I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend…and recalls what Memorial Day is all about. I'll borrow from WikiPedia to summarize it's meaning.
Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday which occurs every year on the final Monday of May.[1]Memorial Day is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.[2] Formerly known as Decoration Day, it originated after the American Civil War to commemorate the Union and Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. By the 20th century Memorial Day had been extended to honor all Americans who have died while in the military service[3]. It typically marks the start of the summer vacation season, while Labor Day marks its end.
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WOUNDED WARRIORS NEED TO BE REMEMBERED TOO--AND HELPED
I don't need to write more, because the link above connects to far more and better messages than I can deliver here. You see, it is no longer just those who lose their lives in war-time. We must honor, remember and help those who lost pieces of their lives, of their bodies and of their psyche to the horrors of war. The fine movie of a couple years ago, THE HURT LOCKER gave just one tiny glimpse into how they suffer and the brutal outcomes. These are mostly young people who sacrifice so we can enjoy the wonderful lifestyle we have.
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PRIZED POSSESSIONS?
One veteran shared with me his most prized possessions during his stint in Iraq: his camp stool (so he didn't have to sit in the sand) and his bucket (so he could have a little water nearby to wipe his face, and try to remove the ever-present sand and grime). What are your most prized possessions?
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THESE RETURNING FROM THE SERVICE NEED HELP WITH JOBS TOO
I know readers realize how tough it is for young people to find jobs these days. How about those people who suspended their normal life to go defend our freedoms and serve our country. They come back with a resume that must contain some unfamiliar skills for prospective employers to consider. Perhaps they should list sacrifice, heroism, honor, duty, loyalty and bravery. I'm not sure the exact job that qualifies them for, but I suspect they can use those traits in almost any responsible position. They just need time to learn the work, and have the chance to perform.
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THE POLITICAL CHALLENGE OF OPPOSING IDEAS--A LITMUS TEST FOR ELECTED OFFICIALS?
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BENGHAZI COVER-UP, IRS TEA PARTY TARGETING & ELECTION INFLUENCE, AP SEARCHES FOR COVERUP, FOX NEW REPORTER "AIDED AND ABETTED?"
And that is just in the past few weeks news cycle and since last year's pre-election news dump and manipulation. Can you imagine a more frightening array of government over-reach, deception, interference and downright intimidation. I am afraid to write freely any more, because I fear making it onto the "enemies list!"
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DEMOCRATS DIGITAL DOMINATION AND GET OUT THE VOTE TACTICS
If you don't know what "Inside the Cave" is all about, read up on it. If this doesn't concern you, I'd be surprised.
HERE IS HOW THE CAMPAIGNS AND OUTCOMES OF ELECTIONS IN THE RECENT PAST AND IN THE FUTURE, ARE FOREVER DIFFERENT.
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FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED
If we do nothing different, the outcomes will not change either. To put it another way, "If nothing changes, nothing will change," or the definition of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."
CELEBRATE THIS MEMORIAL DAY, AND REMEMBER WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT
THEN GO MAKE A DIFFERENCE, IN WHICHEVER WAY YOU PREFER. BUT DON'T DO NOTHING--OR JUST "GRIPE ABOUT THINGS."
THE AMERICAN WAY IS TO TAKE ACTION…IF NOT YOU, WHO; AND IF NOT NOW, WHEN?
Ladies and Gentlemen I Give You The Illusionist, Barack Obama!
BY JOHN MARIOTTI
Many would say that the magician is the ultimate liar. His illusions are deceptive arts of the highest skill–but they seldom portray the truth of what is happening. These illusions are, in effect, grandly produced lies. When the magician wishes to perform one of his lies of legerdemain, he must distract the audience from what he is actually doing by doing something more grandiose so they won’t notice his real trickery.
Thus, he flourishes and gestures, drawing the eyes of the audience away from his real deception. The term used to describe the deceptive motion is misdirection. Boxers use feints; baseball pitchers use off speed pitches; football players step one way, but then pull the leg back and cut the other way; basketball players use head fakes, or ball fakes. The President of the United States may have honed his craft on the basketball court or on the streets of Chicago, but wherever he learned it, he is a master of misdirection.
This misdirection has never been on display more than in recent weeks. He released a vast treasure trove of US technology to the public not long ago. But why dump this valuable information into public use, and why now? It was an act of misdirection, to reinforce how transparent his administration is, all the while withholding realms of documents on more sensitive matters (like Benghazi?).
The IRS shocking misbehavior, targeting Tea Party and conservative organizations started back prior to the 2012 election. It was done to harass, slow down, and disable Obama’s opponents, and amazing as it seems, went largely undetected. Why? There were multiple misdirection efforts buried in his campaign, most of them blatantly untrue ads about his opponent, that drew attention away from the much more serious IRS misadventures already underway.
Now the election is over and The Illusionist succeeded in fooling the American voting public once again. He told them the economy was recovering, when it clearly wasn’t, but the grandiosity with which he repeated those lies convinced many that they were true. Now, after stalling the Benghazi coverup with the “fog of war” claims, until the election was past, it is becoming increasingly clear that al-Qaeda and/or some related Islamic terrorist groups were the culprits. When the truth starts coming out, more misdirection, subterfuge, and illusions are always needed.
Enter the IRS’ criminal behavior, about which President Obama can sound righteously outraged and claim no knowledge. Really? This IRS escapade started over two years ago, so it is inconceivable that a control freak like Obama would not know of it. Add another misdirection, the disclosure of the AP press fiasco, which was precipitated by his own insiders leaking information to the media. Once again, Obama is shocked! Who knew about this? Not him; not The Illusionist.
Both the IRS and AP issues were revealed openly by the government – Barack Obama’s government! And, guess what? The timing was just right to draw attention away from Benghazi coverup facts being exposed by authoritative whistleblowers. Now, after many months, it becomes simple for The Illusionist to step up to his stage and begin yet another performance.
First, Obama fires the Acting IRS Commissioner – never once mentioning that his temporary assignment was due to expire in just a few weeks. He never touches the next levels at the IRS,since they were likely his plausibly deniable henchmen! He speaks with great intensity about how bad this IRS behavior was, always distancing himself from the failure, after the fact.
Then he proudly and loudly demands that Congress increase funding for security at embassies. This is another misdirection, a modified rerun of an earlier one, which attempted to place blame for Benghazi on GOP spending cuts. Independent sources and insider testimony both (later) confirmed that no such spending cuts caused the Benghazi attacks to turn deadly.
No matter, because the misdirection worked long enough to move on with the “show.” Release 100 pages of emails about Benghazi, to claim transparency, and hope that no one asks for ten times that many emails that were certainly not released. Misdirection works again. Or has it?
As The Illusionist–President Barack Obama, continues to deceive and either directly or by omission, lie to the American people (always insulated by layers of staff – for plausible deniability) the need for still more misdirection grows. Now that the facts, the number of problems, and the depth of the deception is emerging, even his friends in the media feel betrayed and used.
Perhaps The Illusionist’s continued tricks are becoming too obvious. But fear not–he always has a few more up his sleeve. He might create an international crisis, as in a “Wag the Dog” kind of trick. Or he might resurrect some old campaign dirty tricks, and spread rumors about his foes-usually the GOP. Who knows what–but we know it will be something new.
There seems to be no level too low for this president and his cronies to stoop to maintain the illusion that they are doing the job they were elected to do, when clearly they are not. Obama’s latest move sends a clear message of disdain for objectivity in oversight, as he appoints a 42-year old White House crony “insider” as acting Director of the miscreant IRS, which will also takeover the vast Obamacare personal databases and implementation.
This time the illusion is frightening beyond belief – and it is really happening. The only hope is that the media and Congressional fact-finding will clearly reveal the irresponsible, illegal and unethical behavior of the parties involved, and their leader – The Illusionist, President Barack Obama. Somebody needs to pull back the curtain and expose him for the charlatan he is.
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IF YOU DON'T READ PEGGY NOONAN IN THE WSJ, YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED THIS.
IT IS EXCELLENT--AND SAYS SO MUCH ABOUT THE CURRENT SITUATION
Political abuse of the IRS threatens the basic integrity of our government.
We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they're seeing. The Justice Department assault on the Associated Press and the ugly politicization of the Internal Revenue Service have left the administration's credibility deeply, probably irretrievably damaged. They don't look jerky now, they look dirty. The patina of high-mindedness the president enjoyed is gone. Something big has shifted. The standing of the administration has changed.
As always it comes down to trust. Do you trust the president's answers when he's pressed on an uncomfortable story? Do you trust his people to be sober and fair-minded as they go about their work? Do you trust the IRS and the Justice Department? You do not.s
The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He's shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you.
But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. This is his administration. Those are his executive agencies. He runs the IRS and the Justice Department.
A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town.
The IRS scandal has two parts. The first is the obviously deliberate and targeted abuse, harassment and attempted suppression of conservative groups. The second is the auditing of the taxes of political activists.
In order to suppress conservative groups—at first those with words like "Tea Party" and "Patriot" in their names, then including those that opposed ObamaCare or advanced the Second Amendment—the IRS demanded donor rolls, membership lists, data on all contributions, names of volunteers, the contents of all speeches made by members, Facebook posts, minutes of all meetings, and copies of all materials handed out at gatherings. Among its questions: What are you thinking about? Did you ever think of running for office? Do you ever contact political figures? What are you reading? One group sent what it was reading: the U.S. Constitution.
The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration. The Journal's Kim Strassel reported an Idaho businessman named Frank VanderSloot, who'd donated more than a million dollars to groups supporting Mitt Romney. He found himself last June, for the first time in 30 years, the target of IRS auditors. His wife and his business were also soon audited. Hal Scherz, a Georgia physician, also came to the government's attention. He told ABC News: "It is odd that nothing changed on my tax return and I was never audited until I publicly criticized ObamaCare."
Franklin Graham, son of Billy, told Politico he believes his father was targeted. A conservative Catholic academic who has written for these pages faced questions about her meager freelance writing income. Many of these stories will come out, but not as many as there are. People are not only afraid of being audited, they're afraid of saying they were audited.
All of these IRS actions took place in the years leading up to the 2012 election. They constitute the use of governmental power to intrude on the privacy and shackle the political freedom of American citizens. The purpose, obviously, was to overwhelm and intimidate—to kill the opposition, question by question and audit by audit.
It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. Again, only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even remotely possible that only one IRS office was involved.
Lois Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, was the person who finally acknowledged, under pressure of a looming investigative report, some of what the IRS was doing. She told reporters the actions were the work of "frontline people" in Cincinnati. But other offices were involved, including Washington. It is not even remotely possible the actions were the work of just a few agents. This was more systemic. It was an operation. The word was out: Get the Democratic Party's foes. It is not remotely possible nobody in the IRS knew what was going on until very recently. The Washington Post reported efforts to target the conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency by May 2012—far earlier than the agency had acknowledged. Reuters reported high-level IRS officials, including its chief counsel, knew in August 2011 about the targeting.
The White House is reported to be shellshocked at public reaction to the scandal. But why? Were they so highhanded, so essentially ignorant, that they didn't understand what it would mean to the American people when their IRS—the revenue-collecting arm of the U.S. government—is revealed as a low, ugly and bullying tool of the reigning powers? If they didn't know how Americans would react to that, what did they know? I mean beyond Harvey Weinstein's cellphone number.
And why—in the matters of the Associated Press and Benghazi too—does no one in this administration ever take responsibility? Attorney General Eric Holder doesn't know what happened, exactly who did what. The president speaks in the passive voice. He attempts to act out indignation, but he always seems indignant at only one thing: that he's being questioned at all. That he has to address this. That fate put it on his plate.
We all have our biases. Mine is for a federal government that, for all the partisan shootouts on the streets of Washington, is allowed to go about its work. That it not be distracted by scandal, that political disagreement be, in the end, subsumed to the common good. It is a dangerous world: Calculating people wish to do us harm. In this world no draining, unproductive scandals should dominate the government's life. Independent counsels should not often come in and distract the U.S. government from its essential business.
But that bias does not fit these circumstances.
What happened at the IRS is the government's essential business. The IRS case deserves and calls out for an independent counsel, fully armed with all that position's powers. Only then will stables that badly need to be cleaned, be cleaned. Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if they don't, the politicization of the IRS will continue—forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it isn't stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again.
