No excuses

One of the slogans I’ve mentioned before that I’d like to hear is “When we import oil, we export jobs.” And, please, don’t give me any of the, “we can’t do that because of the carbon footprint” nonsense. Even if you believe in anthropogenic, global warming due to carbon emissions, if we use our own oil, it will not cause more global carbon emissions but less. I will leave the proof of that as an exercise to the reader.

However, there is another important slogan I would like to hear from Mitt Romney, and, if he were to utter it, I think it would result in a wider victory than would otherwise be possible. Romney has on his web site, “Americans deserve more jobs and more take-home pay.” That’s fine as far as it goes, but what I want to hear is,

“Americans deserve more jobs and more take-home pay. Give me four years, and if I don’t produce that, I will not run for re-election, no excuses. Yes, there will be Democrats in congress. Yes, there will be unforeseen difficulties. Yes, I will not get my way in everything. None of that matters. My promise to you is that I will increase the take-home pay of all levels of American society or I will not run again. No excuses. I promise a brighter tomorrow, no excuses.”

We have seen the largest destruction of wealth since the Great Depression. While the average person does not know the numbers, they feel it, they believe it. People still dream of an America where each generation will do better than the last. That is in real jeopardy.

Obama has been an unmitigated disaster, and again, people feel that. But the one thing that Obama makes more than anything else is excuses. The favorite has been, and still is, “Blame Bush!” But that is never enough. Things were worse then he expected. Unexpected things happened and on and on. Things are never his fault! Although he has played more golf than both Bush Presidents and he attended more campaign fundraisers than all Presidents since Richard Nixon combined before he officially announced his re-election and REALLY got started, he is working tirelessly for us. I don’t believe he is working overtime for us and I would not care even if it were true. I don’t care if he has had good intentions. I believe in results. Obama has not delivered. If he thinks that he has delivered, I don’t want what he’s selling.

So, Mitt, you want our votes? Double down with a double promise: Not only promise us what you will do for us, promise us what the consequences for you will be if you fail. And, no excuses.

Vulture Capitalism

One of the issues in the current presidential campaign is the roll of venture capitalists, or, as our president who has never worked in a real business likes to call it, “vulture capitalism.” I was a small cog in venture capital firm and I am proud of that work as is, I suppose, anyone who has actually done that kind of work.

My company acquired 6 different companies, the largest of which was Huffy Services. I clearly remember walking into their Dayton offices for the first time. When we walked down the main hallway, I knew that all of the people on the right were going to lose their jobs and a lot of them on the left.

The right side was accounting, payroll and software development. They had 5 software developers. I replaced all of them and did not get paid anywhere close to what their senior developer got paid. They had about a dozen people entering manual worksheets. I wrote new software so that the twins in our office were able to do what those dozen did. Later, we moved it to an OCR process and then a totally electronic reporting system by web or smart phones. The billing department had almost a dozen people and my new software allowed them to do that work with two. Payroll was at least a half dozen and, again, my new software eventually got that down to one person. That one person will likely read this blog. I forget how many people were on the accounting team, but they all lost their jobs. I developed a direct, automated link from our custom software to our JD Edwards corporate accounting. All in all, dozens on that right side lost their jobs.

The left side, Operations, was not quite as bad. All of the senior administrators lost their jobs. Some of the best service coordinators were offered jobs in Dallas. Only one of those took the offer but she is still working with the company in Dallas eight years later. I remember one of the service coordinators who was only scheduling 16 Lowes stores (we were servicing 5 or 6 thousand stores) and in those stores, the same person worked there every day. The CEO used to like to joke that she could finish her day’s work before she finished her first cup of coffee. She was the niece of one of the senior people. She lost her job. The new scheduling software I wrote allowed the job to be done better with far fewer people so only a fraction kept their jobs. One of those people who worked with the company until last year will also, likely, read this blog. I consider myself friends with those people.

So, all in all, a large percentage of the white collar employees lost their jobs. How could I be proud of that? Well, the office workers were all overhead and not producers. The upside is that the 3,000 field workers who were actually producing got to keep their jobs. Without the purging and re-organization of an inefficient operation, they would have all lost their jobs. So, yes, some of it was painful, but on the whole, it was quite worthwhile.

All of the companies we purchased had a few things in common: Their software systems sucked, they were grossly inefficient, and they had to either re-organize or dissolve. So, you can point to all of the bad things that happened, or you can see the big picture which is that we allowed those companies to continue to function and provide better service for our clients at a better price because we were more efficient.

