Month: August 2015

An Illinois Voter’s Pulse on Election Day (November 2, 2010)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

I live in the State of Illinois, where today we’ll be electing a Governor and a brand new Senator, among other offices. Though he has been gone from the Prairie State electoral canvass for over two years now, this voting day is still somewhat of a referendum on deposed former Governor, Rod Blagojevich and the dispiriting legacy he left in his wake.

In the Governor’s race, citizens have a choice between Pat Quinn, the former Lieutenant Governor for the Blago administration, who has served half a term since Roddy Boy was given the boot. Although not a perfect lawmaker by any stretch, Quinn has suffered from two major flaws: a lack of scintillating personality and the bad luck to have been the person to inherit an economic meltdown, immediately after the Illinois State legislature voted to eject Blago. In the same way I feel that President Obama has been curiously blamed for prolonged economic pains that were not his doing, Quinn seems to have paralleled Barack in microcosm.

Illinois, now officially the most bankrupt State in the Union, was well on its way to being so before Pat Quinn took the reins. However his Republican opponent for the Governor’s mansion, State Senator Bill Brady, will not have any of that – if one assesses the situation by looking at his ads. Senator Brady is fond of highlighting the statistic that Quinn has retained “75% of Blago appointees,” a thinly veiled suggestion that Rod and Pat are chums and bedfellows who have celebrated the continuity of corruption in Illinois. The problem with that assertion is that for most of Blagojevich’s term and a half, the two men were barely on speaking terms. I think “frenemies” is what the kids are calling it these days. The suggestion that Quinn’s failure to clean house and fire everyone the moment he took office means he and Rod are ideological cousins is a stretch at best.

Furthermore, one of Bill Brady’s most treasured sound bites is his claim to be an “optimist. We are facing tough times, but I’ve always believed in America and the people of Illinois. Together, we’ll make a clean break from the past and grow jobs here.” That sounds wonderful, but how exactly? What is your plan Senator Brady?

Don’t look to the candidates website for clarification:

“The four cornerstones of the Brady Better Illinois: Jobs Plan begin with the fundamentals:

•Create a stable tax climate to help jumpstart the economy
•Engage in long-term strategic planning
•Create a fair playing field to once again make Illinois competitive
•Restore accountability and transparency to the state budget process”

I think I speak for many of us when I say that the only thing more unspecific than this plan is Charlie Sheen’s diagram for getting his cocaine and booze soaked life together.

So clearly, we know I voted for the Governor’s seat in Illinois. However, the race to replace outgoing Senator, and further Blagojevich collateral damage, Roland Burris, was not as simple as it might seem for a Lefty like myself.

Clearly, I would not be using the touch screen ballot to select Mark Kirk, the Republican candidate and five term Congressman, who been caught lying about everything this campaign season. Kirk had said he won the Navy’s “Intelligence Officer of the Year” award, which he didn’t. He said he was fired upon the last time he visited Iraq. Nope. Did he learn nothing from Hilary Clinton? He said he served in Operation Desert Storm when he was in actuality a reservist in Maryland. Even his civilian biography proved to be full of half truths. Kirk has frequently spoken about his time as a nursery school teacher, a huge former campaign talking point. Turns out he was just a work-study student from Cornell.

And the funny thing is, given the weakness of Kirk’s competition, Democratic nominee Alexi Giannoulias, the Congressman had no need to embellish his record. Alexi, as my friend Tim so eloquently put it, “has failed at everything he tried.” This hardly speaks to one’s ability to make sober and reasoned decisions for the state. The 34 year-old current State Treasurer (we’re bankrupt) and former BFF of Barack Obama (until the April failure of his family’s Broadway Bank created tension) is hardly qualified to be a Boy Scout Troop Leader, let alone a man in charge of advocating for the American people.

So as I entered the ballot booth early this afternoon, absolutely despising both candidates in this contest, wishing not for the first time that the two party system would provide us more palatable options, I made a snap decision: LeAlan Jones, the Green party nominee.

The former NPR documentarian, just 13 years-old at the time of his honest portrayal of life on Chicago’s south side, Ghetto Life 101, managed to impress me more with this one accomplishment, than anything I have seen out of Kirk or Giannoulias. Republican voters have long ago written me off, and my fellow Democrats might tell me I wasted a vote. No I didn’t. I am sending a one person message to both parties in this politically scarred state to get serious and send me some real candidates. In the meantime, I wish Jones, a linebackers coach at Chicago’s Simeon Career Academy, the upset of a lifetime.

