Telling It Like It Is

Top US Cyber-official leaves; 2nd in recent months. threats like THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY describes are growing more and more. Get it, read it

THE ENTERPRISE--THE PROBLEMS & OPPORTUNITIES

IT SEEMS THAT A LOT OF THE PROBLEMS WE FACE ARE A "LACK OF LEADERSHIP"
The President likes to "leak" a lot of things he seems to be "for," but when it comes to actually putting any kind of plan out there, he is mute, silent and then critical of anything others propose.  That isn't leadership. That is "playing politics."  Now he is into his "blame shifting" mode---blaming the Republicans for walking away from his amorphous, ill-defined, and never once written down "wishes."  John Boehner put it well when he said that, "working with the White House is like working with Jell-O."  Obama is shifty and shiftless--and is cleverly forcing the GOP to "negotiate with itself."  Good for Boehner for walking out.  WARNING:  The so-called cuts Obama is referring to are "suggested cuts," which are non-binding.  Calling Obama "Two-faced" would be a compliment.  He has at least 3-4 faces, maybe more.  Anybody want to bet that most of those suggested budget cuts would never happen?  Not while Obama is in the White House!  That is so much B-S!

THE DANGER OF MISINFORMATION--A HUGE PROBLEM
We are all forming opinions based on the information we get--from media: print, cable TV, the Internet, and correspondents we speak or email with--or research we do independently (which still has the challenge of verifying its accuracy and content).  The problem of misinformation is HUGE!  For example, here in OH, a law named SB5 (Senate Bill 5) was passed, which dramatically affected the rights of public unions and their members.  Its intention was to rein in the runaway costs of wages, benefits and other rules that have elevated public union employees to much higher than their (taxpayer) counterparts in the private sector.  This is a similar action to those being taken in IN, NJ, WI, etc.  It is way past due and very necessary.

BUT--THE UNIONS AND MEDIA HAVE DISTORTED ITS REAL PURPOSE AND CONTENT SO BADLY--IT MAY BE REPEALED BY REFERENDUM, COME NOV.2011
Few people really know what SB% contains.  Many have mistaken impressions formed by Union advertising campaigns and word of mouth from Union members who are trying to protect their "overpaid" and "overprivileged" positions against being reduced to "competitive" levels.  AND IT IS WORKING!  THAT IS BAD.  The challenge is to get the public in general to consider the fact and alternative outcomes, and not just "feel sorry for the poor public employees."  These are people who have been earning much higher (from 125% to 200%) wages and benefits than comparable jobs in the private sector--which are the taxpayers who pay for the higher wages and benefits. Talk about an issue of fairness.

IF YOU DO NOT VOICE YOUR OPINION ON THIS ISSUE, THE REFERENDUM WILL REPEAL SB5, AND WE WILL BE RIGHT BACK WHERE WE STARTED--WITH UNFAIR, UNEVEN WAGE & BENEFIT PAYMENTS--(TEMPTING TO JUST CONTRACT THEM OUT TO PRIVATE FIRMS AND SAVE TAXPAYERS MILLIONS)

Sure, teachers and firefighters and police are important in our society--but these groups are not the only public employees.  There are more administrators, clerical folks, bus drivers, janitors, maintenance people, toll collectors, etc. etc. all of whom are "overpaid" when compared to the competitive marketplace.  These jobs could (and might be, if SB5 is repealed) outsourced to private contractors.  The liquor stores, toll roads and some prisons are well along to that path.  Why not school administrators?  For that matter, why not entire school systems.  Privately operated schools are performing miracles with some tough, inner city kids (when parents are supportive).

BACK TO SCHOOL SPENDING WILL NOT DECLINE MUCH--STAY ABOUT THE SAME--A RELATIVE "NECESSITY"

Families with students in kindergarten through 12th grade plan to spend an average of about $603.63 on apparel and supplies, down less than 1 percent from $606.40 a year earlier, the National Retail Federation said, citing a survey of 8,684 consumers conducted by BIGresearch from July 1 to July 6.   Slowing US economic growth and the 9.2 percent unemployment rate may weigh on shopping in the season, which trails only the holidays as retailers’ second-largest sales period of the year. About 44 percent of shoppers said the economy was forcing them to spend less, the group said.  “Families aren’t opposed to spending on what they need, but parents want their children to take a good look around at what they already have before deciding what to buy for back to school this year,” said Matthew Shay, president of the Washington-based NRF, said in a statement.

NOW HERE IS A VIABLE SOLUTION!

"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for re-election."  —Warren Buffet July 8, 2011

THE RECOVERY--IT'S NOT HAPPENING--AND WON'T FOR A LONG TIME, AT LEAST NOT LIKE WE USED TO KNOW THEM

If you want to learn something enlightening, check what growth assumptions the Obama planners are using to project the deficits we will be running in the years ahead (record deficits at that).  The assumptions on growth are "pie in the sky" high--4-5%.  That is simply not going to happen anytime soon--at least not until our government "gets real" about what it plans to do and quits torturing businesses and the American people with fear, uncertainly and doubt.  Yes, it's the old FUD Factor still with us.  Consumers afraid to spend because the jobs outlook stinks; businesses afraid to hire because the demand outlook stinks; and the government creating large does of doubt (that it knows what to do to help the situation), uncertainly (about what new taxes and regulations Obama's agency heads will enact next), and fear that the growth outlook is not good; this leads to starting the cycle all over again...afraid to spend, afraid to hire, afraid of government intervention, etc. etc. etc.

