SNIPPETS:
P & G calculates that one in five of its US jobs and two in five in OH--depend directly on its global business
To climb out of the recession, we need to create millions of the kind of jobs that US multinationals tend to create.
WalMart finally shot itself in the foot, getting prices too low, and failing to grow sales.
You can only make money by building inventory IF YOU CAN SELL IT (at near normal prices, in near normal time frames.
$379.7 Billion = TEN years of the tax increase of eliminating Bush income tax rates on singles above $200k+ and couples above $250k+.
What's Hot and What's Not? (based on capacity change 12/2008-12/2009):
HOT: Semiconductors, Communications Eq., Computers, Electricity, Oil & gas.
NOT: Textiles, Printing, Furniture, Motor vehicles, Plastics & rubber products
In addition to a "DEBT PANEL" maybe we should form a "QUIT SPENDING PANEL" too.
States are getting killed by reduced tax revenues and continued increases in spending instead of making tough cuts.
Thirty-seven (37) governors' seats are up for reelection this coming fall. Good time for action.
HUGE FACTOR GOING UNNOTICED: The impact of the Census and redistricting on who gets how many seats in the House and what shape the districts are--ridiculous.
Best idea I've heard: Pass a new law that House districts must be rectangular in shape with four ninety-degree corners joined by straight lines. That'll slow the "gerrymandering" that gets incumbents reelected over 90% of the time no matter how bad they seem to do. Add term limits across the board, and now you've got something going.
PARETO'S PRINCIPLE
Work on the 20% of the items that affect 80% of the results. In the case of the US government, or your business, it's good advice. So why are the DC politicians, and for that matter, those in our states, trimming around the edges of the little things. What needs to be "fixed" are, in shown below, in order. Cuts should be targeted at the top 5: DEFENSE, SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, MEDICAID, AND INTEREST ON THE DEBT. See?
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IF YOU ACCEPT THAT PREMISE, THEN WHAT?
The $750 billion defense budget is far from all necessary or even critical. There are huge administrative overhead costs in there that could be slashed. Would some functions need to go away? Absolutely. Some big weapons systems would have to go away too--the ones like we used to fight wars against nation-states half a century ago would be a good place to start. (Huge tanks, for one example, a large, unwieldy and very expensive, high maintenance piece of military hardware). But I'm getting ahead of myself. The first rule when cutting is to cut redundancies. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, National Guard....should I stop now?
Do they all need their own "toys?" (Planes, vehicles, boats, etc.) HELL NO! If the leaders would carefully redefine the missions and the functions, then the Army would contract and provide the ground vehicles and weapons; the Navy would contract and provide boats, ships, subs, etc.; the Air Force would contract and provide all the planes; Aircraft carriers would be jointly developed by the Navy and Air Force. Only the Marines and Special Forces branches would get to pick and choose their own unique weapons and transportation.
Impossible, you say? Transfer all the prime contracts as outlines and cancel any redundant ones, absorbing them into ongoing projects. Would contractors scream? Sure. Would they adapt? Absolutely. Who is the customer? The US Government. Tell them that's the way it is (just like WalMart and HomeDepot do in retailing).
FIXING SOCIAL SECURITY IS SIMPLER THAN YOU THINK (I didn't say "fun" or enjoyable.)
There are only a few solutions:
1) Lower benefits or have them start at a later age. (The latter is better add 6 months to the retirement age every year for the next 12 years until it approaches the lower average life expectancy of a working person, male or female. That was what age 65 was--life expectancy--when the plan was developed 75 years ago.)
2) Raise the taxes that fund them, or remove the upper limits. (The latter is better. People making over $100k per year are not rich, but since there is not enough of them working, each one and their employer will have to pay the additional 3+%.)
3) Reduce the rate at which they escalate by choosing the lower of the COLA adjustments. (Some of the measures are inflated--and they know which ones to fix.)
4) Increase the number of workers paying into the fund by rounding up and taxing the millions of illegals not paying now. (Needs to be done anyway.)