Some people will only hold up the bad and criticize good people who are doing useful work. You want some people in Washington who understand the current business changes in charge. When the Democrats tout Bill Clinton as the great American business president, remember that he had the good fortune to be president when software actually started to help. Before that time, computers did not really help white collar employees as a whole. During that time, supervisors went from supervising 5 or 6 employees to twice that number. That lead to a lot of restructuring, but it was all necessary to make America competitive in the global, competitive market.

The President Obama is telling everyone that his 700 BILLION in Medicare cuts is only all saving from waste and abuse. That’s a laugh. First, he will never achieve that number--that is pure fairy dust. And, if he achieves even a fraction of that savings, he will leave behind far more bodies than Romney ever managed to do. The costs are salaries, drugs, medical equipment and facilities so you have to cut those in order to save money. Those proposed savings are jobs and pay. One topic for another day is how ObamaCare will make the coming shortage of doctors much worse because of the “free” care and those cuts.

But just remember when Obama berates Romney for being a “Vulture Capitalist” the president has no idea what he is talking about while at the same time he is proposing something much worse then anything Romney has ever done.

Bloomberg is a hypocritical, ignorant fascist

Bloomberg is a hypocritical, ignorant fascist.

I was going to say that he is a hypocritical, ignorant fascist pig, but I did not want to make it personal, just factual.

First, do I think that people should drink sugared drinks? No, not unless they are exercising. When you drink a sugared drink and are not exercising, your body cannot use the sugar fast enough so the excess sugar plasterers itself on the outside of your cells, reduces the ability of the cells to function and never comes off until the cell dies. Ouch.

Bloomberg (Big B), however, has some problems.

First, all sugared drinks are equally harmful and that includes fruit juices which he exempts from his ban. I’m not sure if that lobby is more powerful in his world or if he is just ignorant. Fruit juice is like lipstick on a pig: You cannot take a food or drink that is basically bad for you, add something positive like “Vitamin C!” and magically get something that is good for you. The sugar in orange juice is just as bad as the sugar in Coke. Whole fruit is good for you, juices no so much. Why? The general rule of thumb for solids is that they are half digested in 45 minutes and not fully digested for four hours. Liquids can basically go straight in causing the sugar spike your body cannot handle.

The other major problem Big B has is that he is targeting obesity, not cell damage. Did you know that there is strong statistical evidence that drinking artificially sweetened drinks also leads to weight gain? There are recent studies showing that artificially sweetened drinks may stimulate the hunger centers in the brain to make you hungrier so that you may eat more. Gotta ban those bad boys too!

For the best results, you should only eat when you are active. You should not eat and then go to bed. There is a lot of evidence that eating at the wrong time of day is actually worse for you than eating the wrong foods. So, will Big B start dictating when restaurants can be open?

So, what is worse for you, the Coke you drink in the middle of the day when you are active or that sugary sweet desert just before bedtime? I often drink a 40 or more ounces of sugary soda in the middle of a long bike ride and it does me no harm at all. In fact, it helps me greatly!

Do we have a problem with obesity? Sure, we do. There is even recent evidence that the poorer you are, the more obesity is a problem. That’s a remarkable fact but I will leave that for another day. The problem with liberals like the Big B is that they want to take away our liberty because they feel that government must “Do something!”

But really, what are they going to do? Ban all deserts and eating after 8PM? See how well that works in New York City.

The whole idea that the government is not just going to give us information, but control our lives is basically fascistic. We opened the door wide to fascism in the US when we allowed smoking bans in private establishments. We like to refer to restaurants as public places, but that is really not true. Court houses are public places. Public libraries are public places. Who owns the building? If it is the public, than it is a public place. If it is private citizens (and that includes corporations which are simply a collection of individuals) who own the building, then it is a private place.

Don’t get me wrong—I hate smoking and I will not willing eat in a place that allows smoking. However, the solution that is consistent with liberty is to inform people both about smoking in general and individual restaurants. If a restaurant was required to have clear signs stating if it was smoking or non-smoking, then everyone could use their freedom to do what they want. However, this notion that since I hate smoking and I want to eat in a specific restaurant so I will get the government to change them to my likes and dislikes is fundamentally fascistic and no one exemplifies that better than Bloomberg.

If you want to learn how to eat better go to www.drmirkin.com. If you want the government to force you to do what it thinks is in your best interest, you are advocating fascism. We in the US are at a tipping point and unless we wake up and start advocating liberty, we will end up in a country devoid of liberty.