WHEN THE PEOPLE IN A COUNTRY SEE THEIR ELECTED LEADERS UNABLE TO DO WHAT THEY KNOW MUST BE DONE

They simply shake their heads and hunker down.  What do you do in your home (or business) life when the money runs out?  YOU QUIT SPENDING!  Sure, you look for loans to tide you over, but those are hard to find, expensive and temporary.  Sure, you look for new revenue--a second or third job (hard to find, maybe impossible), a higher paying job (fugettaboudit), or more sales revenue (you better have a great, innovative new idea).

HOW DO WE BREAK OUT OF THIS?  TURN THE OUTLOOK POSITIVE: CUT GOV'T SPENDING TO REIN IN DEFICITS, CUT TAXES TO GIVE CONSUMERS MORE OF THEIR INCOME TO SPEND, REMOVE A TON OF REGULATIONS THAT DON'T NEED TO BE THERE.

Watch the economy start to grow--still not as fast as in the past because there have been large structural changes:  jobs eliminated by productivity and technology, some jobs gone forever (low skill factory jobs), others a reduced to a small fraction of before (travel agents, proof-readers/editors), and many others a victim of bad policies (minimum wage workers too expensive for the lowest tier of jobs).  

MIDDLE CLASS JOB LOSSES--AN INTERESTING ASSORTMENT

The middle class jobs with the largest decline in recent times might (or might not) surprise you: Travel agents (the least drop--only down 14% over past 5 years), Vocational Education Middle School Teachers, Broadcast News Analysts, Ag Engineers, Transit & Rail Police, Law Clerks (down 23% over 5 years), Proofreaders and Copy Markers, Math Technicians, Advertising and Promotion Managers (down 32%), Comp & Benefits Managers (down 34%).  Surprised? I was.  Not factory workers, not truck drivers, and not even construction workers, which I think surely dropped a lot more than 1/3 (but probably weren't counted as "middle class" jobs).

http://blogs.forbes.com/jennagoudreau/2011/06/22/disappearing-middle-class-jobs/

SEE THE STRUCTURAL SHIFTS?  WANT TO GUESS WHICH JOBS INCREASED FASTEST?

No surprises here:  Of the top 18, 15 involved health-care related jobs (13 for humans and 2 for animals--Vets and Vet assistants!):  Biomedical engineers, Network systems/data analysts, Home health aides, Financial examiners, Medical scientists, Physician assistants, Biochemists/biophysicists, Athletic trainers, Physical therapist aides, Dental hygienists, Vet techs, Dental Assistants, Computer software engineers, Medical assistants, Physical therapist assistants, Veterinarians.  I guess now you know where to look for jobs.  It's not in factories, or retail shops either. 

THAT'S PLENTY FOR TODAY

Stay cool, and hope that the circus in Washington comes to some sort of useful conclusion... like cutting a lot of spending and not increasing many taxes.

BEST, JOHN

PS:  For another good column, read on....

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BUY IT NOW:   THE  CHINESE CONSPIRACY
http://www.thechineseconspiracy.com

Come see me on Forbes.com and on American Express Open Forum.  Just search for  Mariotti.

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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HERE'S THE PROBLEM WITH THE DEBT CEILING AND THE NATIONAL DEBT IN GENERAL--KRAUTHAMMER SAYS IT WELL

President has done nothing to fix the debt
BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, Sunday, July 10, 2011  03:10 AM

Here we go again. An approaching crisis. A looming deadline. Nervous markets. And then, from the miasma of gridlock rises our president, calling upon those unruly congressional children to quit squabbling, stop kicking the can down the road and get serious about debt.

This from the man who:

• Ignored the debt problem for two years by kicking the can to a commission.

• Promptly ignored the commission's December 2010 report.

• Delivered a State of the Union address that didn't even mention the word debt until 35 minutes in.

• Delivered in February a budget so embarrassing that the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected it 97-0.

• Took a budget mulligan with his April 13 debt-plan speech. Asked in Congress how this new "budget framework" would affect the actual federal budget, Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf replied with a devastating "We don't estimate speeches." You can't assign numbers to air.

President Barack Obama assailed the lesser mortals who inhabit Congress for not having seriously dealt with a problem he had not dealt with at all, then scolded Congress for being even less responsible than his own children. They apparently get their homework done on time.

My compliments. But the Republican House did do its homework. It's called a budget. It passed the House on April 15. The Democratic Senate has produced no budget - for two years running. As for the schoolmaster-in-chief, he produced two 2012 budget facsimiles: The first (February) was a farce and the second (April) was empty, dismissed by the CBO as nothing but words untethered to real numbers.

Obama has run disastrous annual deficits of around $1.5 trillion while insisting for months on a "clean" debt-ceiling increase, i.e., with no budget cuts at all. Yet suddenly he now rises to champion major long-term debt reduction, scorning any suggestions of a short-term debt-limit deal as can-kicking.

The flip-flop is transparently political. A short-term deal means another debt-ceiling fight before Election Day, a debate that would put Obama on the defensive and distract from the Mediscare campaign to which the Democrats are clinging to save them in 2012.

A clever strategy it is: Do nothing (see above); invite the Republicans to propose real debt reduction first; and when they do - voting for the Ryan budget and its now infamous and courageous Medicare reform - demagogue them to death.

