Leadership

 

 

 

 

"You can't be all things to all people..."

Many times when growing up I heard sage advice from my folks - "Stop trying to be all things to all people - just be yourself". It was good counsel back then and remains so today. In the last election cycle, we witnessed candidates trying to be all things to all people. This led to mass confusion. What are the core values of this candidate? Why the vacillation? Why the change? It caused me to think back on some of the leadership training I had in the Navy. Leaders lead by example and values. They don't lead from behind, or opinion, they lead by character.

By the same token, for an office like president, you need to be the president of the entire country, the entire population. Some of the past presidents never got off the campaign trail. They governed in a similar fashion to the way they campaigned. Good guys and bad guys. Red or blue. Rich or poor. People who have worked hard and made good money have been vilified for no good reason what so ever. Even though the richest people pay the majority of taxes, they are accused of stinginess. True leadership understands that people who have made money have just as many rights as those who have not.

Leadership is not agenda driven. For example, our energy policy is a mess, and has been for years now. The agenda of changing our energy profile over from fossil fuels to renewables is not working. Leadership will strike the proper balance between the vast untapped supplies we have as well as developing renewable sources. It is allowing our neighbor to the north the ability to ship product through an pipeline to be built through the center of our country.

Leadership is getting our house in order prior to jetting all over the world on non critical issues. The most important issue we have in our country right now is the impending "fiscal cliff". This should be an "all hands on deck effort" with the president leading the charge. However, there is already a trip planned to visit a small country half way around the world. This is not leadership. Failure to address our "fiscal cliff" with acumen, compromise and speed will result in a fiscal mess which will plague us for years to come.

In a time of leaders which are nothing more than caricatures made up by teleprompters, ads and a fawning press, the country craves true leadership. True leadership that will be the lesson plan of future history books. Now is your time Mr. President. You have been given a second time to be a true leader. You can't be all things to all people, nor can you just belong to selected constituencies. Now is the time for true leadership - please avail yourself to it.

Lessons Learned

 

 

“We get the government we deserve.”

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America

 

It is with heavy heart I write this post. I was going to wait until tomorrow morning, but since sleep has escaped me, I thought I would put some thoughts down while they were fresh.

How in the world could this have happened? With the economy, the developing scandals and the lack of agenda, Obama should have been beat by at least 20 points. In case one has not noticed, the country is a mess. We have now voted for four more years of the same mess. 

The Candyman Theory - "Two chickens in every pot" has been a campaign promise for generations. It still works. Truth tellers do not do well with a growing portion of the population. Much has been promised, little will be delivered. There is not enough tea in China to pay for what is expected. Painful and disappointing days are ahead for many that voted for the Candyman. Sorry, raising the rates on the rich will not help and only result in our economy sinking further into malaise. Buckle up - the shock is coming.

Mr. Nice Guy - I like Mitt Romney. He is a high quality man. He is nice - way too nice for this arena. In the third debate, he had Obama. He could have taken what was known about Benghazi and pounded Obama so hard, he would have been speechless. But he did not. He and his team went up against the "win at all odds" thugs from the Windy City and got their lunch eaten. They allowed the machine to paint Mitt as something he was not. Mitt could not counter punch nor could he define his agenda.

The Storm - From a political standpoint, what really fascinated me about Hurricane Sandy was it demonstrated the "Mad Men" aspect of the storm. Obama flew into the storm zone, acted like the "Consoler in Chief" (like all presidents do), met with a fawning Chris Christy in New Jersey, and then flew off to continue the campaign. The East Coast was then and still is a mess. Yet, exit polls gave Obama high marks for his handling of the crisis. He did not do anything! The short attention span audience just saw the pics and they looked good. When the Gov of NJ almost "french kissed" Obama on the Jersey Shore, the audience loved the bipartisen image. Meanwhile, misery continues and very hard lifting is in the future to clean this up.

Scandals - With the Republicans retaining control of the House, get ready for full speed ahead on the two international festering wounds, Benghazi and then Fast and Furious. There is going to be many ugly facts coming out that are going to soil people high up the totem pole. It is going to be messy and ugly. When all the facts come out, get ready for some delayed "buyer's remorse".

The Cliff - Coming up in less than 60 days is our financial Waterloo. The president will continue to want a "balanced approach" (which means soaking the rich) and the House will first want to see some honest to goodness financial realism resulting from budget cuts. Failure to agree on a viable solution will send our slowly healing economy into a tailspin. To further complicate the issue is sequestration and the next debt limit which will hit about the same time. 

There are others, but they will be fodder for another day. The message for Mitt was fine and he was a truth teller. When 49% of the population don't pay any Federal Tax, why vote for a guy that tells you the truth? Everybody's taxes are going up, even those who are paying nothing. Many deductions are going away, even for the middle class. Many will feel pissed and betrayed. This is why we have Truth in Advertising laws in this country.

