Introduction to Market America

When we got back from our trip to L.A., wifey asked me to attend some presentation about a business called Market America. She and pumpkin were scheduled to take a church trip in San Jose which conflicted with this event which coincidentally also took place in the Bay Area.

I had to arrive at the In-N-Out Burger on Sunrise at 5:50 AM. Ay caray. It was not easy to get up so early but I managed to half run, half walk to the designated pickup place at 5:45. At 5:48 a van pulled up with 5 women - Coco, Wang Jun, Su Zhen, Patrica Wang and two other women who I had never met.

I had a long conversation with Su Zhen who is the person that introduced the business to Cindy. She is from Taiwan and lives in Folsom with her husband and 2 daughters.

Finally after a long ride, we arrived at Santa Clara University a little before 9 AM. I am not used to sitting all day so this was going to be a challenge, not so much for my attention span but for my reluctance to sit so long. The speaker, Phil Guido, came on and talked about Market America and how he got into the business. He also talked about how to recruit new distributors and stay focused on duplicating efforts.

My job was to take lots of notes since I had agreed to attend on Cindy's behalf. Could this work for us? Selling products was not my forte. Memories of trying to be a telemarketer for Armstrong Cabinet Refacing about 30+ years ago have always haunted me whenever confronted by a business like this but I thought I should be open to something different. Besides, it is nice to be able to do a more social activity than staring at the computer all day. 

Master Bath Remodel

Our bathrooms were in need of remodeling. The shower leaked in the master bath and the shower doors were falling apart in the guest bathroom. After much discussion, we decided to have them upgraded. We hired this Russian guy named Vasily who was a tile specialist. He did a great job in both bathrooms.

Fainting Incident at Blood Source

I like to give blood. I have given over 5 gallons since moving up to Sacramento in 1997 and before that I used to give regularly to the Red Cross in West L.A. While in L.A., I recall some of my donations were in platelets but since about a year ago, I have been giving whole blood exclusively. For many years I went to the Citrus Heights facility on the corner of Fair Oaks and Greenback. Then one day, I was driving up Folsom Blvd in Folsom on my weekly pilgrimage to Winco to buy some groceries when the familiar Blood Source logo caught my eye in a small strip mall. That is a lot closer than Citrus Heights, I thought and the bike ride is infinitely more pleasant. The American River bike trail is just across the street so I immediately decided right then and there that I was abandoning the Citrus Heights location forever. The Folsom office is actually a little smaller but more modern and the nurses are sweet too. After giving a few units of whole blood, one of the nurses asked me if I wanted to try giving some platelets. She said that in some cases, I could give both platelets and whole blood. The only downside is that a platelet donation takes about 50 minutes to an hour while I could squeeze out a pint of whole blood in less than 10 minutes. When she mentioned that they have personal DVD players and all the latest movies, I decided to give it a try. Of all the times I have given blood, and that is quite a few times, I have never felt any unpleasant side effects. Yea, I might feel a slightly light headed when I first get up but after wolfing down a pastry and a few cups of cranberry juice in the rest area, I am good as new. The platelet donation machines have changed quite a bit since back in the 90’s when I gave at the Red Cross in West L.A.. They are computerized and there is only one needle for input and output. The input is some kind of citrus juice mixed with red blood cells and the output is platelets. During the process, it is common to feel numbness or tingly sensations in the lips or arms or chest. No big deal, just suck on some tums and it usually goes away. On that Sunday morning, I had a couple of large cups of tea in the morning. The nurses said to make sure to drink water to help the blood flow out easier. Before settling into the donation chair, I took a piss per instructions because it was going to be a long time - the computer calculated a 113 minute session. I have no idea how it calculates it. But in any case, there was only a little bit of piss at that point. I guess the tea hadn’t digested through my kidneys yet. After getting comfy we got started. The movie was Inception - some sci-fi movie with Leonardo DiCapprio about a team of people that can invade other people’s dreams and change their minds about things. At about the 45 minute point, I started to feel the need to take a piss. Bad timing of course since I was in the middle of donating. But at that point, I didn’t feel numbness or tingly sensations so I didn’t ask for a tums. That turned out to be a mistake as I would later discover. But my biggest feeling was wanting to pee. By the 1.5 hour point, I felt like my bladder was ready to burst but I held on. The minutes seemed to slow down. Finally, the process was completed and after waiting a couple of minutes, I rushed into the bathroom to relieve myself. I unzipped and let out and out it came out, slow at first and then building into a torrent as furious as a dam that had just burst. The pee just kept coming. I didn’t know a human bladder could hold this much liquid. After what seemed like 2 or 3 minutes, I began to feel kind of woozy standing there waiting for this show to end. By the time it did, the room started to get dark around me. I quickly bent my head over for a sec until the faintness went away and then opened the door and walked over to the rest area. I knew something wasn’t right because the room kept getting darker until I shook my head. I made it over to the refrigerator to pour myself a juice. As I opened the refrigerator door, that woozy feeling returned. I quickly poured the juice and downed it in 2 gulps because I was afraid I would pass out standing right there. I told myself to hold on. Maybe if I sat down things would get better. I sat down and tried to focus on a newspaper in front of me.
I made it to a chair at the counter and tried to focus on some article in the newspaper in front of me. The darkness returned and I didn’t have time to shake my head or place my head down. I suddenly felt too tired to keep my eyes open. I knew what was happening to me but I couldn’t stop it from happening. I laid my head down between my arms and started dreaming for a brief second before I blacked out completely. When I awoke, I was lying on the floor with my legs on the chair which had been tipped over. My first thought is that I had fallen backwards but the sight of 4 smiling nurses allayed my concerns. "David, David!", Kelly called to me. "Look, there are 4 beautiful nurses around you."  That comment made me chuckle as I regained my consciousness. They told me that I had slumped over and one of them had spotted me from all the way over on the other side of the room. They apparently knew what to do and all of them sprung into action. They tipped the chair backwards so they could monitor me. I was lying right on the cold floor but it felt good because my body was drenched in sweat. The body does weird stuff when you pass out and they had used water to cool me off. My arms were tingly but after sucking on a few Tums, the tingly feeling went away. It took about a half hour before I felt good enough to get up. Good thing I didn’t ride my bike like I usually do since a trip back, though downhill most of the way would have been wobbly. I drove home about an hour later and had to call them when I got home so they would know I made it home okay. That whole rest of the day I couldn’t keep any food down. It was about the most unpleasant blood donating experience I have ever gone through. However, that being said, I plan on continuing to donate when the weather gets a little better.