And it would be shameful and shallow for any Republican operative or operator to make this scandal into a commercial and turn it into a mere partisan arguing point and part of the game. It's not part of the game. This is not about the usual partisan slugfest. This is about the integrity of our system of government and our ability to trust, which is to say our ability to function.
A version of this article appeared May 18, 2013, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: This Is No Ordinary Scandal.
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WHETHER ANYONE WILL EVER GET THE PROOF NEEDED TO PLACE THE BLAME WHERE IT BELONGS….
The bureaucrats at the Internal Revenue Service did exactly what the president said was the right and honorable thing to do
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Was the White House involved in the IRS's targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.
President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an "independent" agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.
Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. "He put a target on our backs, and he's now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?" asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.But that's not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn't need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he'd like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.
Mr. VanderSloot is the Obama target who in 2011 made a sizable donation to a group supporting Mitt Romney. In April 2012, an Obama campaign website named and slurred eight Romney donors. It tarred Mr. VanderSloot as a "wealthy individual" with a "less-than-reputable record." Other donors were described as having been "on the wrong side of the law."
This was the Obama version of the phone call—put out to every government investigator (and liberal activist) in the land.
Twelve days later, a man working for a political opposition-research firm called an Idaho courthouse for Mr. VanderSloot's divorce records. In June, the IRS informed Mr. VanderSloot and his wife of an audit of two years of their taxes. In July, the Department of Labor informed him of an audit of the guest workers on his Idaho cattle ranch. In September, the IRS informed him of a second audit, of one of his businesses. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never been audited before, was subject to three in the four months after Mr. Obama teed him up for such scrutiny.
The last of these audits was only concluded in recent weeks. Not one resulted in a fine or penalty. But Mr. VanderSloot has been waiting more than 20 months for a sizable refund and estimates his legal bills are $80,000. That figure doesn't account for what the president's vilification has done to his business and reputation.
The Obama call for scrutiny wasn't a mistake; it was the president's strategy—one pursued throughout 2012. The way to limit Romney money was to intimidate donors from giving. Donate, and the president would at best tie you to Big Oil or Wall Street, at worst put your name in bold, and flag you as "less than reputable" to everyone who worked for him: the IRS, the SEC, the Justice Department. The president didn't need a telephone; he had a megaphone.
The same threat was made to conservative groups that might dare play in the election. As early as January 2010, Mr. Obama would, in his state of the union address, cast aspersions on the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, claiming that it "reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests" (read conservative groups).
The president derided "tea baggers." Vice President Joe Biden compared them to "terrorists." In more than a dozen speeches Mr. Obama raised the specter that these groups represented nefarious interests that were perverting elections. "Nobody knows who's paying for these ads," he warned. "We don't know where this money is coming from," he intoned.
In case the IRS missed his point, he raised the threat of illegality: "All around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates . . . And they don't have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation."
Short of directly asking federal agencies to investigate these groups, this is as close as it gets. Especially as top congressional Democrats were putting in their own versions of phone calls, sending letters to the IRS that accused it of having "failed to address" the "problem" of groups that were "improperly engaged" in campaigns. Because guess who controls that "independent" agency's budget?
The IRS is easy to demonize, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It got its heading from a president, and his party, who did in fact send it orders—openly, for the world to see. In his Tuesday press grilling, no question agitated White House Press Secretary Jay Carney more than the one that got to the heart of the matter: Given the president's "animosity" toward Citizens United, might he have "appreciated or wanted the IRS to be looking and scrutinizing those . . ." Mr. Carney cut off the reporter with "That's a preposterous assertion."
Preposterous because, according to Mr. Obama, he is "outraged" and "angry" that the IRS looked into the very groups and individuals that he spent years claiming were shady, undemocratic, even lawbreaking. After all, he expects the IRS to "operate with absolute integrity." Even when he does not.
Write to kim@wsj.com.
A version of this article appeared May 17, 2013, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The IRS Scandal Started at the Top.
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THIS IS ALL YOU CAN STAND OF ONE EDITION.
MORE COMING IN THE FUTURE.
BEST, JOHN
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LEADERSHIP IS ESSENTIAL AND OUR COUNTRY IS REELING FROM THE LACK OF IT AT THE HIGHEST OFFICE IN THE LAND!
DO YOU RECALL THE CHILDREN'S TALE, "THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES?"
"The Emperor's New Clothes" is a short tale by Hans Christian Andersen about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!" (from Wikipedia)
For the past 4-1/2 years, Barack Obama has deceived Americans and been aided and abetted by the mainstream media, who consistently admire his "new clothes"--the positions he takes and retakes until they fit the desired outcome--regardless of their goodness or veracity. This week, a series of events exposed Obama not once, but three times, and finally, convinced many of his left-leaning mainstream media acolytes that he truly could not be trusted, and was in fact, "naked!" (Or perhaps, rather his "pride and ambition" was what is "naked.")
The story below first appeared on TheBrennerBrief.com, the fine new blog where I and about 30 others contributed numerous posts. Whether it is 1) the exposure of the lies and deception about the tragic Benghazi incident, 2) the frightening revelation about about the IRS abusing its power to persecute conservative/right leaning organizations, or 3) the alarming incident about a mixture of leaks involving national security--to the Associated Press--and the violation of the rights of this organization and its staff caused by government eavesdropping and spying on them, Obama's new clothes are non-existent now. His "cloak of invisibility and invincibility" are gone.
Consider the other instances of media bullying, such as Bob Woodward disclosed earlier this year, or the ad hoc censorship in major media sites--using "pressure tactics" to get notables such as Jack Welch thrown off the Fortune contributor list. (Disclosure: I met the same fate due an editorial position at Forbes.com. I was too critical of Barack Obama, his hidden history and his misguided policies.
Yet, for his entire time as president, both he and his followers act as if anyone who questions him or doubts his capability, his policies or his honesty are "heretics" (in the old religious sense) and like the case if the Emperor's New Clothes, they are either "unfit, incompetent or stupid." But that's not true, and as time goes on, more and more of Barack Obama's lies are exposed. Recently he forced members of his administration to back up his lies about the sequester by administering it in the most painful, ill-advised way. The Congress called him off the Air Traffic Controller cutbacks, Public outcry challenged his Transportation Security Agency mandates. Any rational person questioned how a 4-5% cut in funding could or should result is 20-25% cuts in staffing or support.
Well, now the Emperor's New Clothes meets Pinocchio!
I’m not a constitutional lawyer, like the occupant of the White House. I am an American citizen, and I take offense when our elected officials and their key staff deceive us and outright lie to us. Whether it’s President Obama, Hillary Clinton, senior State Department staff, or officials inside the Internal Revenue Service, big lies deserve big consequences.
When Bill Clinton was caught in outright lies about his Monica Lewinsky involvement he was impeached, but allowed to remain in office. Now that his wife and her former boss, Barack Obama have topped “Slick Willy’s” prevarications, it is time to take very serious action against all of the perpetrators of a litany of lies and misrepresentations.
Benghazi is just one of this long litany of lies originating in the White House and delivered glibly by a president who parses, dissembles, and on occasion, lies with a calm, convincing demeanor. (Simply Google Obama Lies and choose which list you prefer). Much of the mainstream media have been willing accomplices in this reprehensible behavior. Only a few fact checkers have called out the president and his “misstatements” and untruths.
Press Secretary Jay Carney is similarly fortunate that Pinocchio is a fictional tale. Otherwise, those in the front row of press briefings would be skewered literally by his growing nose. Barack Obama’s omnipresent TelePrompters would be endangered by the presidential proboscis.
Someone – preferable those in Congress who were elected to provide checks and balances in our tripartite form of government need to say, “no mas!” They must pull back the false veil of half-truths, distortions and outright lies, and hold the liars responsible, regardless of their last name or lofty position.
Nothing less is acceptable. If we, and our elected representatives let this immoral, unethical and illegal behavior continue, there is no telling how much more illicit our leadership behavior will become.
I FIRST WROTE THIS FOR FORBES.COM A YEAR AGO…AND I JUST "UPDATED IT" BARELY AT ALL.
Leaders depend on the trust and loyalty of their followers. When a leader lies, that trust is breached, sometime irreparably. Worse yet, when the president of a company (or the president of the country lies) their credibility is damaged or destroyed and their prominence makes the lie all the more crippling.
Why would a leader lie, when they understand the negative consequences of being caught in that lie? Usually it is to advance an agenda, or support a decision that cannot stand up to scrutiny based on the truth. A typical corporate leader’s lie is the one that follows an acquisition or a merger: “Nothing will change.” What utter nonsense that statement is. Of course things will change—maybe everything. That’s why the acquisition or merger happened. Either there were problems that need to be remedied, and/or synergies or opportunities that were not being fully exploited.
Another typical lie is in the form of a declarative statement: “Trust me; you will be rewarded for your efforts in due time.” Really? When? Why not now, and under what circumstances? Whenever a statement opens with the words “trust me” or “honestly” alarm bells should go off in your head. If the person saying these things were trustworthy or honest, they wouldn’t need to preface their statement by saying so. Their actions would portray that honesty and trustworthiness.
Presidents of companies are surely not scrutinized as closely as the president of the country. The always on, 24/7 news media and cell phone video capability record his words constantly. The result is a lot of video snippets of “misstatements” as the “spin doctors” call them, followed by explanations by staff parsing the words into a more defensible form. This is the challenge of every elected official, and of many high-ranking corporate executives. The larger the constituency and the more recognizable the person, the more likely they will be seen, heard and/or recorded doing or saying things they might later regret. Among those regrets, lies and transgressions are at the top of the list.
Highly regarded Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel told a lie in hopes of “protecting” the program and a handful of star athletes. Once the first lie has been told, it is (and was for him) downhill from there. Ultimately, he lost his job, his credibility and those very athletes he lied to protect suffered anyway. The first lie sets the stage. Bad things happen after that. Lying is contagious and spreads like a virus.
Former NJ Governor Jon Corzine has become infamous for his role in the disappearance of billions of dollars of investor funds from MF Global. Whether he knows where the money went, and is convicted of crimes in the courts is almost beside the point. He has been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. A secondary problem is when someone associates with a known liar, there is a contagion by which they too become suspect—even extending to Corzine’s role in helping fund president Obama’s reelection campaign. Was some of that money “dirty?” Nobody can or will ever know with certainty.
Yet another frequent business lie has to do with the location and longevity of facilities. When an executive comes to town, and tells the townspeople (and employees) how important they are to the company—and then closes the facility, idling the workforce shortly thereafter—the stain from that apparent lie stays with the executive. The executive might not even be overtly lying; the decision about which facilities to close may not have been made yet. Even so, this situation is a “minefield” of credibility killers.
Ironically, there are times that lies can be indirect, or unintentional, or even simple exaggerations. The children’s story about Chicken Little’s claims that “the sky is falling” proved that after repeated exaggerations, few would believe Chicken Little even when “the sky actually was falling.” Many closely watched government reports (like employment data) “sort of lie” when they are released “initially” and then “adjusted” in the following month.
Bosses, political officials, including the President, all suffer from lower regard because of “broken promises,” which are another form of lying. I can’t cite recent data, but every study I have seen for a decade or more shows about 60% of employees do not trust their employers to “level with them.” Certainly the trust of Americans in their Congress is currently even lower than that.
However, since this is an election year, some data on politics is more readily available:
Whether you think a broken campaign promise qualifies as a lie, many people feel that way. In corporate life, when leaders lie, they often are trapped by that lie, and lose the respect and support of their organization. This is a frequent precursor to their failure and losing their jobs—sooner or later.
When elected officials lie, the outcome may be that they too lose their jobs—or at least they should. The question is whether the perception of broken political campaign promises as “lies” puts many incumbents and candidates in jeopardy. There are often extenuating circumstances surrounding corporate statements (the market changed, etc.) and the same goes for broken campaign promises. As an old friend once told me, “There is always a reason but never an excuse for outright lying!”
Sometimes the promises simply cannot be kept (and never should have been made—e.g., closing Guantanamo) but “the path to hell is paved with good intentions,” and noble intentions (alone) do not equate to job security for corporate executives and for elected officials—the most prominent of which is the president, Barack Obama. Simply Google Obama’s Lies and you will see an astounding array of lists and lies. That is frightening—for all Americans and our country.