FIXING MEDICARE AND MEDICAID IS MUCH HARDER--THE HOLE IS DEEPER AND THE PROGRAM MUCH MORE COMPLEX
That's no reason to avoid doing it--just a couple of facts.
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From: THE WEEK, Feb. 19, 2010
Editor's Letter: Our Country’s Future
Do we accept painful tax increases at virtually every level of income—or do we drastically reduce our ambitions, and our expectations?
Thursday, February 11, 2010
In Colorado Springs, says local businessman Chuck Fowler, “Atlas is shrugging.’’ The city government of that conservative, anti-tax community had
a huge hole carved in its budget by the recession, falling sales-tax revenues, and escalating pension and health-care costs. When the city proposed
tripling property taxes to make up the shortfall, the indignant citizenry said: No way. So Colorado’s second-largest city is now a laboratory in
minimalist, Ayn Rand–style government: Dozens of police and firefighter jobs are being eliminated, and the police helicopter is up for sale.
Recreation centers and pools are being shuttered; potholes will be left unrepaired; more than a third of the streetlights have been turned off. Parks
will not be mowed regularly or watered at all; municipal trash cans are being hauled off, and replaced by signs advising people to take responsibility
for their own trash.
Is this our country’s future? Quite clearly, our appetite for government services now exceeds our willingness—indeed, our ability—to pay. Even the
federal government cannot print money and borrow trillions indefinitely. So do we accept painful tax increases at virtually every level of
income—or do we drastically reduce our ambitions, and our expectations? (See Controversies.) For more than half a century, America has truly been
the exceptional nation, with a costly safety net for the poor and the elderly; armies of public servants to educate our kids, clean up our messes, and
keep order; and a military so rich in weaponry and manpower that we have extended our influence over every corner of the globe. Sooner or later,
something has to give, and it will have to be big. You can’t erase trillion-dollar deficits by turning out the streetlights.
William Falk, Editor-in-chief
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CONSUMER CONFIDENCE DROPPED 10 pts. AND JOBS ARE STILL NOT RECOVERING; HOUSING IS STILL IN DEEP TROUBLE
So where is the recovery. With the US economy heavily dependent on consumer spending (60-70%) and consumers reeling under job losses and unaffordable mortgages, the likelihood of a robust recovery near term is not good. The government spending on stimulus bills is like "welfare" in that it is a hand-out which will provide a brief uptick, but does nothing for the longer term problem. Neither political party has much credibility right now, because neither one has many solutions that resonate with the needs of so many Americans.
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Excerpt From the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 23, 2010: "The employment outlook didn't fare any better. The percentage of consumers expecting more jobs in the months ahead fell to 13.4% from 15.8%, while the proportion expecting fewer jobs jumped to 24.6% in February from 18.9% in January. The report also showed 17.2% of respondents expect their incomes to fall over the next six months, and only 9.5% expect an increase. "The combination of earnings and job anxieties is likely to continue to curb spending," said Ms. Franco."
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HOW MANY TIMES DOES THIS MAN HAVE TO BE CAUGHT LYING BEFORE PEOPLE FIGURE OUT THAT HE LIES...WHENEVER IT SUITS HIS PURPOSE
His failed Presidential campaign was marred by bold-faced lies--that he was caught making. (Joe Biden does it too--in some of his most "profound statements" he makes up facts that are grossly wrong). Gore lost all respect by Tennesseans (his home state) because they tired of his lies and misbehaviors. He was "groomed from birth" to be president by his powerful politician father, Albert Gore, Sr. Now he's in hiding so he doesn't have to face the revelation of his bunk-science for which he won both a Nobel prize and an Oscar. This sort of tells you how credible those two award granting bodies are--doesn't it?
Al Gore's Nine Lies
IBD Editorials Posted 06:54 PM ET
A lot has happened since Newsweek's Nov. 9 cover story -- most recently the retraction of Al Gore's rising-seas scenario.