And then up the ante by demanding Republican agreement to tax increases. So: First you get the GOP to seize the left's third rail by daring to lay a finger on entitlements. Then you demand the GOP seize the right's third rail by violating its no-tax pledge. A full-spectrum electrocution. Brilliant.

And what have been Obama's own debt-reduction ideas? In last month's news conference, he railed against the tax break for corporate jet owners - six times.

I did the math. If you collect that tax for the next 5,000 years - that is not a typo - it would equal the new debt Obama racked up last year alone. To put it another way, if we had levied this tax at the time of John the Baptist and collected it every year since - first in shekels, then in dollars - we would have 500 years to go before we could offset half of the debt added by Obama last year alone.

Obama's other favorite debt-reduction refrain is canceling an oil-company tax break. Well, if you collect that oil tax and the corporate jet tax for the next 50 years - you will not yet have offset Obama's deficit spending for February 2011.

After his Thursday meeting with bipartisan congressional leadership, Obama adopted yet another persona: Cynic-in-chief became compromiser-in-chief. Highly placed leaks are portraying him as heroically prepared to offer Social Security and Medicare cuts.

We shall see. It's no mystery what is needed. First, entitlement reform that changes the inflation measure, introduces means testing, then syncs the (lower) Medicare eligibility age with Social Security's and indexes them both to longevity. And second, real tax reform, both corporate and individual, that eliminates myriad loopholes in return for lower tax rates for everyone.

That's real debt reduction. Yet even now, we don't know where the president stands on any of this. Until we do, I'll follow the Elmendorf Rule: We don't estimate leaks. Let's see if Obama can suspend his 2012 electioneering long enough to keep the economy from going over the debt cliff.

Charles Krauthammer writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

[email protected]

THE ENTERPRISE--HOPE AND FEAR

THE ENTERPRISE--HOPE AND FEAR

TO THOSE WHO ARE ADMIRERS OF BARACK OBAMA--I APOLOGIZE--NOT BECAUSE I AM SORRY I CAN'T STAND HIM, RATHER BECAUSE I AM SORRY THAT YOU DON'T SEE THROUGH HIM, HIS LIES AND THE FACT THAT HIS POLICIES ARE DESTROYING AMERICA

But I will say this, George W. Bush started this deficit snowball rolling with his spending and a few foolish moves--like the Medicare Part D, Prescription Drug plan that made an out of control unfunded entitlement worse than ever.  Bush also gets the credit (blame) for the TARP--but in retrospect, it didn't turn out costing anywhere near the $700+ billion that was advertised.  Make no mistake, he and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen didn't know that--they just "hoped" it would help stop the financial meltdown and if it did, that would be cheap.  (Watch the movie "Too Big To Fail"--it's a good, if scary movie--well cast, well acted, and with an interesting message.)

PEOPLE OFTEN TELEGRAPH THEIR MESSAGE BEFORE THEY SPEAK--OBAMA DOES!

A wise person once told me that whenever they started a statement with "Honestly" I should interrupt and ask them if they have not been honest with me in the past.  I was warned that someone who started with "Truthfully," might not have been telling the truth in the past.  Thus, when President Obama started one of his paragraph long sentences with "Here's the truth..." I only wondered which lies had preceded that statement or would follow it.  With this President you don't have to wait long or look hard.  The lies are fairly common, and spoken with such aplomb and conviction that they are almost indistinguishable from the truth--which is often mixed in randomly.

THE LIST OF BLATANT LIES IS TOO LONG TO DIG OUT AND PRINT HERE

Let's just take an obvious one:  "I can't guarantee that Social Security checks will go out on August 3."  Of course you can.  The Federal government, even if horribly in debt, had an inbound cash flow of $2.5 trillion (revenue) divided by 52 weeks.  That calculated out to an average of almost $50 billion per week. Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid together amount to about 40% of what the government spends ($3.8 trillion annual spending times 40% divided by 52 weeks = $29 billion) so there is plenty of cash flow.  Also, Timothy Geithner, the Treasury Secretary works for President Obama.  Thus Obama can guarantee that Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid checks can go out on August 3.  He simply must order Geithner to make sure the administrative functions necessary stay in place and make sure the money is prioritized to pay these things first.

WANT A COUPLE MORE?

I like this one.  "Eighty percent of Americans are for a tax increase..." [as part of the debt ceiling/deficit reduction debate]  What nonsense.  The polls I saw showed that about 30 percent favored a tax increase and closer to 40% favored a blend of spending cuts and tax increases.  He must have polled his staff, because the only 80% number was the Democratic responses to those two combined.   

Or how about, when talking about reducing America's dependence on oil as an energy source, and listing the benefits, "...and it will make businesses more efficient..."  HUH?  How would that work.  Most businesses I know would need to convert their processes (and trucks and cars, etc.) to some other energy source at considerable cost--and then those machines, etc. would work just like they did before. Or, maybe I just don't understand.  Perhaps electricity from solar or wind is somehow more efficient than electricity from oil and gas.  I must have missed my Energy Conversion class that day in grad school.

WHAT AND WHO CAUSED THE MESS WE ARE IN?  THERE ARE PLENTY OF CULPRITS TO SHARE THE BLAME.  

