THE ENTERPRISE--A FEW THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

THE ENTERPRISE--A FEW THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

FINALLY, RANGEL HAS STEPPED DOWN
It's about time. His list of illegal and unethical transgressions should have brought him down a long time ago.

BOB LUTZ RETIRES FROM GM
Too bad, but Bob deserves a rest.  He's 78 and has done marvelous things in the US auto industry.

BEST TITLE FOR A COLUMN:  "WHAT A DISASTER LOOKS LIKE"
Peggy Noonan in the WSJ, describing the first 14 months of an Obama presidency.  Her perspective spans back to the Reagan years.

FORD HAS FIGURED OUT HOW TO WIN--AND CONQUER COMPLEXITY--IN A NEW CULTURE
Paul Ingrassia, the WSJ's astute observer of the automotive scene recently did a wonderful article on how Alan Mulally of Ford is reshaping that legendary company. Two of his greatest tools:  eliminate complexity and build a new culture.  Here's a brief excerpt from the longer article.

    "...Ford's recent success is already amazing considering the prior half-dozen years of near-fatal decline. If it continues, Mr. Mulally will be credited with one of the great turnarounds in corporate history. His method has been to simplify, relentlessly and systematically, a business that had grown way too complicated and costly to be managed effectively.
    "Improve Focus, Simplify Operations," reads one of Mr. Mulally's many charts, which he repeats like a sacred mantra. Soon after his arrival Ford began shedding brands—Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin among them—that the company couldn't afford to support. Volvo will be next to go. Meanwhile, the core Ford brand got an investment infusion to replace aging cars and revive a model lineup that had been heavily tilted toward gas-guzzling trucks.
    In the process, Ford cut its number of global platforms, or chassis, to eight from more than 20, and the number of nameplates to 25 from 97. Each platform and model involves hundreds of millions of dollars of engineering costs, which translated to billions of losses because Ford couldn't sell enough of each model.
    Besides revamping the product line Mr. Mulally has overhauled the often-contentious culture in Ford's executive suite. Most of his appointees are company veterans, but they're the sort of people who typically got overlooked when style seemed to count more than substance, as it often did at Ford. ..."

For the entire article, here is a link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704479404575087372469421104.html?KEYWORDS=Ford%27s+renaissance+man

IRAN WILL BE A PROBLEM--NO MATTER WHAT WE DO
It will get a nuke.  (Hopefully not use it, but Ahmadinejad is crazy, so he might.)   We need to make it clear what happens if they nuke anyone, anyplace.  And we better hope our arsenal has  been maintained--in spite of Obama's anti-nuke naivete and stupidity.  Pick sanctions that do not polarize the young, revolutionary Iranians against the USA and in 10-15 years they will overturn the lunatics now in charge.  Meanwhile, it will be tense.

A RECOVERY IS COMING--BUT SLOWLY
Manufacturing is recovering first; services are lagging behind--and the USA is much more a service economy now.  Temp hiring is up.  That is "stage 2" of a job recovery.  The first stage is lengthen the work week of existing employees--hours go up and overtime starts; in stage 2, more temps get hired; finally, then, finally (if companies believe the demand will be sustainable) real hiring starts.  And the "jobs bill," with its token tax incentives will not accelerate those phases one iota.  It is just $15B of hype--mostly wasted--but makes great Congressional PR.

WHAT ARE WE DOING WITH OUR CHILDREN
The most preposterous move is one that I read in a recent column by George Will: jumping rope with no rope, so no child will be embarrassed by tripping on the rope which could harm their self esteem.   No scores for games?  No grades in school?  What's wrong with this kind of thinking?  I have news for everyone (parents, educators, psychologists, etc.) who thinks this nonsense is right.  There are scores in the real world.  There are grades too.  Somebody wins and somebody loses.  If we send a whole generation of kids out who do not realize these facts, we are the guilty ones, setting them up for failure, depression and worse.  Will someone please apply some common sense?

