“The Republican Party is in deep trouble,” Powell told corporate security executives at a conference in Washington sponsored by Fortify Software Inc. The party must realize that the country has changed, he said. “Americans do want to pay taxes for services,” he said. “Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less.”

via CongressDaily – Powell Says Shrinking GOP Should Return To The Center.

Guess all the tea-partiers were protesting about something else?

They simply don’t provide what we, the information-consuming public, want, in the way that we want it. Namely, yesterday. We’re in a ‘breaking news’ information world.

When the US Navy rescued Captain Phillips, news-hungry interneters knew about it within hours, if not minutes. When the earthquake struck Italy, the world was mobilizing to help almost immediately.

That kind of news delivery doesn’t, can’t, happen with a newspaper.

Some people lament the closing of newspapers as ‘a decline in society’. Where will we be, they ask, when the local newspaper prints its last daily edition?

Who cares?

No, I’m not oblivious to the fact that people who work in the newsrooms will likely lose their jobs. I’m aware that the pressman is very worried that he has worked a lifetime to master a fading technology and has no other skill to substitute. I’m relatively certain that buggy-whip craftsmen felt the same way.

So in that respect, about the people, I do care. But about newspapers as an ‘institution’? Nope.

I don’t know that print newspapers will survive. I definitely don’t think of them as venerable, ‘must have’ institutions that need to be propped up and kept in some sort of zombie limbo by government bailout or capital injection. I know that the companies that run the newsrooms will survive, providing that they re-invent themselves to provide what we want, when we want it, in the way that we want it.

This little missive was inspired by an article by L. Gordon Crovitz in today’s Wall Street Journal (ONLINE!) that detailed the reinvention of that paper by managing editor Barney Kilgore. The WSJ was in trouble. Their monopoly on providing market information to the financial world was gone. Investors and market-watchers were able to get stock pricing immediately. What did Mr. Kilgore do?

Kilgore observed that then new media such as radio meant market news was available in real time. Some cities had a dozen newspapers that had gained the Journal’s once-valuable ability to report share prices.

The Journal had to change. Technology increasingly meant readers would know the basic facts of news as it happened. He announced, “It doesn’t have to have happened yesterday to be news,” and said that people were more interested in what would happen tomorrow. He crafted the front page “What’s News — ” column to summarize what had happened, but focused on explaining what the news meant.

On the morning after Pearl Harbor, other newspapers recounted the facts already known to all the day before through radio. The Journal’s page-one story instead began, “War with Japan means industrial revolution in the United States.” It outlined the implications for the economy, industry and commodity and financial markets.

Kilgore led the Journal’s circulation to one million by the 1960s from 33,000 in the 1940s by adapting the newspaper to a role reflecting how people used different media for news. His rallying cry was, “The easiest thing in the world for a reader to do is to stop reading.”

Even after radio and TV began delivering news in ‘real time’, newspapers survived. Newspapers provided a depth of information that couldn’t be provided in sound bites and video segments.

The internet, obviously, is the game changer.

There is, of course, the question of just who will do the reporting if/when the big papers close. I don’t have a worry of that. If there is a vacuum in the marketplace, some entrepeneur somewhere will move to fill it. “How,” people ask, “will any company be able to pay for a reporter or analyst to be on-scene when everything is moving toward free content on the internet?”

It might happen that way. But one thing I’m sure of – if people don’t get the information they want in the way they want it, for free, they’ll pay for it. Eventually. It may take some scarcity in the news marketplace for people to realize that if they want timely, accurate information and analysis they’ll have to pay for it. But if it’s needed, it will happen, sooner or later.

That dilemma is the subject of a Wall Street Journal Online article today: Jonathan Clements Says the Bonus Tax Creates a Disincentive to Work.

A snippet:

That would be me. Once my total income hits $250,000 for the current calendar year, I will have no incentive to work a single day more in 2009. After all, for every extra dollar of income I earn above $250,000, I will lose 90 cents of the bonus I received earlier this year.

Being somewhat knowledgeable about personal finance, I’m trying to figure out how to finagle this. By minimizing my investment income in 2009 and pushing other income into 2010, I reckon I can delay the day of tax reckoning. But even with that finagling, by mid-October, I will hit $250,000 in total income — and have no incentive to earn any more income in 2009.

At that point, I plan to ask Citi for an unpaid sabbatical. Forget earning more income. There’s no point. Instead, you will find me hunkered down at home, desperately trying not to spend money. This will make entire financial sense for the Clements household. What about the struggling economy? Not so much.

Some of you cheer using the tax code to punish achievement. Not that you use that as the reasoning – the reasoning is to ‘spread the wealth’. As if someone who doesn’t earn it deserves a sizeable chunk of what *I* earn.