1.  The success of the Reagan administration in creating jobs and prosperity following the mess that was Jimmy Carter (who may go down in history as the second worst president--following Obama.)  It proved Keynesian economics wrong, but gave too much credence to "trickle-down" supply-side economics.  Future presidents and Congresses used this approach to excess, most notably, George W. Bush.

2.  The repeal of the Glass Steagall Act, in 1999, which allowed commercial banks to combine with investment banks and was like taking the "speed limit of the roads."  Blame.  President William Jefferson Clinton AND GOP controlled House and Senate did this one, by huge majorities.  This allowed and encouraged the financial institutions to reward excessive risk taking which led to the financial crisis--but not without help.  It took government intervention combined with market forces and greed to really move things along.

3.  The largest problems are trackable back to the actions of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac and Sen. Chris Dodd and former House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank, who were also the principal supporters and political protectors of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the government housing policies they implemented.  Amidst a series of increasingly liberal laws regarding access to housing and low cost mortgages, a veritable landslide occurred.  Mortgages with low interest rates became adjustable rates that started near zero and climbed fast as time went by.  Low down payment mortgages became no down payment mortgages.  Lax credit checks became no credit checks, then fraudulent credit checks as the frenzy grew to sell houses to people who couldn't afford them, and never should be buying them.

4.  The second term of George W. Bush, in which, after undertaking not one, but expensive two wars he delegated the mismanagement of Iraq to people who ignored or failed to see their errors--or were simply fools (I doubt this, but ego and myopia are serious shortcomings).  Thus Bush failed to stop spending to compensate for the cost of those wars.  Number of spending vetoes by Bush--ZERO, NADA, NONE.  His initial courage and resolve turned into foolish stubbornness and insularity.

5.  Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Congress of 2008-2010.  Reid gets off as being merely stupid or misguided or corrupt or something.  Pelosi lives in her own little world where logic is suspended and ignorance is glorified (it's called California).  The Democratic Congress, shirking their duties two consecutive years, failed to present or pass a budget for the USA in either of the past two years.  This was fine with them since it allowed uncontrolled spending under continuing resolutions.   

Barack Hussein Obama, a barely competent, rookie US Senator and undistinguished State Senator from IL (the home of crooked politics) parlayed a skill in speech-making (via teleprompter) and his ethnic (half-black) heritage into an opportunity of a lifetime for which he had been groom--to run for president.  Obama was trained as a youth by expert socialists, communists, racist preachers and corrupt politicians.  He learned those lessons well.  He was elected by the single-minded support of the liberal elite, a biased, adoring mainstream media, voting blocs of minorities, the sympathetic idealists (heavily female), and the dependent, misinformed underclass who loved his community organizer wealth-redistribution concepts.  Obama  (in collusion with liberal Democrats) is methodically destroying America by putting it so deeply in debt and employing both class warfare and racial tactics to polarize the American people--with the help of the media who loves a good mud fight.

Now, America finds itself buried in debt, running record deficits, right at the time that the baby boomer population surge reaches access to the unfunded entitlements.  The current financial deficit is so bad that if everything in the budget were cut except for the "biggies" --Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, Defense, and Interest--there would still be a deficit. That is how bad it has gotten.  If America were a company, it would be insolvent, bankrupt and out of cash flow--ready to close the doors.  However, the Treasury still owns the printing presses that can print money.  And the more they do of it, the less all of our money is worth.  Now the debate is that we must raise the debt ceiling even higher or face "default" or downgrading of our credit rating, and even higher interest costs. 

To be continued.

BEST, JOHN

 

THE ENTERPRISE--A WORLD OF IDEAS

THE ENTERPRISE--A WORLD OF IDEAS

I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE THIS EDITION WILL GO...LET'S SEE WHAT UNFOLDS

I'M TORN ABOUT HOW MUCH MORE OF THE OBAMA STUFF TO INCLUDE--IT MAY JUST MAKE YOU FEEL WORSE

Part of the problem we have these days is that the news is bad, so everyone feels bad, gets cautious and stops spending, hiring, and trying to grow.  And sure enough, then things get worse.  When the leaders are clueless the people lose confidence in them.  When they have no confidence, what they see is all the wrong things happening.  There is no doubt in my mind that nearly everything that the Federal government has done for the past few years has made things worse, not better.  

The last part of Bush's term was no picnic.  Whether the TARP was the right solution is hard to know. It probably averted a financial crisis, but who knows whether that crisis would have resulted in a harsher, but shorter downturn.  When there is too much bad debt, too many bad actions, the only thing that fixes them is to clear them out of the system.  An indelicate metaphor is that the way to get rid of a smelly mess is to flush the toilet.  When that happens, everything starts over, clean, but what was there before is all gone.

AMERICA'S ECONOMY IS SUFFERING FROM MULTIPLE ISSUES

Don't think for a moment that if you could suddenly replace the Democratic majority in Congress and put a new, more conservative President in the White House that things would suddenly get better.  They wouldn't.  There would be a period of purging the old, wrong things and replacing them.  And that would be painful, messy and unpleasant.

 

There is no "silver bullet"--no "magic solution" to many of the structural problems.  Getting out from under a crushing debt load requires austerity, and that in itself is painful.  Cutting massively overgrown government will add tens of thousands of government employees to already huge unemployment.  The private sector--if government would get off its back--will grow and create jobs, wealth and tax revenue.  But all of that takes time. It also takes a careful balance of cutting and stimulating, of shrinking and growing.  Whoever the GOP chooses to oppose Barack Obama (given the current candidate group) will do a better job than he has provided that the GOP gains control of the Senate and holds onto control of the House.  