Good Luck Jon and Stephen! (October 30, 2010)

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Stewart_Colbert

It’s a big political day today, sort of like a Super Bowl for the Washington set.

In this corner, we have President Obama, returning to my hometown of Chicago for the first rally in the Windy City since the historic evening in November of 2008 when he became America’s only President of color. My husband and I were fortunate enough to be at Grant Park that night, and no matter how the administration rates now, nothing can ever take away from the emotional significance of that evening. I am often critical of the Commander-in-Chief, but he is a gifted and moving speaker. The rally, “Moving America Forward” is part of a series being held as the President attempts to boost the flagging morale of the Left, encouraging them to get to the polls on November 2nd. “Just Say No to the GOP” and all that. The stakes are high.

If it is possible to upstage the party of a sitting President (and it apparently is), Comedy Central hosts and comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are holding their own “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” on the Washington Mall in the nation’s Capitol this afternoon. The event, which will begin any minute now, is a deadly serious tongue-in-cheek answer to conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s late August “Restore Honor” rally, which was attended by over 87,000. Many liberals, and quite a few centrists, objected to the timing of Beck’s call-to-arms, which also happened to be the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Stewart’s soiree, per the organizational website, has but one mission: “We’re looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn’t be the only ones that get heard.”

Further: ” Ours is a rally for the people who’ve been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs) — not so much the Silent Majority as the Busy Majority. If we had to sum up the political view of our participants in a single sentence… we couldn’t. That’s sort of the point.”

A rally for good old fashioned, hard working, common sense. How can I not get behind that? In some ways I am sorry it takes two men who get paid to crack jokes on a cable channel to organize a visible response to the caterwauling of the extreme Right, but whatever works. Break a leg guys!

How the Internet Saved Me From Myself (October 28, 2010)

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heart-internet-love

I am old enough to remember the days before the Internet and it’s offspring – blogs, streaming video, chat, porn – beguiled us so. My grade school and high school reports were researched at home via Encyclopedia Britannica, or else I had to go to the library for more sources. But when I was 14 years old, I spent a lot of time at the much cooler home of my best friend Jesika, part of a family of “early adopters.” They were among the first to sign up for Prodigy Internet service, and when I first “surfed” this archaic version of the Net, my mind was blown. You mean we could talk to boys from other states without attracting parental attention? Sign me up!

My Internet savvy and uses evolved somewhat as I entered college at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. In the Fall of 1996, I created my very first email account at this always technologically progressive institution. I registered for classes online. I still didn’t have a computer of my own, instead making use of my roommate’s old fashioned word processor when facing a deadline and there were too many bodies in the computer lab. There was no Google yet so attempts to search for information meant using one of the earlier search engine prototypes, which yielded an undifferentiated, cluttered looking bag of mixed results.

I thought the Internet could be a timesaver in some cases, a novelty in others, but I couldn’t foresee then that the invention would mean anything more than that to me. I was, and remain, an analog book lover, a person who writes in a bound journal every other day and exchanges old fashioned letters written on stationary.

But then a little gnawing voice that I attempted to ignore for most of my life, but grew progressively louder as I entered my 30s, started yelling at me to stop denying that I had to write. I am nothing if not practical, and I knew that the profession of authorship, like music, dance and acting, bore a success rate of approximately 0.1% So I went about the business of trying to be a corporate success, continuing to fail miserably, wondering why I couldn’t get myself to play the game, until, exhausted by all the efforts to normalize, I had to face the truth. I am a writer – come what may.

And this is when I realized that the World Wide Web is the best thing that ever happened to me. At best, the Internet is a source of endless information located at the punch of a few keystrokes. At worst, it is a way for the socially awkward to distract themselves, tune out from the real world and avoid human interaction. I say this is a terrible phenomenon because in the wrong hands, Internet addiction can deprive one of a meaningful life.

But for me this covert method of demonstrating perceived talent without actually having to look anyone in the eye has been a godsend. I am a bit of a conundrum. I am quite outgoing, gregarious and sometimes even charming in a room full of people with whom I already feel a safe connection. At other moments, in a space full of strangers, I give off the impression of having Asperger’s Syndrome: stiff, silent, nervous, drinking too much to try to overcome my discomfort, certainly not the confident smart aleck I appear to be with my inner circle.

