drill, baby, drill

In case you’ve forgotten, one of the main rallying cries at the Republican National Convention in my hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota in 2008 was “drill, baby, drill”.

The link below will allow you, once again, to re-live those thrilling days of yesteryear:



On April 23, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico caught fire and exploded. Early on in the disaster, oil was flowing into the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of 6,000,000 gallons a day. After several failed attempts to stem the flow, BP is currently in the process of installing a new type of cap to seal off the well, nearly three months after the original explosion.

we had leakers in Wisconsin, too

On June 2, 2010, former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin posted the following message on her Facebook page:

where is Joe McCarthy now?

Ms. Palin apparently is of the opinion that the Deepwater Horizon incident is proof that we need to do MORE drilling in “safer areas” of the United States, one of which is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, commonly known as ANWR.

The only intelligent comment that I can add to her post is two words:

Exxon Valdez

On March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and released somewhere between 11 and 32 million gallons of crude oil. Although Exxon Corporation spent an estimated $2 billion in clean up costs, and $1 billion in legal costs, a significant portion of those expenses were covered by insurance policies, and several punitive damage awards were reduced dramatically in later years. Ultimately, the Exxon Valdez was repaired, at a cost of $30,000,000. It is still in operation today, and it is now owed by a Hong Kong company, which has renamed it Dong Fang Ocean. As of January, 2010, it was registered in Panama.

The Exxon Valdez incident led to the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, and also caused major changes in the physical characteristics of oil tankers, as well as their escorts.

The economy of the city of Cordova, Alaska was adversely affected after the spill damaged stocks of salmon and herring in the area. Several residents, including one former mayor, committed suicide after the spill.

Last year, scientists at the University of South Carolina estimated that it would take ANOTHER ten years for the wildlife in the area of the spill to recover.

well, isn’t that slick?

The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform is a far GREATER catastrophe. The amount of oil that is flowing into the Gulf is equivalent to 4 Exxon Valdez spills EVERY WEEK.

Although George W. Bush may well have been one of more unpopular presidents, he was a surprisingly well-read leader, as evidenced by the link below:

run, Spot, run

It’s been argued that the only book that Sarah Palin has read is her own, and perhaps that’s what being a rogue is all about. However, I would encourage her to read at least some of the books written by Thomas Friedman (of the New York Times) since he has a far better idea about how to handle America’s energy crisis than she does.

In closing, I’d like to offer Ms. Palin a few kind words of advice:

Three Cups of Tea

I’ve told our H.R. manager that the initial “T” on the dealer plates that I’ve been issued by The Autobarn stands for “tough old bird”.

In my 62 years, I’ve lost jobs, had close experiences with life-threatening illnesses, crashed on the way to Hell, been robbed in China, suffered numerous financial hardships, and I currently owe the I.R.S. almost as much as I paid for my first house.

In spite of all that, though, I’m probably one of the most optimistic people that you’ll ever met.

I’ve also read hundreds of books in my lifetime, and until this morning, I don’t remember reading ANY that brought tears to my eyes.

In May of this year, I read Greg Mortenson’s second book, Stones into Schools, and published a post about the book on this blog site on May 16. As I finished reading his first one, Three Cups of Tea, this morning, the closing pages brought tears to my eyes simply due to the fact that his story, and the initial success of some of his students, is simply unbelievable



When it was first published, in 2006, the book was the #1 best seller for 14 straight weeks on the New York Times book list. Since its publication, it has been required reading for freshman, honors or campus-wide reading in over eighty universities, and hundreds of schools. It is also required reading for senior U.S. military commanders, Pentagon officers in counter-insurgency training, and Special Forces deploying to Afghanistan.

As of today’s date, Mortenson’s company, the Central Asia Institute, has built 141 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Arguably, he is the one person who is the MOST responsible for peace in that part of the world.

None of us would be willing to endure the sacrifices that this modern day peace keeper has endured over the years (including being kidnapped by the Taliban), but we CAN make a contribution to world peace at a far lower cost. All you need to do is click on the link below:

Three Cups of Tea

Believe me when I tell you that even a $10 contribution will do a LOT more for peace in Afghanistan than a $5,000,000 Predator missile.

If you only read one book for the rest of the year, make sure that it’s this one.

It's deja vu, all over again

Former Yankees manager Yogi Berra is well known for fracturing the English language, and the quote above is one of his originals.

A recent story in The New York Times brought that quote to mind again, but this time it relates to Chinese workers.

