Akascribe A personal blog covering all manner of subjects

February 13, 2012

Rail is not a Four-Letter Word

Filed under: General,Politics — akascribe @ 10:21 pm

There is a debate playing out politically in California about high-speed rail.  After a voter initiative passed in 2008 calling for the construction of a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, opponents are now trying to (please forgive me) derail the plan.  Their beef?  It would cost too much and be too difficult.

Last summer, I rode the Eurostar train from Paris to London during a family vacation.  It took two and one-quarter hours to get from one central rail station to the other, leaving any consideration of flying the same route unimaginable.  Once you factor in the transfer times to and from an urban airport, the extra time involved in clearing security, and the inherent delays with air travel, making the journey by rail is the hands-down winner, even at double the cost, although with advanced ticket purchase our rail fares were no more than the going commercial airfare.

I lived in England during the 1970s and I remember the hue and cry attendant with boring the Channel Tunnel and obtaining the rights of way for high-speed rail.  The French had no such qualms – they built their portion of high-speed track way before the Brits did – but despite cost overruns and delays the system has been a runaway success.  I’m sure Europeans could not envision going back to a time when the Continent was not connected to Britain by high-speed rail.  Or the major cities on the Continent itself.

So why are we Californians dragging our feet?  Eurostar was completed almost two decades ago (in 1994) and involved one of the largest engineering feats in history, digging three separate tunnels under the English Channel (the third tunnel is a smaller, central one needed for service purposes).  Connecting Northern and Southern California requires so such heavy lifting and, lest we forget, the transcontinental railroad that did involve some major engineering (to climb over the Sierra Nevada) was built  a century and a half ago.  Interest rates are at a historic low and unemployment is still relatively high, strategically an ideal time to build a large infrastructure project.

Nevertheless, opponents of the project have turned rail into a dirty word, trotting out arguments that focus on funding complexities or a concern over potential users.  But these critics are being disingenuous.  Their real objection is borne of ignorance.  They just don’t understand what it means to live in a rail-oriented culture.

The Japanese get it, as do the Europeans.  Who wants to drive a car 350 miles or fly a busy air corridor when you can travel safely and serenely at 200+ mph while having a leisurely meal, reading a book, or doing some work.  And not have to burn fossil fuels in the process.

As the current presidential election cycle has shown, in certain American circles (mostly conservative ones, as far as I can tell) it has become fashionable to denigrate European culture.  Anything European automatically smacks of socialism and appeasement.  Well, to those who wish to criticize, I can only say:  have you actually visited there and tried it?  I defy anyone, even the most rock-ribbed Republican, to travel from the Gare du Nord to St. Pancras Station, yes even while sipping a nice Chardonnay and nibbling on some quiche, and tell me with a straight face that he’d rather shuttle to SFO, endure the vicissitudes of commercial airline travel and then rent a car at LAX (where public transit is still a joke).  Let me tell you, I’ll have that GOP good ol’ boy singing the Marseillaise and drinking lukewarm English beer faster than you can say “Return your seat backs and tray tables to their upright and locked position.”

So my modest proposal is this:  anyone in the California legislature who intends to vote against high-speed rail must first travel to Europe, courtesy of the taxpayer, and experience it first-hand.  Trust me, it will be cheaper and easier in the long run to foot that bill.

December 27, 2011

My Meeting with President Obama

Filed under: Politics — akascribe @ 10:55 am

Okay, a meeting might be overstating it.  But I did meet and have a one-on-one discussion with Barack Obama in Washington.  It was exhilarating, fascinating and empowering.  I left DC on such a high that I barely needed an airplane to fly back to San Francisco.  So here, in a nutshell, is what happened.

After volunteering for the Kerry campaign in 2004 and the Obama campaign in 2008, mostly in my capacity as a lawyer (e.g. I spent Election Day on November 4, 2008, at various precincts in northern Nevada doing voter protection), I was contacted last month by a local Obama campaign volunteer about renewing my efforts.  Would I like to volunteer again?  I said absolutely, but suggested I might also do some fundraising, given my contacts.  So she put me in touch with a local high-level fundraising “bundler” and we arranged to meet for coffee at Emporio Rulli in Larkspur.