"DRINKING FROM THE INFORMATION FIRE HOSE"
Information overload is affecting everyone.  We all wonder what to do about it.  That was the topic of comments from John Mauldin posted below.  His feelings mirror mine.  George Friedman, CEO of Stratfor the highly regarded intelligence service, also shares these concerns, and presents his thoughts.  My solution is to continue finding the best, most concise presentation of useful and interesting information I can, and "trickle it" to you each week--the same as John does.
From John Mauldin's weekly newsletter [[email protected]]

    "I met with George Friedman of Stratfor this Tuesday. (Tiffani went with me, her first trip away from my granddaughter Lively. Ryan got to play Mr. Mom.) I was sitting in George's office at the end of the day, waiting for everyone else to show up so we could go to dinner. I had been busy trying to coordinate meetings and keep up with my reading and research, emails, and phone calls."
    "George, I have a problem. I feel like I am drinking information through a fire hose. I am addicted to information. It is beginning to interfere with my productivity, as I get so much high-quality material from the best sources that I feel I need to absorb. Each bit of information becomes a clue to the larger puzzle. But I have to write more. I am going to have to start randomly deleting things every now and then if I am going to stay on top of it all, and get some of these books that are in me done."
    I am determined to have a life outside of work (family and friends are important), and am for the most part successful at that, but I am not getting done all that I wish I could do when I'm at work. And there are books piled on my desk that simply scream for attention.
    I thought George would understand. He has some 90 analysts all over the world feeding him up-to-the-minute analysis on country and issue situations. Surely, he must have an idea for me on how to handle the "download" problem.
    "John," he replied quietly, sighing heavily, "I know what you mean. But if I started randomly deleting, I'd be afraid I would miss something important. What else can you do but keep at it?"
    "It is the conundrum of our age. I hope, gentle reader, that I help you in some ways to keep up and stay informed without overloading you! Have a great week, and learn something new!"


WILL HEALTH CARE LEGISLATION BE PASSED BY A SIMPLE MAJORITY?
If it is, so be it.  If those are the rules, and the laws passed abide by the rules, then it will show how little the majority in Congress and our President care about what the American people want--and what they need.  The Democratic cry is that the Republicans have no alternative plan.  That totally ignores Rep. Paul Ryan's very well thought out and documented plans.  Ryan's proposals go far beyond health care.  They set out a path to restore our country to fiscal sanity and solvency--albeit it will take a long time given the GOP/Bush and now Democrat/Obama's prolific and irresponsible spending.  Read some of Ryan's good sense and factual commentary that I have pasted  below.

I also promised to put forth a new potential name to lead our country in 2012 going forward.  MITCH DANIELS governor of Indiana. Read the article follows to learn more about him.

That's plenty for this week.  Have a good one as we look forward to spring, an economic recovery (even if a slow one) and the chance to elect some new people to represent us in Washington in just 8 months!!!  Remember WE, THE PEOPLE, must stand for what we believe in.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVAhr4hZDJE

