Gene Chapman
(Address Edited)November 2, 2011
(Edit)
Dear (Edit):
Thank you for your recent correspondence of this past week on the phone contract issue with Verizon.
As a Gandhian, I am obliged to contemplate the highest truth and the highest solution in all matters. When I worked to push for new hours of service regulations within the trucking industry with House Majority Leader Dick Armey (edit), Senator Phil Gramm and Texas Governor George W. Bush in the early 2000's, I was amazed at how many trucking executives would look me in the eye over breakfast or in some other setting and discount the lives of your and my family in the name of profits. They would say, "Well, a certain amount of people have to die," and that I should focus my resources on more important things. We know now that 210 lives are saved each year because of the new hours of service regulations that went into effect under President George W. Bush in January, 2004 (over 1,600 lives saved to date).
While I suppose the issues discussed in the enclosed letter from the Verizon executive will not kill anybody, I know that when we seek less than the highest truth, we impoverish the world. When we accept less than that voice of logic and reason that speaks to us in the stillness of the night to a calm place in the center of our stomach, while the cow bells that surround truth are silenced, we open the door to great inequities and a world of disarray.
Clearly, a fourteen (14) day contract evaluation period is insufficient time for a person to know how a phone contract will impact them, when the first bill is thirty (30) days away and no concrete facts have been presented to the customer concerning taxes, etc. before the thirty (30) days. Perhaps Verizon should be asked to provide a lawyer to each client?
If we are to be the best world we can be, the executives in it will have to address the highest truths and the highest solutions available from that benevolent Spirit of the Universe that is both math-centric and truth-centric. Anything less will leave the world a filthy mess.
Most respectfully,
Dear (Edit):
Thank you for your recent correspondence of this past week on the phone contract issue with Verizon.
As a Gandhian, I am obliged to contemplate the highest truth and the highest solution in all matters. When I worked to push for new hours of service regulations within the trucking industry with House Majority Leader Dick Armey (edit), Senator Phil Gramm and Texas Governor George W. Bush in the early 2000's, I was amazed at how many trucking executives would look me in the eye over breakfast or in some other setting and discount the lives of your and my family in the name of profits. They would say, "Well, a certain amount of people have to die," and that I should focus my resources on more important things. We know now that 210 lives are saved each year because of the new hours of service regulations that went into effect under President George W. Bush in January, 2004 (over 1,600 lives saved to date).
While I suppose the issues discussed in the enclosed letter from the Verizon executive will not kill anybody, I know that when we seek less than the highest truth, we impoverish the world. When we accept less than that voice of logic and reason that speaks to us in the stillness of the night to a calm place in the center of our stomach, while the cow bells that surround truth are silenced, we open the door to great inequities and a world of disarray.
Clearly, a fourteen (14) day contract evaluation period is insufficient time for a person to know how a phone contract will impact them, when the first bill is thirty (30) days away and no concrete facts have been presented to the customer concerning taxes, etc. before the thirty (30) days. Perhaps Verizon should be asked to provide a lawyer to each client?
If we are to be the best world we can be, the executives in it will have to address the highest truths and the highest solutions available from that benevolent Spirit of the Universe that is both math-centric and truth-centric. Anything less will leave the world a filthy mess.
Most respectfully,
Gene Chapman
