ClimateGate Lessons Learned?

Global warming research has been corrupted by a number of scandals. A major disclosure of what occurred at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. and the U. N. research debacle are cases in point.

Those who always disputed global warming contentions are finally, though only slowly, being given voice not available to them in the past.

Yet, there is still continued talk of climate-warming change. It has been a religious-type habit that many have invested too much of their careers in, for them to suddenly recant as having been victims of a hoax.

The world still needs clean air and water, but the old global warming mantra has truly become a secular religion to many on the left.

In fact, the SEC, influenced by the Obama administration, wants corporations to report how they are handling the problems of global warming. As if the hoax were never perpetrated.

Real Health Insurance Changes

Effective insurance is as important as mere coverage. Suggestions:

1) Do away with wasteful first dollar insurance. Too much costly paperwork is involved for small claims everyone can afford to pay. Have deductibles for small amounts but be sure to cover catastrophic losses.

2) Make insurance portable from job to job and state to state. That’s a worthwhile change most folks need right away.

3) Make coverage available to all, but not just when someone gets sick. That’s like buying fire insurance only when your house burns down.

4): Have interstate insurance competition. You can be sure that will reduce cost.

5) Most importantly: Eliminate questionable law suits with tort reform, preferably with arbitration panels that eliminate the huge lawyer’s take. And wipe out health care fraud.

Should You Buy a Franchise?

Why should you buy a franchise? The main purpose is to get a valued company name and expertise. But you can probably acquire a suitable name and expertise at no franchising cost.

Buying a franchise may make sense only if you get a highly recognized brand name and you get special management expertise.

Understand that the usual upfront fees and the royalty you pay on sales, that cover whatever management training and materials you receive, will probably represent about half your net earnings.

Many franchisees eventually form groups with other franchisees, to sue over contract terms because they are unhappy with their arrangements.

Think clearly before you make an expensive franchising decision.

“Too Big to Fail” Presents A Problem

If a bank, or any business, is too big to fail, according to a government regulator’s premise, might it not be too big to manage in the first place?

Perhaps the emphasis on size is misdirected when related only to the need for government oversight.

When corporate entities get gigantic, there usually are hidden management problems that are almost impossible to recognize and avoid. Those may involve more correction than possible from conventional governmental regulation.

Example: Many commercial banks also are in the investment banking business. But there are aspects of investment banking that can veer off in varying directions, which I have always felt go beyond the normal skills of everyday managerial skills at those institutions. Those specialized skills are business-oriented and are not usually the skills attained by investment bankers..

Problems encountered have little to do with the need for more regulation. In fact, the more regulation, the more likely, management will fail.

Liberals Beat “Big Business” as a Pastime

Liberals love to beat the “system.” But by doing so, they generally attempt to get at “big business” or anyone who has more money than they.

But that often means they can stick it to anyone who they deem “profiteers.”. I am speaking about any private sources who provide jobs.

Even government jobs must come from taxes paid by the “rich” in business.

College-Going Futility

The idea of having more college graduates per se is not productive. Graduates are not producing a smarter population.

Colleges are doing a poor job, comparable in many respects to what high schools accomplished in the past. In fact. educational productivity is poor from kindergarten on, through grade and high school and into institutions of “higher learning.”.

The prime function of a college diploma? Apart from impressing friends and relatives? Employers use them merely as a shortcut for lazily screening and evaluating prospective employees.

Productivity Gains

Economic changes occur without public knowledge or publicity, but they affect the affairs of all of us.

The public ought to get basic economics education in the media, so that they may more readily absorb information that has so much to do with everyday life.

One example: Positive changes in output per hour by industry often is considered to be good during economic recessions; it helps recovery. Companies cut staff to do this to keep labor costs low. It is happening these days.

It is painful, of course. Lost jobs produce the favorable statistic. However, that is true only in private industry. The public sector, particularly those unionized, are being added to, with the aid of past federal stimulus funds. And they are budget-busting, absolutely non-productive.

The Corporate Image

Companies try to redo their image as well as focus when fortunes turn. They do what individuals do with New Year’s resolutions. Most individuals never seem to take those resolutions seriously.

When companies do it, the program is an expensive undertaking. Moreover, it’s a sign of desperation and poor management when it periodically and habitually occurs.

Customers and the public instinctively feel management may be hiding real problems and that it is all a sign that management is weak or dishonest.

There is a natural tendency not to believe what corporations say and do, because of populist left-leaning media and politicians. Corporate managers have to be doubly careful about image. They can be damned no matter what they say or do.

Anti-Trust Laws and Jobs

The Sherman Antitrust Ac has been relatively timid for over 120 years.

There always is a debate about what actually is a monopoly. Many on the left consider size alone as the deciding factor, when in the past, the competitive effect on the consumer was always important.

