Where Have All the Leaders gone?

Remember Lee Iacocca, the man who rescued Chrysler Corporation from its death throes? He's now 82 years old and has a new book, 'Where Have All The Leaders Gone?'.

Lee Iacocca Says:

'Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder! We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course.'

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned, 'Titanic'. I'll give you a sound bite: 'Throw all the bums out!'

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore.

The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq , the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving 'pom-poms' instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of the ' America ' my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?
I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have. The Biggest 'C' is Crisis! (Iacocca elaborates on nine C's of leadership, with crisis being the first.)

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

On September 11, 2001 , we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. A hell of a mess, so here's where we stand.
We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving.
We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country.
We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia , while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs.
Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble.
Our borders are like sieves.
The middle class is being squeezed every which way.
These are times that cry out for leadership.
But when you look around, you've got to ask: 'Where have all the leaders gone?' Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, omnipotence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.
Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo?
We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.
Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm.
Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.
Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when 'The Big Three' referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen, and more important, what are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debit, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bonehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change? [Barring Ann Coulter from the Today show for life, because you don’t like what she has to say?] Had Enough? Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope - I believe in America. In my lifetime, I've had the privilege of living through some of America 's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises: The 'Great Depression,' 'World War II,' the 'Korean War,' the 'Kennedy Assassination,' the 'Vietnam War,' the 1970's oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11.
If I've learned one thing, it's this: 'You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a "Call to Action" for people who, like me, believe in America '. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the crap and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had 'enough.'
Make your own contribution by sending this to everyone you know and care about. It's our country, folks, and it's our future. Our future is at stake.

Fix the Economy?

So, let’s see now. Congress passes legislation granting Barack, Hank, Nancy & Harry (BHNH) control of $1.2 Trillion so they can spend it on “stuff” that will stimulate the economy. Can you even imagine the earmark feeding frenzy? Does anyone remember those ‘Amazon’ movies with the piranha attacks? This will make Madoff look like a penny-ante piker. What I want is the concession to sell tickets to the audience for this fiasco.

Barack and all of those ridiculous talking head and op-ed idiots keep reminiscing about FDR’s New Deal legislative genius that fixed the last depression in 1933. Hey guys—that was NOT fixed until we solved the unemployment problem by sending everyone without a job to Europe and the Pacific to fight a war and put everyone else to work producing goods and products needed in that war. We can’t do that anymore. Besides, can you imagine 3,000,000 soldiers in a war after seeing what 150,000 in Iraq looks like? Trust me, WWII would have ended for America the day after Normandy if there had been imbedded reporters and cameras there.

Our Captians of industry sent ALL of our production capacity to China and Mexico (thanks you greedy pricks). Have you been to Gary, Pittsburgh or Detroit lately? All those production facilities are shuttered and rotting or soon will be. GI Joe and Rosy the Riveter are distant, fading memories. Now we have to import our fly swatters from Malaysia.

What’s the plan guys? Spend $1.2 Trillion on production in China, India, Malaysia and Mexico to gold-plate their economies in hopes that it “trickles down” to ours. Maybe if we spend enough in Mexico, their economy will improve so much all of the illegal aliens in this country putting a drain on our economy, will go back voluntarily, then they will build a wall to keep us out. Yankee go home, but leave your money!

So it’s hopeless right? Maybe not, let’s find out. I don’t have the answer, but you do. There are a hundreds of smaller production companies out there that could be “stimulated” and “encouraged” to expand with a small piece of that $1.2 Trillion. (thats ELEVEN ZEROS). And I do NOT mean wholesale or retail sellers of imported stuff, financial institutions or incompetently managed car makers. I mean companies actually taking some combination of raw materials and turning them into a product that can replace the imported stuff wholesalers and retailers are selling and banks are financing.

