PERSPECTIVE: WHILE ROME BURNS.

Is there anything more frustrating than to hear our politicians talk about inane and irrelevant subjects while our economy continues to decline and job growth continues to be weak or non-existent? Actually it is worse than we thought! Did you ever imagine that millions of people would be collecting unemployment insurance for as long as two years with no end in sight? And I will bet that many have heard stories of persons on unemployment who have been offered jobs who did not want to start until their unemployment insurance runs out. Then, how about the 45 million Americans who received food stamps in 2011? That is nearly 15% of our population, and the number is growing! The irony is that the Food Stamp program is administered by the a US Department (Agriculture) while another US Department (Interior) runs the Park System where visitors are admonished not to feed the animals lest they be incapable of foraging for themselves.

Anyone who watches Nature at work knows that you cannot run counter to Nature’s laws very long before you will be greatly harmed. The Food Stamp program and paying people to be idle runs counter to Nature’s Laws and America will surely be severely harmed if we don’t stop this ASAP. Our days are numbered! We have to stop “feeding the animals” so they won’t forget how to “forage” for themselves. Have we forgotten that Man is an integral part of the Animal Kingdom?

Getting our economy growing with the attendant job creation is not only an important issue, it is the only issue! If we don’t get some economic growth and job creation soon, does anyone believe that we will be any more capable of reducing or terminating the food stamp program than we can adjust Social Security or Medicare? To accomplish any modicum of growth and job creation, we will need strong and experienced leadership This Presidential election is doubtless one of the most important we will ever see, and this one is all about leadership. We desperately need the most capable and experienced leader possible.

Obama is not that person! He has no leadership experience, and he has learned nothing about leadership on the job and has demonstrated that he has no clue what to do. Worse he has surrounded himself with incompetence. It is instructive to note that every time Obama opens his mouth he makes a Freudian Slip which tells us that he would not do the correct thing even if he did know how, because he is an ideologue. We saw this in his conversation with Joe the Plumber during the campaign of 2008 when he talked openly about distributing the wealth. Then it happened recently when he blurted out that no innovator or business has succeeded without Government help. This is ridiculous, to say the least, and socialistic to tell the whole truth. He also showed his ignorance of how innovation really works when he claimed that Microsoft and other digital technology companies needed the miniaturization of electronic circuitry developed by the US Government space program and to become successful. Actually, it is the other way around; the US space program needed the invention of the transistor to miniaturize circuitry. That device was invented in the late 1940’s in Bell Labs in New Jersey, a private entity owned by AT&T. You may recognize that the name Bell came from Alexander Bell, whom most grammar school kids could name as the inventor of the telephone.

The Media would have us believe that these statements and comments are “gaffs”. That is nonsense; they are “Freudian Slips” which, as described by Dr. Sigmund Freud, are deeply held beliefs that “slip” out revealing what one actually believes about the subject at hand.

For further perspective on why the President must provide the leadership we need at this critical time, you can see what happened when Obama delegated the development of the Obamacare legislation to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and Harry Read, Senate Majority Leader. They produced an abomination that even the democrat members of the House and Senate had to hold their noses and be bribed to pass. It is an old adage that if you assign a committee to build a horse it will invariably come out as a camel. Congress cannot lead, period.

Meanwhile, Romney has the demonstrated experience needed to lead and to turn around disasters. The problem is that the President and the Media have chosen to keep that knowledge from the voters by denigrating and distorted Romney’s record of leadership and turnaround achievements. Moreover, they constantly berate him and distract voters for his not providing more tax returns. They and we both already know what they will show. Romney is extremely rich and pays taxes commensurate with the return on capital he has invested not from a salary. Most of the time he receives no salary for the services he renders. Yes, Romney is rich, but it is not inherited; he gave all his inherited wealtxn ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddv away to charities. What he currently earned he earned on his own by investing in US businesses. Remember you do not become rich by failing.

Romney’s experience in the business community is amazing. By any standard Bain Capital is a huge success, especially where businesses must deal with intense global and digital competition. Founded in 1984, Romney and his partners started Bain with $37 million of private capital which they raised. Bain then invested in or acquired and often turned around hundreds of failing companies and in the process it created thousands of jobs. Today, Bain manages $66 billion of investor capital.

Bain Capital’s performance is considered so exceptional that it is being used by the Business Schools as an example of how to turn around a failing company in a global economy. Imagine if Romney had been the CEO of Eastman Kodak, a firm that invented and owned the camera and silver based film business from the get go only to lose it to global competition when they failed to recognize the significance of the digital camera. Under his leadership Kodak would probably still be a major US business icon instead of residing on the trash pile of failed US companies.

Another example of Romney’s leadership skills is his saving the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games of 2002 which were planned for Salt Lake City. Here is what happened. Before Romney took a leave of absence and left his day-to-day tasks as CEO of Bain in 1999, the Olympic program was $379 million short of needed income, and they were planning to scale it back. Those who followed the issue inform us that Romney ran the planning for the Games like a business. He revamped the organization’s leadership and policies, reduced budgets, and he boosted fundraising by alleviating the concerns of corporate sponsors, while recruiting many new ones. With Romney’s leadership and business acumen the Games were turned from a failure to a huge success and put a feather in the “US Cap”. Doesn’t this sound like what is needed for the US economy right now?

The United States is still the most innovative country in the world, with the greatest universities, abundant energy and natural resources, and excellent workers. So, what is causing our decline? Our Politicians and our Media! In particular we are talking about our President, the members of the Senate and the Congress who refuse to take meaningful action.

Nearly everyone knows that the major factors that inhibit our getting the economy back on track are:

• Government taxes and regulations choke private enterprise and make it non-competitive in the global markets.

• The new digital revolution requires skills that the US has a shortage of

• The lack of concrete plans to control our unsustainable and growing debt caused by entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security creates uncertainty in the business community.

Clearly, Romney has the credentials that are required to lead, and the business experience that is needed to bring back the confidence that the business community must have to invest in the United States. But to win this election, he must guard against the distractions and untruths that the Media and Obama can throw at him. This is what is happening now. Obama is using class warfare to distract us by making us believe that no one can be successful without the prior government creation of technology and infrastructure. Moreover, the ultimate in badness is if becoming successful makes one rich. Romney fits that pattern perfectly because he is rich and is in the “One Percent” that Obama constantly castigates in his promotion of class warfare. This makes him the perfect person for them to harangue and produces an opportunity for Obama and the Mainstream Media, that is Obama’s compliant partner, to obfuscate the facts and demagogue the issues.

We are pleased that Romney at last has starting to lash back at Obama’a silly slip. But he has yet to spell out a job-creation plan that the ordinary voter can understand. He must spell this out and repeat it over and over in the simplest language possible. My earlier blog about using our abundant supply of natural gas to replace oil for our vehicles would be a good starting point.

Finally, it is crucial that we rid ourselves of those politicians who continue to “fiddle while the conflagration grows”.