The bottom line as to whether there is a monopoly or not should be the effect on the consumer. If the corporate situation being investigated helps the consumer, then there is no monopoly. The whole intent of the Act was in the interest of the public.

What is telling is the administration’s position and the support of lawyers, who are always ready to sue. But such plaintiffs do not always have the consumers’ interest at heart.

What about jobs? Any effects of strict leftward action will be negative as a result.

The Types of Business Management Risks

There are four types of business management risks.

1) Knowing what the possible risks are.

2) The size, types and pitfalls of accounts receivables.

3) Salary excesses, their fringe costs and how they can be controlled.

4) Existing and potential production problems and where they can be regulated.

What compounds these problems in many companies, large or small, is the inability to adequately recognize them early on. And to monitor them, while managing their potential risks on an ongoing basis.

College Debt

What about college-imposed debt?

The numbers received on this subject from the College Board, are for average students are huge and are based on a 1999 study. They handicap careers.

What the estimates do not take into account are a list of important factors. including how student debts racked up in going to college ought to include those of their parents and how they weigh down college advantages.

Interest on the debts are huge and add to problems associated with those debts.

What’s a College Education Worth?

I see estimates of a college education being worth, from about $800,000 to as much as $1 million. However, I find it’s more likely a fictitious figure, comparing what someone can earn over a lifetime with a college degree, as opposed to earnings of a laborer working at minimum wage for his or her whole life.

An assumption is made that all non-college jobs are non-skilled. Many skilled jobs that do not call for a college degree, such as electricians and plumbers, pay far better than college-bred positions.

Eliminate janitor-type jobs from the conventional comparisons, and the comparison gets completely skewed.

Vaunted Non-Profit Companies

The public usually seems to get the impression that non-profit companies are good and for-profits somehow are not. That non-profits are there to be helpful; the others may be greedy, seeking nothing for the public or consumer, but profit only for themselves.

The public have been taught by populist politicians and the media, that somehow profit is a dirty word. Unless, of course, a member of the public loses a job. In which case the boss has no profits with which to pay salaries.

But then again, for-profits must have cheated to get their earnings, if you listen to the populist media expositions.

However for-profits have an upside, in that they are seen as more competent. Too many folks have had run-ins with the post office and motor vehicle personnel.

Global Warming?

Rethink the expensive global warming laws that have been based on what we are now learning are global warming hoaxes.

And what about ethanol production? It is expensive because the fuel is not efficient. And it is the product of a source of food that is becoming more expensive because of its diversion to energy use.

The outlawing of incandescent bulbs, and the buying of costly compact fluorescent light bulbs instead, is another instance of the need for rethinking some of the global warming nonsense.

What about green car manufacturing and the plans of companies who are going "carbon neutral." Lots of talk, and huge expense. Really over nothing.

When will schools stop teaching the kids the cataclysmic effects of climate change?

Industries For Future Job Growth

Getting to know what jobs will be plentiful in the future is never easy to predict. In these difficult times it’s tougher.

Consultants hired to make predictions are often wrong; yet they prognosticate and get clients, despite only rarely winning accuracy sweepstakes.

We know that economic trends are hard to change overnight. The health care services industry appears destined to continue its growth. There will be some bumps, however, depending on legislation and unionization activity.

Also, some aspects that require delicate skills, doctors, for instance, may be adversely affected by past legislation or continued lack of tort reform by government.

How New Jobs Can Develop

Getting the unemployment rate down from where it hovers at the official 10% rate, to a more normal 5% and below, is not going to be easy. Not with meaningless gestures from the Obama administration.

The unemployment rate is actually over 17% when you consider the truly unemployed. Not only those who still haven’t given up seeking a worthwhile job or are on unemployment income while it lasts. The truth is, the official unemployment rate is misleading.

To get job creations going, the economy must improve. That means psychology must get rosier. More money has to get into households. That situation is not improving.

You simply have to get more funds into the hands of the consumer. What will do that? Lower income taxes, fast. And productive private industry jobs, fast.

To produce jobs you must get small business starts going by cutting their taxes. And you have to cut government debt. Servicing that debt makes it impossible to keep taxes low or to make a dent in their reduction.

It’s really simple. The White House says it is doing it. But saving 1% as it actually proposes multi-trillion dollar deficit budgets is impossible.

The Right Job Resume

Books and pamphlets tell you how to write a job resume. But above all, remember, the importance of the covering letter. It’s just as essential as the resume itself.

Place upfront on to the covering letter what is most important about your skills. Outline very quickly your professional assets. Tune the theme to what that skill is; technical, leadership, or academic.

The covering letter ought to quickly reprise what you are really selling about yourself. That will make it easier for a prospective employer to scan your’s from, perhaps, hundreds of other job requests.

The U.S. Does Not Provide the Freest Economic Government

According to the annual Index of Economic Freedom reports from the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, the U. S. remains far behind countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Singapore, in terms of economic freedom..