A TWO PARTY SYSTEM IS OK--UNTIL IT RUNS OFF THE RAILS (LIKE IT HAS NOW)

Normally, American politics work pretty well with the Congress controlled by one party and the White House controlled by the other. Checks and balances work.  BUT--given the breadth and depth of the problems in America right now, and the urgency for massive changes to fix them, a period of one-party control is probably best.  Left too long, even that stops working as well.  

Opposing viewpoints are useful and provides a balance in government.  Since I live in OH, I can tell you that it is a valuable test case.  We elected GOP from top to bottom.  We elected a Governor who is relentless, determined, and experienced in reining in runaway spending and in getting governments to live within their means. How do I know that?  Because he did it once before in Washington working as budget director under then Speaker Newt Gingrich in a different era.  

Even controlling both houses and the governor spot in OH, things are turbulent.  Why?  Because some people don't like the changes that are being made.  John Kasich will have balanced a budget that had an $8 Billion gap (2-year budget).  But to do that, you have to make a lot of changes, and cut funding to a lot of things.

FINAL NOTE ON THIS POINT--TO THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

DO NOT PROMISE TOO MUCH, TOO FAST.  WE NEED WHAT WAS OBAMA'S SLOGAN--"HOPE AND CHANGE"--BUT DONE THE RIGHT WAY--PRUDENTLY, RESPONSIBLY, AND COURAGEOUSLY.

BOOKS WORTH READING:

I have not featured any books in here for a long time.  There are a couple of reasons.  

• The first is that I don't read "popular autobiographies," especially of entertainers, politicians,athletes, etc.   Either they have little to say that interests me, or I don't respect their opinions enough to be worth the time. 
• The second is that so many of the business and quasi-business (e.g, Freakonomics and any sequels) are literary adventures with no useful destination--except if they are entertaining.  I'll give Malcolm Gladwell credit.  He is a talented enough writer that I usually read his books.  They are informative, follow some theme, and are fun to read.  (Outliers, The Tipping Point & Blink are excellent; What the Dog Saw less so since it was a compilation of articles, not written around a single theme.) 
• The third is that most business books I find these days seem "repetitive" in so many regards.  That doesn't mean you might not enjoy them.  It probably means I have read and thought about too many such books.  If the book has some unique premise, it might grab me.  A couple of those in recent years are How We Decide  by Jonah Lehrer (a writer, not a practitioner), and In Pursuit of Elegance; Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing by Matthew May (a writer who was a practitioner of sorts, advising Toyota).
• I seldom read historical non-fiction.  That eliminates a lot of books.  I occasionally read some general interest books, typically on health related—Anticancer by David Servan-Schreiber) which offers thoughts on how your frame of mind can influence your susceptibility to/survival of cancer) or current events—Heaven and Earth, by Dr. Ian Plimer a fine book which debunks "global warming"topics)—but then the reading time simply runs out.

That said, I have some across a few noteworthy books.  These books I recommend to those who share my taste or want to read something both fun and useful:

Car Guys vs. Bean Counters:The Battle for the Soul of American Business by Bob Lutz, formerly vice chairman of GM, and a Chrysler executive in its "good days" (pre-Mercedes).  It is full of down to earth, common sense, "gut feel" kind of reflections about his most recent time at GM, how it got into its mess, and what happened since.  Except for a long chapter on the Chevy Volt, I read it fast and it was fun, and he made a lot of sense.  Surely there were some "sour grapes" from his standpoint, but not an excessive amount of them.

Walmart Inside-Out: From Stockboy to Stockholder, by Ron Loveless.  First a disclaimer.  Ron is a long time friend.  Our relationship goes back to days when he was in charge of hardgoods at Walmart and I was running Huffy Bikes, selling to his division of Walmart.  We became friends later, after sharing time on a board and really getting to know each other.  This is a fun read. It is "folksy" and certainly autobiographical, but even if you are not as interested in his climb from the lowest job in Walmart to leading Sam's Club to $1 Billion in sales faster than any retailer ever reached that level, it is an interesting, often humorous and always unique story.  Not only was it "embraced" by Walmart, but former CEO David Glass wrote the Foreword.  A lot of it is a personal biography, but it is full of useful learning and insights that Ron got from growing up and moving up, inside America's largest company.

CHANGING GEARS--HOW ABOUT THOSE JOBS NUMBERS?  DEPLORABLE, HUH?

Anyone who truly understands business and consumers is not surprised.  Consumers are worried, wary and holding back spending.  Gas and food are using a lot of their discretionary spending.  With that, they buy down, looking for the best value, lowest cost goods and services, and stores. Inventories are adequate and no one wants to get stuck with too much inventory in this kind of weak economic growth.  Employers are not hiring new employees because the need is simply not there, and everything the government does adds to the risk, uncertainty and cost of doing business.  Fewer people equals fewer government regulated costs, and lower fixed costs as well.  How this can be a mystery to the folks in Washington is simply mind-boggling.  

DON'T LOOK FOR MUCH TO CHANGE—UNTIL SOMEONE OR SOMETHING CHANGES THE "RULES OF THE GAME"

However, until something breaks the USA out of this cycle, growth will remain anemic and so will job creation.  Throwing (taxpayers) money at the problem didn't help, and that is one of the few solutions our inexperienced and often clueless president knows how to do.  

