Justmypolitics

Just My Opinion

I am not a gun control fanatic.  I do not  have a crystal ball to know what new gun laws might do, but common sense tells me we have too many guns in circulation.  It is time we did something about it. Maybe I am wrong, but I hope that I have a right to my own opinion on this.

Both the gun lobby and gun control fanatics could argue about what works and what doesn’t work until this moment passes.  It would be a tragedy if we let public support for doing something just disappear.

Common sense tells us that we are in an out of control arms race in the United States.  To me it is reminiscent of the mutually assured destruction we somehow bought into during the cold war.

Today’s criminal could be armed with a Glock pistol and/or a semi-automatic rifle.  There are places where this is reality.  To a number of folks it makes some sort of weird sense that the only solution is to be better armed than the best armed criminal.

Unfortunately, too many weapons bought by these people worried about their own safety end up destroying the safety of others.

We do not  need regulations that would prevent my wife’s 84 year old aunt or any other sane person from having a shotgun in their house to provide a sense of security.  

It also makes no sense to take guns and rifles away from hunters.  We have a deer problem along much of the east coast.  I am happy to see hunters continue to thin the herd. I am also not adverse to a nice deer tenderloin on my grill.

Being a boy growing up in the rural South, my best friend, Mike, and I often headed off into the woods around Lewisville, North Carolina, with our shotguns looking for small game when we were barely teenagers.  It was nothing unusual.

I went off to military school when I was fourteen.  We marched with M1s and learned how to clean them. Eventually we even got a chance to shoot them.  Guns were a part of my life.  

When a college roommate and I spent a summer in Alaska, there were guns legally in my pickup truck.  We flew into the Kenai Peninsula by float plane that summer of 1970.   Because of the presence of brown bears where we were camping, they would not even fly us in without guns. We were glad to have the guns at night when we could hear the bears wandering around the campsite.  While I was fishing for trout with salmon running between my legs, I had a 44 magnum pistol strapped to me.  After some practice shots with it, I was pretty sure the only way it would protect me was if I could pull the trigger just after the bear closed his mouth on my gun hand.

After college, I built a cattle operation in the rolling hardwood hills north of Fredericton, New Brunswick.  We had salmon in some of the streams and we had lots of bears.  One day I was checking the cattle in field one the back of the farm.  The herd ran past me and my pickup truck  instead stopping for the taste of grain as usual.  In an instant I figured out that the last calf was actually a 400 lb black bear.  I got in the truck and chased it into the woods.  That afternoon the area ranger told me to shoot it on sight if I ever saw it.  The bear had lost its fear of humans.  I never saw the bear again but I rode around with a 30/06 five shot semi-automatic rifle in my truck for a few weeks.  That summer 29 black bears were trapped along the Tay River which bordered our farm.

A year or so later I had a 2200 pound bull go bad and start stalking me.  The rifle went back in the truck, but luckily I tricked the bull into a handling chute and loaded him onto a truck headed to the meat packers.

I never had to use my rifle in any of those incidents but I was glad it provided a sense of security at the time.  In 1982 we sold all our cattle, and I went to work in the city.  In 1984 we moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia where I worked for Apple Computer.  Halifax was a peaceful Canadian city, but America and the grandparents were calling so we headed south.

Our time in Canada which ran from 1971 until 1987 ended when my wife and I along with our three children moved to Columbia, Maryland.  My Remingtons, Winchesters, and Mossbergs all stayed in Canada. I don’t even remember the regulation that kept them out of the country.

Living between Baltimore and Washington, DC was a culture shock for us.  After years in Canada where I would have been hard pressed to recall any gun deaths, we were dropped into a world where the local news was mostly the nightly shootings and murders in DC.  While the news was disheartening, we did not go out and rearm ourselves.

We only lived in Columbia for a couple of years before heading down to Roanoke, Virginia. There were far fewer gun incidents in Roanoke but I did work closely with people at Virginia Tech so I got to suffer with them after the mass killings there.

Sometime while we were living in Roanoke, we inherited a shotgun.  We still have it with us, but we survived many years without a gun.  I didn’t feel any less safe those years.

Canada is a different society than the United States, but Australia which I have also visited might be a little closer in culture to the United States.

However, it is unlikely that either the Canadian model or the Australian model of gun control would work here, but we have to find something better than what we have.  Maybe that better is buying back assault rifles and pistols and stricter licensing. Certainly better is not more guns.

We should look very closely at ourselves and realize that we have to change.  Getting rid of the some of the guns in our society is just the first step.  What is reasonable protection for a homeowner?

Do we really need more handguns in circulation?  I never met a Canadian who felt the need to protect their home with a handgun.  