This means, in economic and bureaucratic terms, there is much improvement we can make to eliminate business red tape and restrictions. Unfortunately, in the past two years, we have been heading away even more from free economic principles.

This, at a time when we desperately need to formulate new private industry jobs.

The Franchise Route

Why bother to sell a franchise?

First question to ask yourself if you are thinking of franchising your business:

If you have a successful business, it’s easy to think it can be franchised. But why should someone pay for the company name and your expertise when they can probably duplicate the same entity at no additional franchising cost?

There are some questions you can ask yourself about the possibility and logic of franchising your business. You cannot successfully franchise your operation if:

1) It is easily duplicated or entered into by a competitor.

2) You don’t have a highly recognized brand name.

3) You don’t have special management expertise to offer.

4) It’s hard to service or manage operations, from your site.

You must realize, too, that the usual upfront fees and the royalty you take on sales, that cover whatever management training and materials you may offer, will probably represent about half a franchisee’s net earnings. That fact is bound to eventually infuriate him, assuming he becomes successful. There is no telling what the fury may be if he fails after investing in your advice.

So he may eventually cheat you or form groups with any other franchisees you may have, to sue you over contract terms.

Question: If you want to franchise your business, can you finance and constantly control the finances of your franchisees? That is most important, should you do decide to franchise. It is the most important binding link you can have to the prospective franchisee.

Government Fraud

We often hear about business fraud. Most often, however, there are checks and balances in business by boards of directors and independent audits. When an Enron occurs, the publicity and media extravaganzas, along with government finger-pointing and publicity, make up for smaller, relative numbers.

Government fraud is taken for granted but is far more prevalent where politicians and bureaucrats take it as a given because they are so “underpaid” on the job.

An example: There is a formula for how government grants are used. There always is a euphemistic allowance made for “waste.”

And there is always an understatement of projected cost. It’s a rare government project that ever meets its original cost estimates.

Then there is usually some figure allotted to account for missing funds. Or at least a few percentage points devoted for investigation of fraud.

That is because of the psychological nature of government jobs. You don’t have the same checks and balances than in private industry, despite the public image the media provides.

Government projects are always ramped up. Very few are ever terminated. Sunshine laws are passed from time to time but appear ineffectual. Once on the books, laws and agencies they breed have a life of their own.

Venture Capital Availability

Getting venture capital is not easy as it’s often a case of being lucky, or knowing the right people. However, you need basic planning to get into the game. To ask for funds, a game plan or budgeting proposal is essential.

Incubators were a fad for a time, for very early stage venture funding. They proved a flop in the past. Incubators required lots of hand-holding for entrepreneurs. The problem was, there were too many students and teachers often had no ability at the required levels. The eventual dot com bubble showed how futile that effort was.

Angel capital is now used for early-stage startups, Classic venture capital is for the level after you generally have some vestige of business operations.

Getting VC funds is usually a sort of lottery, should you have no connections. Those who get funds generally have those, or have gotten funds for earlier ventures.

There is a good reason why VC funding is so haphazard. The VC “experts” actually haven’t the foggiest idea of which entrepreneurs to select and fund. Those VCs who have made big money were often merely lucky; they also picked lots of losers.

The payoff for VCs is generally the ability to sell stock in the venture to others, even when there are no profits to be made.

Some deals have been referred to as legalized Ponzi schemes.

Differences in Health Care by Country

In a recent U.N. World Health Organization WHO ranking of countries, the U.S. does poorly. This has been used as an argument for a massive overhaul of the U.S. health insurance industry.

However, look at the report closely because of the terms used. The latter represents what has become a typical U.N. report; that is, an anti-American bias whenever possible.

Read carefully and you note the study points up only the difference between universal coverage and actual care.

It thus becomes easy to see the difference the terms signify. Look at health care in Canada, Great Britain and France with universal coverage. A law on the books or government promise to cover a citizen with health benefits does not mean everyone will get timely or sufficient personal attention when necessary.

The U. S. still has the best health care in the world, though it can be tweaked to be made better.

A Corporate State in the U.S.?

There is a major lesson to be learned that is not being taught in our schools. Not in elementary classes nor high schools, and certainly not in those of so-called higher learning.

It has to do with the true nature of the corporate state. In this regard, a study of Benito Mussolini’s Italy is essential. Starting in the 1920s. Mussolini was a Socialist who advocated what we know as the corporate state.

The Obama government has now taken over General Motors, GMAC and Chrysler. It also controls banks to a greater extent than they have ever been, having dictated salaries, and thus hiring policy.

The government already controls the giant entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose collapse really were one of the bases of our financial meltdown.

Then you have the takeover of AIG, a completely unnecessary step for several reasons I have discussed before.

Banking industry bailouts and resultant government influence are yet another example of the government’s meddling in the underpinnings of our economy.