The bundler and I immediately hit it off.  She and her husband are former Wall Street investment bankers, with more than enough disposable income to max out on their annual campaign contributions, but she also felt a duty and had the time to do more.  Her European education and international background gave us a common reference point, she liked my fundraising ideas and she seemed impressed by some of my contacts.  So much so that, at the conclusion of our meeting, she invited me to join her at the next Obama Campaign Finance Committee meeting in Washington, scheduled to take place in early December.  Technically, only major donors could attend but she made it clear that her bundling status entitled her to invite me as a guest and, as an added sweetener, the President might drop by.

That was all the motivation I needed.  The idea of spending a couple of days in a hotel ballroom in DC wasn’t particularly appealing, despite the campaign insider briefings we would no doubt receive, but I have long admired Barack Obama.  In addition to his historic presidency and all that it portends for this country, his memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” impressed me deeply.  The chance to shake his hand was too good to pass up.

Luckily, the round-trip airfare was affordable and I could spend the first night staying with friends, one of whom is a former Washington Post editor and the other is an international human rights lawyer.  They seemed amused by the purpose of my visit but genuinely appreciative that I was working to help re-elect the President.

Fast-forward to the second day of the conference (the first day I attended Lawyers for Obama meetings and a mover-and-shaker campaign cocktail party in the evening).  As soon as I arrived at the hotel’s ballroom level in the morning, it was clear we’d be getting a visit from the President.  Security was tight, with metal detectors and x-ray machines just like TSA provides at airports, and plenty of Secret Service agents with their telltale earpieces and wrist sleeve mikes.  Then it was confirmed – a staffer handed me a piece of paper and said the President would be talking questions, so I should write one down and submit it before 10 am.

Okay, but what to ask?

I’d been doing a lot of reading and thinking of late about Europe and the sovereign debt crisis.  Part was out of personal interest – I hold an EU passport and that summer I’d travelled in Greece, Italy and France, discussing first-hand with locals their views on the problems with the Euro.  And part was of out of genuine concern, realizing that if Greece and/or any other over-leveraged Euro-currency countries defaulted, the economic panic could rival that of the sub-prime debacle in 2008, putting the whole U.S. economy in jeopardy along with the rest of the world.

So much of the discussion in Washington the previous 36 hours had been about domestic issues.  And of course a lot of “inside baseball” analysis of the GOP race, which at that point looked like Mitt Romney as the safe bet and Newt Gingrich as the current front-runner but ultimate long shot.  I figured everyone would be asking about domestic stuff, so I crafted a three-part question about the Euro crisis and handed it to a campaign staffer during a break in the breakfast meeting, an interesting presentation by Obama’s chief pollster about regional election demographics.

Despite the thought-provoking presentations slated for the morning sessions, anticipation obviously was building towards the President’s arrival.  The early breakout sessions wrapped and everyone convened in the main ballroom to hear talks by Matthew Barzun, the head of the Chicago-based campaign office, and Jim Messina, the White House-based campaign head.  I found myself checking my watch more often – Obama was due at 11 am – but as the time approached 11.15, still nothing.

Then the tone shifted in the room, as the Secret Service guys assembled at the front and grew more alert.  The Commander in Chief was on the premises.

And then he walked in.  Everyone rose and gave him a standing ovation.  It was exciting to see him in person (he looks the same) but what impressed me once he was finally able to speak – this was a very enthusiastic audience! – was the calmness with which he carries himself.  He’s obviously a very intelligent man, and this comes across even more so in person, as he addressed a wide range of issues, speaking without notes or hesitation.  But he is also very comfortable with who he is, not in an arrogant way but in an assured, self-contained manner.  There is none of the sense one gets from an insecure celebrity (or, I am told, from former President Clinton) of an ego-based neediness, a desire to be loved.  Obama apparently gets enough of that from his own family and he reassured us that if we gave him the campaign tools to get reelected (i.e. the cash), he would get the job done.

After Obama spoke extemporaneously for twenty minutes or so, Matthew Barzun returned to the stage to read out some questions for him to answer.  Since there were over a hundred people in the room, I suppose they figured this would be the most efficient method.