Are assault rifles a legitimate hunting weapon?  Last time I checked the territory for brown bears is pretty well confined to Alaska and even I might rather have something besides an assault rifle if I faced a big bear.  Certainly if you need more than five shots to shoot an animal, you should not have a gun in the first place.  

There used to be a law that you could only have three shots in a shotgun magazine.  No serious hunter I knew complained of that being a problem.  I have shot and butchered animals for our own consumption, but you only need a .22 rifle for that.  

As to needing assault weapons to protect us from a government out of control,  most people living near Camp Lejeune as we do might argue that if you think an assault weapon will save you from the Marines, you likely are not going to qualify as a sane individual in the first place.

The truth is that the best weapon to protect us from a tyrannical government is the ballot box. I focused on Colonial American History in college, our founding fathers would be shocked at the level of armaments in our homes.  They might even argue that we would not need all the guns in the home if we would just disband all our standing armies.

So can we just ditch the nonsense about the average American needing an assault rifle?

Before someone tells me to pack my bags and go back to Canada, understand that our neighbor to the north has more similarities to life in the United States than it does differences. Living there is not a punishment. I would love to ditch my US health insurance with its $5000 annual deductible and $9000 a year premium.  However, I would hate to give up my life in the warmth of North Carolina’s Southern Outer Banks

David Sobotta is an author, photographer, and serious fisherman who lives along the White Oak River just up river from Swansboro, North Carolina and not far from the beaches of Emerald Isle, North Carolina.  David grew up in Piedmont area of North Carolina just as it was poised for massive change.

His most recent book, The Pomme Company, was released in Kindle format this past November.  David’s articles on technology can often be found on the Internet pages of ReadWriteWeb. 

Taking away once in a lifetime opportunities

I have never doubted that the educational opportunity that I got as student in North Carolina’s public schools had a major impact on my life. 

I am also positive that removing programs like the Governor’s Schools will harm not only students but also North Carolina.

Perhaps I am lucky to be over sixty and long past the days of worrying about education for my children, but I do have a granddaughter who will be turning three soon,  and I hate to think the educational opportunities that have made North Carolina a great state are drying up before she has her chance.

I never attended one of NC’s Governor’s schools, but I did get the opportunity in 1962-63 to attend a gifted program run by Forsyth County.  I think it made a huge difference in my life.

My mother was raising me as a single mom In Lewisville, NC.  The first year I attended Lewisville School, all twelve grades were housed under one roof.  I did well in school, and my mother who never finished high school drummed into me at an early age that getting a good education was important.

However, it wasn’t until I was chosen in a countywide search to participate in a year-long gifted program that I learned to really believe in myself.   Lewisville in my youth was a very rural spot, and the highlight of our summers was always the two weeks when the ancient activity bus carried us daily for swimming lessons at Tanglewood Park.

The Forsyth gifted program gave me a different summer.  We went everyday for several weeks to the Graylyn  Mansion near Winston-Salem.  That summer I got exposed to some great teachers and very intelligent classmates.  I learned to type, and I figured out that I could hold my own in a room of smart students.

When the next term of school rolled around, my mother arranged the schedule at her beauty shop so that she could drive me 25 minutes each way to Oldtown School where I got to attend the county’s gifted class for my eighth grade year.

I learned a lot that year, but mostly I learned that hard work in school was really worth the effort.  From that gifted class I went on to the McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and eventually to Harvard.

I managed to graduate with honors from Harvard, and I think my mother was pleased that her son was the first of her family that graduated from college.

Arguments could be made that going away to prep school got me into Harvard, but in my heart I know that the year in the gifted program is what flipped the switch for me.  It showed me that learning could be fun and rewarding.  It was a great life lesson.

My careers have been a little unusual.  I ran a cattle operation for ten years after Harvard, and then worked for Apple for nearly twenty years.  Since leaving Apple I have done things as diverse as selling ultra high speed networking and real estate.  Through all the career changes, a love of learning first kindled in that Forsyth County gifted class has kept me successful.

For the last few years, I have also been interviewing potential Harvard students from North Carolina.  I cannot count how many times graduating seniors have mentioned to me the impact that programs at the  Governor’s School  have had on them.

As Apple’s manager for higher education in the Southeast, I once had the opportunity to sit down in one of the rocking chairs in C.D. Spangler’s office when he was President of the UNC system.  I will never forget his passion for providing a low cost, high quality education to university students.  Those high educated students coming out of the UNC system have been critical to North Carolina moving forward.

Mr. Spangler’s belief in the power of education was not any different from my mother’s.   Belief in education has been at the heart of North Carolina’s success.

A lot of people and companies have chosen to locate in North Carolina because of our education system.  Budget cuts which destroy the Governor’s School and weaken NC’s higher education system are a huge step backward for North Carolina.