This tendency to become a hot mess in new social situations goes to another level if I am on the spot professionally: giving a presentation, accepting an award or even talking about a subject anywhere close to my heart. I look down, get teary eyed, and my hands start to shake. Can you just imagine me trying to pitch a book? It all of course comes down to insecurity. Without the Internet, and its cousin, email, I may never have had the balls to put myself out there at all.

Because what I can’t bring myself to do in person, for fear of rejection, failure or just plain old looking stupid, I can do with rehearsed, unemotional confidence over the computer. The first time I reached out to the Editor-in-Chief of a local Chicago paper, the first publication to take a chance on me, my palms were sweaty. I felt faint and almost certain my offer to write a story would be shot down. But Suzanne didn’t see any of this. What hit her inbox was the thoughtfully worded, calm and professional request to throw me a feature. I nearly fainted with shock and fear when I received an affirmative reply a few days later, but again, Suzanne was not privy to that response. My practiced, “Thank you, I look forward to meeting your deadline” allowed no hint of neuroticism.

With very few exceptions, all of my writing has been for the web, that first print feature notwithstanding. On the page of this blog, I put myself out there, dare to inscribe things I often can’t say to myself. It has made me a better writer. The ability to hide behind my terminal has paradoxically done more for the real “me” than anything else. Some of the topics I have addressed in my work have opened up much needed, and often delayed conversations in my personal life. What can I say? I am better behind a keyboard than in a room – everytime.

I know I need to work on the interpersonal part of my game. I can’t simply flee when asked to have an adult conversation with a stranger who may or may not have some decision making power over my career. But for today, I am grateful for the opportunity to share my insecurities with a larger potential audience than I might otherwise have allowed myself to experience. In person, I trip over my own self-deprecation before giving others the chance to point out my flaws. Online, clad in sweats from the comfort of my home office, I am a confident, more risk taking Becky.

Hey You! Get Off of My Head (October 26, 2010)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Woman’s Head Stepped on by Rand Paul Supporters
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_kentucky_senate_scuffle

My friends, even in this most wacky of mid-term election campaign cycles, that is just not a headline one encounters everyday. As I woke up this morning, booted up the computer and perused my Yahoo home page, this story naturally caught my attention.

Rand Paul, as we all know by now, is the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate race in Kentucky. The political newbie and practicing ophthalmologist won his party’s nomination in May of this year, riding a wave of anti-incumbent sentiment and sudden Tea Party relevance. Paul’s father, Republican congressmen and Presidential also ran, Ron Paul, endorsed his son’s candidacy early on, a bid to replace beleaguered Republican Kentucky senator Jim Bunning. That blessing and the backing of the suddenly powerful Tea Party machine, has been enough to propel Rand to a reported 15-point lead over Democratic opponent Jack Conway.

But it hasn’t all been a smooth ride for populist poster boy Rand Paul. On May 19th the candidate famously ran afoul of enlightened people when he stated that had he been a senator during 1960s, he would have raised some questions on the constitutionality of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits private businesses who provide public accommodations from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, or national origin against their customers. Paul argued that this title infringes upon constitutional freedoms. The would be senator got his first lesson in public backpedaling when the inevitable firestorm ensued.

And now this. The article above reports that “Lauren Valle of liberal group MoveOn.org, told Louisville station WDRB she was trying to give Paul a fake award when his supporters took her to the ground.

Television footage shows Valle’s blonde wig being pulled off before she’s pinned to ground. A man then puts his foot down on her head. Valle said the incident left her with ‘a bit of a headache.'”

Once I got done unclutching my abdomen after a full few minutes mirth, I became a little concerned about the members of the Rand Paul security team. During a campaign season of unparalleled hubris, have these folks gotten themselves confused with the Secret Service? What right did they have to get between a non-violent citizen and the candidate she peacefully opposes? This is downright undemocratic, although as we witnessed in last week’s firing of NPR commentator Juan Williams, the room for honest, diplomatic discourse grows ever smaller on both side of the aisle.

If you watch this video of the melee, it’s actually a little disturbing. The head stomper in question knew this maneuver was unnecessary. The slight Valle was already restrained on the ground. This is not Iran people.

Immigration Frustration (October 22, 2010)

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immigration

Three years of marriage, countless forms and $4,500 in legal fees later, my husband Eddie and I are still in the process of trying to secure his final, “unrestricted” green card. My husband immigrated from India in 2002, a 22 year-old man with an undergraduate degree in Information Systems earned on a satellite campus of the University of Hertfordshire, England at New Delhi.