What if the wealthy people, the high earners that you steal this money from, decide that it isn’t worth it any more? Then where are you?

Michael Crichton

One of my favorite authors, Dr. Michael Crichton, died a few days ago.

In 2003, he gave a lecture at CIT — and exposes the fundamental fallacies of global warming hysteria. Here is part of what he said (emphases mine)…

Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two-week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:

N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL

Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet’s life during which the communicating civilizations live.

This serious-looking equation gave SETI a serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses — just so we’re clear — are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be “informed guesses.” If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It’s simply prejudice.

The Drake equation can have any value from “billions and billions” to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. . . .

The fact that the Drake equation was not greeted with screams of outrage — similar to the screams of outrage that greet each Creationist new claim, for example — meant that now there was a crack in the door, a loosening of the definition of what constituted legitimate scientific procedure. And soon enough, pernicious garbage began to squeeze through the cracks. . . .

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period. . . .

I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. . . .

To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: “These results are derived with the help of a computer model.” But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world — increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs.

This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynman called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands.

Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we’re asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?

Bravo, Dr. Crichton.

When you read about the problems with American education, you usually read statistics about literacy and dropout rates. But those statistics don’t do the subject justice because the problem with American education is a human story. Every dropout is a human being, every illiterate teenager is an individual, every teen that commits suicide was somebody’s baby, and every kid that’s doing 20 to life is a real breathing person – full of potential.

People are too quick to criticize parents, teachers, administrators, and students. The failure of government education isn’t theirs alone. It’s every American’s fault because we continue to allow the unrestrained growth of government schooling. Haven’t we learned anything from our own experiences in government schools?

It’s very easy for people to bury their head in the sand and ‘let the administrators handle it’. I, for one, am of the opinion that the administrators are failing badly. Be that as it may, there are some places in the country where accountability is coming back in style.

The state of Texas is one of those. There, students have to pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills exam in order to get a diploma, in addition to the requisite credits.

In Fort Worth, 600+ students failed the test, and are being denied the opportunity to graduate with their classmates. But many are protesting that “it’s not fair”. You look at the picture above, read the sign, and tell me it’s not fair. “Let are kids walk”?

If you don’t have anything to do business-wise in those areas, this is still important to you. It is an example of government overreaching, prodded by companies that will benefit hugely from the action. Now, I’m all for benefits–but benefits for all, not just some.

I’m grateful for the FDA, as they have been instrumental in keeping some dangerous drugs off the market. Like any every government agency, though, they have their problems, otherwise known as lobbyists. In this case, the lobbyists come from the land of giant pharmaceutical companies who want a government agency to restrict further what you can and can’t buy. The want this not because they are concerned for your health and welfare, which is what they would have you believe, but because their territory is being encroached upon and this is how they react.

Wallace Wattles, in The Science of Getting Rich, explains the difference in thought between operating in the competitive vs. the creative arena. When you engage in business competitively, your focus is necessarily on lack–that there is only a finite pie, and you must do whatever it takes to get your piece of it, preferably the biggest piece possible.

When your thinking is focused on creativity, you are faced with abundance. There is no need to compete because all you need will be created and made available to you.

The big pharmaceutical companies operate from competitiveness. The natural ways are foreign to them, and present a challenge. They’ve chosen not to operate from the creative side, but from the competitive side. Natural health and wellness products and services present a potential loss of business to the companies, and this is their way of competing in that arena.

On the teleclass I held last Monday, I told you I would do some research on issues surrounding the current attacks on vitamin supplements and then send you an email explaining the situation and give you simple steps you can take to help. Here it is.

When I stated this on the teleclass, I didn’t know what I was opening up. It’s more than I thought – what’s new!

How to read this email -The best way to read this is to go all the way through it to the end. I’ve included links under different sections just in case you want more information on it. However, if you click on one of the links, you could be gone for a very long time! I know, I’ve spent a week on it – hopefully so you don’t have to. You need to stay focused on building your business – but you also need to do your part in keeping health freedom.

After weeding through tons of “the sky is falling” types of comments regarding supposed attacks on nutritional supplements, I have isolated three main and real attacks on our health freedom. I’m only going to explain one of them today as there is a SUNDAY NIGHT deadline to act.

All three of these attacks not only are on the supplement industry, but health foods as well! All attacks are an attempt to weaken or replace the DSHEA Act. DSHEA –stands for “Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act.”

This is a law that was passed in the U.S. in 1994 during a previous period when the U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) was trying to restrict our access to nutritional supplements. Due to a huge outcry by the American public, Congress unanimously passed the DSHEA Act and it is what gives us the legal right to consume and sell supplements, health foods and juices.

The attacks on DSHEA are coming from multiple directions therefore we must defend in multiple directions, but all attacks appear to be coming from one source, the Pharmaceutical industry – through the FDA.