Letter to Dan Lungren

Dear Congressman Lungren:

Thank you so much for your response to my recent inquiry regarding how to deal with climate change. However, I did not outline my proposal as I would have preferred to speak to you directly. I understand you are very busy campaigning and perhaps do not have a time slot in your schedule to meet with me. Therefore, I will outline my proposal to you here in this email and hopefully you will have a chance to consider this and offer your response.I left off my previous correspondence by pointing out that the science regarding global warming is very settled. I provided you with the phone number of the most respected scientist in this field, Dr. James Hansen over at Nasa. Dr. Hansen has recommended a carbon tax as the most effective and quickest means to begin moving our economy to a post fossil fuel era. To clarify the definition of this tax, it is not a cap and trade system. Dr. Hansen and many others in the environmental movement do NOT support cap and trade and neither do I. A cap and trade system would create a huge and difficult to bureaucracy and the resources needed to monitor such a system would exceed the desired benefits. So, coming from another angle, I agree with you completely that cap and trade is not the way to go.

A carbon tax, however is elegant in its simplicity. The amount of Co2 produced by the burning of oil, coal and natural gas is known precisely by scientists. A tax would be assessed at the point of extraction or port of entry based on the resource being extracted or imported. Such a system would be simple to implement - there are only a few oil, coal and gas companies in the U.S. so monitoring would be far more simpler than a cap and trade system.The most intriguing aspect of such a tax is that the entire amount would be refunded back to the American people in the form of dividend checks. People who purchase products that are not directly tied to fossil fuels will actually earn money. Such a system will shift resources towards cleaner energy alternatives through shifting public demand. This will stimulate the collective talent and resources of private industry to a new post industrial clean energy revolution.Such a tax would be implemented gradually so that industry has time to adjust but I am very confident that American ingenuity will be up to the task. In short, we can and must begin this transition for our childrens’ sake. Please consider what I have said and not dismiss this flat out before speaking to others about it. Once again, I urge you to speak to Dr. Hansen to understand this solution before you pass judgment.