There are small foundries all over this country pouring molten metal into forms to make thousands of different products; All of the Craftsman hand tools are made in Colorado; A small company in Minnesota produces thousands of pine chop sticks exported to Japan; A small company in Iowa manufactures, in Iowa, and installs paint and powder coating booths all over the world; A research lab in Wisconsin invented Oriented Strand board and glue-lamb beams; A CA based company invents and in plants all over the country, manufactures a large % of the soda and soup cans we use daily; there is a research group near Chicago that is on the verge of curing Pancreatic cancer (without using fetal stem cells). None of these companies have well-connected, on-the-take lobbyists in DC. None of these companies can afford to make six-figure contributions to politician’s campaign funds or pay for vacations to exotic places. Their executives don’t have Gulfstream jets, chauffeured limos or hot and cold running bimbos or interns. The employees of these companies are the GI Joes and Rosy the Riveters of today’s America. You want to stimulate the American economy and produce, not SPEND our way out of the present economy? Earmark OUR money into these companies. They will take us there.

Senators and congressmen, you want earmarks for your constituents? Find a bunch of companies like these in your state/district and put them on the earmark list. The more you find and “stimulate” the more likely you are to be re-elected. Just be forewarned. These guys will NOT pay you a finder’s fee, and they will not let you rake off a cut for yourself, but they will remember you and vote accordingly. Now we are talking honest–hardworking not greedy –selfish. Come on you guys, this is not the time to loot and jump ship, this is the time for Americans to get busy and work for the common good of all of us.

Becoming Sadness

Yesterday Mary and I lost a close friend and family member. Our little dog Gypsy was put to sleep to end months of struggling with a collapsed trachea. Until now Gypsy never brought a second of sadness to our home. He was pure joy and happiness , as only a faithful dog can be. Even his death did not really bring sadness into our home, only grief of personal loss. I can only imagine the loss he is feeling. He has been terminally separated from his people, to whom, as is typical for a dog, he has been intensely loyal, loving and committed.
Gypsy was our companion for just slightly less than 10 years. He was the alpha of his little pack of 3 other dogs, who are now very confused by his departure. Do dogs grieve the loss of a pack member? Probably not the way we do, but there is a dramatic difference in the personality of our little pack without him and some of the joy in their daily living is gone for the moment. A new dynamic in our home will develop and we will all adjust to this loss, but it will never the same (and probably should not be) without our little Gypsy.

Happy New Year

Father, I ask You to bless my friends and those that I care deeply for, who are reading this right now. Show them a new revelation of Your love and power. Holy Spirit, I ask You to minister to their spirit at this very moment. Where there is pain, give them Your peace and mercy. Where there is self-doubt, release a renewed confidence through Your grace. Where there is need, I ask you to fulfill their needs. Bless their homes, families, finances, their goings and their comings. In Jesus' precious name. Amen.

May 2009 be your year filled with many blessings and much happiness.

Want Change? Try these:

· Limit Congress persons to not more than 2 terms (never vote for an incumbent – they have all been corrupted by the DC system. The longer in office, the more corrupt.)

· Prohibit Congressmen from voting for their own pay raises. Since when did any of us get to tell our employer how much he was going to pay us? (Did you know that Hillary’s appointment to Secretary of State, Daschle’s as Secretary of HSS, Salazar as Secretary of Interior, Solis as Labor and LaHood as Secretary of Transportation are all illegal? The constitution specifically states that any Congressman who voted to raise the pay of any civil service position, is not eligible for that position. As senators or representatives they all voted for civil service pay raises. [No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased [sic] during such time: and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.
US Constitution Article 1, Section 6.] Remember. Barack Obama will be swearing to protect and defend this constitution on 1/20/2009. Selective, and politically convenient defending and protecting? What's up with that?

· Stop paying for law-makers high-priced insurance premiums. Congressmen are part-time employees. They just might legislate some improvements to the insurance industry if they actually had to purchase their own and deal with the claims process.

· We need to eliminate the Congressional pension system. They qualify for 100% retirement after just one tour of duty. Talk about privilege. They are utterly out of touch with the real retirement world. NO ONE else in this country has that level of security which puts them that much more out of touch with their constituents. We have almost nothing in common with them since they have taken the authority to isolate themselves from the “real” world in which we all live.

· Make Congress pay into the social security system. They make the laws for it, they should be participants in it. If they were dependent on it like everyone else, it might actually be solvent.

· Stop handing out aid to ILLEGAL aliens. If we did, there would be enough for Medicaid and the food stamp program for American citizens, without inflationary money printing.

