O’s Healthcare, Pelosi’s lie, Global timeline, Who do we blame?

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After a long day at work – my manufacturing facility in SoCal, coming home I heard Obama on the radio news  talking about how nurse Becky told him everyone has to “buck up” for the Health Care” plan he is pushing.  If that doesn’t just beat all.  Nurse Becky is telling us what we need to do! He is so amazingly inexperienced, it is incredulous.

For anyone following global crisis, here is an interesting link that has a timeline for you.
http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/global_economy/policyresponses.html

On a separate subject, I just don’t understand Pelosi’s lies about the CIA briefing her on waterboarding.  How can a person in power lie?  I never lie.  It’s just not possible to be honorable and tell a lie (admittedly, because in part you know the consequences are worse than the truth).  You would think she would know better.   Of course the flip side is she didn’t lie, but since she can’t backup her allegation under intense scrutiny and outrage, she leads us to no other conclusion.  And now, the fiasco about Congress not being briefed on plans that never got off the table – that is reminiscent of Clinton lying about having sex with ML, because the statement all hinged on how one interpreted the use of the word “is”. 

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the–if he–if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not–that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement….Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.”

Remember that?

Here’s something to ponder: Who’s to Blame for the (economic) mess we are in: http://www.newsweek.com/id/186180

Power

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To quote another wonderful woman:

“Being powerful is like being a lady.
If you have to tell people, then you aren’t.”

Margaret Thatcher.

She also said:

“We want a society where people are free
to make choices, to make mistakes,
to be generous and compassionate.
This is what we mean by a moral society;
not a society where the state is responsible
for everything, and no one is responsible
for the state.”

Defining Success

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Margaret Mead,  by Wikipedia’s description, was a popularizer of the insights of anthropology into modern American and Western culture.  The other day, she was quoted as having said:

” I must admit that I personally measure
success in terms of the contributions
an individual makes to her or his
fellow human beings.”

I really wonder, in the wake of Michael Jackson’s passing, what she would have thought of his contribution.  Would she have thought he contributed?  Certainly, he was a top entertainer.  But how does that contribute to fellow human beings?  Inspiration?  Were we inspired to do something?   I loved his work, but was I “inspired”?  Perhaps.  Perhaps in the sense of witnessing someone do the very best they can.    Perhaps the contribution was the enjoyment in watching the performance.

So what about shock-jock Madonna?   I like her work, but she’s not at her very best – her performance is mediocre, relatively speaking, and her voice isn’t all that good.  She is ambitious enough to do anything (gross or not)  to keep fans gaggling for her.

So what would Margaret Mead have said?

Let The Markets Decide

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I listened this morning  to GM’s CEO “customers, cars, & culture” priority…

Did anyone read Anna Schwawrtz’s brief interview in Time? http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1909115,00.html

She lived through crash of 1929,and is considered a financial matriarch. She co-authored with Nobel laureate Milton Friedman the highly acclaimed financial bible A Monetary History of the United States (Princeton University Press, 1963), and she’s worked as an economist with the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1941.  She now serves as an adjunct professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Bottom line: Companies that fail should be allowed to fail. Let the market decide. Rescue plans provide no motivation for companies to “get it”.

After listening to “the new” General Motors this morning, I heartily agree.

Global Warming

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Are we all on the same page?  Does everyone know that Al Gore stands to benefit from the cap-and-trade regulations?  He is a partner in a capital firm called Kleiner Perkins, which has invested about $1 B in 40 companies that stand to gain from the cap-and-trade regs. (IBD, 6/18/09)

Remember this the next time you hear Al Gore ignoring reports that contradict his assertion that global warming is accelerating.  That reminds me – it snowed in Yonkers New York earlier this week.  In July!  How’s that for global warming?

Politics

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In the June 16th publication of Investor’s Business Daily, they talk about Biden’s then recent stint on NBC’s Meet the Press, where Biden said “Everyone guessed wrong.”

But this is simply not true.  Back in February the IBD offered its readers the prediction that the stimulus bill would “in fact not stimulate much of anything.”  They went on to offer that the $787 B package would be filled with “pork and outright waste.”

They remind us that 330 well-recognized ecomomists signed a statement protesting Obama’s claim that “there is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help jump-start the economy.”