There you have it. When leaders lie, whatever the circumstances, the justification, rationalization or excuses, bad things invariably follow. It’s hard to tell the truth all the time. An old Jim Carrey movie, Liar, Liar, portrays this dilemma humorously, but is also scary how hard it is to always tell the truth. Which of us do not tell a lie from time to time? Leaders must constantly strive to tell the truth to the greatest extent they can. That doesn’t mean they need to reveal everything. Just try to stick with the truth. That’s the best us mere mortals can hope to do.
THAT'S PLENTY ON THE TOPIC FOR NOW. WATCH FOR MORE IN COMING WEEKS. THESE ISSUES WILL NOT FADE AWAY. TIME WILL ONLY REVEAL MORE SUCH INSTANCES OF DECEPTION AND MISDIRECTION. A FAVORITE OBAMA TACTIC IS TO "CHANGE THE SUBJECT VIA MISDIRECTION." HE WILL DO EVERYTHING HE CAN TO HAMMER THE IRS AND THE AP INTRUSIONS SO HE CAN DRAG ATTENTION AWAY FROM THE BENGHAZI COVERUP AND IT'S LITANY OF LIES AND FAILURES OR LEADERSHIP.
BOTH HILLARY CLINTON AND BARACK OBAMA HAVE THEIR HANDS DIRTY ON BENGHAZI--AND FOUR AMERICANS DIED BECAUSE OF THIS FAILED LEADERSHIP.
Author of the Award Winner: THE COMPLEXITY CRISIS, the exciting novel: THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY, and co-author of HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY: Leadership Lessons from the Obama Presidency
HERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT POPPED INTO MY HEAD (OR EMAIL BOX) RECENTLY:
Obama’s OSU commencement speech--Notable Snippets and some Appropriate Rebuttals
President Barack Obama came to Columbus, OH on Sunday. It was a familiar venue for him, since he visited Columbus five times in the past year, as part of his campaign to win OH, the ultimate “swing state.”This time he spoke to a packed audience in the OSU “Horsehoe” where the Ohio State Buckeyes play football in front of a larger, and certainly noisier crowd than Obama drew.
In many respects, Obama’s was a relatively typical commencement speech, exhorting the graduates to use their education to become better citizens, and to contribute to society.
In other respects, it was conspicuously missing some of the words, exhortations, admonitions and calls to action that might be expected for graduates leaving one of the nation’s largest and leading universities, into a deeply troubled job market.
There were more than a few cases where what President Obama said would have graded an Incomplete at OSU for what he didn’t say. Here are just the most glaring examples:
He said.
“….yours has become a generation possessed with that most American of ideas - that people who love their country can change it.”
What he didn’t say was that you can also do it great harm—as many of his failed initiatives to “fundamentally change America” have proven.
He went on to explain.
“For all the turmoil; for all the times you have been let down, or frustrated at the hand you've been dealt; what I have seen from your generation are perennial and quintessentially American values. Altruism. Empathy. Tolerance. Community. And a deep sense of service that makes me optimistic for our future.”
Nowhere in this statement does he even mention ambition, work ethic, achievement or a sense of responsibility. How could those vital attributes be omitted from such a phrase in a speech like this?
As we know, President Obama can “turn a phrase with the best of them,” and he did, one time in this speech when he said.
”That's what citizenship is. It's the idea at the heart of our founding - --"that as Americans, we are blessed with God-given and inalienable rights, but with those rights come responsibilities --"- to ourselves, to one another, and to future generations.”
The heart of this paragraph is his BEST LINE: --"that as Americans, we are blessed with God-given and inalienable rights, but with those rights come responsibilities…” If only that idea could have been pounded into the hearts and minds of the audience, the speech would have been a success.
As it was, the very next sentence was vintage Obama playing the “blame game.”
“But if we're being honest, as you've studied and worked and served to become good citizens, the institutions that give structure to our society have, at times, betrayed your trust.”
Of course no one can hold you responsible for anything then these big, nasty institutions have betrayed you! What utter nonsense.
Then here’s the big preemptive excuse.
And in Washington - well, this is a joyous occasion, so let me put this charitably: I think it's fair to say our democracy isn't working as well as we know it can, It could do better. And those of us fortunate enough to serve in these institutions owe it to you to do better, every single day.”
Yes, Mr. President, and these problems are in large part due to a lack of presidential leadership! Notice how Obama moves into the passive voice, third person to avoid any personal ownership of the problems,”…
I think it's fair to say our democracy isn't working as well as we know it can…”
If the first omission of important traits was not enough, here it comes again, “But I think of what your generation's traits - compassion and energy, a sense of selflessness and a boundless digital fluency - might mean for a democracy that must adapt more quickly to keep up with the speed of technological, demographic, and wrenching economic change.”
Notice again the traits not singled out as important or noteworthy: accomplishment, character, integrity, and personal values. The mere omission of these tells us a great deal about what the president (or his speech writers) believes is of paramount importance—and what is not.
Next comes a litany of how the founders made government the solution to all of our needs and aspirations, with only one small part omitted.
“And that's precisely what the founders left us: the power to adapt to changing times. They left us the keys to a system of self-government - the tool to do big and important things together that we could not possibly do alone. To stretch railroads and electricity and a highway system across a sprawling continent. To educate our people with a system of public schools and land grant colleges, including Ohio State. To care for the sick and the vulnerable, and provide a basic level of protection from falling into abject poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth. To conquer fascism and disease; to visit the Moon and Mars; to gradually secure our God-given rights for all our citizens, regardless of who they are, what they look like, or who they love.
Thus we see how Barack Obama arrives at lines like “You didn’t build that!” He never even considers or mentions the free enterprise economic system that generated the wealth, which made most of the preceding benefits possible . Then he continues in defense of his idea of government as the ultimate virtuous solution.
“Still, you'll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works; or that tyranny always lurks just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule is just a sham with which we can't be trusted.”
News bulletin to the graduates: government is often sinister, it is frequently dysfunctional (in so many ways), and under Barack Obama it has been tending toward tyranny, and often can't be trusted.
Finally, in his most glaring deception, he talks about opportunities, jobs and their future. He never once acknowledges that their generation faces the most difficult struggle to find jobs that anyone has ever imagined in this country’s recent history. This is his WORST SERIES OF LINES.
“And where we're going should give you hope. Because while things are still hard for a lot of people, you have every reason to believe that your future is bright.”
Of course you wont be able to find the kind of jobs you imagined, to pay off the huge debts, which we have made it easy or you to incur via Federal government student loans.
“You are graduating into an economy and a job market that are steadily healing.”
Steadily and slowly healing, Mr. President. It will be nearly impossible to find the good paying jobs for so many of those who studied the fun, easy, and low-value curricula instead of the hard, high value ones.
Next comes the “disclaimer,” behind which he can hide—uncertainty.
”Still, if there is one certainty about the decade ahead, it's that things will be uncertain. Change will be a constant, just as it has been throughout our history. …. But more than anything, what we will need is political will…”
Right. In his view “political will” is an imperative; one which is required to harness the efforts of those who will work hard and accomplish important things and use their accomplishments and wealth for your benefit. After all, it’s only fair!
This was another rollicking Obama oratory, punctuated with rhetorical gems, and filled with equal parts of false hopes, half-truths and serious omissions.
The good news is that relatively few of the graduates listened closely enough to recognize the points I gleaned from the text of the speech. They just wanted to get out of there and party.
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I AM ALL FOR HELPING THE POOR--UP TO A POINT--BUT WE ARE NOW WAY PAST THAT POINT!
If you have heard or read about the enormous amount of government paid benefits and income that was provided to the "Boston Bombers" you might be appalled. But that is not unusual. The entire American welfare system has been so distorted, abused and misused that hundreds of billions of dollars (each year) now go to fund all kinds of welfare: food stamps, housing assistance, income replacement, free cell phones, and oh, yes, aid to dependent children.
Note: I have not fact checked this piece…but it seems likely to be accurate based on past reports I have seen and heard. Take a look:
When you have the rich timeliness of TheBrennerBrief writers to feast on, I am sitting wondering what I can add to this. Then I realized it: a lot of people like to go through buffets or “smorgasbords” (not so many of them are called that any more) because they want a taste of a variety of things.
Then they can decide what they want more of, and usually find it without difficulty. Thus, I plan to bring you that “buffet sampler” of things that will affect you, most Americans—and me—in the coming months and years.
Drug Companies in Distress—Consumers Benefit—For Now?
Two of the giants of the US pharmaceutical industry are reeling from patent expirations on blockbuster drugs, which contributed billions in profits for many years. The good news for consumers is that lower cost generic replacement drugs will reduce prescription outlays. Last year, Pfizer’s huge selling cholesterol-lowering drug, Lipitor, saw its patent protection expire. Now generic atorvastatin (the drug’s technical name) sells for a fraction of the cost.
This year Merck will lose is protection for Zocor, another cholesterol-lowering statin drug, costing it billions in profits. In a second blow to Pfizer, its anti-depressant drug, Zoloft will lose patent coverage mid-year 2013.
While this seems like good news for consumers, and helps hold down spiraling medical costs, there’s a dark side to expirations. The drug companies must find new, highly profitable drugs to pay for expensive research on still newer remedies. Make no mistake, these companies make handsome profits on patented drugs, but a sizable part of the revenue goes to fund research on breakthrough drugs.
Without that revenue, if the research is slowed, so are the breakthroughs that have extended life expectancy and improved the quality of life for millions of people. Finding successful new drugs is a little bit like drilling for oil. You have an idea where to look, but once you start exploring, there is a high likelihood that you will have many failures before finding the one success.
Generics are supposed to work the same as the brand names, but when low price/cost become the criteria, there are risks of formulations that don’t deliver the same amount of medication at the same rate. Be careful. Plus, pharmaceutical companies may be a great target for criticism, but life without their breakthrough drugs would be grim for many people and shorter for others.
Pros: Cheaper generic drugs for millions, lower health care costs
Cons: Less to revenue to fund research and find the next generation of life-saving drugs
Don’t Make Customers Wait to Give You Their Money
So said Sam Walton, whose mantra was embodied by stores opening more checkout lanes any time the lines stretched back to the main cross aisle. He was right, and now other retailers are finally discovering it. Grocer Kroger has developed a sophisticated measurement system using military type infrared cameras to track how long it takes to check out.
Kroger has even advertised its speedy checkouts and they seem to be a hit with consumers. That’s now surprise to McDonald’s executives who have known for years that the time to serve customers matters a lot to time-stressed people. Giving fast (and courteous) service may cost a little more, but it pays big dividends for such companies.
Walmart is poised to take the next big leap: begin your checkout while you shop, using your smartphone. Scan & Go is the new system being tested, in which the bar codes on items can be scanned with your smartphone as you put them in your basket. That reduces checkout to scanning your smart phone and paying the bill. Of course there’s a lot of detail work between now and a wider roll out. Errors, fraud, mistake correction, and many more details remain to be addressed.
But one of these days, the time to check out will be embedded into your shopping time…assuming you use the system right, and you trust it, and it trusts you; but those are big assumptions.
Pros: Improving worker productivity but shifting the work to customers.
Cons: Mistakes will be made, and fixing them will be a big job.
Privacy—What’s That?
When George Orwell wrote his memorable novel 1984 decades ago, the term “Big Brother is Watching You” became part of the vernacular. Now it is true. Unfortunately, it is not just “Big Brother.” It might be any of a large group of marketers, scammers, thieves and market researchers. Some have legitimate reasons to “watch you.” Others have far more evil intentions.
The growth of smartphones and tablets, of free WiFi and fast cellular networks have brought “always on, anywhere” connectivity into a reality. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the “bad guys” have access to you, your data and your private information too—unless you hare hyper vigilant and very technologically savvy and watchful.
The same technology that lets you know where you are and where you are going can do the same thing for others—shadowing you. Is that good? Not quite. Is it preventable? Barely. The more Apps, Cookies and Contacts you load onto your devices, the easier it is to “bug you” with code that tells the “bad guys”—and “Big Brother”—where you are and what you are doing.