Speaking out against those cuts is the least that I can do for the state that gave me such a great start in life.  Mother would accept nothing less.

King George

King George seems to believe that he and only he knows what is best for our country.  There appears to be a number of loyalists in our population that are quite comfortable letting King George do as he pleases, even if it means trading hard won freedoms for a false sense of security.

There are those of us who see the expansion of unrestrained executive power as a threat to our country.

This could have easily be written in 1776.  Yet the words define the crisis that our country faces today.  We have a president who believes that he is above the law.

As is often the case in times of crisis, fear has been used to manipulate not only the voters but also the very lawmakers whose historic role has been to provide a crucial check to the power of the president.  They have been unwilling to step up to that role until recently.

As we struggle to create democratic foundations on the other side of the world, terrorists must take great pleasure in seeing us dismantle our own democratic protections out of fear of another terrorist attack.

Terrorists cannot destroy our democracy, only we can.  We face a great danger in allowing our president to be above the law.  Spying on Americans with no judicial controls is the first step on a very slippery slope.

It doesn't take a lot of to see what can happen.  If the executive branch can spy on Americans, they can also spy on legitimate opposition parties. 

We're already in the situation where the Republican party has gerrymandered election districts in Texas to create a Congressional majority.

I've been listening to David McCullough's "1776."  It's a narrative of the difficulties faced by the  Continental Army in fighting the Revolutionary War.  It was only by the smallest margin that we won our freedoms and have been able to keep them intact these two hundred plus years.

It occurs to me that those who fought in the Revolutionary War really understood the dangers of allowing their freedoms to be trampled on by an unrestrained executive.  I'm not certain that we as a country have awakened to the dangers of allowing an executive branch to do as it wants  in collusion with a legislature unwilling to stand up for our rights.

Perhaps the recent signs of backbone regarding the anti-torture resolutions and the so-called "Patriot Act" might be a sign that the pendulum will swing back as the our legislators realize that if they keep acting like a rubber stamp for the president, they may wake up one day and not have any powers left.

We don't have a finely oiled machine of government.  What we do have is a system that often gets out of balance, but somehow manages to get back to center over time.  The genius of those giants of 1776 is that they built a framework which has managed to survive many challenges over the centuries.

Our job is to not let an over enthusiastic executive destroy that delicate balance.  I hope we don't let down those real patriots of 1776 who sacrificed everything for those freedoms that we so often take for granted.  It would be a travesty for those freedoms to whittled away because we allowed our own government to use fear to manipulate us.

A "Bushian Laboratory"

David Brooks recently published an interesting article, "A Bushian Laboratory."  It ran in the NY Times on September 18 and in the Roanoke Times on September 22.  In the article Mr. Brooks makes the assertion that "compassionate conservatism" is actually "big government conservatism" and that this new George Bush will transform the Gulf Region.  It will be a "a laboratory for the Bushian vision of energetic but not domineering government."

Let me try to understand what part of the government that we've had for the last five years is not domineering.  Just to be clear, domineer means the following, "To rule with insolence or arbitrary sway; to play the master; to be overbearing; to tyrannize; to bluster; to swell with conscious superiority or haughtiness."

Perhaps I've missed the overwhelmingly humble spirit of government in the last few years, but the truth is that this as been anything but a humble period of government.  I think there is little doubt that we have lived through one of the most domineering governments in the recent history of our country that is unless you're well connected enough to be enjoying the influence that you have managed to buy.

This government was certainly energetic in protecting the names of the people on Cheney's secret Energy Task Force.  I wonder if five dollars a gallon gasoline was on the agenda.  Unfortunately we'll never know, but seeing much higher fuel costs is a certainty.

We've used our military superiority to turn most of our allies to at best concerned friends who are seriously wondering what has happened to a dependable participant in the complex arena of world politics.  We redefined torture so that it is permissible.  Then there is always the Patriot Act which helps to soothe away any cares that I might have before I fall asleep at night.  I take great comfort in the thought that the terrorist training ground we've created in Iraq has stretched our military to the point that our all volunteer Army is in danger.  Knowing the National Guard which should be at home with all its equipment has now become an arm of foreign policy keeps me from worrying about regional disasters.

With unbelievable arrogance and changing stories, we continue to try to justify a war that previous presidents from both parties knew was impossible to win.  If government has become energetic, it is appears the most energy is expended in trying to manage reality so they can stay in power and curry favor to those who helped them get in power.