The attempt to nationalize the entire health care industry, about one sixth of the economy, is yet another flagrant example of a parallel picture of what happened at another, not so distant time.

Business Production Improvements

Business production improvement has become more a matter of fashion and less what it’s intended to be. The idea is constantly marketed by consultants as business management break-throughs.

Well-known more recent ones are still referred to as Lean Manufacturing, and the Six Sigma systems. They are simply just old-fashioned quality control procedures.

But doesn’t everyone believe in production or process improvement or quality control? Whatever label you put on them? A good business manager inherently knows this without the labeling.

The trick is in implementation. Motivation is essential in sticking to such programs on an ongoing basis. Boredom always is the fly in the ointment, so periodic appraisals are essential. Furthermore, management needs to employ in-house or outside experts to check on processes and results.

Forget the titles that you assign your project.

Corporate Boards of Directors

I’m assuming now the reader is running a small or medium size business, but the following advice can apply equally to the biggest companies.

Many corporations are guilty of using friends, relations and acquaintances to fill open spots on the board. But ability is strongly needed.

The board of directors has the actual legal responsibility for the proper function of the corporation. Moreover, each director has joint and several liability for any sins of omission or commission in this pursuit. That means he or she can be sued individually for neglect of responsibility of the entire board, in the event of any board errors or conceived fraud by board members. In other words, the board member with the deepest pockets or most to lose may get the brunt of a lawsuit.

Do you choose by race, by gender, or by culture? Definitely not, but these days, societal pressure and anti-discrimination laws may, and do enter into consideration. To the detriment of many corporations who still discriminate by quotas despite laws on the books.

Most important business experience ought to be the number one requirement for board membership. However, that too often gets short shrift.

Risk Odds

Most folks have no idea of risk, as they apply to business, or finance, or health.

Risk numbers cover too many areas to be covered here. I would suggest you go to an internet search engine just to get a hint of the vast range of risk possibilities in all your areas of interest..

List a subject in which you may be interested. Add the word or a phrase with he questioned risk.

Google the phrase health risk odds and you will get over 7 million web pages to search. Google the phrase risk odds calculations and you get the same approximate number to browse.

The results can be enlightening.

1/5/11 A Solution for Public Employee Budgeting Problems

I have recently written about problems of government paying over-market wages and pensions to public employees, amounts that bankrupt government and taxpayers alike

There is a solution. As a starter, publish wage and pension scales, along with fringe benefits of all unionized government workers. List only job description, for the public to see. Let voters know how private earnings and pensions compare to public earnings and benefits, that they, the tax-paying voters earn for comparable work.

If there is to be open government, why hide a major cost? Yet, this part of the budget is always hidden from voters.

Powerful Teacher Unions

The powerful teachers’ unions have a particular influence because they always have a good marketing ploy. Who wants to turn down funding when “it’s for the kids.”

But a good portion of that cost does not go to kids, it’s for teachers. And those costs can be budget-busting. Yes, the public probably knows how much is spent per student. But how about salaries and pensions? And all for a part-time, nine months of actual total work?

I’m not picking on teachers. The same holds for other government employees. Especially the ones who retire well before age 65, and are double-dippers on grandiose pensions.

Union Control of Government

In my recent report on federal, state and local government unionization I stated how total outlays for wages and pensions are about triple what they are for comparable private industry jobs,

I mentioned how these unions control government.

What, with their political contributions and the ability to close down government operations, along with their control of budgets because of their size.

The problem will persist until politicians are no longer beholden to unions for funds and getting out the vote.

When will that be?

Public Employee Unions and the Vaunted Stimulus

Want to know why the stimulus did not produce the jobs it supposedly was intended to do, but, instead had another primary purpose?

The two major public employee unions have tremendously influenced left politics on a national scale. For proof. a good portion of the Obama administration’s so-called stimulus went to states for budget gaps that had to be filled to safeguard those states’ unionized jobs.

That supposed government aid to the economy proved to be more a slush fund than a stimulus.

Unionized Public Employees

There is a serious problem when government workers are unionized. This started on the federal level requiring no Congressional approval and has now grown in all layers of government.

It was a JFK executive order 10988 in 1962 that started what has grown into a political-influenced monster, taking over our states and city governments as well. Unionization controls whatever it touches.

The unions now influence state and big-city government bureaucracies and, therefore, too many state and local political machines.

The public will be shocked to find out that public employees are being unionized at a rapid pace when private employment is only about 7% unionized.

Mind you, union wages run much higher than comparable wage scales. About one third, and more beyond private earnings. Pension funds and terms usually far surpass that of private industry. In some instances, five or more times. In general, total government unionized pay packages are about triple those of comparable private industry jobs. All of which have been budget-busting, and almost impossible to control.

And the taxpayers making lesser pay are paying the bills.