The era of personal privacy is about over, and we are giving it up for the sale of convenience, communications, and entertainment. The problem is, once gone, no one knows how to regain it. If everything about you is “out there,” it stays there “forever.” Youth and teens are just beginning to get this—but probably too late. Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other social networks already contain too much private, personal data. As these grow, it only gets worse.
A whole new field will soon emerge—how to protect your remaining privacy, and how to “reboot” your on-line identity to regain some semblance of privacy again. It won’t be easy, but as demand grows, it will come. Watch for it. You read it here.
Pros: You can be always in touch, anywhere, any times, with anyone
Cons: You will no longer have any secrets or privacy, as you will be available to find, track, interrupt, (and attack!)—Any time, any where, by almost any one
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The Right Metrics & The Wrong Conclusions
If you read the recent news, it talks of unemployment at 7.4%. Using one measure (the Bureau of Labor Statistics U-3) that is correct. But that measure excludes millions who have given up looking for a job or who are grossly “under-employed.” That number is closer to 14% (BLS U-6). The government statistics are also “adjusted” or “revised” a month after being issued, because the initial measure was wrong. What can you believe?
There are many such issues that surround reporting of employment. Initial claims for unemployment of over 300,000 sound so large, but no one points out that during the same time frame probably 3 million Americans changed jobs. The 300,000 kind of figure is a “net” figure, of those folks who lost jobs but didn’t find new ones.
Unfortunately we are in a 24/7 news cycle, where fact checking is done less often and with more bias, and the “old” news media (the TV networks) and many of the more liberal networks (CNN, MSNBC, et. al.) no longer simply report the news. The “spin it,” biasing it to fit the ideology they support. Is this wrong? Perhaps—unless the person seeing or hearing that distorted reporting agrees with the conclusion or is totally clueless about the distortion (more often the case).
We live in a world of non-stop government reporting, but many of the most important ones are then “revised” about a month later. The problem is that too many people reacted to the initial “estimate” and barely notice the revision, which can swing the conclusions to a whole different direction.
Clearly this whole measurement concept is not simple or easy, but measurements are still very, very important. They help us assess progress, know how we are doing, and even let us know what is, or isn’t “success.” When a measurement is done wrong, or measures the wrong thing, or somehow, because of error, provides leads to the wrong conclusion, it is seldom recognized until later (like the government’s revisions). In the meantime, we make decisions based on that measurement—wrong decisions usually.
Investors react and often over-react, to government reports on employment, on GDP growth, on the balance of trade, and so forth. Markets soar or plummet from these reactions. And then, 30-45 days later, a revision comes along that says, in effect, “Whoops, we got it wrong.”
Some mistakes in “metrics” sometimes go uncorrected—or unnoticed—for a long, long time. Have you been ill and had a temperature lately? You probably compared your temperature to “normal” which you were taught for years was 98.6 F. Wrong! The correct human body temperature is closer to 98.25 F (and that’s an average, because there are variations from person to person). The 98.6 F reading was developed in 1868, when Carl Wunderlich published a seminal paper on body temperature in 25,000 adults. But his study was done using imprecise measuring devices and techniques of that era, yet it has been widely accepted over 100 years. Considering how many medical decisions are made based on this metric, it is downright amazing that this error has not caused huge problems. Or maybe it has, and we just don’t know it.
Have you even used a map that was not to scale and been confused by the distorted perspective it gave you? Have you owned a car with a speedometer was wrong—and you got a ticket for speeding without realizing you were speeding?
It has been proven time and again that simply observing something causes it to change. So does measuring it. Heisenberg’s Uncertainly Principle in physics warns us that two related things cannot both be measured accurately, simultaneously.
“Forewarned is forearmed,” or so the old saying goes. The most important message of this brief article is to make sure the metrics you choose are measuring what you want to measure—and doing it accurately (to the best level possible.)
The first way to check metrics is to apply “common sense.” Is that result reasonable? Another is to find historical comparisons. A third is by a “check point” or a reference standard. For many years, factories and industries kept “standards” in the form of physical objects that had been carefully verified to be correct. The U. S. government even established a “Bureau of Standards.” They did this because gauges and measuring devices can be damaged or simply get out of adjustment. If you weigh yourself, and don’t believe the reading, you usually look for another scale—but make sure it’s an accurate one.
Time for the world is kept on very precise atomic clocks and is called “coordinated universal time” (UTC) and often referred to as Greenwich Mean Time or “Zulu” time. Since communications signals cross many time zones, an accurate, standardized measure of time is critical.
Somewhere, somehow, all metrics—and those reporting them--need to be understood more deeply and then checked and rechecked regularly. Whatever you are doing to meet or to use, some predetermined metric, stop every now and then and check to see that the metric is accurate—and the right one—and that it is measuring what is really important. If you base conclusions on the right measurements and use them correctly, you will be surprised how much better your decision-making becomes.
In conclusion, if you believe the data that the jobless situation in the US is improving, then your conclusion is probably OK. If you believe that the problem is getting a lot better, then go back to that bls.gov table and notice that about 14% of Americans are either unemployed or underemployed, and I’ll bet you they don’t think things are much better!
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Cyber-attacks Hit American companies again
Charles Schwab & Co. has been suffering from denial-of-service attacks, blocking access to the site for two hours on Tuesday and slowing the online operations of the financial services firm intermittently on Wednesday.
In a message posted to Schwab's website, Walt Bettinger, president and CEO of Charles Schwab, explained the site's slow performance was a result of a "'denial of service' attack penetrated by a third party." Bettinger said that no client accounts or data was compromised.
"Based on the history of denial of service attacks on other companies, we anticipate these attacks may continue against our industry — and us — for some time," Bettinger acknowledged. "We will continue to work with the industry and law enforcement to ensure our web sites are available without interruption."
One in five data breaches are the result of cyberespionage, Verizon says
Verizon's data breach investigations report covering 2012 includes information on cyberespionage-related breaches for the first time
While the majority of data breaches are the result of financially motivated cybercriminal attacks, cyberespionage activities are also responsible for a significant number of data theft incidents, according to a report that will be released Tuesday by Verizon.
Verizon's 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) covers data breaches investigated during 2012 by the company's RISK Team and 18 other organizations from around the globe, including national computer emergency response teams (CERTs) and law enforcement agencies. The report compiles information from more than 47,000 security incidents and 621 confirmed data breaches that resulted in at least 44 million compromised records.
In addition to including the largest number of sources to date, the report is also Verizon's first to contain information on breaches resulting from state-affiliated cyberespionage attacks. This kind of attack targets intellectual property and accounted for 20% of the data breaches covered by the report.
In more than 95% of cases the cyberespionage attacks originated from China, said Jay Jacobs, a senior analyst with the Verizon RISK team. The team tried to be very thorough regarding attribution and used different known indicators that linked the techniques and malware used in those breaches back to known Chinese hacker groups, he said.
However, it would be naive to assume that cyberespionage attacks only come from China, Jacobs said. "It just so happens that the data we were able to collect for 2012 reflected more Chinese actors than from anywhere else."
The more interesting aspects of these attacks were the types of tactics used, as well as the size and industry of the targeted organizations, the analyst said.
"Typically what we see in our data set are financially motivated breaches, so the targets usually include retail organizations, restaurants, food-service-type firms, banks and financial institutions," Jacobs said. "When we looked at the espionage cases, those industries suddenly dropped down to the bottom of the list and we saw mostly targets with a large amount of intellectual property like organizations from the manufacturing and professional services industries, computer and engineering consultancies, and so on."
A surprising finding was the almost fifty-fifty split between the number of large organizations and small organizations that experienced breaches related to cyberespionage, the analyst said.
"When we thought of espionage, we thought of big companies and the large amount of intellectual property they have, but there were many small organizations targeted with the exact same tactics," Jacobs said.
There is a lot of intelligence-gathering involved in the selection of targets by these espionage groups, Jacobs said. "We think that they pick the small organizations because of their affiliation or work with larger organizations."
In comparison to cyberespionage, financially motivated cybercrime was responsible for 75% of data breach incidents covered in the report and hacktivists were behind the remaining 5%.
One noteworthy finding of this report is that all threat actors are targeting valid credentials, Jacobs said. In four out of five breaches, the attackers stole valid credentials to maintain a presence on the victim's network, he said.
This will hopefully start to raise some questions about the widespread reliance on single-factor password-based authentication, Jacobs said. "I think if we switch to two-factor authentication and stop being so reliant on passwords, we might see a decrease in the number of these attacks or at least force the attackers to change" some of their techniques.
Fifty-two percent of data breach incidents involved hacking techniques, 40% involved the use of malware, 35% the use of physical attacks -- for example ATM skimming -- and 29% the use of social tactics like phishing.
The number of breaches that involved phishing was four times higher in 2012 compared to the previous year, which is probably the result of this technique being commonly used in targeted espionage campaigns.
Despite all the attention given to mobile threats during the past year, only a very small number of breaches covered by the Verizon report involved the use of mobile devices.
"For the most part, we are not seeing breaches leverage mobile devices as of yet," Jacobs said. "That's a pretty interesting finding that's kind of counter-intuitive in light of all the headlines saying how insecure mobile devices are. That's not to say they're not vulnerable, but the attackers currently have other easier methods to get the data."
The same holds true for cloud technologies, Jacobs said. While there have been some breaches involving systems that are hosted in the cloud, they were not the result of attacks exploiting cloud technologies, he said. "If your site is vulnerable to SQL injection, it doesn't matter where it's hosted -- in the cloud or locally. The kind of breaches we're seeing would occur regardless of whether the system would be in the cloud or not."
The Verizon report includes a list of 20 critical security controls that should be implemented by companies and which are mapped to the most prevalent threat actions identified in the analyzed dataset. However, the level to which every company should implement each control depends on the industry they're part of and the type of attacks they're likely to be more exposed to.
THAT'S A LOT OF THINK ABOUT…SO YOU CAN SEE WHY IT WAS "ON MY MIND." NOW IT'S ON YOUR MINDS TOO…
Author of the Award Winner: THE COMPLEXITY CRISIS, the exciting novel: THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY, and co-author of HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY: Leadership Lessons from the Obama Presidency
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The tragedy at the Boston Marathon exposes how vulnerable America is to terrorists--especially "home grown ones." England is already facing this problem even more than we are, where there are huge concentrations of Muslims in London…many of which are becoming increasingly extreme. America has such a strong belief in freedom, that the flip side of this is that radicals are also free to do what they choose, including blowing up or shooting or stabling people when they have the opportunity and desire to do so. All of the laws in the world can't stop a few evil people who are determined to wreak havoc in the innocent. The shooting in CT proved that. So does this bombing.
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TO INCREASE PROTECTION, DECREASE FREEDOM!
The widely discussed and debated laws (guns, immigration, etc.) only make acts of extremist violence more difficult--but far from impossible. The true controversy may well develop about how many of our "freedoms" we choose to surrender in order to protect ourselves. This is the true extension of terrorism. Current debates about immigration policy and ID use will likely migrate to impact the general population. It is both imaginable, and perhaps advisable that our ubiquitous driver's license be made into "a smart ID, including biometrics, and maybe even RFID locators. Will "Big Brother" be able to track your movements then? Absolutely. To protect against the abuse of freedom, one of the primary actions is to remove some dimension of that freedom. But realistically, if "Big Brother" chooses to ignore the Constitution (gasp!), they can almost do this now. Credit card use, GPS enabled cell phones and other means of location tracking exist now. The choice may be a difficult and contentious one. (Look at the voter ID debates. You need a "license" ID with a photo to drive a car, check into a hotel, board an airplane, but to vote requires only the weakest of ID--e.g., a utility bill with a name and address, etc. Really?
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THE ECONOMY IS STILL SICK--AND MOST AMERICANS KNOW IT
Yes, housing is coming back from it's doldrums, aided by the hard to explain climb in the stock market, and the aggressive sale pricing of homes. The inventory of unsold homes is dropping very quickly. New home starts are climbing. The concern is that unusually low interest rates could actually trigger another housing mini-bubble! Consumer spending is up and down. It is buoyed by the stock market and depressed by the job (jobless) market. The one solution that will lift America out of this malaise is GROWTH! It may surprise many of you that I think the current GOP budget proposal is "too much of a good thing!" We need to rein in spending, but cutting too far, too fast will cripple an already anemic economy. The cuts need to be targeted, but the places where they need to be made most are the pet projects and crony buddies of the current president--so that probably won't happen.