BEST, JOHN
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OPINION MARCH 4, 2010  ©Dow Jones Reprints:
Dissecting the Real Cost of ObamaCare
The President's own chief Medicare actuary says the Senate and House bills are bending the cost curve up.
By PAUL D. RYAN        [Emphasis added is mine--JLM]
The following are remarks made by Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, about the cost of the House and Senate health-care bills at President Obama's Blair House summit on health care, Feb. 25:
    "Look, we agree on the problem here. And the problem is health inflation is driving us off of a fiscal cliff.
Mr. President, you said health-care reform is budget reform. You're right. We agree with that. Medicare, right now, has a $38 trillion unfunded liability. That's $38 trillion in empty promises to my parents' generation, our generation, our kids' generation. Medicaid's growing at 21 percent each year. It's suffocating states' budgets. It's adding trillions in obligations that we have no means to pay for . . .
    Now, you're right to frame the debate on cost and health inflation. And in September, when you spoke to us in the well of the House, you basically said—and I totally agree with this—I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits either now or in the future.
Since the Congressional Budget Office can't score your bill, because it doesn't have sufficient detail, but it tracks very similar to the Senate bill, I want to unpack the Senate score a little bit.
    And if you take a look at the CBO analysis—analysis from your chief actuary—I think it's very revealing. This bill does not control costs. This bill does not reduce deficits. Instead, this bill adds a new health-care entitlement at a time when we have no idea how to pay for the entitlements we already have.
    Now let me go through why I say that. The majority leader said the bill scores as reducing the deficit $131 billion over the next 10 years. First, a little bit about CBO. I work with them every single day—very good people, great professionals. They do their jobs well. But their job is to score what is placed in front of them. And what has been placed in front of them is a bill that is full of gimmicks and smoke-and-mirrors.
    Now, what do I mean when I say that? Well, first off, the bill has 10 years of tax increases, about half a trillion dollars, with 10 years of Medicare cuts, about half a trillion dollars, to pay for six years of spending. Now, what's the true 10-year cost of this bill in 10 years? That's $2.3 trillion.
    The Senate bill] does [a] couple of other things. It takes $52 billion in higher Social Security tax revenues and counts them as offsets. But that's really reserved for Social Security. So either we're double-counting them or we don't intend on paying those Social Security benefits.
    It takes $72 billion and claims money from the CLASS Act. That's the long-term care insurance program. It takes the money from premiums that are designed for that benefit and instead counts them as offsets.
    The Senate Budget Committee chairman [Kent Conrad] said that this is a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.
Now, when you take a look at the Medicare cuts, what this bill essentially does [is treat] Medicare like a piggy bank. It raids a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare, not to shore up Medicare solvency, but to spend on this new government program.
    . . . According to the chief actuary of Medicare . . . as much as 20 percent of Medicare's providers will either go out of business or will have to stop seeing Medicare beneficiaries. Millions of seniors . . . who have chosen Medicare Advantage will lose the coverage that they now enjoy. You can't say that you're using this money to either extend Medicare solvency and also offset the cost of this new program. That's double counting.
    And so when you take a look at all of this; when you strip out the double-counting and what I would call these gimmicks, the full 10-year cost of the bill has a $460 billion deficit. The second 10-year cost of this bill has a $1.4 trillion deficit.
    . . . Probably the most cynical gimmick in this bill is something that we all probably agree on. We don't think we should cut doctors [annual federal reimbursements] 21 percent next year. We've stopped those cuts from occurring every year for the last seven years. We all call this, here in Washington, the doc fix. Well, the doc fix, according to your numbers, costs $371 billion. It was in the first iteration of all of these bills, but because it was a big price tag and it made the score look bad, made it look like a deficit . . . that provision was taken out, and it's been going on in stand-alone legislation. But ignoring these costs does not remove them from the backs of taxpayers. Hiding spending does not reduce spending. And so when you take a look at all of this, it just doesn't add up.
    . . . I'll finish with the cost curve. Are we bending the cost curve down or are we bending the cost curve up?
Well, if you look at your own chief actuary at Medicare, we're bending it up. He's claiming that we're going up $222 billion, adding more to the unsustainable fiscal situation we have.
    And so, when you take a look at this, it's really deeper than the deficits or the budget gimmicks or the actuarial analysis. There really is a difference between us.. . . We've been talking about how much we agree on different issues, but there really is a difference between us. And it's basically this. We don't think the government should be in control of all of this. We want people to be in control. And that, at the end of the day, is the big difference.
    Now, we've offered lots of ideas all last year, all this year. Because we agree the status quo is unsustainable. It's got to get fixed.
It's bankrupting families. It's bankrupting our government. It's hurting families with pre-existing conditions. We all want to fix this.
    But we don't think that this is the . . . the solution. And all of the analysis we get proves that point.  Now, I'll just simply say this. . .     We are all representatives of the American people. We all do town hall meetings. We all talk to our constituents. And I've got to tell you, the American people are engaged. And if you think they want a government takeover of health care, I would respectfully submit you're not listening to them.
    So what we simply want to do is start over, work on a clean-sheeted paper, move through these issues, step by step, and fix them, and bring down health-care costs and not raise them. And that's basically the point."


