widen between rich and poor, surplus of pre-2000 turns into a trillion dollar deficit, gasoline price soars, the extreme right continues to bully (If you are not with the "right", you must be wrong. If you are not with me, you must be against me.), "liberal" is framed as a bad word, a country that struggled to uphold its individual freedom with pride begins to lose the same, religion & politics undermine separation of church & state, world respect erodes, a great country begins to slide back in time.

We watch in dismay as helpless, impotent bystanders. Thank the fore fathers for their wisdom that we have term limits for some high places. Is our government still "the government of the people, by the people, for the people"?

How about those Astros

I am not a true baseball fan. Actually, I do not easily get hooked on anything, although I enjoy most every kind of sports. An amazing thing happened last weekend as I turned on the TV. Astros were playing the Atlanta Braves. It was the bottom of the 8th inning with Astros batting. Our home town 'Stros were down 6 to 1. Bases were loaded. Then Lance Berkman hit a grand slam home run. Just like that it was 6 to 5. Then came another hit when the ball grazed the far wall above the yellow mark making it a solo home run. The game was tied. The Astros almost won on the 9th when a home run was called a foul ball because it missed the mark on the far left side by few inches, if any. So, they continued to play for 18 innings. I was hooked. (It reminded me of the game between Astros and Mets in 1986 that had gone on for 16 innings. I had watched that in a hotel room TV in one of those business trips. Unfortunately Astros had lost that one.)

Astors were running out of players. 43-year-old Roger Clemens came to pitch as a reliever. He was also at bat to pinch hit for a sacrifice base run. At the bottom of the 18th, rookie Chris Burke hit a home run. Astros won 7 to 6. The players ran out to the field like a bunch of kids. Roger Clemens lifted up the young rookie on his shoulder. It was heck of a game, coming from a not-so- hooked-on-baseball guy like me.

Now Astros are off to St. Louis. Go Astros!

A Young Marine

He was a marine and the only kid of his parents. He had just turned 24. He was shot and killed, not in a war, but by the father of his girl friend in front of their house. The girl's family belonged to a different religion. The fellow marines honored him with 21-gun salute. The bugle played a somber note. They folded the "Stars & Stripes" and offered to the grieving parents. His casket was lowered. Looking over his grave was an angel on a pedestal.

Religion, hatred, death, and eternal peace! The young marine went home.

My very first

I wasn't a blogger. I think I was influenced by my daughter's blog site. Then I checked out a few other sites. I found that blogging has become, quietly and unbeknown to me, a phenomenon. I think it is another dimension in individual freedom. So, here I go. Keep tuned for my future postings.