What was the Tunguska Explosion?

 

 

 

"Strange days have found us
Strange days have tracked us down"

 

Strange Days

The Doors

 

 

Most people when asked what the biggest explosion noted in modern times will offer up 1) the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II or 2) some of the more powerful nuclear bombs detonated before the test ban treaty was signed. However, historians will tell you the loudest explosion in modern times happened slightly over 100 years ago in a remote area of Russia. It was an explosion estimated to be 2,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; it was an explosion so loud, it was heard well over 1,000 miles away. So what in the world (or out of the world) could have caused it?

Some astronomers have been quick to point out that once in a great while a comet, small asteroid or large meteor will detonate in the atmosphere rather than impacting on the ground. This is a theory that is still held by many; however, not by all. What is missing from this theory is evidence - namely lots and lots of fragments from this large "whatever" that exploded in the sky. In addition, there is evidence of trace radioactivity on the ground. Meteors and comets are not known to be radioactive.

So here come the alternate theories. First it was a UFO that crashed. A hundred years ago, due the remoteness of the crash site, nobody visited until nearly twenty years after the event. The native people were hesitant to allow outsiders in as they believed the explosion was due to one of their gods being angry and punishing the land. During the initial visits, something was found which was reported to official channels in Moscow. The area was sealed off and a team from the organization which eventually became the KGB arrived at the site and removed "something" and took it back to Moscow. Eyewitness accounts by some of the natives tell of a silver projectile streaking across the sky changing altitude prior to exploding. One of the women who witnessed the explosion as a young girl talked about putting her hands over her eyes to protect them. She described seeing the bones in her fingers during the flash - similar to what people saw who witnessed an atomic explosion. This theory would help explain the lack of meteor debris as well as the radiation on the ground. Some refer to this theory as the "Russian Roswell".

Another theory was the event was caused by Nikola Tesla. For those who don't know much about this man, he had a duel reputation. First off, he was a gifted inventor who took the DC invention of electricity and advanced it to AC, which made the technology viable for widespread usage. It truly changed the world. On the other hand, some believe he was the consummate "mad scientist". It was reported he was working on an experiment using particle beam weapons. At that time, Tesla was "shooting" X-rays over considerable distances, creating photographs of skeletons sometimes as far away as 40 feet from the source of the gun. Tesla was also involved in experiments with shooting cathode rays at targets. Some even believe his technologies were behind the very controversial Philadelphia Experiment (more on this in a future posting). As early as a century ago, Tesla developed a laser-like apparatus which he shot at the moon. With all he was working on, some believe the Tunguska explosion was due to one of his experiments gone awry.

Over one hundred years after the event, the theories continue to roll in. Anti-matter, black holes and other thoeries even more obscure. The bottom line is this - we don't know what happened and maybe never will. It was however, an event that will forever fascinate those of us who are drawn to these type of extraordinary events. Yes, maybe strange days have found us...

 

The Manchurian Candidate?

 

 

"Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed"

Mao Tse Tung

 

Believe it or not, there are a great many people who believe our Commander in Chief is a "Manchurian Candidate". For those who cannot remember, the Manchurian Candidate was a 1959 book by Richard Condon which about the son of a prominent US political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for the Communists. It was twice made into films, once is 1962 and then again in 2004. True or not, there are things in the background of our current POTUS which are disturbing at the least.

In my lifetime, I can only remember one time a presidential candidate was suspected of being under the control of ultra left or ultra right influences. In 1964, then Republican candidate for president Barry Goldwater was endorsed by the John Birch society. Even though Barry Goldwater was not a member of the Birch society, many thought the endorsement tied Goldwater in with this ultra right organization. Other than Goldwater, I cannot think of any candidate, from either party, that has drawn as much suspicion as our current sitting president.

Like many of us, when growing up, I was told by my parents that we are known, we are judged by the company we keep. Our current president has had many associations which are disturbing. In his formative years he was raised by and exposed to anti-colonialists, socialists and yes, even communists. In college he studied Cloward and Piven, who developed the strategy of overloading our public welfare system thereby allowing it to crash, which would usher in a national system of guaranteed annual income. In his adult life, those associations continued. Rather than rolling up an impressive resume to assume our highest office, our president rolled up more associations. As a community organizer, he was a disciple of Saul Alinsky. From his neighbor who is a convicted terrorist, to his pastor who uses gutter talk and racial hatred from the pulpit to the Chicago gangster who helped him with his real estate. His associations are like a "who's who" of shady characters. We knew some of this in 2008 - we know quite a bit more now.