THE FOLLOWING PIECES ARE NOT MINE: ONE IS NEW, AND A COUPLE HAVE BEEN AROUND ON THE INTERNET FOR SOME TIME

But the longer they circulate the more prophetic they become.  I am posting them to remind everyone of why America is in so much trouble.

BEST, JOHN

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AN ARTICLE BY 

Ed Feulner, President of Heritage Foundation

Twenty-five years ago, Geraldo Rivera hosted a greatly hyped TV special called "The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults." It still stands as one of the highest-rated programs in television history.  

On the ballyhooed night, cameras crept through the tunnel to the vault. There, on live TV, workers pulled down the concrete wall. The dust settled, and the cameras peered inside. And what did spellbound viewers behold? A pile of dirt, a few empty gin bottles, and a discarded stop sign. Such were the treasures in Al Capone's vault.

A quarter century later, this serves as a wonderful metaphor for the grand project of Progressivism. Since the dawn of the 20th century, Progressives foretold the blessings they would deliver. Ordinary citizens lack the wits to govern themselves, they said, so let's put an elite cadre of Progressive managers on the case. Give them power, and they’d soon have things humming -- a chicken in every pot, a Chevy in every garage.

When Progressives gained power, they served us the New Deal and Social Security, followed with helpings of the Great Society and Medicare/Medicaid. Now they're jamming the Obama smorgasbord down our throats -- ObamaCare, bailouts, stimulus packages, Government Motors, and "quantitative easing," a.k.a. printing money.  

That isn't all. Far from it. For decades, public-sector labor unions harnessed Progressivism's spread-the-wealth creed to extract lavish contracts from government. Workers won guarantees of lifetime health care and generous pensions, often without having to contribute a penny from their own above-market wages.

But instead of simmering in their Progressive pots, the chickens are now flocking home to roost. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are going broke and, if not reformed, will soon devour the entire federal budget, chickens and all.  

The Obama spending spree is running up trillions in deficits and adding trillions to the national debt, while the economy stagnates in recession. Public-sector pension funds and health care plans are draining state treasuries. At least 44 states and the District of Columbia are in the red and facing bigger deficits down the road.

At all levels of government the dreary, dishonest philosophy of Progressivism is a crashing failure in practice. Its grandiose promises are as hollow as Al Capone's vault. The empty gin bottles discovered there serve as reminders of the spending binge Congress has been on for years. Only the discarded stop sign offers useful advice. It's high time, indeed, for policymakers to stop.

Stop the reckless borrowing and spending. Sober up, and start governing responsibly.

But who will determine the ideas that will supplant the failed Progressive project and repair the damage it has wrought? Milton Friedman gave us an answer in the 2002 preface to his 1962 classic, Capitalism and Freedom:   

"Only a crisis -- actual or perceived -- produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable."

Of course, Friedman knew full well that ideas are never just “lying around,” but are the carefully calibrated ammunition in an endless battle. They come from thinkers on the right who produce books such as Capitalism and Freedom, and from think tanks.  

Why think tanks? Well, consider the two main alternatives. Members of Congress, even conservative members, are usually the last ones to promote ideas bold enough to repair the mess liberals have made. Colleges and universities, meanwhile, tend to be sanctuaries for the most devout apostles of the Progressive faith. They're unlikely to overturn their cherished worldview and offer alternatives.

As fed-up voters send more conservatives to Congress, and as Progressivism's slow-motion train wreck continues, expect to see increased calls from policymakers for ideas from the right. After all, we have plenty of practical, powerful ideas lying around.

Ed Feulner is president of The Heritage Foundation (www.heritage.org).

=====================

THE MAKE-BELIEVE PRESIDENT by Alan Caruba in his blog "Warning Signs"  (Jan. 2010)

http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

 "I have this theory about Barack Obama.  I think he's led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.

In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry.  Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? "Dreams of My Father" was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old.  The "Audacity of Hope" followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself.  There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a "communist with a small 'c'" was the real author.

His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial.  He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley's formidable political machine at his disposal.

He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital.  How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?

He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries.  He took Iowa by storm.  A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed "cool" in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool.  He dazzled the locals and he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.

And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole.  And then John McCain did something crazy.  He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska .  It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984's Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.

The mainstream political media fell in love with him.  It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man.  The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.

Now, nearly a full 2 years into his first term, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President.  Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.  It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.

Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to "wish away" some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West.  Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread.  It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain.

The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign "world tour" were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.

Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party's hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party.  It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.

 

Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an "obstreperous" Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against "jumping to conclusions" about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted, "Allahu Akbar."  The absurdity of that was lost on no one.  He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber "an isolated extremist" only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.

He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America .  He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity.  And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.

The pattern repeats itself.  He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth.

 

Knock, knock.  Anyone home?  Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual's life.

   

When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his.  Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review.  He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.

We laugh at the ventriloquist's dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America?

 

Answer this:What will you do when nothing works? The go read a scenario: http://ping.fm/r0DN2

I'm telling you, THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY is happening. If you don't believe it, BUY THE BOOK & watch "Code Wars": http://ping.fm/kj1OW

THE ENTERPRISE--DOES HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF?

THE ENTERPRISE--DOES HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF? 