Best Regards,
David Brotman

Attempt to Reach Dan Lungren

This may become a moot point if Ami Bera wins the 3rd Congressional seat next Tuesday but I do not assume anything. In fact, I would present the same argument to Mr. Bera as I am presenting to Congressman Lungren. I am doing this to go on the record as trying my damnedest to convince my representative in the U.S. Congress that something must be done about global warming. I have been told by others that my efforts are like a salmon swimming upstream considering the forces aligned against taking action but I cannot throw my arms up and give up when Serena’s future is at stake. In some respects I am covering my ass so that when Serena gets older, she cannot accuse me of not doing anything about this issue. This blog is my record and proof that I did try and will continue to try. So here is the detail on my attempt today:

1) Contacted Congressman Lungren at his Gold River office this morning at approximately 11:00 AM. I spoke to a woman named Katie who asked me what I wanted to discuss. I told her that it was climate change. She told me to contact Sandra Weissman at Lungren’s Washington D.C. office as she is the one in charge of energy policy for Mr. Lungren.

2) Spoke to Sandra Weissman at the D.C. office and explained my purpose. I briefly mentioned the current science regarding global warming and that it is an urgent matter. Her response was that Mr. Lungren agrees it is a problem but I am not sure that it is a problem. I insisted that it was important to speak with Mr. Lungren and she agreed to allow me to speak with Lungren’s scheduler, Debra Jones.

3) Sandra Weissman transferred me to Debra Jones and Debra asked me the purpose of the meeting. I reiterated my reasons for requesting a meeting and she suggested I email her a brief statement explaining the issue and she would get back to me. This conversation took place today at approximately 11:30 AM. I emailed her at debra.jones@mail.house.gov and the full text of that email is located in the previous 2 blog posts I just made.On a kind of funny note. Serena is sitting next to me right now writing out math problems as I type this up.

Letter to SacBee

I beg to differ with a recent claim made by one of your readers that the oil industry is not subsidized. Aside from the fact that California is one of the only states in the country that does not have an oil severance tax in place, a much larger subsidy has been taking place since fossil fuel became the energy choice of this country over a hundred years ago. All of the byproducts created from combustion of fossil fuels including but not limited to toxic air and water pollution, mercury poisoning of fish, ocean acidification, climate change, extinction of marine and mammal species, increased lung cancer, heart disease and asthma rates to name a few all represent external costs not included in the production of fossil fuel. Transferring these costs from producer to the public represents a massive subsidy of the fossil fuel industry. This convenient and profitable arrangement has allowed the oil companies to profit immensely at our expense. The only way to slow down this gravy train is to attach a cost to carbon in the form of a revenue neutral carbon tax.

Why Dems and Repubs can rarely find common ground

The main reason as I see it is because Repubs look at the world differently. Whereas Dems tend to see the world as it is in all its complexity, messiness and shades of gray, Repubs see the world as they would like it to be, a nostalgic dream of an era gone by. Many of them long for the world of yesteryear when European whites held all the reins of power and everybody fit in their rightful place. People of color weren’t so uppity and fortunately not many of them voted. Gays stayed in the closet and you could go out for the evening and forget to leave your door unlocked. Yes, those were the days. Now the world has become scary and the people you see in public are many different shades of yellow and brown. A intelligent person of color has made it to the White House, an impossible thought not more than 10 years ago. This rapidly changing demographic profile that makes up the U.S. is a frightening world to many older, white Americans. This fear morphed into anger and expressed itself through the tea party. "Taxed enough already" became their rallying cry in 2009 as the health care bill was being debated but a more accurate slogan would be "Too much change already."  But the demographic changes are here to stay and will likely accelerate as the Baby Boomers begin to die off in 20-30 years. Yet many whites cling to the hope they can somehow reverse this trend and eagerly embrace the messages of fear being promoted from within their ranks. Whether it is Mexicans, gays, Blacks, liberals or socialism, fear is the uniting theme. Though the pages of the playbook are worn and frayed, the strategy is consistently effective. Unable to reinvent itself as a big tent party and sell its bankrupt supply side economic theory, Repubs are forced to use the tactic of divide and conquer. Using social hot button issues such as gay marriage, abortion rights or illegal immigration, Repubs effectively force voters to take sides. If you vote along the party line, you are being patriotic. If you vote the other way, you are a traitor to your country. For many people busy with their daily lives, it is just plain easier to see the world in black and white and let others define right and wrong for them. Adhering to a rigid ideology eliminates the need to think and ponder the world in all its complexity and shades of gray. Some issues can be molded to fit into the guidelines of the ideology such as gay marriage or abortion. Other issues that do not fit the mold or expose the shortcomings of free market economic theory such as climate change need to be vigorously challenged or denied. This irrational approach to everyday problems conflicts with the more complex, scientific problem solving approach favored by Dems. In this environment, little can get accomplished since the mechanism by which problems get solved is different. There can be no common ground between the two parties unless the problem solving mechanism is the same. This would mean either Dems give up science as the reliable way of understanding the world or Repubs must discard their non-linear way thinking.