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A BUDGET, A BUDGET, MY KINGDOM FOR A SENSIBLE, BALANCED, BI-PARTISAN BUDGET
At least his most recent budget proposal mentions a couple of ways to reduce the spending on entitlements (only a little, and always in the future--not now!) The tax structure needs revision, and some of the "loopholes that need closing" will likely be a drag on investment--but they still need closing. In general the tax code is riddled with special interest driven exceptions most of which should be removed--but nobody wants their pet exemption to be removed. So progress will be painfully slow in doing this. If the most egregious loopholes could be closed, the overall rate could be lowered, and SURPRISE lower tax rates actually create more income for the government because they stimulate GROWTH. For some inexplicable reason the liberal Keynesians led by their idiot savant Paul Krugman, refuse to recognize the facts: every time in recent history (50 years) that the capital gains tax rate was cut, tax revenue increased! Will they ever learn? NO!
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But this is my segue to the subject of GROWTH in another context. Clearly not enough of you have bought copies of ROADMAP TO PROFITABLE GROWTH…because in spite of glowing reviews, sales SUCK! PLEASE…GO TO AMAZON AND BUY COPIES OF IT--ONE AT A TIME! Kindle is cheaper at just under $8. But even at $14.95, the value you will get is enormous. OR IF YOU WA NT MORE, CONTACT ME AND I'LL HAVE 25, 50, WHATEVER QUANTITY YOU WANT SHIPPED DIRECT TO YOU AT A HOT PRICE!
READ ON….
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A GREAT REVIEW OF ROADMAP TO PROFITABLE GROWTH BY A BRILLIANT AUTHOR/CONSULTANT
This review is from: Roadmap to Profitable Growth (Paperback)
There are probably more books on how to run a business than grains of sand in the Sahara, Yet the basics of every successful business come down to some simple and straightforward strategies, which, if executed, will provide the basis for every good business decision. In Roadmap to Profitable Growth John takes these essential ingredients and boils them down to an easy to understand manageable 125 pages of insight.
But don't let the concise nature of the book fool you. Having built three business, and advised thousands, I've found that the best leaders stick to a formula that precisely fits John's Roadmap - and foremost among these is looking beyond the urgent distractions and instead focusing on a vision of the future that is often obscured by the complexity of the present.
John takes a hard look at why we derail our best ideas and intentions by not putting in place a roadmap that offers a living tool to navigate uncertainty and complexity. In fact, the term Roadmap underplays the true nature of what John is describing, which is more like a real-time GPS to steer your business, resources, partners, customers, and priorities.
Most importantly Roadmap to Profitable Growth lays out the immutable principles for business success in the chaotic landscape that defines today's markets. You can't help but walk away from this books thinking, "Damn, I should know all of this. So why don't I practice it?" The answer, which the book points to repeatedly, is that knowing is a world apart from doing.
If I had my way every leader would have to read this book once a year to keep reminding themselves of what really is important. A fast, powerful, and practical bible for business professionals.
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AN EMAIL THAT CERTAINLY MADE MY DAY…A VERY NICE GROUP OF COMMENTS ABOUT ROADMAP TO PROFITABLE GROWTH
"Thank you for sending me a copy of "Roadmap...". Just finished reading it cover to cover. Congratulations on an excellent book!! You have so many "Gems" in it that the whole book is a Big Gem. Too many nuggets of wisdom, page after page! Of course, I plan to recommend it to my MBA students and others…" This was from an old friend, Raj Aggarwal, who is a distinguished professor at U. of Akron, but also one of the smartest guys I know (I said so before he complimented my book--many times.) When you get compliments like this, it's time to go take a shower and let your head shrink back to normal proportions. But it sure feels good!
FOR THOSE WHO ARE AT OR NEAR RETIREMENT…OF THOSE WHO HOPE TO RETIRE SOMEDAY
This is a very important article. It means the "old rules no longer apply." How often have you heard that lately. Read it and consult your advisor. If you don't have an advisor I can recumbent one for you--no obligation, just someone I have worked with that I know will do a good job for you. I know a couple in Columbus and at least one in the Cleveland area, and maybe even one in Knoxville, TN! Just ask! Just when you thought you had this investing and retirement planning thing all figured out…they changed the rules… and the economic conditions…
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I'VE WRITTEN MANY TIMES ABOUT JOHN MAULDIN AND GARY HALBERT, AND PUBLISHED SNIPPETS FROM THEIR NEWSLETTERS.
THIS ONE IS ESPECIALLY APPROPRIATE FOLLOWING THE PRIOR ITEM.
Is The Government Lying To Us About Inflation? Yes!
In today’s Outside the Box, Gary D. Halbert (my old and very dear friend and former business partner of many years) reminds us about a few significant facts concerning the Consumer Price Index (CPI) that mainstream economists and the media tend to ignore. The central question is whether the CPI is really indicative of the actual inflation rate. Not likely, says Gary, since the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which compiles the CPI, has engaged in methodological shenanigans over the past couple decades (as has been well documented by John Williams of ShadowStats, among others). The upshot of all their monkeying with the numbers is that the official rate of inflation may be two to four times lower than the actual rate (which is rather convenient if you’re a government bureaucrat trying to hold down interest costs and Social Security payments).
These changes are hotly debated in academic circles. There are many economists who agree with the changes and can show with their models that inflation is low. That is the currently accepted wisdom, or what passes for it. The problem is that inflation only shows up, as one person put it, in the things we actually buy. If your main costs are food, energy, education, and healthcare (ring any bells?), then inflation is a great deal higher than 2%. Other items are actually falling in price. It comes down to the mix of items in the calculations and whether you buy into the concepts of substitution (if beef gets too expensive we buy hamburger rather than steak) and “hedonics,” which says that prices of products drop over time as quality and manufacturing efficiency improve, so the calculation of inflation should take this into account.
Which means you can have official inflation at a low level (or even falling for certain items), while the amount you actually spend out of your very real pocket is rising! And thus the debate.
Having refreshed us on the basic techniques of CPI massage, Gary turns to food and energy, which the BLS includes in “headline CPI” but omits from “core CPI.” He points out that while headline CPI jumped an unexpected 0.7% in February, core CPI rose only 0.2%. That is, food and energy price increases accounted for more than 70% of the rise. “Not good for the economy,” he notes.
And of course, this is all bad news for unwary investors, since
Those who believe that inflation is only 2%, when it may be 5-8%, may be making investment decisions that are almost guaranteed to erode the purchasing power of their money over time. This is especially true with low-yielding investments such as CDs, Treasuries, etc.
Gary wraps up by taking a look at “chained CPI,” which he explains as follows:
[C]hained CPI assumes that when prices rise, consumers will resort to entirely different products, rather than just seeking a cheaper brand. For example, if beef prices rise, chained CPI would assume that consumers might opt for chicken to save money.
The chained CPI debate is raging as we speak: I got an email from the AARP this morning, urging me to tell my Senators to say no to chained CPI being used to calculate Social Security cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) – sounds like they may vote today (Friday) on a bill to do just that. But as Gary points out, we either calculate benefits using chained CPI – which, yes, is tough on those living on a fixed income – or we eliminate the cap on salary subject to Social Security taxation (that is, we raise taxes). As Gary says, “Either way, somebody’s got to pay, and it might end up being a little [of] both.”
Author of the Award Winner: THE COMPLEXITY CRISIS, the exciting novel: THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY, and co-author of HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY: Leadership Lessons from the Obama Presidency
It was the year 2000 when I started investigating the threats from cyber-terrorism for a novel I was determined to write. When I was half way through the novel--
THE SILENCE, the attack on 9/11 happened. I wrote it into the book and kept on writing. THE SILENCE was finished in 2001, and published shortly thereafter. However a blizzard of 9/11 focused books and the recession caused it to "just sit there" with little interest or sales.
During this period, I even wrote to the CIA, FBI, and NSA alerting them to the threat. Since there had been no "traceable crime" the FBI had not interest. The fact that viruses and worms of that era (Notably Code Red and NIMDA) had infected millions of computers was apparently not enough of a crime. The CIA thanked me with a form email, and the NSA did not respond at all. There were not "cyber-terrorism" agencies at that time , even though the president's staff member Richard Clarke had issued the strongest possible warnings. A few years later, Clarke later wrote a fine non-fiction book, CyberWar, (after he left government service).
Then I got busy with boards, six of them, which culminated in the Chairmanship of World Kitchen as it emerged from Ch. 11, and was followed by a rash of family issues: Susan's illness, the birth of our last grandchild, moving from Tennessee to Ohio, and the concurrent death of five members of our immediate family in a short few years. Obviously I was busy with matters other than writing.
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EIGHT YEARS LATER
When 2009-2010 rolled around, and cyber-threats had not slowed--they had increased dramatically, I dug out THE SILENCE. I had shelved it nearly a decade before, although anyone who wishes to read it, can still find it on amazon (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=the+silence+Mariotti). I considered critical feedback from readers and friends. They loved the story, but the book was too long. In my attempt to make it a "literary" novel, I had bogged down the inherent "thriller" I intended it to be. So, I rewrote it, retaining most of the story line, bringing the technology up to date.
That was exciting and scary at the same time. The number and severity of cyber-attacks had grownimmensely. I even included a time line from my 2000 era research up to the present as an appendix.
Finally, to update this special edition one need only Google Cyber-terrrorism or anything remotely like it and see the huge number of hits. One of the best publications I read, which is ideal for busy people is THE WEEK magazine. It is a superb compilation of all kinds of information. I encourage readers to try it, and see if you get hooked on it as I have. A recent issue summed up the cyber threat situation, and China's role in it quite well. It is posted below. China is not the only source of hacking and cyberthreats, to be sure. Russia, the Ukraine, and even the USA are also major threats.
Hacking is a global activity and the most frightening aspect of it is how easy it is to do and how hard it is to protect against. Many of the best defensive systems are a single firewall, and little else. Security lapses are frequent and all it takes is one. Personal computers are particularly vulnerable, and most of those are connected to some sort of business, which can transfer the "infection." Flash drives can carry infections too, and those are everywhere, used for all kinds of purposes, business, government and personal.
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Someday, in some way, the story of THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY will happen. That will be a terrible day indeed. President Obama has attempted to stiffen the nation's defenses after Congress couldn't agree on legislation to do it (no surprise, they can't agree on anything). Yet, all of the efforts are far more reactive than proactive. What can you do? Stiffen up your passwords, and quit using the obvious ones like birthdays, or other simple number sequences. Keep your anti-virus up to date if on a PC, and keep you firewall turned on. Clean out your Cookies periodically. And never answer "phishing" emails that might look a little legitimate but are somehow just not right. Report them to the supposed sender, most of whom have fraud prevention groups. Banks and credit card agencies will not ask you to input vital information via email--don't fall of this. Don't give it out over the phone unless you initiate the call and know that the person and organization on the other end is legitimate.
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IF YOU WANT AN ENTERTAINING AND RELEVANT NOVEL…GET ONE NOW.
Now go do something while your email is still working, reach out of long lost friends, get in touch with loved ones, patch up family feuds, and tune-up your business, because tomorrow may be the day it all stops working.
I apologize fro giving you so much extra reading below, but it you want to really know, and understand the threat, you will read it and pass IT ON.
JOHN
PS: For those of you who do not read the Wall Street Journal, here are three excellent stories that hammer home the nature and magnitude of the risks:
Author of the Award Winner: THE COMPLEXITY CRISIS, the exciting novel: THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY, and co-author of HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY: Leadership Lessons from the Obama Presidency
FIRST OF ALL A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO REPLIED, AND ENCOURAGED ME TO KEEP WRITING
And thanks for the comments about content and frequency, too. Right now I am considering one of the suggestions I found particularly interesting: To write a bi-weekly edition of THE ENTERPRISE regularly, and then when events or topics warrant it, insert a "Special Edition" in between the regular ones. I will be thinking about more details of how to do this while I rework my address list, and send out one more request…for those folks who missed the first two.
Please tell those friends and colleagues you know who read THE ENTERPRISE, that if they have not replied, they will be dropped off the list following the THIRD REQUEST which will be going out soon. It will just stop appearing in their email in-boxes.