This certainly isn't just a Republican problem, the Democrats are just as guilty.  For years both parties have been "down sizing" government by taking actual government employees off the books and turning their work over to government contractors. Spending continues to rise since there's the same work to be done, but someone also has to make a profit on it.   In order to win that work, companies send enormous sums hiring the very people who ran the organizations which can bestow millions upon millions of dollars on private companies.  It's little wonder that these contracts often follow in the tracks of those government officials.  Government hasn't really gotten smaller or smarter,  it's been outsourced and made far more complex than it needs to be with more people doing the same job for even more money.

The one unarticulated goal that you can guarantee will be achieved is the re-election of incumbents. Beyond that as we have seen, the placing of political cronies in key positions knows no bounds.

In this new energetic government, shouldn't competence be the first order of business.  If that's the case what is Karl Rove, the master of political planning and the destroyer of anyone who dares challenge the administration, doing in charge of the largest federal reconstruction effort ever?  Last I checked there was still an ongoing investigation into Rove's role in the leak of a CIA agent's name.

Then there is whole issue of trusting this government to spend our money wisely in this effort to transform this "disaster zone of urban liberalism" which used to be known as the Gulf Coast.   The natural disaster that the Gulf Coast has faced is unlikely to be fixed when the cronyism of Bush's world combines with the well established cronyism and corruption dating back to the days of Huey Long.

Last I checked the top White House procurement official, David Safavian, had to resign this week due to "repeated false statements to government officials" regarding an investigation into  influence peddling.  I take great comfort that his wife, who may be a very nice and competent lady, is the chief council for the Government Reform committee which reporters are guessing will be in charge of the post Katrina investigation.  Perhaps the Government Reform committee needs to first investigate itself or at least show us how they have reformed government for the better in the last few years.

The problem isn't liberalism or conservatism, Democrat or Republican,  the problem is the lack of passionate belief in government and the mission of government to provide services to the people, whether directly or indirectly.  There are plenty of good contractors out there, just as there are plenty of dedicated government employees.  We just need competent, caring, hard working managers with the power to make things happen for the good of the people who have kept this government going with their hard earned dollars.

Unfortunately neither party seems to be able to govern well for the benefit of the people who are paying their salaries.  The best levees have been erected around the incumbency of our current politicians and the interests of those who got them to power and  who spend ever increasing dollars to keep them in power.

Mr. Brooks did get one thing right, and it's a very big thing.

Our President has yet to resolve, the "contradiction between his compassionate spending policy and his small-government tax policy."  Just to make certain that our future is as bleak as that of a New Orleans' levee, Congress has also shown no fiscal responsibility.

That dual lack of prudence just may just be the biggest disaster of all.

Good government, little or big

In response to the "Best-laid plan flopped" by David Brooks, published September 15, 2005 in the Roanoke Times, and originally published in the NY Times.
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David Brooks seems to think that the failure in New Orleans can be attributed to an inevitable failure of "big government."   I don't think the  Katrina cataclysm has anything to do with big government.

Katrina shows us that those with little faith in government aren't exactly the best ones to make government of any size work.

Admittedly it is harder to make a large organization function effectively, but there are government organizations that have come out of this mess, looking very effective.  I think both the Coast Guard and the National Weather Service have done their jobs very well.  Mr. Brooks also seems to forget that FEMA achieved some great success under President Clinton.

Anyone that has been in a large organization can explain that it is quite possible for even massive organizations to be very effective in spite of all those PowerPoint presentations and plans.  All that is needed is a strong alignment between the top leadership and the goals of the organization.  Obviously it helps immensely to have a clarity of purpose, but aligning organizational success with the personal passion of a leader is one key factor that is fundamental to creating effective business or governmental units.

In fact in large organizations often the only successes are those divisions or agencies which really mirror the goals of the leader.  Trying to create a success when you aren't on the same page with the leadership, is much harder that just swimming against the current. In fact it rarely works.

Building a successful team is an organizational and a leadership challenge, not something driven by whether you are a liberal or a conservative, a big outfit or a small one.

Some of the most revealing examples of organizational success and failure actually come from the business world which I'm sure Mr. Brooks believes functions better than government.

It is hard to miss the success that Apple Computer has had in the music world.  Not surprisingly all music products at Apple come out firing on all cylinders.  Music is Steve Jobs' passion right now.  There is no doubt  that whatever red tape that needs to be cut on a new Apple music product happens with few if any questions.  Perhaps some might have noticed that Apple hasn't been nearly as successful in selling computers as iPods.

Having spent a long career at Apple, I can tell you that Steve Jobs isn't nearly as interested in selling computers as he is iPods. In fact he is not even very fond of his computer sales organization. Accordingly his computer sales team has a lot of the characteristics of today's FEMA, complete with the cronies whose resumes don't exactly shout computer hardware sales.  Not surprisingly they haven't made nearly as much progress against the Windows world as one might have guessed given the quality of Apple products, both hardware and software.