As our president, he has shunned our closest allies and embraced our enemies. When discussing missile defense with the Russians, he patted the Russian leader on the knee and whispered "Just wait until I am re-elected". He has refused to support Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East while sending money to the Muslim Brotherhood. He bows to dictators and turns a blind eye to the patent infringement practices of China. He insulted our closest Euro ally by sending back to Great Britain a bust of Winston Churchill, which had been given to us a gift. He has trampled on our Constitution while embracing the over reaching powers of the U.N. We have over 46 million people on food stamps and many of the elements of welfare reform are being undone. Our true unemployment is still almost 15% and many of the jobs created in the past four years are low paying service sector jobs.

If he is not our Manchurian Candidate, our president is looking like a very good imitation. The myth is gone, and now we are left with record. We know this man, we know his background, we know his policies and we now know his vision for our future. Fool us once shame on you - fool us again, SHAME, SHAME, SHAME on us.

 

The Better Mousetrap

 

 

"Innovation is the central issue in economic prosperity"

Michael Porter

 

 

As much as I admire his writing, I rarely agree with our home town boy, New York Times columnist, Thomas L. Friedman. However, recently he was on a news show and the topic was how to kick start our economy. His point was this - America is suffering from an acute lack of imagination in coming up with the next "big thing". Unlike the past, when major inventions and innovations just rolled out of our country, as of late the landscape has been somewhat barren.

I know this is hard to believe, but many agenda driven newspapers such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune are quick to accuse "global warming" for the carnage caused by Hurricane Sandy. Just for a moment lets assume they are correct, and America is one of the biggest culprits of global warming. In the editorial section today, the Star Tribune said the following: "A reexamination of nuclear power is in order to determine whether 21st-century technology can make it a safer and more sustainable option. So is a push for more renewable generation of electricity. A tax on carbon emissions ought not be dismissed out of hand."

The above quotation is a perfect example of lack of imagination. First off, until we come up with a viable long term nuclear waste solution, more nuclear power is not a solution. While it is true that nuclear power is clean compared to coal, the externality of production resulting in radioactive material which has a half life of thousands of years, is not acceptable. While we did have a perfectly good solution in Yucca Mountain (see my posting at) http://veryangrybird.blogspot.com/2012/08/yucca-mountain.html, certain interest groups killed this project. Now we are left with tons of radioactive material dangerously residing in temporary storage.

How about renewables? Is that a better mousetrap for global warming? Not really. That industry is fraught with problems and is not cost effective. Again, this issue was addressed on the wind industry in developing nations (see my posting at) http://veryangrybird.blogspot.com/2012/10/blown-away.html. This industry has a future, but many problems remain for it to be a viable, cost effective solution.   

I guess my bottom line on global warming is this - ever since Al Gore made this his cause célèbre, it has been much about suspected causes, and nothing about viable solutions. Currently, we have no cohesive energy policy, no renewable water policy or sustainable agriculture policy. We do have innovators like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who have kept American the leader in IT. We also have people like Bill Walton and Jeff Bezos who have redefined the retail business. However, for our really big national problems, we have a dearth of talent.

For example, last summer we had a "super storm" in Minnesota right before the 4th of July weekend. It flooded Duluth and made a mess of the North Shore. State hydrologists estimated that the water that fell on Minnesota was over 2 trillion gallons. That is enough to fill Lake Mille Lacs (a huge lake) and have 1/2 trillion gallons left over. Most of that water left the state in run off. Shortly after the storm, the state went into a late summer, early fall drought. Capturing some of that run off water and saving it for dry months would have saved farmers millions and increased yields. Just imagine the amount of water that fell during Hurricane Sandy. What we could have done with that water next summer if our national drought goes into a second year.

I really hope that our next president will be more into solutions, viable solutions, and not just blaming. What has made our country great in the past is our innovative prowess - today, what is making our country not as great is the lack thereof. We need better mousetrap inventors and we need them now. The fallout of having better mousetrap inventors is thousands and thousands of mousetrap builders - and that is good for all of us.

 

The Load

"Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt"

Herbert Hoover

 

 

My wife and I had a great day today. We finally finished the re-fi on our house. We took out a 30 year mortgage for as much as we could get. We were done in the late morning , so we had time to run downtown to see our travel agent and book our dream vacation - a cruise around the world that lasts almost two months! We took every dime out of savings to pay for it. Next, we stopped by Home Depot to finish our home improvement buy. All new appliances, new carpet in every room and new patio furniture for the Spring. It was costly, but we put it on the card. It almost "maxed out", but we got it approved. We are going to live it up, spend it like we don't have it (we don't anymore), and then let our kids worry about cleaning up the mess.

 

Get the picture? Who would do that to their kids? Short answer - us. For reasons that escape me, we have really screwed our kids (and maybe grand kids) into the ground with our out of control spending. One of the travesties with today's news cycles is the brevity of coverage on important topics. We were all about the debt clock as it was displayed during the RNC. Then the impact of the fiscal cliff was the topic de jour. Then the terror murders in Benghazi. As we were gathering the incriminating trail of evidence that led back to the White House, Hurricane Sandy came a calling. As people are struggling for food, water and gas in the storm zone, we are back to the presidential race. Meanwhile, while nobody is watching, the debt clock continues to spin like a high speed fan.

