I experimented today and while browsing through four or five recipes online, I made myself some delicious (and certainly healthy) Vegetable Pasties! The filling included garlic cloves, onions, carrots, broccoli, mozzarella cheese, mushrooms, pine nuts and broccoli. I also added half of a delicious turnip (which looked a bit sketch in the store) having learned that it's quite healthy for the body. Despite having some trouble with making the dough and using my water bottle as a rolling pin, they turned out perfect. Even better with yogurt. Best part of it was that I enjoyed the making and experimenting...something I will get to at the end of this post.
Two things I learned today, one is a fact about our Congressional leaders and the other is about a certain man.
I was watching a clip of CNN's Jack Cafferty calling Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a "horrible woman". The insult was related to how she refused to disclose exactly how much money hundreds of thousands of dollars was spent on governmental employees and family to go to the Copenhagen Summit and then stay in nice hotels (such as the Marriott). In the clip, Cafferty is outraged at the amount spent while Americans are suffering from the continuing recession. A sentiment that I can understand, especially considering how little was achieved at the Summit. This bit of information about Cafferty and Pelosi however wasn't really what struck me today. It was the information I learned when I stopped the video to google the number of millionaires in Congress.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, as reported by the Wall Street Journal Post, there are 237 millionaires in Congress--roughly 45% of them. That says something about us as voters, about our system, about our leaders and even about the policy that is made. Here are some questions to mull over:
How representative are these representatives?
Is it good to have a political system that overwhelmingly prefers the wealthy?
Is it good to have politicians who are so heavily vested and interested in being wealthy, as leaders?
This last question may seem confusing to some of you. You might think: "Doesn't everyone want to be wealthy?"
I think many if not most of us wouldn't mind having money and definitely wouldn't mind having a lot of it. But there are some of us who do things and are motivated in life by things totally unrelated to wealth. Many doctors, I'm sure, become doctors to help cure diseases and save lives. Some are motivated by the promises of huge salaries but I would wager that a good deal of them are in it to help others and not themselves. And that's just one profession. There are millions of people involved in the healthcare industry that are motivated by a desire to help the sick--nurses and researchers for example. Healthcare isn't the only industry that you can find people with this foremost sentiment and desire to help people. It is a profession that is identified here in the states as decidedly American: the Inventor.
When one thinks of "inventors" our minds jump to several different places--Edison, the Wright Brothers or George Washington Carver. We hardly ever think of the man Nikola Tesla. Unfortunately for Tesla he was unlike Edison. Tesla was not particularly concerned with patenting his ideas and inventions, he wasn't that all interested in making money. The man undersold the royalties for what patents he patented (which weren't even close to the great number of things on his mind) and was way ahead of his time. Tesla invented and contributed to such modern fields of robotics, remote control, radar, computer science (for those of you who didn't read the wikipedia article, I'm borrowing text at the moment), ballistics, theoretical and nuclear physics, vacuum tube, x-ray. Many of his inventions are still in use (compared to those of Edison's who have become outdated) such as the alternating current "AC" electrical power and the Radio and something even more modern Wireless Energy. Tesla unsuccessfully sought to build theWardenclyffe Tower that would essentially guarantee instant communication and free wireless electricity. These two products combined with a number of Tesla's other inventions would bring about something Tesla called, "The World System". The World System would be essentially something like the Internet, except better. It would be able to provide wireless electricity to your lights in your house, to allowing the flight and remote controlling of a blimp, to the transmission of morse, audio and television. What stopped Tesla? Investors and money. The main financial supporter of the construction of the Wardenclyffe Tower was the renown J. P. Morgan. who pulled out of the project (and encouraged others to do so as well) upon learning that electricity would be provided to everyone for free.
So what's my point?
Greed has and will only gets mankind so far. Benevolent, voluntary work, I believe, is what really drives progress and what can continue to drive progress into the future.
If we required all elected Congressmembers to give up 90% of their savings, how many individuals would run for office? Would that actually weed out the individuals who are in it for the power and wealth? Would that drive down the costs of campaigns and make politicians more honest?
What about the private sector? Who are the Nikola Tesla's of our time? What developmental organizations are there out there that are devoted primarily to advancing mankind over the next shareholder's meeting? Is such an organization possible?
Always more questions.
Sincerely,
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