Stop Being Funny!

I woke up very upset this morning. Upset with Anna Hazare. I have been following his antics since his first fast-unto-death back in April. I think he is trying to force his viewpoint on the Congress government. By insisting on his Jan Lokpal bill, I think Anna is just showing his disrespect for how democracy works.

I sat in my comfortable chair and started thinking seriously. Then it stuck me -- we always knew how bad corruption was in India. Yet we never did anything about it. We just suffered at its hands silently. Or when it would suit us, we even bribed our way to special treatment from the government. We just complained, but did nothing. We just went back to our lives thinking that this problem is too big to solve. We just learned to live with this monster on our backs.

Along came an old guy with nothing to lose. He managed to jolt everyone out of their collective indifference to demand that government should do its job. He owned up responsibility of doing something about corruption. He roused an entire nation and scared the hell out of a corrupt government. When the government dragged its feat, he even came up with a bill that would definitely put fear in every single corrupt official in the country.

Agreed it seemed somewhat rushed through. Agreed there wasn't really an effort to build national consensus around what should go into the bill. And there wasn't enough detail on how the new Lokpal would stay accountable and not misuse its immense power.

But really, I mean really, what is the alternative? How can you trust the Congress party and its bosses to eliminate corruption when their very existence is defined by scandal after scandal? How can you trust the opposition parties who have been utter failures? How can you trust the judicial system (with the exception of few honorable folks at Supreme Court)? Or the spineless CBI? When you can't trust any of them, why would you entrust them with the responsibility of creating a strong Lokpal bill? Which political party would willingly walk its leaders to jail for being corrupt?

So I finally thought I would support Anna and his Jan Lokpal bill - mainly for its content, but also for lack of alternatives. At the least, I will stop complaining about him from the comfort of my chair!

Footnote : Those of you opposing Anna Hazare on the grounds that he is being undemocratic, here is my request -- Stop Being Funny! That's the least you could do to root out corruption in India.

Dr. Puneet Arora's Testimony @ Senate Immigration Subcommittee

Here's the link to testimony by Dr. Puneet Arora, of ImmigrationVoice, at Senate Immigration Subcommittee earlier this week. He is right on target why the employment-based highly skilled greencard program is so messed up in this country, and how to fix it. Thank you, Puneet, for bringing it to lawmakers' attention.

Millionaires and Taxes

Do millionaires have time to troll Yahoo news website and post comments on news stories there?

I was checking something out on Yahoo news site the other day. Had some free time at my hand, so started reading user comments on one of the news stories there. It was about debt ceiling talks and possible income tax rate hikes in US. I noticed that overwhelming majority of the comments are against tax increases.

It got me thinking. Obama wants to raise taxes on the richest folks in US (or plug loopholes, to use his preferred language...whatever) . That's probably the top 3-5% of the country in terms of income. This, he says, is needed to avoid deep cuts to programs that benefit remaining 95%.

Let me __not__ get into whether that argument makes sense or not. That's not the point. But if I were part of that 95% of the population, my first instinct would be to support such a measure. So what if someone else pays higher taxes, if I get to keep my pie, right? But no, most of the comments on that news story were against higher taxes. Very passionate and vocal arguments indeed. It is as if all those people posting comments are millionaires who don't want to pay higher taxes. That brings me back to my original question - do millionaires have so much time to troll news websites?

Three possible groups of people here:

1. Millionaires who spend a lot of time on Yahoo news (and other websites), trying to shoot down any discussion of tax hikes.

2. People who may not be millionaires, but truly believe that lower taxes always help everyone to prosper, regardless of the times/situations we live in. They also believe it's better to cut services for 95% of people than asking 5% of rich people to pay up more.

3. People who are definitely not millionaires, but have so much dirt in their heads that they are brainwashed by media into thinking they are one, and so don't want to pay higher taxes. That's effectively taking your opponent's side in the argument!

Are there other groups too? Which group are you in?

How Not To Run A Sport!

India has a rich tradition in field hockey. For all the attention Cricket gets when one talks about India, hockey is the national sport. While India's best years as a hockey powerhouse are clearly behind them, there have been occasional surprises too. Like the Championship victories in Sultan Azlan Shaw Cup in Malaysia in 2009 and 2010.

They went in as defending champions this year and ended up sixth among seven nations that competed. Quite disastrous performance. Hockey India, the governing body for the sport in the country, did a review of team performance. Here are some of the reasons they came up with.

• Some players did not have proper shoes to play on astro-turf.
• Goalkeepers did not have a good kit.
• Team did not have a proper doctor. The one who was deemed best for that job is an army doctor and he was not released by the army to go with the team.
• Team did not have a sports psychologist nor a yoga instructor.
• Team training camp was held at Delhi, prior to leaving to Malaysia. And Delhi is not suited for training camps. They should have been held at Bangalore or Pune.