Health food and supplements are a huge threat to the pharmaceutical industry. Healthy people give little or no money to drug companies. Nutrition and health companies are competition to the Pharmaceutical companies.

A study released in May 2004 from the National Institutes of Health showed that 1/3 of all American adults use some form of alternative therapy, spending tens of billions annually. Those of us who sell nutritional products know this. Americans now spend more on complementary and alternative types of products and therapies than they do on conventional health care professionals. This document has no doubt been seen by the pharmaceutical companies; which is why they have escalated their attack on health freedom.

Let me explain how this happened – it’s important. A grassroots movement is one that is started and continued “by the common people” instead of by politics and businesses. The Health Freedom grassroots movement came about because people did not like the options they were being given by conventional medicine – options like drugs, surgery, amputation, chemotherapy. People decided to look for “alternative” choices. Those alternative choices, such as nutrition, herbs, chiropractic care, raw fruit and vegetable juices, etc., were much more palatable.

Many times people find the alternatives work just as well (if not better) but with no side effects. The Health Freedom grassroots movement has continued to grow to where now 1/3 of adults in the USA are using some form of alternative therapy.

The drug companies will not “roll over” and let this happen without a fight. They are using all resources available to them – money, media and political contacts. But NEVER forget that this started and can be won as a grassroots movement – as long as those that are part of the movement actually fight for their rights.

So how do we fight? We can’t use airplanes, ships, tanks, guns, knives or even rocks. No, this is a strategic game and is rigged in a particular way. The FDA has a boss – it’s called the U.S. Congress and the Senate. We win by communicating to Congress and the Senate. This is not a hard fight at all. It’s as easy as eating a banana. Here’s the game plan on how to win the game of health freedom:

Get enough people to tell their Congressperson and their Senators that we demand health freedom.

That’s it.

Let me describe this in detail because many of us (including me) were asleep when the teacher explained this in school. The State you live in has Representatives and Senators in the U.S. Congress. They were elected by you. If you didn’t vote, you still elected them because you didn’t vote for someone else.

We [the people] tell elected officials what we want by sending letters and by calling their office. Don’t worry, they (the Congressperson) won’t answer the phone but the person who does will “take a message.” When the message is delivered they will do what we want as long as there are ENOUGH PEOPLE stating they want it.

Why?

Have you ever noticed every few years there’s a bunch of red, white and blue signs littering the streets and telephone poles? There may even be some crazy guy dressed in a suit standing at a major intersection in your town waving at everyone with a sign that reads, “Vote for me to represent you in Congress!” That’s the guy! He’s the one you’re writing to (if he won, that is). He’s also the FDA’s boss. He won’t get reelected if he doesn’t do what “the majority” wants.

So that’s our side of the game. Now, let me explain what our opponent (the drug companies) is doing to try to win the game. Our Congressperson doesn’t want to stand in the streets waving at everyone come next election. He’d rather have the money to run state wide advertisements on television, radio, newspapers and magazines so that he’s reelected. So our opponent (the drug companies) is offering to give him some advertising money – if he will vote in favor of more drugs and more FDA regulation.

But, with a lot of people writing and calling him (I’ll say it again, the “majority”) he doesn’t need to advertise because he has word of mouth! He will be reelected because he’s doing what THE PEOPLE want him to do.

Right now – we don’t know how many people are calling him/her and telling them that they demand health freedom. Therefore, YOU have to [at a minimum] call and write your Congressperson and Senators but also YOU BE THE CAUSE that other people do it as well. That’s how we get the “majority.”

Now let me explain what we’re fighting for.

In the broad view, anything that expands the FDA’s ability to regulate supplements and foods has to be fought and beaten. Why? Because the FDA’s actions have proven that they really work for the drug companies and nutritional supplements are unwanted competition for drugs.

Here is the item that requires immediate action:

1. This coming Monday morning, there is a bill scheduled for a Senate vote called the “Food and Drug Administration Revitalization Act” (S1082). We have to act immediately on this one.

There aren’t many people who would disagree that the FDA needs “revitalization.” But just like in your personal life, you could sit down and write a plan to revitalize your life and it could do JUST THE OPPOSITE! It could cause things to get worse.

I think that’s the situation with the planned FDA Revitalization Act (S1082).

I feel the biggest problem with the FDA is that it (the whole organization) has a conflict of interest as well as the people (the scientists) who approve drugs have a conflict of interest. People who test drugs at the FDA are allowed to have a financial interest in the drugs they test. Another way there is a conflict of interest is after a drug is approved, the FDA scientist gets a job working for the company who he/she just approved the drug for.