As predicted, all of the initial questions were about domestic issues.  The economy.  Conflicts with the Congress about pending legislation.  Campaign-related strategizing.  This went on for perhaps twenty more minutes.  Because there were multiple questions for each topic, Matthew presented the questions to the President without attribution to any particular questioner.  Obama gave thoughtful, articulate answers to each question.  There was, I recall, one question about foreign policy, but it had to do with troop withdrawals and the war on terror, and this quickly morphed into another campaign-related digression.

And then Matthew said this:  “I have something a little different now, Mr. President.  This question is from Owen Prell from Mill Valley, California.”

I smiled – he was going to read my Euro question!  I’d met Matthew the day before, so maybe that had helped, especially since Matthew is the former Ambassador to Sweden.

As soon as Matthew started reading my Euro crisis question, damned if the President didn’t beam from ear to ear and look energized.  When the question ended, he launched right into his answer, prefacing it by saying, “I have probably spent more time thinking about this problem and talking to experts and leaders in Europe about it in the past several weeks than on any other subject.”

Bingo – I’d hit the jackpot.  As the President soon explained, this was indeed a pressing concern for the very reasons I had figured.  If the Europeans couldn’t adequately address the sovereign debt issue and the Euro Zone drifted into full-blown insolvency, the economic repercussions will have global significance.  President Obama said this was the one issue that threatened to derail the entire U.S. economic recovery and his very reelection.

He spent a considerable amount of time discussing the specifics of the problem and what he was doing to solve it (basically encouraging Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel to tackle the crisis proactively).  A few of my colleagues who I’d gotten to know in the previous day’s meeting gave me congratulatory nudges and glances.  The funny thing was, if you’d asked any one of them earlier whether the Euro was going to be Topic A on the President’s address that morning, you would have received blank stares.  Just goes to show that great minds think alike.  Or so one would like to imagine.

The President wrapped up his answer and moved on to another topic, and the Q&A session ended soon after.  Everyone stood up and applauded the President, then many of them moved quickly to a “rope line” at the front of the room.  My colleague to my left told me that I should do the same if I would like to shake his hand.  So I did what I was told.  That was the purpose of my trip to DC after all, wasn’t it?

The problem was, the positions along the rope line were now already staked out, and everyone seemed to know the President.  As he moved down the line, to shake hands with someone or kiss a woman on the cheek, he addressed them each by name and moved quickly on.  “Remember we met in St. Louis, Mr. President?”  “Absolutely, Frank – keep up the good work.”  It reminded me of a State of the Union address, when the president greets Congressional well-wishers as he slowly exits the chamber.

Well, I figured, at least I had a height advantage, so I sidled up to the rope line and stuck my hand out above a short African-American woman I’d gotten to know the day before.  A really charming, vivacious person, she lived in the DC area and had a large grass-roots following in her community for the Democratic party and the President.  She greeted Mr. Obama and he gave her a big grin and a hug before moving on.  But he couldn’t ignore my large outstretched meat hook, so he shook my hand.

I couldn’t think of anything earth-shattering to say – what do you say to the President as he gives you a quick handshake? – so I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head:  “Good luck with Europe.”

With that, he looked at my name tag.  Owen Prell from Mill Valley.  I could see him doing the math in his head.  Ah, the guy with the Euro question.  So instead of moving on, he stayed put and started discussing it with me.

At length.  Our perfunctory handshake had dissolved into two guys standing and talking about Europe.  We are both the same age (he is a month older) and height, with somewhat analogous backgrounds (foreign parent, connections to Hawaii, played basketball, attended Ivy League law schools where we were on the law review), so on some level it seemed perfectly natural.  I noticed that everyone around us sort of parted and allowed us to speak.  He was doing most of the talking, to be sure, but he listened as I made an observation or comment.  He clearly had Europe on the brain and I was the one guy in the room who’d asked him about it.  So he wanted to talk some more.

At one point, I recall getting a little self-conscious, thinking:  “Well, this is fucking weird.  I’m standing here speaking to the President of the United States!”  But that thought was only going to make me dissolve into a puddle of flop sweat, so I banished it from my brain and resumed having my nice civilized Euro chat, albeit in these rather unusual circumstances.

