maven&meddler

The weekend was wonderful. We drove over to the Bay Area on Friday, to attend the graduation of my step-daughter. She received her graduate degree in Organizational Development from the University of San Francisco. The chapel at USF, where the ceremonies were held, is simply one of the most beautiful buildings imaginable. Not only that, but guess who else received a degree that night? How about Craig Newmark - the founder of Craigslist. (in green robes, seated, front)  Really!

I admire anybody who slogs through a graduate degree. It’s been a tough couple years - working full time in a demanding executive level position with a large company, going to school and maintaining some semblance of a family and social life. I’m especially proud of our girl - woman, actually.

Here she is with a proud papa -

Now, she can get down to planning a wedding for this coming summer.

The Maven family has made another step into the modern world with the acquisition of our first iphone over the weekend. We’d put it off since it seemed like it was just too expensive, and perhaps a nice toy. Fiddling around with the iphones of friends and relatives, however, we’re beginning to understand just how indespensible they are. I’m going to sell a Garmin gps we had for the car. The iphone is far better for that function as well as many others.

We did get a screaming deal on it. By signing up for ATT U-verse (which has only just now become available in our neighborhood) we got a $200 rebate (pays for the cost of the iphone) and they managed to reduced our current bundled bill by $30 per month (pays for the basic data plan). All we were left with was the extra $10 per month for the GPS function. Not too shabby.

Mr. Maven is starting to see the light (“you mean I can get my stock quotes anytime?”) and will be eligible for his in March.

This is why it’s always a good thing to hang with the younger folks. They keep us up with the technology, and it keeps our relationships with them vibrant and relevant.

I didn’t try very hard to keep up with the news of the day over the weekend, but it was hard to miss the fact that we’ve been let down as a nation on healthcare reform.

There are so many reasons that this legislation is a non-starter that it’s discouraging to list it all again and again. I don’t agree with those who say to junk it and start over. I guess that I’d feel guilty depriving those few million that might actually benefit from this legislative carcass that got picked clean by the insurance and big pharma lobbys - in addition to the teabaggers and Blue Dogs.

This failure points to far more serious, underlying problems with our entire system of governance. We are so tied to corporate lobbying money that we can’t do what’s right anymore. That doesn’t bode well for the future of this country. Money has taken the place of backbone.

You don’t have to look far to see that the same problems are undermining any real reforms in the financial services and banking industry and more.

At the end of the day, I don’t want to see Sen. Harry Reid take the fall on this, although I do believe he could have done more, too.

How many times, though, do people like Reid need to have their extended hand bitten off by the Republican party of “whatever you want, we’re against it” before they just go ahead and throw caution to the wind and get ‘er done?

I have a life to live despite all this. And to do that, I’ll have to tell myself (and hope I can swallow it) that whatever we end up with after conference committee, will provide a foundation for future reform - providing we should all live so long.

It just didn’t need to be this way. Medicare for all would have been too simple.

Well, that’s about it for now. The kids will be driving over on Wednesday for the weekend. We’ll be having Christmas dinner here - in spite of my Scrooge leanings, I still like to cook dinner on Christmas. There’ll also be a little party on Wednesday night.

That ought to keep us busy.

Cheers.

Maven.