Imagine you’re a scientist at the FDA and a drug company says to you, “I’ll give you 1000 stock options in our company. If the drug gets approved, you’ll be rich.” That’s certainly good for you and is great for the drug company – but it can lead to a situation where a drug like Vioxx gets approved but shouldn’t have. (Vioxx was a popular pain reliever that caused over 28,000 deaths from heart attack before being recalled.)

This new FDA Revitalization Act (S1082) will allow drug companies to pay the FDA 380 million dollars to “speed the approval process.” I feel this creates a conflict where a drug may be approved that may not have been if there wasn’t any financial incentive for it to be approved.

The FDA Revitalization Act (S1082) also will expand the FDA’s authority to ban any food or dietary supplement that it deems “unsafe”, based on their own personal opinions. They could make anything they want appear as a risk – including your favorite dietary supplements that you sell and use to stay healthy.

Watch this video when you have 90 minutes. Please not now – finish this document. It includes an interview from a 20 year veteran of the FDA.

Prescription For Disaster

Here is the punch line -

As long as the drug companies control the FDA, our health freedom is under attack!

HERE’S WHAT TO DO:

Before Sunday night at midnight, read an article about this bill here: The Problem with the FDA Revitalization Act

Scroll to the bottom of the article; click on “Take Action Now”; enter your zip code in the form, customize the letter and submit it.

DONE – you see how easy it actually is! You just did the most important thing a person can do for their country. People often thank me for “serving my country.” I think learning what the issues are about and voting is a better way to serve the country than shooting bullets.

NOW, if you are a leader you will cause at least one other person to do what you just did! Don’t just forward the email – you have to actually MAKE it happen – close to action.

Every time a Congressperson or a Senator receives a comment from the public they view it as 13,000 people making the comment because they know that for every 1 person who writes them it represents 12,999 people who will never get off their butt and do something!

Therefore, and this is very important – pat yourself on the back because you did what 12,999 people haven’t done yet.

Huge respect and admiration to you for making a difference,

Tim Sales

The attention should be on the absence of the kind of stupidity I described in Where’s The Outrage, not on the pervasiveness of it, because that kind of attention merely prolongs the situation.

I know this, and that’s one of the things that I need to improve in my own thinking processes.

So, that’s the answer

UPDATE:

Google’s even telling me I messed up! Ads for creating your own memorial web site, bereavement counselling — what did I unleash here? LOL!

All the time, everywhere I go, all the people I see, everyone seems to be in a hurry–me included. Hurry up, hurry up. Get there, do your thing, and hurry on to the next thing. Rush rush rush.

Oh, and the freeway–how many people do you know that can drive in rush hour and not get frustrated?

It’s killing me, this rushing-around thing. Faster, ever faster. I want to get off the merry-go-round. Who’s keeping me on it, anyway? Only me.

Time is too important to be rushing around all the time, colliding with this and that, being a human pinball.

So for the next few days, until it becomes a habit, my mantra is going to be, “SLOW DOWN”. Drive leisurely (sometimes — I like driving fast), take time with lunch and dinner, lose the franticness that has invaded my life, notice the things that show up–pay attention. I’ve missed too many of the little pleasures that make life enjoyable.

I know most of you know this. I did too. But I lost it somewhere along the way, and now I’ve rediscovered it.

Stop and smell the roses. What a concept.

I paid attention to the people around me as we de-planed. I listened to what they were saying. I heard the following words and phrases: “Well, this day is ruined.” “They’ve screwed me out of an entire day.” “Ridiculous.” “I hate small planes.” “I hate Charlotte Airport.” “Ridiculous!” “This sucks.” “Five f-ing hours!” “I should’ve just gone to Chicago.” “Ridiculous.”

Reading it reminded me of a story I read in Dr. Wayne Dyer’s book, The Power of Intention:

Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man bursts in, apoplectic with fury, shouting and stamping and banging his fist on the desk. The resident prime minister admonishes him: “Peter,” he says, “kindly remember Rule Number 6,” whereupon Peter is instantly restored to complete calm, apologizes, and withdraws. The politicians return to their conversation, only to be interupted yet again twenty minutes later by an hysterical woman gesticulating wildly, her hair flying. Again the intruder is greeted with the words: “Marie, please remember Rule Number 6.” Complete calm descends once more, and she too withdraws with a bow and an apology. When the scene is repeated for a third time, the visiting prime minister addresses his colleague: “My dear friend, I’ve seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this. Would you be willing to share with me the secret of Rule Number 6?” “Very simple,” replies the resident prime minister. “Rule Number 6 is ‘Don’t take yourself so damn seriously.’” “Ah,” says his visitor, “that is a fine rule.” After a moment of pondering, he inquires, “And what, may I ask, are the other rules?”
“There aren’t any.”

Stop taking myself so seriously. When I do that, my day seems to go a little better. Why don’t I do it more often? Like all the time? Something to work a little more on, maybe?