Governments are even more in need of strong leadership than businesses since public service below the crony level isn't as rewarding monetarily. Governments also require agency heads with a passion for what needs to be done and a true clarity of purpose.  When that happens, people don't worry about whether something is their job or not,  they just get the mission accomplished.  By all accounts  we have an immensely successful and a very large military working for this country. They have more than their share of PowerPoint presentations and plans.  Yet when you give them a clear objective with strong leadership and guidance, they can achieve almost anything.  When they got to New Orleans, things started happening. However, when no one can explain their mission like in their ever changing mission in Iraq, it's a lot harder for them to be successful.

You can bet that if the military were planning for New Orleans they would not have been late for a date with a hurricane by a few days.  Having a love for what you're doing and the skills to be successful  is hard to beat. It's only the rare college roommate that has all the qualifications to be successful in every field.  Wouldn't if have been great to have had a FEMA leader as clearly focused and skilled in emergency management as Steve Jobs is at bringing out portable music products?  I can bet resources would have been to New Orleans a lot earlier.

When you have a leader who really believes in what you and they are doing, all sorts of magic can happen.  The size of the business unit or agency has little bearing on the potential for success.  What really counts is the strength of the leader and the passion for what they're doing.  To have successful government, you have to start with people who believe in government.  Then perhaps if we had more high level people in government focused on their agency's true mission instead of just helping to re-elect the person who gave them a job, we would have a more effective government irrespective of it being liberal or conservative, big or small.

Critical Thinking

Recently I saw that forty percent of Americans believe that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. This brought a favorite Thomas Jefferson quotation to mind.

“If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be...if we are to guard against ignorance and remain free,it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.”

Are there many people in the Roanoke Valley who really believe that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq? I am puzzled by how people can be so unconnected with current events to hold on to that notion. Is there perhaps an alternate reality out there that I am unaware of? Certainly anyone reading The Roanoke Times, one of the national newspapers, or listening to network news should have picked up this fact by now.

It is easy for each of us to have different ideas on whether or not the invasion into Iraq was a mistake or something that had to be done. We can have opinions on whether or not it has made us as a country safer or more at risk. Surely, however, we can agree on one fact, there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq.

With the polarization of everything, are people losing the distinction between fact and opinion? In the rush to corroborate our opinions are we becoming slipshod in how we check our facts? Articles both in print and digital medium that are a little lax on fact checking or even in vetting their sources are not hard to find.

Just before the holidays an article was published in the Roanoke Times. It happened to be in my field of expertise, technology. I felt the article which was not on the opinion pages was off base on a few points so I attempted to engage the author to see if perhaps he was just unaware of some of the facts.

It was interesting in that when he finally responded his answer was that he did not have time for a debate and stood by the points he had made. It reminded me so much of the old saying, “Don't confuse me with the facts. I have already made up my mind.”

Certainly we live in an age overwhelmed with information, but that makes it all the more important that each us not only learn the skills of critical thinking but that we also pass it on to our children. We also need to demand that our newspapers carefully monitor for objectivity and correctness of facts the articles that they publish. In general I believe The Roanoke Times does a very good job, and perhaps this article being an exception to the rule is why it has bothered me so much.

While an article on technology might not be as important as an article on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the relevance of getting the facts right is just as important. If I were a technology executive visiting Roanoke for the first time, and I happened to read an inaccurate article, my opinion of Roanoke would be colored. If the article happened to be the recent one that concerned me, the conclusion could be made that Roanoke had missed about five years of what has happened in the technology world along with the thought that Roanoke just might not be the smart place to start or move my company.

The printed word has a great power and with the power comes responsibility. I was fortunate to spend summers of my teenage years sometimes in the company of R.J. Berrier. R.J. spent over fifty years writing and editing pieces for the small newspapers in Mount Airy, N.C. His commitment to correctness and facts was one of his core beliefs. As he often told me, "Most people only have the opportunity to be in the newspaper three or four times in their lives, when they are born, when they graduate from high school, if they marry, and when they die, so it our responsibility to make certain that we spell their names right and get the facts straight."

At a time when there is so much misinformation and polarization in the world, I still depend on the R.J.'s of today to make certain the printed word that I read each morning has more credibility than what I might find wandering the Internet.

Our local paper is my real connection to the world. It is my first step to staying informed each day. It is also “our” paper because it is our responsibility to challenge articles when they get the facts wrong.

If we all make a renewed commitment to carefully checking our facts while preparing for a respectful debate of differing opinions, the process can lead to a more tolerant and successful future for all.

Maybe we can even figure out the next step in Iraq if we start by agreeing on the one fact, that no one found any weapons of mass destruction.