AS USUAL PEGGY NOONAN GETS IT RIGHT
This is an excerpt from her most recent column, and the entire column is posted at the end of this edition
"Barack Obama really is a study in contrasts, such as aloof and omnipresent. He's never fully present and he won't leave. He speaks constantly, endlessly, but always seems to be withholding his true thoughts and plans. He was the candidate of hope and change, of "Yes, we can," but the mood of his governance has been dire, full of warnings, threats, cliffs and ceilings, full of words like suffering and punishment and sacrifice.It's always the language of zero-sum, of hardship that must be evenly divided, of constriction and accusation.It's all so frozen, so stuck. Just when Americneeds a boost, some faith, a breakthrough.
Mr. Obama is making the same mistake he made four years ago. We are in a jobs crisis and he does not see it. He thinks he's in a wrestling match about taxing and spending, he thinks he's in a game with those dread Republicans. But the real question is whether the American people will be able to have jobs.Once they do, so much will follow—deficits go down a little as fewer need help, revenues go up as more pay taxes. Confidence and trust in the future will grow. People will be happier.
There's little sense he sees this. Dr. Doom talks about coming disaster when businessmen need the confidence to hire someone. He's missing the boat on the central crisis of his second term."
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INNOVATION IS NEVER DEAD
I can cite many examples of how the USA can continue to grow and prosper. I wrote about the paths to profitable growth in ROADMAP TO PROFITABLE GROWTH which you can now buy on http://www.amazon.com in either paperback or Kindle formats. There are many other examples of markets that have been expanded by new and better--or more convenient--innovations. Consider Bagged Lettuce: chop up a $1 head of lettuce into enough to fill 3 bags that sell for $2.49 each…because you are "buying time and selling the convenience" for time stressed, busy people. Consider Pandora charm bracelets, which have replace the old snarly, tangly, dangly (but cute) old style charm bracelets almost completely with a more convenient, yet equally diverse and much more "valuable" at least if the pricing is any guide.
OPPORTUNITIES ARE LIMITLESS, BUT RESOURCES ARE LIMITED
There are many, many more such innovations. The USA can find prosperous growth by following the principles in ROADMAP TO PROFITABLE GROWTH and finding unmet, and unrecognized needs (who knew we "needed" iPads?) Billlion dollar markets are awaiting. Buy the book, and give them away. If you want a quantity, contact me for a hot introductory price!
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Now here's the most unusual one I have seen or heard of in a long, long time. (Just keep the terrorist cats away!)
These are clever, innovative, high tech, and totally impractical based on today's level of development. There are not enough charging stations and all they do is take power generated elsewhere and converted to electricity, and then make it seem cleaner. It isn't. It's just a matter of where the power conversion occurs: locally in an internal combustion engine or regionally, in an electric power generation station fueled with coal, gas, water, solar, wind or whatever. Just like the ethanol boondoggle, this is simply a question of what is the best, most economical overall approach. (Ethanol, from corn, is actually wasteful to produce and use in place of gasoline. Its energy content is lower, its pollution content higher, its effect on engines worse, and its total cost of production is also higher and gasoline. Meanwhile it uses/wastes corn, which a valuable global food product. The only ones ethanol benefits are those in the plains states, notably Iowa, who lobbied Congressional members to give them subsidies to make a profit, producing a fundamentally undesirable fuel.
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SOLAR ENERGY
This is the ultimate power source, but only if and when someone figures out how to covert it to usable forms, economically, and locally. Not all places have equal solar energy density, so some places that have a lot of solar energy (Iike our SW deserts) are too far from users (population density). This is very unlikely to change: the mismatch between incident solar energy density and population density! Then what? More subsidies?
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WIND ENERGY
The same goes for wind energy. It is not so clean. It is disruptive to the environment, both physically and visually. These huge wind turbines are dangerous is many way, some of which we barely understand. Worse yet, all of the best places to put them are far away and lightly populated. Same as solar. Where there's "clean energy" there are no people to use it. Thus it must be "transported" with all the attendant losses, through a distribution system that is outdated, vulnerable and unsightly in its own way. Wind, unlike solar is not worth the investment needed to make it a large source of power.
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HYDROELECTRIC, GEOTHERMAL, etc.
Hydro electric power, whether provided by gravity causing water to flow or tides causing the ebb and flow is a viable power source, but requires vast structures to capture it. Dams, turbines, etc. are needed, because like most sources of power, the laws of thermodynamics apply--the potential energy is only useful if it can be converted to a form that releases its energy more willingly and with less inefficiency and loss.
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NUCLEAR POWER IS BETTER, EVEN IF "RISKIER"
Small, localized nuclear reactors could be built to safely power every major city, and located not far from the cities involved. Why aren't they? Because people read about Chernobyl (an exercise is Soviet era stupidity) and Three Mile Island (a genuine "whoops") and most recently the Japanese earthquake/tsunami and nuclear power plant disaster (and act of God to teach the arrogant Japanese nuke designers that they really aren't so smart after all.) Still nuclear power is the best, non-fossil fuel for long term--and it has one problem--a big one, is the half-life of spent nuclear fuel, which is incredibly long. it takes thousands of years for the radiation to decay down to safe levels. That is an unavoidable problem.
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IS NUCLEAR WASTE A BIGGER THREAT THAN DIRTY COAL EMISSIONS?
The only "safe" way--if any way is truly safe--to discard spent fuel is to "bury them deep and remotely" in essence trying to sort of return them to the planet, and not poison the people. And everyone now has the NIMBY philosophy: Not In My Back Yard, about where to store spent nuclear fuel. There are still huge, largely unpopulated ares of the USA (Including Nevada--where Yucca Mountain storage facility was being developed, and is now stalled), areas of Wyoming, Montana and other Western states that are viable storage candidates. Transportation is a problem too, since, once again, where the power is needed doesn't match where some consequence of it must be developed or discarded. This problem is unavoidable no matter which power source we use!
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THERMODYNAMICS
For those who never studied Thermodynamics, one of the basic laws is that the "ENTROPY" of the universe is constantly increasing; entropy is the inverse of AVAILABLE ENERGY, which therefore is constantly decreasing as we use it to do things and convert most of it to either useful actions or simply HEAT--which then serves to heat our environment, like it or not.
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KEYSTONE PIPELINE AND OTHER SUBTERFUGE
If ever Barack Obama gets his so-called superior intelligence to actually work in some productive fashion for Americans, he will release the restraints on such things as the Keystone Pipeline, to make Canadian oil sands production available to refineries in the USA, to enable vastly more offshore oil production including from the ANWR (Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge) and many more such initiatives.
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IDEALISM, IDEOLOGY AND IDIOCY
Why this long rant on energy? BEcause America has a GROWTH PROBLEM which is being worsened by the ignorance of the people Americans elected to lead our country. The fastest way to "fuel" this growth, (pun intended) is to turn loose the American Energy System to produce all it can and eliminate the need for OPEC oil, Venezuelan oil, and become a net energy exporter. For those who don't recall, the GDP growth is calculated by the addition of the net or Exports and Imports. Exporting a lot of oil would add GDP growth, but most of all it would create millions of jobs, and lower energy costs for US companies below those of their foreign competitors adding still more potential jobs.
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USE THE ROADMAP TO PROFITABLE GROWTH
If everyone reading this would simply buy 10, 20, 30, or 50 copies of the book and give them as gifts to all of the managers, executives, and owners of businesses they know, the multiplier effect would be huge. Even if you didn't want to contact me for a special price on the 25 and up quantities, the costs would be modest (25 books at full retail would cost $375…a far better use than supporting political campaigns in this non-election year. Where else can you spend $375 and do a big favor for friends, relatives, customers, and suppliers alike. The secrets to finding profitable growth in the USA no longer remain secret. They are in ROADMAP TO PROFITABLE GROWTH.
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FINALLY, THANKS AGAIN TO THE SEVERAL HUNDRED PEOPLE WHO REPLIED THAT THEY WANT ME TO CONTINUE WITH THE ENTERPRISE. I'LL TRY TO MAKE IT WORTH READING..AT LEAST 25-35 TIMES EACH YEAR, MAYBE MORE.
Best, John
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"The little book that could help save the US economy."
New Book: ROADMAP TO PROFITABLE GROWTH… GET IT NOW!
Author of the Award Winner: THE COMPLEXITY CRISIS, the exciting novel: THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY, and co-author of HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY: Leadership Lessons from the Obama Presidency
Neither Barack Obama nor his staff imagined that they would propose the initiative that started the spending cuts so badly needed to rein in the US deficit. They were sure that Congress would never let the sequester happen. Ironically, few of the cataclysmic consequences threatened by the Obama administration or the president NEEDS to happen. They will only happen if the way the president and his administration implement the cuts causes them to happen--and even then they are wildly exaggerated.
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DOES OBAMA THINK AMERICANS ARE STUPID OR JUST EASILY DECEIVED?
The only explanation for the draconian, exaggerated messages being delivered by President Obama and his cabinet is that he thinks the American people are stupid—or at least easily deceived or bullied. Consider this: the dreaded sequester that is supposed to end life in the USA as we know it, amounts to maybe a two percent cut in government spending. In fact, compared to last year, it is virtually no spending cut! However, you’ll never hear this kind of explanation from Barack Obama and his White House henchmen. Instead you heard from Transportation Secretary LaHood that 5000 Air Traffic Controllers will need to be furloughed. Since there are about 25,000 such positions involved, how does a 2% cut in funding turn into the need for 20% of the staff to be furloughed, and Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano’s claim that 5000 border agents would need to be sidelined, which, out of a 20,000 person force, amounts to a 25% cut in staff (due to a 2% cut in funding?).
Since a majority of Americans bought his plea for four more years—“Forward” to a continuation of low economic growth, high deficits and government giveaways—maybe they are getting what they wanted. If that were the case, they any cuts would be bad news for them. Here’s the fallacy. Government spending has grown over 30% in the past five years. Thanks to base-line budgeting, Federal spending increased over last year enough that the sequester cuts would barely effect most departments compared to their 2012 spending levels. But the country still operated in 2012—in fact with the Obama administration in charge—so what’s the big furor.
Nobody in the Obama media gang tells you these facts. The Pentagon projected that the budget for FY 2013 (at the time, two years out) would be $571 billion. Compared with that figure, the sum Panetta settles for ($525 billion) is $45 billion less. But last year’s actual FY 2012 budget was $531 billion. And compared with this figure, the proposal for FY 2013 is a cut of just $6 billion, or 1 percent. Can Defense keep us safe with just over $500 billion? I hope so, since it has done so in recent years. But this time it will be “devastating” according to outgoing Secretary of Defense Panetta. Why? Because he “wanted” $571 billion!
To believe this furor, Americans must ignore the fact that any manager with half a brain could manage through a slight spending cut, but because this is the Federal government involved, logic and common sense goes out the window. Too often the government leadership acts as if it only uses half a brain, doing the inexplicable across many departments to keep its wasteful bureaucracy growing. Such nonsensical actions serve to prove that the cataclysmic results promised could only happen “with intent to harm Americans”—and so they could be blamed on the GOP—and not the president. Here’s the issue: Barack Obama wants NO spending cuts. He wants MORE taxes so he can spend more money, and run up still larger deficits.
When there was an impasse over the budget ceiling, he had Jack Lew (the newly appointed Treasury secretary) propose the sequester, with the idea that it would be so distasteful to the GOP because of mandated Defense Dept. cuts, that they would cave in and accept Obama’s wishes. Now, after a time-lapse of a less than a year, Obama’s revisionist amnesia claims the GOP House created the sequester amidst plans to destroy the country, leave children, the poor and underprivileged without welfare, and force terrible hardships on Americans.
Author Bob Woodward, who chronicled the dysfunctional debt ceiling debate in his book The Price of Politics, has already gone on the record that Barack Obama’s White House staff was the originator of the sequester. It makes all of us fearful of what kind of retribution the White House might use against those who merely point out factual inaccuracies and distortions. The Obama administration’s positions and statements to the public are “scare-tactics” and “hogwash”—carefully crafted lies that can be sold to the gullible America people by Barack Obama.