UPDATED INFORMATION:  

THE CURRENT US BUDGET DEFICIT IS OVER $14 TRILLION, and CURRENT SPENDING IS ADDING ABOUT $1.4 TRILLION TO IT, THIS YEAR!

go see it yourself and ask HOW IS THIS EVER GOING TO GET FIXED?

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

A NOTE TO THOSE READERS WHO ARE STILL FANS OF BARACK OBAMA

I have tried, over and over, to give him every benefit of the doubts I have about him.  Each time I am rewarded with lies, phony statements, demagoguery and either class warfare or the race card (which he can play freely because he is half black.) I only wish he were "half-competent."  That would be a big improvement.  

Barack Obama's  early 2011 budget submission was so irresponsible it proposed spending $1.40+ for each dollar of revenue coming in--for a $1.5 trillion deficit--FOR JUST ONE YEAR. Obama and his cronies in the Pelosi-Reid Democratic Congress did not even bothered to make a budget for the USA in the past 2 years, because it would hinder their insane spending. They have done more damage to America in 2-1/2 years than can be repaired in a decade.

Left alone, if he is reelected, Obama will be sure to make recent history repeat itself--taking over more control of the USA, and raising taxes so he can redistribute the money to fund big government and deficits as far as the eye can see.

THINGS WILL BE A LITTLE BETTER OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS--BUT IT WILL BE A SHORT TERM UPTICK--ALMOST LIKE LAST YEAR!

Here is a perspective on what to expect over the next few months.  What the politicians are saying and doing has little to do with these near-term factors.

• Consumers remain worried and wary about their job situation
• Jobs will show only small gains, and may show periodic losses as government workers are cut, adding to the unemployed
• Lower gas prices will give consumers a brief respite, which will allow them to spend on other needs
• Back to school shopping will start to pick up, but after that brief uptick, things will slump again mid-fall
• Year end shopping will again pick up for Thanksgiving and Christmas as shoppers grab early bargains--but it a short term uptick not a trend
• Nothing the government is doing will solve the unemployment situation near term; demand is low and employers will get by with minimal hiring 
• New work force entrants--150,000/mo. will struggle to find any kind of jobs; this unemployment problem is structural, not cyclical--the jobs are gone!
• Housing will remain in the doldrums as the glut of foreclosed houses gets worked down--slowly; new construction will continue very weak except for the "wealthy"
• There are jobs that will go unfilled because the skills needed either do not exist in sufficient quantity or are geographically mismatched (and people are trapped unable in houses they can't sell--at any acceptable price.  
• Structural unemployment means just that--the structure of the jobs available in the US and the skills needed have changed and will not change bck
• President Obama promised transparency; his actions now are as transparent as he promised:  Draw down the Federal Petroleum reserve  is a pure stunt  which didn't cause gas prices to drop, they were dropping anyway--supply & demand did it.
• His politically motivated decision to withdraw forces from Afghanistan according to a plan that NONE of his field commanders proposed (He ignored all of those as too slow) let him claim a withdrawal now, and another in Sept. 2012, 14 months away, exactly when the Democratic convention is being held and in the heat of the 2012 election
• BARACK OBAMA WILL DESTROY AMERICA AS WE KNEW IT. HE IS ALREADY DOING IT-- BECAUSE HE BELIEVES IN THE WRONG POLICIES--AND IS CLUELESS ABOUT WHAT TO DO DIFFERENTLY.  

FIRST A BRIEF ON THE CURRENT POLITICAL SCENE--THE ATTACKS ON POTENTIAL OBAMA OPPONENTS HAVE ALREADY STARTED!

It doesn't matter who the opponent turns out to be, the attacks will be unrelenting and vicious, personal, and whatever it takes to discredit them.  

Ironically, ALL of the current GOP candidates are MORE QUALIFIED, AND MORE EXPERIENCED than Barack Obama was at this stage of his candidacy.  And yet, the mainstream media deems them  "A weak slate of candidates."

• Romney leads, looking more seasoned, mature and ready.
• Bachman is popular but can she really contend for the top spot?
• Perry is a hope, but will he remind too many people of Bush (TX Gov. & Christian beliefs)?

• Huntsman is an unknown--maybe a "Hail Mary"--hard to say
• The others are just not viable--either economically--or because of some underlying weakness that is too easily exploited.

BULLETIN:  BARACK OBAMA PLANS TO RAISE AND SPEND $1 BILLION ON HIS REELECTION--THAT IN ITSELF SAYS HE HOPES TO "BUY THE ELECTION!"  SCARY?  (AND THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA WHO WILL GET A LOT OF THAT MONEY LOVE IT, AND HIM!)

DO WE LEARN FROM OUR ERRORS--NO! WE REPEAT THEM!!!

 

Does anybody out there have any memory Of the reason given for the establishment Of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY During the Carter Administration? Anybody? Anything? No? Didn't think so!   Bottom line ... We've spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency ...the reason for which not one person who reads this can remember.  Ready??????? It was very simple .. And at the time everybody thought It very appropriate... The 'Department of Energy' Was instituted on 8-04-1977  TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.   Hey, pretty efficient, huh?????  AND NOW IT'S 2011, 34 YEARS LATER ... AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS NECESSARY DEPARTMENT IS AT $24.2 BILLION A YEAR IT HAS 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES AND LOOK AT THE JOB IT HAS (NOT) DONE! The USA IS NOW MORE DEPENDENT ON FOREIGN OIL THAN IT WAS WHEN THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY WAS FORMED. THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY 'WHAT WAS I THINKING?' Ah, yes, good old bureaucracy... And NOW — we plan going to turn the Banking System, Health Care & Auto Industry ALL IN THE NAME OF CHANGE?  WILL WE EVER LEARN ABOUT HOW GOVERNMENT JUST GROWS AND GROWS NO MATTER HOW INEPT IT IS--A WE PAY FOR IT!