· Secure our borders. At some point our economy will recover and the influx of illegal border jumpers will increase again.

· Amendment 14 was created to protect the citizenship of former slaves, not create an anchor-baby back door to citizenship. Eliminate that loophole.

· Stop the abuse of our welfare system. We feed children 3 meals a day from age 5 to 17. Charitable organizations give away good, clean clothes, companies collect , and donate school supplies. Hospital emergency rooms provide complete health care, at tax payer expense, for illegal residents and uninsured citizens. What are parents doing for their children? What is Congress doing to correct these issues?

· With all of the money being spent on investigative processes by Homeland Security, certainly an automated cross check of Social Security Numbers against IRS records, Medicaid, Medicare, SSI, and other programs could to wonders to track down fraud and abuse of benefit programs.

· Since virtually all mortgage loans are, eventually, government related, establish guidelines that prohibit any lender from approving a mortgage to a borrower who does not qualify, or make the originating lender keep that loan as their own investment.

· CEO and Senior management pay is out of control. It is time to put a stop to the ridiculous compensation packages paid to executives. To preserve free enterprise, offer a board of directors the option of paying it out of their own pockets.

· NO “photo” ID should ever be issued to anyone who’s face is covered, regardless of their religious affiliation.

This opinion owes large thanks to Norma White, Amarillo, TX for her significant and involuntary contribution to this document. If I was getting paid, I would have to send it to her.

Are we there yet?

$350,000,000,000 (Three-hundred and fifty Billion Dollars) was handed off to a baking industry who has no conscience and is motivated almost completely by greed and power hunger. It was handed over with no “oversight”, no strings and no “transparency”. Now we are all left asking wheredit-go? When asked the banks respond with “we don’t know”; “none of your business”; “Keeping track of the money was not part of the deal.”

Bush and Paulson talked us (Congress) out of this money, because everyone is in panic mode, and then just pissed it away. The idea of this money to the banks was to loosen credit by creating liquidity; Get under-performing “toxic” assets off the bank’s balance sheets and replace them with high quality US Treasury assets. The government would take those bad assets, restructure, rework or season them into performing assets, then liquidate them to repay itself. Simple.

The problem is they did this deal with the greediest group of con men in history and they got taken, probably with malice and forethought. I can’t even imagine how much of that money is now in off-shore bank accounts. Their grandkids will have plenty of money to pay back their share. My only advice to them is to remember, somewhere in eternity, the wheel comes full circle and you will be faced with a payback. I just pray to God that I can be there to see it.

I know, Paulson’s real plan, was to have the big boys use that money to buy all of the shaky, failing mid-size banks that could have eventually bankrupted the FDIC. Everybody wins. The entrenched beaurocracy digs in deeper (click to image: large blood-filled tick on a dog’s ear – with chorus – “eeeeuuu”), the big banks get bankier, and all at the expense of that bottomless pit, the tax payers who are too stupid to figure it out. Somebody got paid! We may never know who, but somebody, besides the bankers, got paid!

The bank exectives took the money and bought more banks, subsidized their stock holdings, and entrenched their hold on their own institutions. The idiot beaurocrats (Paulson, Bush & Congress) actually thought these guys would use the money to benefit the country and their own industry, without putting rules or conditions in place. Can you even imagine the stupidity of that kind of thinking? Give an addict a fix and ask him to share it? I don’t know what planet they live on, but it isn’t mine.

So that did not fix the credit liquidity issues. The auto industry can’t sell their crumby cars because nobody and get a loan from the banks, due to “lack of liquidity”. Now we have to dip into the TARP well to give money to Auto companies so they can pay their grossly bloated-wage union workers and annual executive bonuses as usual for the next couple of months. That’s right we are about to spend $15,000,000,000 (BILLION) to save the auto industry from bankruptcy for 90 days.

This did not fix the plummeting housing prices that are pillaging the only asset most of us have. This did not fix the 40% loss of all of our retirement assets while congress keeps theirs fully intact, untouched. This did not help all of the small businesses that are now laying off their staff and shutting their doors.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right [and responsibility?] of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.[1]” Are we there yet folks?


[1] Declaration of Independence