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

Today we might well be witnessing the death of the basic underlying fairness has helped America to a position of power and riches never before witnessed.

One thing has stood out about America since the late twentieth century. It has been the basic sense of fairness that permeates the American character. Education, hard work, and perseverance have more often than not let to a measure of success. Not that life here has been perfect by any means, but for a time there has been an amazing effort to create fairness in everything from our educational system to our workplaces.

In what has turned out to be the best of times and the worst of times, we face another year uncertain not only of our place in the world but also of what to expect next in this exceptional experience we call America.

There are no shortages of challenges. We need to create jobs for our children and make certain Social Security is there for retirees. Yet we also have to deal with our own crumbling infrastructure while rebuilding Iraq and helping the millions made homeless by the recent tsunami. We appear to be a deeply divided country with no clearly delineated course for the future.

One thing has stood out about America since the late twentieth century. It has been the basic sense of fairness that permeates the American character. Education, hard work, and perseverance have more often than not let to a measure of success. Not that life here has been perfect by any means, but for a time there has been an amazing effort to create fairness in everything from our educational system to our workplaces.

Today we might well be witnessing the death of the basic underlying fairness has helped America to a position of power and riches never before witnessed.

Thursday in an opinion piece in the Times, Andrew Rosenthal said “the Bush administration's legal counsels have been turned into the sort of cynical corporate lawyers who figure out how to make something illegal seem kosher - or at least how to minimize the danger of being held to account.” He went on to say, “Now America has to count on the military to step up when the civilians get out of control.”

Having hired more than a few people with military background and having seen many of them in corporate environments, it started me thinking of the transitions that military personnel make when coming into corporate America. I can easily remember a number conversations that started out, “things are not necessarily fair in corporations.”

The military world where fairness and achievement are highly valued is very different than the American corporate world where money is the ultimate altar and your value is often determined by the people you know not how well you do your job. This was not always the case.

Now that I look back on it, it is clear that at least in my experience, there are factors at work in the corporate world that have the basic American trait of fairness in full retreat. “Doing the right thing” has been redefined as “doing the right thing for the corporation” or even worse “doing the right thing for your buddies.”

Corporations have become more like feudal empires governed mostly for the good of the few. Some corporations are now run by groups of “business associates” where decisions are made mostly based on the impact on their buddies. A promotion more often than not goes to the person who is a friend of the right person, not necessarily the most qualified person.

In theory there are laws to protect employees in corporations. In practice corporations do mostly what they want to do and employees have little real protection.

In a recent “Sally Forth” comic strip from my local paper, one of the characters wondered how to handle an improper firing. It was really a moot question since it was impossible to report an improper firing to HR since HR did the improper firing.

There are no laws to cover many of the injustices that employees in large corporations often face. Many companies have become rampant examples of favoritism and governance by people far too closely intertwined. Their impact is to make corporations a place where improper management thrives instead of being eliminated.

Once your corporate compensation moves into the world of incentive compensation, expect math unlike any you have learned. While it is true that corporations need to control costs so that they make a profit. It should also be true that people should always be treated fairly. If you are in corporation where effort and success really mirror your compensation, consider yourself very fortunate.

If anyone believes that fair compensation is the norm in corporate America, you should talk to the workers who are only supposed to work only forty hours but end up putting in hour after hour of unpaid overtime. Why do you hear so little about it? Because if the employees reported it they would lose their jobs.

Unfortunately America corporations are driven by quarterly results. Whatever makes the analysts happy is now kosher. Often that means finding clever ways to get rid of older more expensive employees or having employees work additional hours for which they receive no pay.

If you have ever tried to report a violation to a corporate human resources department, you probably know well that their first priority as one HR legal consultant once told me is “to protect the company.” Basic fairness for employees is often at odds with protecting the image or the cash horde of the corporation. Corporations have become so large that typically institutional investors only care about bottom line results not how line employees are treated.

As more and more Americans are put through these corporations, those American values that we hear so much about are often challenged. Many come out of their first corporate experience convinced that they have been treated unfairly. Some leave the corporate world in frustration. Some stay and abandon their values. Even military people, schooled for years in basic fairness, often cannot survive the temptation throwing everything to the wind for “the good of the corporation.”

This almost sounds like a situation where we should turn to our legislators for help. That challenge in itself might be another essay Of course we started out with the premise that government lawyers are getting like cynical corporate lawyers so it may well be that we stand at a precipice.

Either we reform the engine that has made America so rich or watch helplessly as bad corporations make it harder and harder for the good organizations to keep being fair to their employees while remaining competitive and profitable.

Administration Performance Review

I am challenged to understand what’s happening with this election. If polls are to be believed, the majority of the people are satisfied with the status quo.