 

MITT ROMNEY WILL CONTINUE TO BE ATTACKED--HARDER AND HARDER

Posted below is the answer I gave when someone sent me a long, laundry list of challenges claiming that Mitt Romney was a RINO (Republican In Name Only)

HERE WAS MY ANSWER TO THIS TOPIC: He'd be a hell of a lot better than the guy in the White House now--wouldn't he?

Rationalization:  

As governor of one of the most liberal states in America, IF he was going to lean toward the wishes of his constituents, he would do most of these things noted.  Should he have?  I think yes, or he shouldn't have run and won in MA.  

There is no question that he is not a Tea Party style conservative.  But then neither is America overall--it is just more conservative than MA, so when he runs to represent and lead the entire country, he must "tack to the center-right" which is where the country's prevailing values are. 

Thus, I don't consider a lot of his prior "transgressions" to be "disqualifications" per se--unless there is an issue with an elected leader modifying his positions to balance his personal preferences and those of the people who elected him.

Analysis:  

I think closer scrutiny of Michelle Bachman, Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry (as yet undeclared) will reveal both of them have "perceived flaws" in some regard. The problem with far right purists is that few of us are so perfectly "right" all the time as they insist on candidates being.  And if a candidate is that "perfect" have we overlooked something?  If enough people had really considered Obama's "flaws" he should never have been elected.

I'm not sure what to make of Bachman.  (I am a fiscal conservative and a social moderate I guess.)  Privately I am not sure if we are ready for a woman in the White House, but many other countries have done fine with them in top spots:  Margaret Thatcher comes to mind.  And were we ready for an inexperienced "phony" Black in the White House?  Bachman's clearly "on a roll" but the election is still 16 mo. away and in dog years, or election years, that is a long, long time.

I also think most of the other candidates fit where I placed them in this past week's edition of THE ENTERPRISE  --"THE REST"...  Ironically, every one of them is more experienced as a leader, an executive and/or an elected official than the guy in the White House now. So what are we stressing about?  The MEDIA, that's what.  The relentless scrutiny, playing and replaying, analyzing, parsing, restating (often wrong) what was said and what was meant by it,  is what causes most of our angst and distress.

That and the fact that Obama will spend $1 Billion on his own reelection, neglect his duties as President (as he did as Senator), say whatever he has to whether it's true or a lie and enjoy the adulation of the left leading (75%+) mainstream media--playing up him and playing down his opponent--although results right now even have some of the lefties wondering...

It's a messy, messy process, but recall the failings of John McCain, the very moderate candidate who still gave Obama a decent run in spite of the fact that he was running out of DUTY, and NOT DESIRE!  McCain should have "taken Obama apart" for his lies, his misstatements, and the incongruity between his words and his actions for his entire life as a political operative.

LESSONS OF THE RUSSIAN ATTEMPT TO CONTROL AFGHANISTAN--1979-1989 (IT DIDN'T WORK)

LESSONS FROM OLDER SOCIETIES--THEY DIDN'T WORK EITHER

THE COURSE OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES: 

In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of 

 

Edinborough, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 

2,000 years prior:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a 

 

permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until 

 

the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts 

 

from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for 

 

the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with 

 

the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal 

 

policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."

 "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of 

 

history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations 

 

always progressed through the following sequence:

• From bondage to spiritual faith;
• From spiritual faith to great courage;
• From courage to liberty;
• From liberty to abundance;
• From abundance to complacency;
• From complacency to apathy;
• From apathy to dependence;
• From dependence back into bondage."

The Obituary follows:  

The United States of America:  Born 1776, Died 2016 of uncontrolled excesses?  

It doesn't hurt to read this several times.

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in  St. Paul, 

Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the last 

 

Presidential election (there are a couple of mathematical discrepancies):

Number of States won by: Obama: 19           McCain: 29   (that only adds up to 48, not 50)

Square miles of land won by: Obama: 580,000      McCain: 2,427,

 

Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million  McCain: 143 million  (that only adds up to 270 million--not 300 million.)

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:  Obama: 13.2; 

McCain: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory McCain won was 

 

mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. 

 

Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income housing

 and living off various forms of government welfare..."  

Olson believes the  United States is now somewhere between the 

 

"complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy 

 

with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached 

 

the "governmental dependency" phase.  

If Congress grants unconditional amnesty and citizenship to twenty-million criminal 

 

invaders called illegal's - and they vote - then we can say goodbye to the 

 

USA in fewer than five years.

DOES HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF?  YOU BET IT DOES!  UNLESS THE PEOPLE DON'T LET IT HAPPEN.

CELEBRATE AND SAVOR YOUR INDEPENDENCE ON THIS JULY 4.  AT LEAST OBAMA HASN'T TAKEN THAT AWAY--YET!

BEST, JOHN