FROM REAL CLEAR POLITICS.COM, February 26, 2010
Why Mitch Daniels is on the 2012 Short List  By Mona Charen

On the morning of Nov. 5, 2008, the world rocked to news that the United States had elected Barack Obama to the presidency. That same morning, Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, joined the list of those most often mentioned as potentially defeating President Obama in 2012.

In what may be a sign of unusual mental health and emotional balance, Daniels persistently declined to be considered a candidate. Among his many reasons, he told Brian Lamb, was reluctance to subject his family to the "savagery" of presidential politics. It is great news for the country, if not for him, that he has at last relented and agreed to keep the door open -- if only a crack.

He earned his spot on the short list of possibilities the hard way: In a quicksand year for Republicans, he managed to win re-election as governor by 18 points (in a state Obama carried). His margin of victory included 24 percent of Democrats, 20 percent of African-Americans, 51 percent of the youth vote, 67 percent of the elderly, and 57 percent of independents.

When Daniels took office in 2004, Indiana, which had been enduring Democratic governors for 16 years, was running an $800 million deficit. Four years later, it had a $1.3 billion surplus. Daniels accomplished this without raising taxes (as 66 percent of states have done); in fact, he passed the largest tax cut in state history. Nor did he cut essential services like education, as 40 states have done. As Mark Hemingway reported in National Review, "In the last three years, the state has repaid $760 million to schools and local governments that had been appropriated to finance the state's deficit spending." Additionally, Indiana has hired 800 new child welfare caseworkers and 250 state troopers, all while cutting the rate of increase in state spending from 5.9 to 2.8 percent annually.

Daniels has successfully courted business investment and has welcomed "two Toyota plants, a Honda factory, a $500 million Nestlé facility, and a British Petroleum project that will bring $3.8 billion to the state ..."

This is a laboratory of successful conservative governance. As Daniels put it to NR, "Our health-care plan is health savings accounts for poor people. Our telecommunications policy is deregulation. Our infrastructure policy was the biggest privatization in state history." And his spending policy was less is more.

A former chief of the Office of Management and Budget (under George W. Bush), Daniels is known for his incisive mind and mastery of detail. In addition to government service (he also worked as an aide to Sen. Richard Lugar and as Ronald Reagan's political director), Daniels has headed a conservative think tank, the Hudson Institute, and served as president of Eli Lilly's North American operations.

This is not a slick, packaged politician. Daniels writes his own speeches -- and they are thoughtful, substantive exercises -- and even pens the content of his political ads. His demeanor is friendly and his posture is forward-looking. He has never run a negative ad. He is a conservative, but not of the grievance variety.

In style, Daniels is low-key and witty without being arrogant. In his first run for governor, he traveled the state on his motorcycle or in his motor home, spending the night as the guest of ordinary Hoosiers. His self-deprecating humor made his travels into a popular show -- "MitchTV" -- still available on YouTube. He treats every voter (supporter or not) with respect. And he's not above enjoying himself at a state fair (his wife won the watermelon seed spitting contest).

He's been called the "anti-Obama," but the contrast is not in style. Both men are poised, intelligent, and well spoken. The most glaring contrast (aside from philosophy) is Daniels' wealth of experience and record of governing success.

Daniels has offered the view that a Republican candidate in 2012 must present a credible plan for solving the spending, deficit, and debt crisis the country is in and campaign to "govern, not just to win."

He'd rather someone else do it, which is understandable. He promised Hoosiers he would serve out his term, and feels duty bound to abide by his promise. But Daniels has a combination of traits -- broad experience, wisdom, skill, and likeability -- that are rarer than rare. Surely Hoosiers would release him from his promise if he asked -- if we all asked.

Copyright 2010, Creators Syndicate Inc.


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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/