Finally, here is the classic -

• Players were not given washing allowance for their training clothes. They were washing them daily.

And Hockey India's ultimate fix for all this -- hire a foreign coach for the team! I wonder who in their right mind would come forward to coach, when the governing body is so clueless about even basic things needed by the team!

Perspective and Peace of Mind Go Together!

I was at my daughter’s school yesterday to pick her up in the evening. There were these two women walking behind me. They were picking up their own kids, and they also had a toddler with them in a stroller. As I got out the gate, I held it open for these two women to come out, as a courtesy. If someone does the same favor for me, I would politely thank them, but these women didn’t. Instead, they brushed past me, pushing their stroller in a rush. I was mighty pissed off, for I thought it was very rude behavior on their part.

I then got into my car and started for home. There I saw these two women and their kids, hurriedly walking towards the bus stop close by, and the bus was just about to leave. Then it occurred to me why they were in such a rush at school. They didn’t want to miss the bus and so didn’t have time for pleasantries when I held the gate open for them.

Let me add a little more context here. It was a rainy evening, and these women didn’t have umbrellas with them for some reason. And the bus stop didn’t have a roof to keep them from getting wet. If they missed that bus, they would have to wait for the next one in rain, along with the kids.

That brings me to the lesson I have often heard over the years. Before you get upset with someone for their actions, maybe, just maybe, you should think about it from their perspective. You might be able to find at least some semi-convincing reason why they behaved the way they did. Probably not in all cases, but a few for sure. So what’s in it for you? Less blood pressure and a little more peace of mind - something we all could use!

Forgotten Election Promise?

United States Congress is busy finalizing a huge spending bill, totaling nearly 410 billion dollars, to fund the federal government budget through rest of the fiscal year. It supposedly includes thousands of pet projects of law makers, costing more than 5 billion dollars. President Obama is expected to sign it into law.

In all fairness, not all of those pet projects might be called wasteful spending, but I am certain a lot of it is. As much an admirer of Obama that I am, I find it disappointing that he is willing to sign the bill. That, despite his election promises that he would no longer allow these pet projects, and that he would go line by line in the budget to eliminate them. The official response from his White House team is that this spending bill is an “unfinished business” from previous administration, and that he has no intention of vetoing it.

I don’t know if he is being “politically accommodative” by selectively picking his fights with law makers. May be he is, because he needs their support big time to push his agenda through in the coming days. But on the face of it, his willingness to sign the bill, with all the pet projects intact, seems like a forgotten election promise to me. There better be a good reason for it – because simply saying it is the previous administration’s unfinished business sounds like a lame excuse!

Spend More Money – It’s For Your Kid’s Benefit, After All!

There are lot of reasons why US economy went bust late last year, but one thing everyone seems to agree on is that we are too dependent on consumer spending. While that worked great for so long, easy money/credit is no longer available. That dries up consumer spending and everything comes down to earth with a thud.

I don’t know if US economy will ever move away from that focus on consumer spending, but I find it interesting how much the consumer is tempted to spend more and more. Here is an example.

My daughter goes to kindergarten. As with most 5 year olds, she loves reading books (or being read to). Yesterday, she came home with a sheet of paper from her school – it’s basically an “offer” to encourage kids to read, in partnership with Six Flags theme park. It goes like this: she has to read books for at least 500 minutes over the next 5 weeks or so. In return she would get a free entrance ticket to Six Flags theme park next summer.

Sounds like a good deal, right? She reads more and she gets a nice present. Well, the catch is, being a 5 year old, she can’t go to the theme park alone. An adult needs to accompany her. Given how we like to do things together as a family, that’s 3 extra tickets to buy! Since they don’t allow outside food to be brought into theme parks, we will end up spending exorbitant money for some lousy sandwiches and french fries there. Besides, the nearest Six Flags theme park for me is about 70 miles from my home; so think of all that extra driving and carbon emissions!

What’s really happening here is that Six Flags theme park is trying to make people spend money that they otherwise wouldn’t have. Everybody gets a cut in that extra spending – the theme park guys, the restaurant guys, the oil company guys, and so on. The schools play a willing partner in this because kids may read more (and who knows, they might be getting a cut too). A nice business strategy that supposedly has a positive effect on school kids.

So what am I complaining about here? After all, I would be helping my kid read more. Besides, I would be doing my bit to lift US economy out of the hole by spending money. Ironic indeed - we got into that hole because we spend way more than we can afford in the first place!

This is just an example of how much people are "encouraged" to spend here, even on borrowed money. I am not saying you should save it all and never spend a penny, but the balance is so heavily tilted towards spending here - you can't help but wonder what's happening with US economy right now is probably inevitable.