When he deplaned at JFK airport in New York, with nothing more than two suitcases and a couple hundred bucks in his pocket, Eddie had already done the hard work of completing the TOEFL, the GRE and countless other acronym tests to gain acceptance to the New Jersey Institute of Technology. There he completed his Master’s in Information Systems while working two jobs: one as a weekend bus boy at a local Indian restaurant, and a second as a day laborer in a mattress warehouse. He came to this country honestly and legally, devoting every bit of his energy to survival and study. After his matriculation, he took a job from what he and his counterparts label a technology “body shop,” a company that pays immigrant workers low wages for long hours in exchange for helping them file a H1-B, a worker’s visa.

New York Times financial columnist Paul Krugman, and a number of other economic experts now argue that Eddie, and so many skilled immigrant workers like him, should have received a permanent green card as a graduation gift upon exiting the doors of NJIT. After all, what is the point of U.S. educational institutions training people like my husband, only to send them away afterward? That is no way to make America a stronger global competitor. In a period of mass unemployment, we find ourselves in the curious position of not having enough skilled technical workers. Wouldn’t it make sense to try to hold onto the ones already living and working within our borders?

But you know what else doesn’t make sense? Making that same person and their U.S. citizen spouse jump through years of legal hoops and costs to prove that their love match is in fact, real. Because you see, although his company at the time was more than willing, it was I, who had apparently watched the Gerard Depardieu/Andie McDowell cinema classicGreen Card a few times too many, that convinced him that filing for permanent legal residence via our marriage would be more expedient.

We sought the advice of a reputable immigration attorney before we walked down the aisle (or around the fire seven times, but you know what I mean). So ok, there was a lot to compile: marriage license, our first joint tax return, bills, transcripts of letters written in our dating life, photos, mementos – a bevy of personal treasure that demonstrated our ties together. But again, I had seen the movie and was ready for the paperwork, the invasive hearing, the whole shebang. It always felt ironic that I was, in effect, “sponsoring” someone with more accomplishments and three times more earning power than I would ever know, but procedures must be followed. We’d be laughing about all of it in six months right?

Wrong. Despite having impeccable documentation, and notwithstanding Eddie’s easy pass of his immigration physical and biometrics appointment (fingerprinting and retina scan), it took a full year to be granted our interview. Alright, we told ourselves, a number of marriages today begin and end within a year’s time. It was just another way to weed out fraud. Good thinking America! Across the globe, the prospect of a U.S. green card is still an attractive enticement, and as such, malfeasance abounds. We knew our marriage was a love match, so why fret?

Our hearing was held in a downtown Chicago office in January of 2009. Shortly thereafter, we were informed by letter that Eddie had been approved….but with “restrictions,” a new initiative that neither of us had heard of before. At the time we were told by our lawyer that this was “routine, no big deal.” In two years we would fill out a simple form verifying that our marriage hadn’t disintegrated, and the restrictions would be removed.

So last month, the time came to complete the petition to have the restrictions removed. And guess what? This process is anything but regular. Instead it feels like time wasting deja vu. Eddie was running around like a chicken with his head cut off for a full week gathering (you guessed it) pay stubs, utilities, tax returns, more photos, etc. The “routine” form was in fact a thick stack of paperwork that cost us another $1200 to file (on top of the $3300 we spent in 2007).

What’s more, though Immigration already has Eddie’s medical records, fingerprints and retina scan, he has been told that another set will be required. Any day now, he will receive a notice for an unchangeable appointment to report once more for guinea pig duty. In big, bold print, this notification will declare that failure to make oneself available for the call could result in a “change” to immigration status. Not at all ominous, right?

It is very fortunate for my husband and I that we have the necessary resources to get through this drawn out process, but what about the newly married couples that don’t? To Eddie’s credit, it is he who is keeping his cool and going through each step like a champ. I on the other hand, am starting to get angry. I am a U.S. citizen and have the entitlement to marry anyone non-criminal I choose. It’s written right there in the Constitution within my right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Why doesn’t the government make it any easier and more cost effective, for me to be with the person I wed?

I found myself wondering yesterday, and not for the first time, why anyone bothers to come to this country anymore. Is it worth it? What do these people get in return for running the hamster wheel, not to mention the lost years and thousands of dollars? Repeated invasion of privacy and insinuations that you are your spouse are out to scam the government in exchange for what? A 10% unemployment rate and no voting privileges? I’m over the arrogance.