Climate Fraud: The godfather of climate hysteria is in hiding as another of his wild claims unravels — this one about global warming causing seas to swallow us up.
We've not seen or heard much of the former vice president, Oscar winner and Nobel Prize recipient recently as the case for disastrous man-made climate change collapses.
Perhaps he's off reading how scientists were forced to withdraw a study on a projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding two "technical" mistakes that undermined the findings.
The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, allegedly confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that sea levels would rise due to climate change. The IPCC put the rise at 59 centimeters by 2100. The Nature Geoscience study put it at up to 82 centimeters.
Many considered the study and the IPCC's estimates too conservative in their warnings. After all, Al Gore, in his award-winning opus, "An Inconvenient Truth," laughingly called a documentary, foretold an apocalyptic vision of the devastation caused by a 20-foot rise in sea levels due to melting polar ice caps "in the near future."
Now Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at England's University of Bristol, has formally retracted the study. "One mistake was a miscalculation; the other was not to allow fully for temperature change over the past 2,000 years," he said.
According to Siddall, "People make mistakes, and mistakes happen in science." They seem to be happening a lot lately, and more than just mistakes. We are talking about outright fraud, the deliberate manipulation and destruction of data.
Last November, Al Gore was hailed by Newsweek as "The Thinking Man's Thinking Man."
Since then we and he have been given much to think about, starting with the damning e-mails from researchers associated with the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain. The e-mails revealed an organized attempt to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, to manipulate data to fit preconceived conclusions, and to discredit and shun reputable skeptics.
A key finding of the IPCC, which along with Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, was revealed last month to be utterly bogus. The IPCC claimed glaciers in the Himalayas would likely disappear by 2035. The only thing they had to back it up was a 1999 non-peer reviewed article in an Indian mass-market science magazine.
It's been revealed that researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been systematically eliminating weather stations, with a clear bias toward removing colder latitude and altitude locations. The number of reporting stations in Canada dropped from 600 to 35, with only one station used by the NOAA as a temperature gauge for Canadian territory above the Arctic Circle.
The past is prologue. Two years ago, Justice Michael Burton of London's High Court ruled Gore's film could be shown in British schools only if material explaining its errors were included in the curriculum. Burton documented nine significant errors in Gore's film and wrote that some of Gore's claims arose from "alarmism and exaggeration."
The first error Gore made, according to Burton, was in his apocalyptic vision of the devastation caused by a rise in sea levels caused by melting polar ice caps. Burton wrote that Gore's predicted 20-foot rise could occur "only after, and over, millennia" and to suggest otherwise "is not in line with the scientific consensus."
One by one, Gore's prophecies of doom and those of the climate charlatans he inspired are being exposed as the work of con artists. From the CRU to the IPCC, the climate dominoes are falling one by one. His silence speaks volumes.
Goodnight, Mr. Gore, wherever you are.
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DOES ANYONE WHO SUPPORTED "CAP & TRADE" TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF GLOBAL WARMING SEE HOW WRONG THAT WAS--AND IS?
Stop this charade in Congress right now. Raise hell with every legislator you have in your state. Two Senators and one Representative or if you have a second home, let those Senators and Representative hear about it too. More importantly, will the mainstream media ever correct its advocacy reporting on these lies? Or is it insulated from the truth so totally, that once a lie has been reported, it becomes a sort of de facto "truth.?" Hey, Keith Olbermann--here is a good one for you to say you're sorry about. (Sure, when hell freezes over!) Wait, with global warming, maybe HELL never will freeze over?
*******A WARNING FROM THE CDC*********
Very important disease information has just been made public that I think is something you should all be aware of: Gonorrhea Lectim. The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of this old disease. The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim. It's pronounced "Gonna re-elect 'im." Many victims contracted it in 2008.... but now most people, after having been infected for the past 1-2 years are starting to realize how destructive this sickness is. It's sad because it is so easily cured with a new medical procedure just coming on the market called Votemout! You take the first treatment of Votemout in 2010 and the second treatment in 2012 and simply don't engage in such risky behavior again, otherwise it could become permanent--and eventually wipe out all life as we know it. Several states are already on top of this situation, using Votemout: Virginia and New Jersey, and now Massachusetts, with many more seeing the writing on the wall. Please pass this important message on to all those bright folk you really care about. Thank you!!