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SLOW JOB GROWTH IS A SYMPTOM OF A GROWTH PROBLEM IN OUR ECONOMY
In new economy, jobs lag behind recovery -- By Jim Tankersley THE WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON — There are two kinds of middle-class Americans struggling today. Some can’t find work or can’t work as many hours as they’d like. Others are full-time workers who can’t seem to get ahead.
In Tuesday’s State of the Union and its response, there wasn’t much for either group — at least when it comes to their biggest problem.
Both speeches talked about the need for faster economic growth. Once, that would have been enough. But not today.
In the past three recoveries from recession, US growth has not produced anywhere close to the job and income gains that previous generations of workers enjoyed. A point of increased growth today simply delivers fewer jobs across the economy and less money in the pockets of middle-class families than an identical point of growth produced in the 40 years after the Second World War.
From 1948 through 1982, recessions and recoveries followed a tight pattern. Growth plunged in the downturn, then spiked quickly. When growth returned, so did job creation.
You can see those patterns in comparisons of job creation and growth rates across post-World War II recoveries. Starting in 1949 and continuing for more than 30 years, once the economy started to grow after a recession, major job creation usually followed within about a year.
At the height of those recoveries, every 1 percentage point of economic growth typically spurred about 0.6 percentage points of job growth. You could call that number the “job intensity” of growth.
The pattern began to break down in the 1992 recovery, which began under President George H. W. Bush. It took about three years — instead of one — for job creation to ramp up. Even then, the “job intensity” of that recovery barely topped 0.4 percent.
The next two recoveries were even worse. Three-and-a-half years into the recovery that began in 2001 under President George W. Bush, job intensity was stuck under 0.2 percent. The Obama recovery is now up to an intensity of 0.3 percent, or about half the historical average.
Economists are still trying to sort out what broke those historical links between growth and jobs/incomes. Robert Shapiro, an economist who advised President Bill Clinton on the campaign trail and in the White House, traces the change to increased global competition.
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UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES REVISITED.
President Obama has initiated a number of things that will come back to "bite him" or worse yet, to "bite us--the American people." In case you didn't see my piece on this in THEBRENNERBRIEF.com, I am attaching the text of it here, followed by yet another person who believes this is the case.
Unintended Consequences of Obama’s Plans Cripple the Middle Class
I’ll start by giving our president the benefit of the doubt—that he is actually hoping to make America a better place with his plans, his policies, his ideology and his actions. BUT, before I go too far down that road, I must question what his idea of “a better place” means, and how it actually works out in practice. I fear the answer is either “not so good” or “terrible!”
A few weeks ago I wrote about the sub-30-hour week, and how it will change the working life of millions of Americans. As thousands of employers hold employees below 30 hours to avoid Obamacare’s costs and red tape, there are a several unintended consequences of Obamacare that President Obama may have overlooked.
Sub-30-Hour Workweek—More Jobs, Less Pay
The first unintended consequence is that instead of helping the middle class, this will hurt them. Everyone whose 40-hour week becomes a sub-30-hour week, will take a de-facto 25% cut in pay. Sure, more people will be hired to make up for the hours of work lost, but they too will only earn about 70% of the old “full time pay.” And that was not too lucrative a job to begin with.
The second unintended consequence is that all of those people will be dumped from employer paid health care into the state exchanges or whatever Federal replacement plan develops as more and more states opt out of the exchanges under Obamacare. This will shift cost from the employer to the government—further increasing the Federal deficit.
The third unintended consequence is that American middle-class workers now must replace the lost 25-30% of pay (due to the sub-30-hour work week). These folks all need to find another (second) job with all the difficulty that involves—finding a second job is tough enough, then balancing two job schedules with personal life is harder yet. There are more unintended consequences, but those three are bad enough.
Instead of helping the middle class, the unintended consequences of the president’s plan has hurt them.
Tax The Rich, Slows Growth
The president has insistently made increasing taxes on the “rich” a centerpiece of his economic plans. He now has the power and leverage to do that. Then what? That money collected in taxes on the wealthy will be spent (or wasted) in Washington. That leaves less money to be invested—and investments are what lead to new jobs and economic growth. The government creates no new wealth. All new wealth is created in the private sector and the government simply takes part of that wealth and redistributes it
Capital gains taxes will also increase, which slows the velocity of money moving through the economy. Instead of selling a profitable investment and finding a new one, investors hold the ones they have longer, to avoid the higher capital gains taxes. Both result in less tax revenue. Slowing the velocity of money moving through the economy results in less tax revenue for the government. So do higher capital gains taxes. This unintended consequence is exactly the opposite of why the taxes were increased. Watch it happen
Next, economic growth will slow further, as will job creation, leading to less revenue from growth, still lower tax revenue and bigger deficits (instead of smaller ones).
The next Obama plan that will backfire is that the (unrealizable) projections on new tax revenue (discussed above) will be spent, but not materialize, thus adding to the deficit. This will threaten yet another downgrade in America’s debt rating.
The Wall Street Effect
The final unintended consequence is that the combined effects of these misguided policies eventually reverberate through the economy and impact Wall Street. Stocks have been climbing due to companies saving money and gaining sales outside the USA. Those two sources of earnings are about used up. Savings have been wrung out of most companies and further ones will cause new layoffs—another unintended consequence of these flawed plans.
Sales outside the USA are slowing now (Europe’s recession, China’s slowdown), such that half of the largest 40 US companies have publicly stated plans to curtail capital spending in 2013. Lower capital investment translates into fewer jobs.
Are you getting the theme here? Everything being done by the president and his administration to rejuvenate the economy and help the middle class is likely to have just the opposite effect. Of course neither he nor his staff want to hear this. We’ll all have to just wait, watch it unfold, then listen for excuses and finger of blame being pointed everywhere but where it belongs.
Unintended consequences are scary when the decision makers simply don’t understand what caused them. And that is the way it is as we enter 2013! Welcome to slow growth/no growth America in the New Year.
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FOR MORE, READ THE ATTACHED PIECE. (THAT'S PLENTY TO THINK ABOUT FOR THIS WEEK)
BEST, JOHN
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President Obama has set in motion forces that he can't handle
Neil Snyder, February 18, 2013
Barack Obama is a terrible president. That's obvious to everyone who isn't chronically ignorant or incurably liberal. By "liberal" I don't mean the classic definition of the word which has to do with being open-minded and objective. I mean the modern version of liberal: self-centered, emotional, illogical, and void of reason. Unfortunately, in 2012 ignoramuses and liberals represented the majority of those who voted. I'm not worried about offending them with my harsh words. My very existence offends them, and so does yours if you don't buy into their worldview.
From economic policy to energy policy to environmental policy to foreign affairs to national security to border security to you name it, the president failed the test, but we re-elected him anyway. Obama's misadventures in the Oval Office are becoming the stuff of legend. Benghazi and Fast and Furious are two of his more high profile blunders, but they aren't the only ones. If George W. Bush had committed just one of those offenses, the mainstream media would have demanded his head on a platter, but they gave Obama a free pass. The nation as a whole became complicit in the president's shenanigans because we didn't demand that he be held accountable.
President Obama has done one thing superbly well: he has demonstrated skill par excellence on a national scale as a community organizer. He is second to none when it comes to inciting, agitating, race baiting, stoking fears, and motivating the masses. If you discount voter fraud, more than anything else, those skills got him re-elected. But like a snowball gathering momentum as it rolls down a hill, the forces that he has unleashed will be impossible to stop without pain and suffering.
For example, Occupy Wall Street's demands for social justice dovetailed perfectly with the president's fairness campaign. Was that coincidence or was it by design? The answer should be obvious, but whatever the case may be, the OWS crowd eventually ran amuck in cities across the fruited plain until government officials finally took action to shut them down.
That's the way it is with unruly mobs. Once agitators get them started, you never know what will happen. But we do know this: President Obama is their champion, and they are still among us waiting in the wings for another opportunity to vent their frustrations. Will the next version of OWS be more malevolent than the first? Only time will tell, but I wouldn't rule it out.
OWS types aren't alone. In the United States today, large and growing numbers of people believe that their mere existence is their contribution to society. They think that those of us who have worked hard all of our lives owe them a living, and not just a living, but a very good living. The takers among us are easy pickings for a man with exceptional community organizing skills, and as I said, the forces that the president has unleashed will prove to be impossible to control. If they explode, there will be hell to pay.
Common sense is totally absent in their world. For instance, who would dare to suggest that the 1% who paid almost 40% of federal income taxes in 2010 should pay more because it's "fair" even though about 50% of our fellow citizens paid no federal income tax? The answer: Barack Obama and his merry band of malcontents. If George Orwell were alive today, he would be scratching his head and thinking about a mind-bending plot for another novel.
Takers have no misgivings about attaching themselves permanently to the government tit, and they feel no guilt or shame as they scream for more. Obama knows them and their predilections all too well, and he takes advantage of every opportunity to stoke the fires that burn within them. The president's mother and his grandparents should have taught him the basics -- things like if you play with matches, you will get burned -- because the fire that he's igniting can easily turn into an inferno. If it does, all of us will pay a very high price.
In due course, simple mathematics will dictate that we can't afford to keep able bodied men and women on the dole. Our current debt and deficit situation is so dire that something has got to give. Judging by a recent Gallup poll, most Americans agree with me, but metaphorically speaking, it may take a swift kick in a sensitive area to wake up our elected officials in Washington. Be that as it may, the day is rapidly approaching when no one can ignore our fiscal quagmire because the combination of Medicare, Social Security, and defense spending plus interest on the debt and paying freeloaders threatens to sink this nation.
Reneging on our national debt is out of the question since global pandemonium would ensue. Obamacare may help to reduce healthcare costs, but when evidence mounts that those "death panels" that we have heard so much about are real and that we are saving money by medicating patients and allowing them to pass away peacefully rather than treating their maladies, people will be hopping mad. Many of them will take to the streets to vent their anger. If you think that it can't happen here, you haven't been paying attention.
Social Security is a special breed of cat because it involves seniors, a powerful voting block, and it is regarded as a national promise that we must not break. Besides, people actually paid in to Social Security as did their employers so it's an annuity -- and not a very good one at that. Any politician who thinks that he can safely tamper with Social Security isn't playing with a full deck of cards. Even so, we can't solve our debt and deficit problems unless we make adjustments in Social Security and Medicare. It's the quintessential Catch 22.
Similarly, we need to cut defense spending without jeopardizing our national security, but defense reductions translate into job cuts and that creates another set of problems. No matter what we do, people will not be happy with the outcome, and many of them will vent their frustration in the voting booth and possibly on the streets.
This is the point: a perfect storm is brewing. I think we're heading for a chaotic and violent period in this country the likes of which no one alive today has ever witnessed. If I'm right, conditions will be ideal for criminals to ply their craft, and President Obama is pushing for gun control at precisely the wrong moment.
I believe that what I have described is realistic and unfortunately inevitable, and that brings me back to my back to the president. He has set in motion forces that he can't handle, and all of us are going to suffer the consequences so get ready for a wild ride.
Author of the Award Winner: THE COMPLEXITY CRISIS, the exciting novel: THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY, and co-author of HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY: Leadership Lessons from the Obama Presidency
Listen to me on the Don Smith show Sat. Feb. 16 around 12:45PM…hear about Roadmap To Profitable Growth and more.... or go to Don's web site and listen later on http://www.blogtalkradio.com/the-don-smith-show
I WILL ALSO BE ON HOWARD LEWINTER'S SHOW ON WED. FEB. 20 AROUND 11AM
Tune in then, and hear another, different interview…
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IF YOU WONDER WHY THE US IS BECOMING A WELFARE STATE WITH IMMENSE DEFICITS, THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE: NO GROWTH!
The US economy contracted, moving "backward" in the 4Q of 2012. So much for Obama's plans for progress and "Forward!" It seems the lukewarm recovery just cooled off some more as the Federal government started to curtail its spending. This should not have been a surprise because even government spending counts when the US economic growth is measured--even though it creates no wealth--and consumes wealth from those who have created it.