After what seemed like quite a while but was probably only a minute or so, he thanked me for my question and my efforts – as if! – and moved on.  Which was fine with me – I’d received everything I could have asked for, and then some.  I’d even gotten him to chuckle (when I commiserated with him on how hard it must be to get France and Germany moving in the same direction, observing that Sarkozy and Merkel don’t much like each other, he responded, “Tell me about it!”)

My bundler friend immediately approached me, with new respect and curiosity in her eyes.  Her exalted fundraising status had permitted her and a few other similar donors a private audience with the President before his address, but she wanted to know what he and I had been talking about.  I smiled and joked, “just guy stuff.”  She didn’t see the humor – this was serious business! – and pressed me for an answer.  Which I was only too happy to provide.

I was elated.  I half-expected one of the President’s staff to slip me a note asking me to come back to the White House for a special briefing session later that afternoon.  Maybe I would be appointed special envoy to Europe.  Alas, the rich fantasy life that my head started spinning stayed just that – a fantasy.  But my meeting with the President had been reality.  All that was left, after spending some time basking in the afterglow, was to get to work helping reelect him.

May 18, 2010

Citizens of the World

Filed under: General,Politics — akascribe @ 3:53 pm

Does anyone recall the story “The Man Without a Country” by Edward Everett Hale?  I don’t think I’ve ever read it – it was a Civil War-era tract written to boost support for the Union cause – but I do remember seeing a gripping film adaptation when I was in elementary school.  The gist of the story is that the protagonist renounces his American citizenship and is forced to live the remainder of his life in nautical limbo, forever refused entry on land again.  As contrived as that sounds, it really made an impression on me as a chilling prospect; I can still see the melancholy in the eyes of the stateless man.  Maybe that’s why I leapt at the chance to gain a second citizenship when, much later in life, the opportunity presented itself.

I find that when the subject of dual citizenship comes up, some people adamantly argue (in ignorance) that this is not possible in the U.S.  But it’s a fact that, while not encouraging it, the State Department turns a blind eye to dual and multiple citizens, and there is absolutely no requirement that one renounce allegiance to another nation in order to be an American citizen.  Personally, I think we should actually encourage multiple citizenship.  It might go a ways towards mitigating the rampant nationalism that always seems to get in the way of understanding between peoples.

Even before I obtained my second passport, I always considered myself half-British.  My mother is English and she has always retained her U.K. passport, even after she was naturalized as a U.S. citizen when I was born.  She once told me that she never felt the need beforehand, but having given birth to an American, she wanted to be able to vote and help determine my destiny.  Growing up, my family spent a lot of time visiting England and, if truth be told, my father – a native Californian – is more of an Anglophile than any of us.  Alas, even when we actually moved to England during my high school years and obtained legal residency, he has never been eligible for citizenship.  Unbeknownst to me, I had the option of electing British citizenship at the age of eighteen, but it seemed a moot issue when we returned to the States and I entered UCLA and embarked on my adult life in the Colonies, as some Brits half-humorously still refer to us.

It was only much later, while working in San Francisco, that I fell hard for an English lass and briefly contemplated relocating to London.  My British residency status from high school days was still valid but I felt somehow cheated when I learned that only children of male British subjects were granted full citizenship automatically.

Fast-forward to a few years ago when I was travelling with my wife and son to London and handed over a new American passport to immigration at Heathrow, along with my old passport stamped with my U.K. residency status.  Behold the magic words, carefully nursed from passport to passport since the 70s:  “Given leave to enter the United Kingdom for an indefinite period.”  So British in its subtlety, but so powerful in its import.  So I was more than a little perturbed when the officer instead stamped a generic tourist visa in my passport (limited to six months duration) and explained that I hadn’t visited the U.K. recently enough for my residency to remain in good standing.  Maybe it might seem trivial – I had no real desire to live in England again – but I felt a part of me had been ripped out.  Seeing my distress, the immigration officer kindly asked me how I had come by my now-former residency status in the first place.  When I told her it was because of my mother, she suggested I check with the British embassy when I return to the States, since the naturalization laws had changed.