*******A WARNING FROM THE CDC*********
A MORE SERIOUS WARNING:
AMERICA'S FUTURE IS IN JEOPARDY DUE TO FAILED LEADERSHIP AND MISGUIDED POLITICIANS--AND I'M NOT JUST TALKING ABOUT OBAMA, REDI & PELOSI, ET. AL. BUSH AND HIS GANG HAS A BIG PIECE OF THIS PROBLEM AS DO THE GOP LEADERS WHO SAT IN WASHINGTON AND SPENT LIKE "DRUNKEN POLITICIANS" 6-8 YEARS BEFORE THIS NEW BUNCH TOOK OVER. WE NEED A PERSON WHO UNDERSTANDS BUSINESS, THE FREE ENTERPRISE SYSTEM AND HOW IT ALL WORKS TO CREATE WEALTH.
In a future edition, I'll tell you who that person MIGHT be. Until then, keep acting like "We, the people." Raise hell if your elected officials do not pay attention and support the ones who do, or new ones who will. If they don't respond, give them a dose of VOTEMOUT.
Best, John
PS: Maybe Barack Obama is learning from the old cliche': "If you are in danger of being run out of town, get in front and pretend you are leading a parade." Now he says he's for nuclear power plants. He's making conciliatory (for him, anyway) overtures on health care. He seems to have tabled "Cap & Trade" since it is all based on a hoax. And he's following the same foreign policies as his predecessors, and leaving largely the same people in charge.
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IT HELPS TO HAVE CROOKED FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
After he breaks a whole bunch of laws, they find him guilty of taking a trip he shouldn't have. Reality check in Washington, DC--NOPE--No contact with reality in the Congress at all.
February 25, 2010, © The New York Times
Panel Finds Rangel Broke House Rules With Caribbean Trip
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI and ANAHAD O’CONNOR
[NOTE; inserted emphasis is mine--JM He'll probably get a "verbal reprimand" for breaking 4-5 laws!]
A House panel has found that Rep. Charles B. Rangel of New York broke Congressional rules by failing to properly disclose financial details of a trip to the Caribbean, a House official said. Mr. Rangel, who heads the House Ways and Means committee and who has served his Harlem district for nearly four decades, has been under investigation by two house subcommittees. The guilty finding led to quick condemnation from Republicans, who have made the powerful congressman a frequent target.
“Once promised to be the ‘most ethical Congress in history,’ the Democratic majority now has a serious ethics scandal on its hands thanks in-part to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,” said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “For months, and even years, Nancy Pelosi has been promoting corrupt actors within her caucus ranks when she should have been punishing them.”
One of the two House panels began looking into Mr. Rangel after The New York Times reported that --[1] he was renting four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem at a price that was well below market value, despite rules forbidding House members from accepting gifts worth more than $50. The inquiry — which also included an investigation into whether he --[2] improperly used his office to raise money for an academic center named for him — later expanded after questions were raised about --[3] unreported taxable income Mr. Rangel received from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic.
At the same time, a second subcommittee was investigating a complaint from an ethics advocacy group that accused Mr. Rangel and four other members of Congress of --[4] violating restriction on accepting travel from donors who employ lobbyists by attending a conference last November in St. Maarten. The conference was sponsored by Citigroup, but Mr. Rangel reported in an amended disclosure form that his trip was paid for by the Carib News Foundation, which had underwritten his travels in the past.
It was that inquiry that resulted in the guilty finding by the House committee.
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mea
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John L. Mariotti, President & CEO, The Enterprise Group, Phone 614-840-0959 http://www.mariotti.net http://mariotti.blogs.com/my_weblog/
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