Even if you supported the decision to invade Iraq, it’s hard to deny that the situation in Iraq is getting worse. The president’s own intelligence reports support this conclusion.

If you did not support the invasion, it’s getting easier by the day to declare you were right. Instead of decreasing terrorism, the war in Iraq has, as many mid-eastern experts warned, fanned the flames of radicalism and increased the feelings of hate towards America in the Arab world.

There is little doubt that we have gone from a country that many in the world respected to a country whom many despise and fear. There are those at the United Nations who even believe we have waged an unlawful war in Iraq.

How the majority of the people can look at this and be satisfied really mystifies me. Is there an alternate reality that I’m missing?

With thirty-plus years in the business world, I can’t help but evaluate the situation from that perspective. What if the members of this administration were employees of mine?

If they sold me on the fact that they were going to deliver weapons of mass destruction and then delivered something else, the inescapable assumption is that they don’t know what they’re doing or that they’re trying to fool me. If I trust them to go after al Qaeda, and they go off on a nation-building exercise for sake of ideology, I’m going to haul their rears into my office and explain what staying focused on the job means.

If they start telling me how wonderful things are going, and there’s evidence all over the place that this isn’t the case, I’d put them on a performance plan, plain and simple. Stay on task, get me out of this mess, and get back to the job you were supposed to do. If they can’t figure out how to do this quickly, they need to find other jobs. I’ll find someone else to replace them in the hopes that new team will do a better job.

That is the business world. There is no ideology involved. You say what you’re going to do, and then you do what you said and are measured on those results. If the results are not good, as they are sometimes, it doesn’t necessarily mean you fire the employee. The effort might have been right, but the intelligence or support from the company might have been lacking. Smart companies, employers, and leaders define what went wrong and put to together a plan to fix the problem.

Unfortunately, when people deny there’s a problem or try to hide it, you have to change personnel. People who make up their own reality are never accountable for good or bad results. Not replacing people when they need to go only makes the challenges harder and can have catastrophic results in government or business.

There are a whole list of other items in my performance review of this administration--tax cuts, health care, the deficit, the environment, and increased secrecy in government--and I’ve seen enough to start evaluating replacements.

Unfortunately, it’s a whole lot harder to conduct a really good job interview than it is write a performance review.

Am I satisfied with the job interview that I have gotten from the new guys banging on the door? In a word no, but as is often the case in the business world, my performance evaluation of the current team leaves me little choice. It’s time for a change, and though I’m nervous, I have to hope these new folks will grow into the job and learn from the mistakes of the people before them. It’s pretty clear the current team does not think they have made any mistakes.

I’m not going to worry, as some would have me do, that a vote for new leadership could lead to a new terrorist attack. Terrorist attacks can kill thousands, but they cannot destroy America. What will destroy our country is the unwillingness to actively give our politicians a real job review every chance we get.

Above all, I want the leaders we elect to tell me the truth even if the truth is that they were wrong. Leadership goes hand-in-hand with the opportunity to make mistakes and accept the accountability for them. If there are no mistakes, you have a magician, not a leader.

Unknown Candidates

I suspect the Democrats if they listen closely will find that many people who voted against them did not really understand their candidate or their policies. In this case it should be no surprise. The first time most of the people heard anything about John Kerry and John Edwards was less than a year ago. Most people did not have time to get to know them other than through campaign advertising which as we all know is not exactly a great way to understand the real person. Perhaps instead of voters being to blame, the problem is a little closer to home.

Since John and John were unknown products with the Democratic brand behind them certain assumptions were made. John Kerry hailed from the Massachusetts division of the company which, in spite of whatever might be the truth, has always been viewed as the liberal part of the Democratic company. John Edwards, full of passion and energy, was also of all things a trial lawyer. His folksy North Carolina style connected with the voters on a certain level, but he was still a lawyer without a legislative record .

Beyond building a relationship with people who did not vote Democratic in 2004, the Democrats must make certain that potential candidates have enough visibility over the next three years so that they become known entities and aren’t forced fed to the electorate in the typical media blitz which has become normal for our current political process.

Voting for someone who has become known for his record on standing up to budget deficits, is a whole lot easier than convincing the public that someone from Massachusetts is a fiscal conservative. A strong public record is the best anti-dote for the type of misinformation that unfortunately characterized so much of this campaign. My favorite was the completely inaccurate rumor that John Edwards was responsible for the flu vaccine shortage because of a judgment he had won against a flu vaccine manufacturer.

This brings me to the greatest challenge for the Democratic party. Just as they reinvent themselves, they must reinvent their brand. If in truth, the Democrats stand for balanced budgets, their records need to show that. If they are against nation building, stand up for the belief. If they believe we need more international cooperation, do everything they can to make that happen.