And indeed they had.  Tony Blair has been called “Bush’s poodle” for allowing Britain to follow America into Iraq.  Maybe so, but bless Blair’s heart — he finally rectified the gender-discrimination that long treated offspring of British women as second-class (non) citizens with a new Act of Parliament.  All I had to do was produce my mother’s birth certificate along with my own and I would be in.  Rule Britannia!

This was important to me on several levels.  As I say, I have always felt half-British and it seemed like I was finally getting legal validation of that fact.  But on a more practical level, having a British passport was actually to possess a European Union one, which confers the unfettered right to live and work (along with my family) in any country in the EU.  Spain, for example, or even Greece (at least until the rest of Europe gets around to kicking the Greeks out for decimating the Euro).  Actually, I’ve long harbored the dream of living in France.  I don’t know whether this is an itch that I’ll ever want to scratch, but the fact that I could is somehow very comforting.

There is something else, though – and this is what I was alluding to at the outset.  I have always considered myself an internationalist, putting my status as a member of the human race above that of U.S. citizen.  Don’t get me wrong:  I love my country of birth and in the right circumstance would have been willing to fight and die for it, I suppose.  But I have also always mistrusted nationalism of the flag-waving type.  Why is it that we have to play our national anthem at sports events, when other countries don’t do that?  Why is it standard American political rhetoric that makes us the “greatest nation on Earth”?  Did anyone consider Denmark – or Belize?  And why must my son recite the Pledge of Allegiance in school every day, as I did?  I mean, will this make him a more law-abiding citizen?

No, maybe what we need is to have more dual nationals in our midst, so we don’t miss the global forest for the domestic trees.  With a foot in more than one country, we won’t be as tempted to trample the cause of some other nation.

In fact, two of my good friends have recently augmented their passport collections:  one has added Italian citizenship thanks to a paternal grandfather born in the old country (the Italians, along with the Irish, are very generous when it comes to claiming their own), and the other boasts not one but two EU passports in addition to her American one (since her father was born in Austria and her mother was born in England).

Just think – if everyone started cross-naturalizing, we’d confuse the hell out of terrorists.  How can they target Americans when each of us could whip out multiple credentials, from every continent on the globe?

Now of course I can already hear the voices of dissent.  How will citizens really champion the needs of America with divided loyalties?  Won’t dual citizens, at the first hint of trouble, pull up stakes and high-tail it to Country B?  To which I respond:  True-blue Americans are always extolling the virtues of freedom.  So what better way to make sure people want a stake in this place than by giving them a choice?  As long as we don’t behave like jingoistic cowboys, invading sovereign nations and otherwise demonstrating our unsuitability to be a member of the civilized world, I’m more than happy to salute Uncle Sam.  Just don’t tell me I can’t bow to the Queen as well!

August 25, 2009

À Votre Santé

Filed under: Health & Wellness,Politics — akascribe @ 5:32 pm

With all the weighty political issues swirling around the U.S. in recent years, it’s bizarre that the current health care reform debate has inflamed the most passion.  I mean, there have been, by my tally: (1) Two Ongoing Wars, one of which (Afghanistan) was started on valid principles but waged poorly, and which now threatens to bog us down in the kind of quagmire that dragged down two great empires, and the other (Iraq), which was started on false pretenses, often conducted in violation of international law, and has exacted an ungodly toll in lives, money and moral standing; (2) Domestic Fiscal Policy, i.e. the compiling of massive deficits from a combination of tax cuts and huge non-infrastructure spending (See Item 1); (3) Energy Policy, aka a failure to invest in new technology or otherwise regulate a dirty, non-renewable 19th Century power source (petroleum), thereby both enriching and putting ourselves at the mercy of foreign oil producers (See Items 1 and 2); (4) Environmental Policy, where we stuck our head in the sand about global warming, thereby both missing an enormous high-tech business opportunity and quite possibly rendering our planet unfit for habitation by our grandchildren; (5) Various “Family Values” Issues, such as abortion, same-sex marriage and affirmative action (each too complex to summarize here); and (6) Education, where we have made some noise about teaching better but don’t have the money or resolve to do much about it (See Items 2 and 5). And there were plenty of others.  But what really gets people onto the streets, screaming bloody murder at their members of Congress? Whether to provide a public option to private health insurance. Go figure.

