the alley Newspaper | News & Views of Phillips Since 1976

Efficiency Be Damned

Written by the alley on 01 April 2025

from the series Peace House Community Journal

By Marti Maltby

Like many people, I have watched Elon Musk’s dismantling of the federal government with everything from bemusement to unspeakable foreboding.

The bemusement comes from Musk’s own claims that he is making the government more efficient. If that was the real intent of the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk would be the equivalent of the kid whose dad throws him into a deep lake to teach him to swim. He flails around a lot but doesn’t accomplish much, and eventually he sinks out of sight. Musk has made many claims about how much he is saving the government, but the claims are not believable in the slightest.

Compare Musk’s approach to the investigation into Feeding Our Future, an organization that fraudulently billed the government for $250 million. The investigation required numerous investigators, working for years, to bring charges against hundreds of individuals. By contrast, Musk claims to have uncovered billions of dollars in fraud in a couple of days. His pronouncements are difficult to believe considering how complex most government programs are. Just learning how a single program works would take Musk quite some time. Learning how entire departments work, reviewing their files, and ending the waste in mere days is beyond his (or anyone else’s) capabilities.… Read the rest “Efficiency Be Damned”

August and Charlotte Swedenborg Lose Three Children to Contagious Diseases

Written by the alley on 01 April 2025

233rd in the series Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery

By SUE HUNTER WEIR

“Our need will be the real creator.”*
Plato, 380 BC

August William Swedenborg was 16 years old when he arrived in America. He was born in Sweden on October 20, 1855. Before moving to Minneapolis, he briefly lived in Chautauqua, New York and Titusville, Pennsylvania. On June 3, 1877, he married Charlotte Scruf. Over the course of the next 17 years, Charlotte gave birth to eleven children. Three of those children died young from highly contagious diseases.
Mina Anna Swedenborg (A. M. Swedenborg in the Cemetery’s records) died on March 13, 1881, from diphtheria. She is one of 923 people buried in the Cemetery, most of them children, who died from that disease. And that number includes only those buried in our Cemetery. In the 1800s, one out of every seven deaths was caused by diphtheria. That began to change in 1926 when a vaccine first became available.

Annie Elizabeth Swedenborg was one year and 20 days old when she died from measles and pneumonia on June 28, 1887. Measles was the official cause of death for140 people buried in the Cemetery; 131 of them are children under the age of five.… Read the rest “August and Charlotte Swedenborg Lose Three Children to Contagious Diseases”