Seriously, I can't even begin to say how many people I have talked to about the debt issue who have responded with "who cares", "it does not matter" or just plain glazed eyes. Very few are alarmed over it - and they should be. The numbers have become staggering, and maybe that is part of the problem. Most cannot relate to that many zeroes. For example, this was taken from the official debt clock site this morning:

"The Outstanding Public Debt as of 02 Nov 2012 at 12:25:39 PM GMT is:
$16,267,714,822,058. The estimated population of the United States is 313,796,990, so each citizen's share of this debt is $51,841.53. The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $3.90 billion per day since September 28, 2007."

 

We are spending $4B more every day than we are taking in. Making the rich pay "their fair share" (whatever that is) won't even put a dent in this number. The truth tellers are in small numbers as the long term impact of this spending becomes known. If it is allowed to continue over the next four years, the debt will be over $20T by 2016. Our famous currency, once the bell weather of the world, will become nothing more than paper. Our running debt to China (if they will still lend to us) will be nothing short of monumental. People will be working longer for less and retirements will be tenuous at best. ObamaCare will start to dwarf Social Security and Medicare as our biggest cost driver as cost containment was never part of the bill.

 

I know with all that is going on right now, this subject sounds like it came from Billy Buzzkill or Debbie Downer, but this is for real. Our debt will be our undoing. If Obama is re-elected, brave people from his party are needed to pressure him to cut spending, and do it in a big way. We need to stop the sophomoric arguments that so-in-so is not paying enough taxes - it is spending, and the math proves it. If Romney is elected, this needs to be day one focus. His party needs to help keep his focus as such.

 

The party is over folks - it is time to pay the band and clean up the mess. Our kids are watching. We need to do the right thing for them and those who follow. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Help! (Sorry, not coming soon...)

 

 

"Help, I need somebody,
Help, not just anybody,
Help, you know I need someone, help"

 

Help

The Beatles

One of the most important lessons we learned from Hurricane Katrina is some disasters are so big, so vast and so long lasting, all the power of the federal, state and local governments is not enough to help. What do I mean? Six years after the hurricane, which cost over $80B in damages to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, much repair is still needed. For example, the Huffington Post reports on the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans as follows:

"Six years after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, the New Orleans neighborhood that was hardest hit still looks like a ghost town. Redevelopment has been slow in coming, and the neighborhood has just 5,500 residents – one-third its pre-Katrina population. But politicians, investors and celebrities continue to promise a better future. 
While residents welcome the news, they remain skeptical. Promises have been dashed too many times."

Katrina was a disaster for many different reasons. First and foremost, people died. Some died quickly, and some died slowly. Many that died slowly did so because help did not come in time. Many in New Orleans had been lulled into complacency as politicians told them for years the city was safe from a storm's direct hit. Very few were prepared with survival kits. The levy system, albeit old, was more than adequate, and that was fine. In reality, New Orleans was playing Russian Roulette with Mother Nature. For example, if Hurricane Camile hit New Orleans rather than a hundred miles to the east, this disaster would have happened in 1969.

Fast forward to 2012 with the very recent carnage caused by Hurricane Sandy. Right now, the death toll is at 75 and the damage is estimated to go as high as $50B. Both are expected to rise. President Obama and Governor Christy were on site yesterday talking to victims, making promises they could not possibly keep. It was watching Katrina all over again. 

New York City, similar to New Orleans, has also been playing Russian Roulette with Mother Nature. Lower Manhattan is just a few feet above sea level. Tunnels and subway entrances sit exposed to flooding if a wave or surge of 12 feet or higher would occur. What are the chances? Never happened before. Almost happened during Hurricane Irene on 2011, but that was a once in a lifetime close call - that is until 2012.

Think about this - any hurricane we have had in the past seventy years or so has been a slow motion disaster. In other words, we have seen them coming. Many that live in a hurricane zone have been through this before - they know the drill. Even with that, many are still unprepared with food, water, and emergency supplies. Think of what would happened if (God forbid) we had a disaster we did not see coming? A nuke, a small asteroid, a cyber attack, a solar flare? How much would the government be able to help?

Here is the bottom line. Help will come from local, state and federal government as much as they are capable of giving. However, for a large scale disaster such as Hurricane Sandy, survival may depend on only you. Right now, there is no potable water in the disaster zone,  and people cannot last longer than a week without it. Plus, it is November and it can get very cold if your house is damaged and has no heat.

Help is something we all ask for when in need. Help is something we like to offer to others when they are in need. However, help is also something we owe to ourselves and our families. As I have said more than once, "chance favors the prepared". Be prepared, stay prepared. You are your own FEMA.