Wall Street seem oblivious to this malaise as it climbs back toward new high levels since the big 2007 drop. Earnings are not bad in the US, it seems and most other places are doing worse, so investors are looking here. There is too much cash looking for places to earn a decent return--and the US is the best of an anemic lot. However, many leading companies have already announced cutbacks in their investment plans for 2013. What does that tell you? They are not optimistic about earnings prospects so they are conserving their cash---still. ---------------------- CONSUMERS UNDERSTAND, BUT GETTING PAID NOT TO WORK IS HABIT FORMING Consumer confidence fell, because consumers are smarter than they are given credit for being, and they see through the fog of bickering, political campaigning and deficit spending to prop up welfare programs. They are still unemployed (and even more of them are underemployed) and even the employed are struggling with inflated prices for food, gas, and many services--including health care costs/insurance premiums. Far too many people are working in low wage jobs(retailing, restaurants, etc.) that barely cover their basic needs only when/if supplemented with a variety of government welfare programs (housing allowances, food stamps, etc.). More and more employers are adopting 29 hour work weeks to avoid the burden of Obamacare. This essentially creates more jobs paying less money--not exactly a formula for prosperity for the middle class. Plus, all those who keep their 29 hour jobs take a 25% cut in weekly pay, and must go find a second job just to get back to where they were. Millions are now claiming disability, and with wildly reduced standards for what that means (workplace stress, phantom back injuries, musculoskeletal pain, depression ,etc.), they get disability--effectively removing the motivation to work--perhaps ever again. When the income from all forms of welfare and government largesse exceeds the pay from an honest, but low level job, not working becomes the preferred choice. If a little cash can be earned "on the side" that is all the better. This is what America is turning into and the president is their "Community Organizer in Chief."
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A FEW IN WASHINGTON, DC GET IT, BUT THE MAJORITY DON'T
Meanwhile Washington wrangles with the unresolved, postponed budget, deficit, and looming debt ceiling. The apparent problem is too much spending and too little revenue to support the entitlement, dependency economy. The real problem is barely recognized and totally untreated: too little economic growth in the US private sector. American business needs growth--profitable growth--right here in the USA. Not growth in multinational subsidiaries, employing people in foreign countries, earn profits that are trapped there by the high US tax rates. Profitable growth in America, by domestic companies is possible even with the current unfriendly business environment in DC.
Contrary to what so many of these career politicians think, growth in American economy not only possible, it's the best, and arguably the only solution for America's debt/deficit induced economic crisis. There are still elected officials in Washington who "get it." I know, because I've heard from and spoken with several of them from OH…and a couple from TN where I used to live. Many governors really "get it" which is why many states are coming along better than the country--and most of them are Republicans. A few Democrats get it too…but they dare not speak too loudly if they want continued support of their party.
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WE DON'T HAVE A DEBT AND DEFICIT PROBLEM; WE HAVE A GROWTH AND PROSPERITY PROBLEM
There you have it. America has a debt and deficit problem that is in essence a growth and prosperity problem that is misunderstood and untreated. That's why I write ROADMAP TO PROFITABLE GROWTH…To point out where to look for growth, how to find it and what to do next. Businesses (companies in the private sector) are the ones who need to grow profitably and everything else can happen once that starts. Even those who think all the profits stay in the hands of the wealthy will learn that highly profitable companies even pay their workers more, and treat them better. (Example: Check out Costco!). Those who follow the paths in the book can grow explosively. (Check out Google, and Pandora jewelry.) There are many more examples, but space here is limited. Get the book and read it. See if it doesn't pass your "common sense test." I believe it will.
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YOU KNOW I VALUE THOMAS SOWELL'S THOUGHTS.
Read the piece posted below…it is "spot on"…as usual.
Best, JOHN
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MORE WISDOM FROM THOMAS SOWELL
An old-time trial lawyer once said, "When your case is weak, shout louder!"
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shouted louder when asked about the Obama administration's story last fall that the September 11th attack on the U.S. ambassador's quarters in Benghazi was due to an anti-Islamic video that someone in the United States had put on the Internet, and thereby provoked a protest that escalated into violence.
She shouted: "We had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?"
Students of propaganda may admire the skill with which she misdirected people's attention. But those of us who are still old-fashioned enough to think that the truth matters cannot applaud her success.
Let's go back to square one.
After the attack on the American ambassador's quarters in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, the Obama administration immediately blamed it on the anti-Islamic video.
Moreover, this version of what happened was not just a passing remark. It was a story that the administration kept repeating insistently. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice repeated that story on five different television talk shows on the same Sunday. President Obama himself repeated the same story at the United Nations. The man who put the anti-Islamic video on the Internet was arrested for a parole violation, creating more media coverage to keep attention on this theme.
"What difference, at this point, does it make?" Secretary Clinton now asks. What difference did it make at the time?
Obviously the Obama administration thought it made a difference, with an election coming up. Prior to the attack, the administration's political theme was that Barack Obama had killed Osama bin Laden (with an assist from the Navy SEALs), vanquished Al Qaeda and was now in the process of putting the terrorist threat behind us.
To have the attack in Benghazi be seen as a terrorist attack -- and a devastating one -- would have ruined this picture, with an election coming up.
The key question that remains unanswered to this day is: What speck of evidence is there that the attack in Benghazi was due to the much-discussed video or that there was ever any protest demonstration outside the ambassador's quarters?
If there is no evidence whatever, then the whole attempt to say that a protest over a video escalated into an attack was a deliberate hoax by people who knew better.
There is no point in the administration saying that they did not have all the facts about the attack immediately. All the facts may never be known. But the real question is: Did you have even a single fact that would substantiate your repeated claims that some video led to a protest in Benghazi that got out of hand and led to the attack?
Interestingly, Hillary Clinton herself was not featured in this campaign, even though as Secretary of State she was a key figure. Hillary was not about to create video footage that could come back to haunt her if she runs for President of the United States in 2016.
In a larger context, the Benghazi attack showed that you cannot unilaterally end the "war on terror" or the terrorists' war on us, by declaring victory.
For years, the Bush administration's phrase "war on terror" was avoided like the plague by the Obama administration, even if that required the Fort Hood massacre to be classified as "workplace violence." But, no matter how clever the rhetoric, reality nevertheless rears its ugly head.
Once the September 11th attack in Benghazi is seen for what it was -- a highly coordinated and highly successful operation by terrorists who were said to have been vanquished -- that calls into question the Obama administration's Middle East foreign policy.
That is why it still matters.
---
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page atwww.creators.com.
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"The little book that could help save the US economy."
New Book: ROADMAP TO PROFITABLE GROWTH… GET IT NOW!
Author of the Award Winner: THE COMPLEXITY CRISIS, the exciting novel: THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY, and co-author of HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY: Leadership Lessons from the Obama Presidency
IF YOU HAVE NOT YET ORDERED YOUR COPIES OF ROADMAP TO PROFITABLE GROWTH ---PLEASE ORDER MY NEW BOOK NOW…Then continue reading THE ENTERPRISE…
NOTE: These are ideal gifts for any business person you know…or better yet, for your CLIENTS who will benefit greatly from the book.
Ordering links are at the bottom of this newsletter.
(FOR QUANTITY DISCOUNTS, CONTACT ME DIRECTLY.)
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT--THE GREATEST RECENT COMMERCIAL: "GOD MADE A FARMER" (Paul Harvey's words and narration)…
The farmer was the backbone of America for most of the early 20th Century when America became great. We could all learn from that. Watch this for 2 minutes and see!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMpZ0TGjbWE
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A VERY DIFFERENT ANALYSIS THAN YOU GET FROM THE WHITE HOUSE OR THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
John Boehner is "dumb like a fox." Obama struts his stuff, but we'll see in the end how he comes out.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/01/28/how-president-obama-lost-his-shirt-to-john-boehner/#comment_reply
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CHECK OUT MY POST ON THEBRENNERBRIEF.COM ON THE VERY TOPIC OF "WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND."
http://thebrennerbrief.com/2013/02/06/the-karma-of-supporting-barack-obama/
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I HAVE BEEN WARNING ABOUT CYBER-ATTACKS FOR 12 YEARS…NOW THEY ARE HERE
And now two of the US leading news media are the victims…maybe someone will pay attention?
http://www.policymic.com/mobile/articles/24908/cyber-attacks-will-be-the-greatest-national-security-threat-in-the-21st-century
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IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CYBER-THREATS, AND ENJOY A "GRIPPING STORY"--GET MY NOVEL: THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY (ALSO AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.COM)
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WHY BOTHER TO WORK? YOU JUST LOSE YOUR WELFARE IF YOU EARN MORE MONEY!
Arthur Laffer's column in the WSJ Saturday, raised the core issue about America's "Dependency Status." Rather than do a long introduction, I will simply paste an excerpt from his thoughtful Op Ed piece:
"….The first step is to consider the role played by disincentives, whether they are disincentives to work because government benefits fall away as income rises, or disincentives that make employers reluctant to hire entry-level workers likely to come from the ranks of the young unemployed.
More than three decades ago, I began enumerating a myriad of government "needs tested" programs that diminished welfare benefits as their recipients earned more income. The loss of government benefits made earning more income less attractive to many low-income families, an effect similar to that of raising marginal tax rates.
In the intervening years, alas, very little has changed. Gary Alexander, secretary of public welfare for the State of Pennsylvania, made that quite clear in a July presentation to the American Enterprise Institute entitled "Welfare's Failure and the Solution," an analysis of the welfare benefits plus wages of a single mother of two young children living in Pennsylvania.
Mr. Alexander reports that a single mother of two in the Keystone State earning no wages will obtain welfare benefits—such as food stamps, child care and Medicaid services—worth more than $45,000 annually. If the woman begins earning wages, her total annual income, including the value of her welfare benefits, will rise as well—up to about $9,000 in wages. But the next $5,000 in wages will not increase her total income, because she will lose some Medicaid and other benefits. In short, she faces the equivalent of a 100% marginal tax.
From about $14,000 to $29,000 of gross wages, she will also lose government benefits such that her total annual income will rise only about $5,000—an effective marginal tax rate of 67%. At $29,000 of wages, the woman will realize a little less than $57,000 in net income plus benefits. Once she earns more than $29,000 in wages her housing subsidies and food subsidies drop way down. With wages above $43,000, her child-care subsidies disappear, and once her wages top $57,000 her family will no longer qualify for the Children's Health Insurance Program.
What this means is that her total income—welfare benefits plus wages, minus taxes—won't reach $57,000 until her gross wage income rises to $69,000. In other words, the money earned by her between $29,000 and $69,000 faces a marginal tax rate, on average, of 100%. She receives no net benefit from her labor. Now if that doesn't motivate you to get up and go to work, I don't know what will.
This example is particular to a single mother in Pennsylvania with two children, but the principles apply generally across the country. People with low incomes who receive various forms of welfare subsidies in any number of states—with and without children, whether married or not—face enormous disincentives in trying to improve their lives by working. And these barriers to self-improvement through work have been rising over time."
-------------------------IF YOU FIND THAT SHOCKING, THEN YOU NOW UNDERSTAND WHY SO MANY PEOPLE ARE DROPPING OUT OF THE WORKFORCE IN AMERICA THESE DAYS. WHY WORK WHEN THE GOVERNMENT WILL TAKE MONEY FROM PEOPLE WHO DO WORK AND "GIVE IT TO YOU" FOR DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?
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I DON'T ALWAYS AGREE WITH THOMAS FRIEDMAN…BUT IN THIS CASE, HE'S GOT IT RIGHT!
That's why I wrote Roadmap To Profitable Growth…to help…
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A VERY INTERESTING OP-ED PIECE OF HIS IS POSTED BELOW:
Have a wonderful month and for those in the East, stay in, stay warm, and hope the snow melts fast.
Best, JOHN
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*************************************
"The little book that could help save the US economy."
New Book: ROADMAP TO PROFITABLE GROWTH… GET IT NOW!
http://www.amazon.com/Roadmap-Profitable-Growth-John-Mariotti/dp/1479125083/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357746104&sr=1-1&keywords=Roadmap+to+Profitable+Growth
and Kindle edition: http://www.amazon.com/Roadmap-To-Profitable-Growth-ebook/dp/B00B6BUL4W/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359262289&sr=1-2&keywords=roadmap+to+profitable+growth
Author of the Award Winner: THE COMPLEXITY CRISIS, the exciting novel: THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY, and co-author of HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY: Leadership Lessons from the Obama Presidency
John L. Mariotti, President & CEO, The Enterprise Group, http://www.mariotti.net, http://mariotti.blogs.com/my_weblog/
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