More on this from Trends Research Institute: “VP Biden’s recent admission that the Obama Administration’s economic recovery plan was predicated on egregiously inaccurate forecasts consigns the entire effort to failure, predicts Gerald Celente.”How often does the government have to be wrong, and how wrong do they have to be before people and the media stop taking them seriously?” wondered Celente.  “The first spending package didn’t deliver as promised, and now Obama’s advisors want another stimulus, as if doubling up on failure will achieve success.”

So what is going on in our country?   As a nation, I fear we have sent a well-intentioned child in to do an man’s job.  This isn’t Hollywood where happy-endings can be written to placate fears.  Actually, given Michael Jackson’s recent untimely passing, perhaps the era of happy-endings is long gone, bombarded out of existence in 2001 by the shell shocking events of 9/11.

General Musings

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Just a quick note. Two quotes to think about:

“If you think education is difficult, try being stupid”  

A friend offered this:
The government’s view on our economic state:
“If it moves, tax it.
If it keeps moving, regulate it.
If it stops moving, subsidize it.”
Ronald Reagan

Find ways to hang on to your money, because the government is going to be coming after it in the form of taxes, mandates and regulations.  Someone has to pay down the debt…..

Speaking of national debt, I read a good observation:  If the airlines could keep flying in the aftermath of 9/11 with their bankruptcy issues, why couldn’t the car manufacturers weather their crisis?  The observation offered was that the manufacturers filing for bankruptcy protection, thus able to exit (or restructure) their legacy debt (unions), probably would have been better off than the path the government  took.

Tipping

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While I can’t complain in general, today something irked me enough to bump itself to the top of my list.  I paid $185 for a massage treatment today, and when paying, the cashier informed me that an 18% gratuity is the norm.  Huh?

As an ex-waitress, I appreciate tipping.  And while my massage was very good, I have to ask: when did we start tipping skilled labor 18%?  Tipping, in my humble opinion, is reserved for unskilled labor, to “make up” for the fact that they earn minimum wages.  (Yes, I know most people think it is “to insure priority” treatment, but that has long gone by the wayside.   See Wikipedia for more on that.)

I don’t mind tipping SOMETHING to say “gosh it’s been great and thanks a lot”….but I am not about to pay an extra $33 for that privilege.  Is the establishment really paying an experienced, licensed masseuse minimum wages?  If so, then something is wrong with that establishment’s pay structure.

Even my hairdresser, God bless his soul, only gets a paltry percentage tip (for crying out loud, he charges me $300 a sitting, which I am willing to shell out, but not an extra 10-20% on top of that).  It’s not customary to tip nurses, yet their extra TLC is vital. No one tips bus drivers, but the care they take is vital.  So since when did tipping waiters 10-20% move into tipping a skilled labor force an equal amount?  Frankly, I think the Spa employer should shell out a professional salary, and not count on its customers to subsidize its wages.  The employer, in this case, is shifting the burden of its wages to me, the customer.  Heck, if an employer can’t pay decent wages, they need to raise prices and simpy decline tips. What a relief to you the customer, to actually know you are paying a fair fee and not have to wrestle with your conscience whether you have tipped “enough”.

What’s that?  If they raise prices they can’t be competitive?  Well, as we have learned, if they are a price-taker, they will have to manage costs better or find another business.  If they are a price-setter, they will be just fine.

On another note, the other item I wanted to mention today was along the lines of the economy. Barron’s pointed out that while the unemployment rate leaped from 8.9% to 9.4%, “if we look at the category we feel gives a more accurate picture – the so-called U-6 tally…” which includes the rate of people who have stopped looking (given up) and the rate of people accepting part-time work because they can’t find full-time work, we see that it has grown, which means that unemployment has shot up to 16.4%.  Be careful about the numbers being tossed around….

Leadership

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Coming off from a week of Leadership reflections, (otherwise known as closing residential), I find myself reading Resonant Leadership.  I decided to jump into this book out of a basic fear that I would otherwise put it on the shelf and never look at it again.  After the first 15 pages, I think that anyone who is in a leadership position and has found themselves “blindsided” by any kind of feedback – that this book would make for a good read.

As one who is disciplined in exercise, and I can now see (or articulate) how my exercise regime has contributed to my overall sense of wholeness.  And in reading this book, in turn, I see how this has helped me as a leader.