Part of the reason, we are told, is the core culture of America.  We are still a young nation, founded on a frontier mentality where people don’t want to take orders from Washington and don’t want to be taxed more than absolutely necessary.  Personally, I don’t buy it.  That kind of Jeffersonian ideology went out with the New Deal.  People want and expect the government to provide them with all sorts of goodies, from the so-called basics (national defense, police and fire protection) to infrastructure (interstate highways,  safe water and sanitation) to cheap food (subsidized corn and dairy products) to psychic enrichment (NASA’s space program, National Parks).  Just not, apparently, health care – seemingly one of the most basic necessities of life.

So what gives? I hate to be cynical, but I have to believe it’s because the Democrats are finally in power and have an opportunity to do some real good, despite the laundry list of policy obstacles that I enumerated above.  And for some ideological Republicans, the idea that overall success would further diminish their political viability is so unpalatable that they are willing to drag the whole country down with them.  Now if that isn’t cynical, I don’t know what is.

As to the specifics of the health care debate itself, I must confess that the issues are so complex that I haven’t been willing to wade into the minutiae.  My elected representatives are in favor of reform and that’s good enough for me – I’m willing to let the policy wonks hash out the details.  The fact that the current system is broken is so obvious that a right-winger would be much more credible arguing that President Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii or that Darwin’s theory of natural selection is misguided.  But if anyone out there is still in doubt about how medical costs in the USA are untenable, let me provide one personal anecdote as Exhibit A.

We recently got a referral from our son’s pediatrician to see a surgeon for an elective procedure.  We made an appointment for a consultation, where we were asked to provide lots of personal information (health history, insurance coverage, etc.) but were not charged a consultation fee or co-payment (nor were expecting to).  Once in the consultation, the doctor confirmed that insurance would not cover the procedure at issue and he spent half an hour happily discussing the details, encouraging us to contact him again if we had any further questions.

So imagine my surprise when we received a statement from Blue Shield, stating that the doctor had billed them $652 for the informal consultation!  My wife shook her head in similar dismay, so I immediately called the doctor’s office.  After leaving multiple messages, his billing assistant finally called back and “explained” that this is the way their office handles consultations.  I “explained” that this was not acceptable – we had not been informed in advance that the consult would be other than free.  Oh no, she said – if we preferred, we could be billed a $100 consultation fee, otherwise we would be responsible for a $25 co-payment and Blue Shield would pay the difference (from $652).  At this point, I figured I had either uncovered the most blatant insurance scam in history or was losing my mind, so to handle either situation I called our pediatrician (who happens to also be a family friend).

Now it gets worse.  She was initially as troubled as my wife and I were by what had transpired, so she promised to talk to the surgeon personally.  But when she called back a couple of days later, she was singing a different tune – basically echoing the billing assistant’s statement that “this is the way it’s done” even though it seems odd.  I probed her a little – how can this make any sense? – but it was like she’d already drunk the moral Kool-Aid and wasn’t going to admit what was now painfully obvious: the system had corrupted two otherwise fine and decent physicians.  Things have apparently gotten so bad for doctors that they have no way to survive other than go along with these sorts of smoke and mirror accounting shenanigans.  With the result that few can afford medical insurance (we’re both self-employed and are barely hanging in there) while the insurance company CEOs bring in multi-million dollar salaries.

Then I read that Whole Foods is being boycotted because John Mackey, its CEO, has been so brazen as to write an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal suggesting eight issues the Obama Administration should consider in the health care reform debate without adding to the deficit.  Huh?  I quickly read the editorial and found myself, a card-carrying liberal, agreeing with most of it – read it for yourself.

Mackey proposes such zany notions as: Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts.  Or, Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. And, Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits.  Treason!  Revolution!  Citizens, man the barricades!

So it isn’t just the opponents of health care reform who have wigged out.   Some of the so-called proponents are losing it too.   If all these folks would invest as much energy in eating better and exercising more (another one of Mackey’s calls for action), they’d unclog the arteries in their brains and we’d probably save enough in health care costs to fund Medicare until 2012 – when we can re-elect President Obama to finish cleaning up the mess he inherited.

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