Currently there are far too many things that make the Republicans and Democrats more alike than different. In sales we talk about the elevator sales pitch. If you cannot differentiate your product in an elevator ride with a customer, then in this day and age of over saturated communications, it is likely the customer will never take the time to understand the difference unless disaster strikes the customer and they are forced to consider a change from their comfort zone.

There are plenty of things which I hope a changed process will bring to the front of our electoral consciousness. Chief among them for me is the unbelievable influence that money has on American politics in spite of recent legislation. Unless you have seen this in action, it is really hard to appreciate the depths to which it has taken our government. In my most recent corporate iteration, I spent the last four years selling to our government.

For three years, there was one key politician that I needed to meet. I met with his chief(s) of staff a number of times, but the meeting with this key individual always eluded me. Finally just before I left my previous company and shortly after I was stood up one last time, I got the straight scoop from someone who had finally corned him at cocktail party.

The reason we could not meet was that my company had not donated money to him. It mattered not that my company had a policy to donate to neither party. What mattered was that he did not have any money from us There was one small concession, I did start getting weekly notes suggesting that I could have breakfast with him and a few other monied interests for a personal $1,000 donation or $2,500 if I wanted to bring someone. This is the new political math of the United States.

Maybe I am dreaming but my one hope is that the Democratic disaster of 2004 will change the process enough so that potential candidates and politicians will have a discussion with the electorate starting now. The issues I am concerned about cannot wait. With that renewed dialog may we become a country where the best ideas make it into government policy instead of the ones with the most money behind them.

Now that is something to fight for now and vote for next time.

The Election is Definitely Over

The election is over. There is no shortage of political analysis. Looking back over the campaign, many of the real issues seemed to disappear in the media storm. We were left with over-simplified images that became substitutes for the real people trying to win our votes.

Can we the people really say the polices that were hidden behind the personae are not important to our future? Perhaps we know the candidates’ public stance on Iraq, terrorism, the budget deficit, and a few other areas, yet somehow I feel like the country has been sold a hidden bill of goods.

Actually perhaps our choice was between two hidden agendas or at least ones with very few specifics.

So how do we change the dynamics next time? Obviously the party in power does not have an incentive to do anything different. They are delighted with the results from a campaign based more on image than issue.

That leaves the defeated Democrats. They can pick another candidate or image for the next campaign or they can make up their minds to do things differently starting now. In so doing they just might force a change in the process.

The Democrats are no different than a company that threw what they thought was a well researched product over the corporate wall, did a media blitz, reacted to events, and came close to having a successful product launch. Unfortunately this was a presidential election not a product launch so close does not count.

Some have suggested the three percent victory margin might be reversed with some simple tweaking. There is already no shortage of market research on why people voted the way they did. In theory, picking a new values-based product or candidate for better results the next time should not be a problem so why force a change in the process? Fortunately for those of us hoping for a change in the process, the Democrats already know it is not going to be as easy as finding a new face.

Political parties already market potential Presidents like products, but they often do it without even considering the basics from the corporate world. Products don’t necessarily sell on their own merits. After over twenty years in business world, I can tell you the best product is not always the winner. So if having the best candidate will not guarantee success, perhaps a new business strategy is in order.
Going after the next election like a company trying to penetrate a new or difficult market owned by the competition could change the process for us all. It could be just what the Democrats need.

Treating the new Republican majority as a desirable market would be a lot more beneficial than obsessing over all the red and blue maps. In spite of the horror they inspire among Democrats, they do not spell the end of civilization as we know it, nor are they nearly as bad as going after a market where you have less than 1% market share which can happen in the business world.

The Democrats are in far better shape than this, but long term trends show that they, just as many corporations have, need to reinvent themselves. They need new ideas which sometimes mean new people. But the new ideas could be right in their own organization just farther down the organization chart or closer to the customer as we say in the business world. Dennis Waitley, one of my favorite motivational writers, once said “Crisis is a change trying to happen.”

As hard as it is to do, reinvention often means turning organizations upside down. Can the Democrats do what needs to be done? It means an open discussion of ideas, listening to those who didn’t vote for them or especially paying to attention to those whose ideas from within their own organization did not get consideration this time around. Trying to craft a strategy that keeps them true to their principles while making their ideas more receptive to others is not an easy job.

Changing the rules of the game is better than once again hope to beat the Republicans at the their own game. Fixing the top line strategy and doing things differently the next time around, can force a change in political dynamics in the whole country. While listening to the voters that rejected them is a good start, it is only a start. A open dialog on policies that engaged the electorate now instead of three years from now would be a hopeful sign.