Happy Birthday Ben Franklin. Born January 17, 1706

Things We Need and Don't Need in 2012

2011 was a year filled with dramatic events: a devastating 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in Japan; the killing of Osama Bin Laden; widespread uprisings in the Arab world, the ouster of Libyan dictator Muammar Kaddafi and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak; the marriage of Prince William; the death of Apple Founder, Steve Jobs; a horrific car bombing and shooting atrocity in Norway; the occupy Wall Street movement; rioting in London; the phone-tapping scandal which closed Britain’s tabloid News of the World; the discovery of potential earth-like planets; famine in east Africa and North Korea; the survival of Gabby Gifford; the death of Kim Jung Il: and the end of the Iraq War. With all that has gone on, it has been an emotional roller coaster of a year.

As we stumble into 2012, it occurs to me that we may want a different kind of year than the one we just survived. Certainly, most of us would prefer to see less bad news and more good news. So I have started a modest list of things we need more of in 2012 and other things I would prefer to see less of in 2012.
 

What We Need Less Of:

In 2012 we need less earthquakes and tsunamis, less Reality TV, and less TSA pat downs of children and the elderly.

We need fewer people like Rod Blagojevich, Casey Anthony, Conrad Murray, Jerry Sandusky, Muammar Kaddafi, and Kim Jung Il.

We need a lot less drivers texting behind the wheel, less airline fees, fast food, and disappearing glaciers.

We need less traffic, less unemployment, fewer foreclosures, less hypocrisy, and dates that the world will end on.

We don’t need any more $100-a-barrel oil, or deranged people with guns, and we could certainly do without any more Kardashian family events. 

What We Need More of:

We need more jobs, more food provided for starving people, and more discoveries of earth like planets.

We need more people like Steve Jobs, Andy Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor, Duke Snyder, Betty Ford, Harry Morgan and Seal Team Six.

We need more stuff made in the USA, more exercise and more good ideas like Forever Stamps.

We need more public transportation, locally owned businesses, educated graduates and ice for polar bears.

We need more time to spend with family, more banks that actually lend money, more Peace Prize winners, and more miles per gallon.

Those are just some of the things that came to mind about 2011. I am sure I missed a few. So feel free to add your own list of stuff we could use less of or more of in 2012 in the comments. 

Have a Healthy, Prosperous and Happy New Year!

Twitter by Mail?

What would happen if your Twitter tweets were sent via mail instead of online? That's what Giles Turnbull asked himself one morning. Would it work? What would happen? Some of the answers to his questions are obvious, it was sure to cost more in postage and take a lot more time. But there were other revelations about the nature of our communications with each other that were not so obvious when he began the experiment.

First he had to work out the logistics, buy a lot of stamps, get the postal address of his followers, and determine how to replicate a tweet via postcard. Sending a tweet to all of his followers meant writing out the same message numerous times, so he limited the experiment to 15 followers. Still, that meant writing out his "tweet" 15 times and mailing it to 15 different people, some in foreign countries. A direct message, as with Twitter, could be sent to just one person. His followers agreed to respond in the same manner - via mail.

While it sounds like a tedious process, the emotive results were surprising. Turnbull found himself getting excited to receive his mail. "I began to associate the sound of the postwoman’s approach with the arrival of new, unusually personal messages. I’d get jumpy with excitement, and rush out to the hall the moment they’d been delivered." It turns out that getting mail with personal messages is fun. He began to wonder what letters were like before the advent of email and made some interesting discoveries. "Simple, short messages. That’s what the post was for. People love updates."

Today's postcard, Turnbull observes, has become an "obligation" to inform friends about your vacation. That is too bad because the short message on a postcard can be as imaginative, as funny or as interesting as a tweet. He learned the unique value of the written message:  "Conversations took longer, but they made just as much sense. If anything, they felt more real." He gained a new appreciation for the online and the offline.

Turnbull's article and samples of his postcard "tweets," can be seen at The Morning News.

Congress Grapples with Postal Service Solvency

Last October the House Oversight Committee passed HR 2309, a bill that creates a control authority, a kind of receivership, to take over the Postal Service in the event it defaults on its financial obligations. Legislation has now been introduced in the Senate, S. 1789, with a somewhat different approach. S.1789 passed the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committees in November and will provide a frame for reform legislation considered by the full Senate.  

The Senate bill has a greater focus on cost reductions in order to get the USPS to solvency. Although both bills create processes to close post offices considered unnecessary, the House bill does so through a commission to oversee the closing while the Senate bill creates a more public process.

The Senate bill also reforms the federal workers compensation system to require that employees who are on workers comp but who are also eligible for retirement must take retirement. This is not now a requirement. There literally are USPS employees in their 90's on workers' comp. The USPS represents about 40% of the workers' comp program of the entire federal government. The National Association of Letter Carriers, NALC, has declared its opposition to the Senate bill saying it "would cause irreparable harm to our nation's Postal Service." The NALC has long maintained that the main problem for the USPS is the unique legal requirement to pre-fund future retiree health benefits.

Class Warfare and Ben Franklin

With all of the political talk these days about "class warfare," I thought it would be interesting to examine what Ben Franklin had to say in his pamphlet "Information to Those Who Would Remove to America." Written in 1784, the essay was intended as information for Europeans whose view of American society was distorted by persistent rumors of vast wealth and limitless opportunity for those born into a life of privilege in Europe. America, he maintained, did not need those talented in "Belles-Lettres" or "fine Arts," and would give no deference to "Persons of Family" and "Gentlemen,doing nothing of Value, but living idly on the labour of others." Instead, America valued the working man, the farmer, craftsman or mechanic who provided useful products and services for society.

He writes: "It is imagined by Numbers that the Inhabitants of North-America are rich, capable of rewarding, and dispos'd to reward all sorts of Ingenuity; that they are at the same time ignorant of all the Sciences; & consequently that strangers possessing Talents in the Belles-Letters, fine Arts, etc., must be highly esteemed, and so well paid as to become easily rich themselves.that there are also abundance of profitable Offices to be disposed of, which the Natives are not qualified to fill; and that having few Persons of Family among them, Strangers of Birth must be greatly respected, and of course easily obtain the best of those Offices, which will make all their Fortunes."

This image is simply not true, he says: "These are all wild Imaginations; and those who go to America with Expectations founded upon them, will surely find themselves disappointed." No, he says, America is a country with "few people so miserable as the poor of Europe," and few people who would be considered rich by European standards. Instead, America is dominated by a middle class, "it is rather a general happy Mediocrity that prevails."

No doubt, Franklin was happy with this kind of America. Franklin was not born into wealth, but had to work and use his native abilities for any success he achieved. He was suspicious of those who were born into wealth or who had inherited a title. He argued against such an aristocracy in America and even favored taxes that would limit land and wealth being passed down from generation to generation.