The world's first transcontinental railroad was built between 1863 and 1869 to join the east and west halves of the United States. Begun just preceding the American Civil War, it is considered one of the greatest American technological feats of the 19th century, surpassing both the building of the Erie Canal in the 1820s and the later crossing of the Isthmus of Panama by the Panama Railroad in 1855. Known as the "Pacific Railroad" when it opened, it served as a vital link for trade, commerce, and travel and opened up vast regions of the North American heartland for settlement. Shipping and commerce could thrive away from navigable watercourses for the first time since the beginning of the nation.

Work on the East Coast portion of the transcontinental railroad was done primarily by veterans of the Civil War, but most of the construction in the west was done by Chinese immigrants, who were originally brought in to provide labor during the California Gold Rush in the late 1840’s.

Not long after the completion of the Transcendental Railroad, a variety of forces came together to exclude Chinese workers altogether. The Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882, and was not repealed until 1943, a year after the internment of Japanese Americans occurred in California.

It's a well known fact that history often repeats itself, and the American railroad and the Chinese now have a new connection.
This time, however, it's a LOT different than the old one.

The Chinese government recently signed a contract with the State of California to build high speed rail lines in the state. The Chinese bullet trains are capable of speeds up to 215 miles per hour, and are touted as being environmentally friendly. The California rail authority plans to spend $43 billion to build a 465-mile route from San Francisco to Los Angeles and on to Anaheim that is supposed to open in 2020, and a significant portion of the funding for the project will come from China. The authority was awarded $2.25 billion in January of 2010 in federal economic stimulus money to work on the project.

With apologies to Johnny Cash, the Orange COUNTY Special could be right around the corner, and it came about because of a connection that started 150 years ago.



Déjà vu, all over again.

thoughts on D-Day - volume 2

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

On June 6, 1944, General Dwight Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces during the invasion of Normandy. During the course of Operation Overlord, 5000 vessels transported 156,000 troops across the English Channel. By nightfall of June 6, 9000 Allied troops were either dead or wounded, but well over 100,000 made it safely to shore, and changed the tide of the war against the Nazis.

Dwight Eisenhower and the rest of “the greatest generation” did what was necessary to win WWII, but lessons learned from WWI, and the sheer effort and expense that was used in WWII, caused the world after 1945 to be a vastly different place.

Rather than using the punitive reparations that were imposed after WWI, the Allies rebuilt the lands of their former enemies, and Japan, Italy, and Germany have been our allies for more than 50 years.

There are always going to be people that disagree with us, and today’s enemies are much more elusive that they were in the past, but they can still be defeated as long as we continue to use non-traditional forms of combat.

Our 2010 Defense Budget is somewhere between $880 billion and $1.0 trillion. If you break that down into smaller components, it works out to a MINIMUM of $73 billion per month, $18 billion per week, $2.6 billion for day, $109 million per hour, $1.8 million per minute, or $30,000 per second.

Although those are definitely big numbers, they don’t tell the whole story, since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are funded by supplementary funding that is outside of the Defense Budget. Over a five year period, they averaged slightly more than $160 billion per year.

The 2010 U.S. Expenditure Budget is $3.522 trillion, although projected receipts are a lot less, at $2.381 trillion. Regardless of how you do the math, roughly HALF of YOUR tax dollars are being spent on the defense budget, and I (for one) don’t think it’s money that is being well spent.

I recently finished reading Greg Mortenson’s “Stones Into Schools” , and just started reading his first book, “Three Cups of Tea” this week.

For a grand total of $340, a child in Pakistan or Afghanistan can obtain four years of a high school education, and $50,000 can buy a school, and pay for a teacher’s salary for 4 years.

Either one of those options can help us achieve peace a lot more effectively than ONE $5,000,000 drone, and we’re using a LOT of them in Afghanistan right now.

To be perfectly honest, none of us can REALLY control how our tax dollars are being spent in Washington, but we CAN make some personal contributions that will TRULY make a difference in the world today.

If you’d like to make a PERSONAL contribution to world peace, all you need to do is click on the link below:

Central Asia Institute.



I lived halfway around the world for a year, and it was a wonderful experience. Apart from the fact that I lost 15 pounds (it’s hard to find good pizza in China) it also opened my eyes to the fact that people in other countries really aren’t much different than the rest of us.

It’s extremely unlikely that we’ll ever witness another event like D-Day, but it’s not impossible to imagine that the events of 9/11/2001 could reoccur. To prevent that from happening, all we need to do is remember the words of Mother Theresa, who said, “ If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other”…

even if some of us live in Afghanistan.

how blueberry ice cream can help you get what you want in life

Sharon and I met Don and Barb Cole when we first moved to Waukesha, Wisconsin in 1981. Although Barb could be a little hard to get along with at times (I suspect that she may have been bi-polar), Don was a genuinely good guy.

We often enjoyed a few beers together as we puffed on our pipes, and all four us got together on Saturday nights with our church group to play “500”

Even though Don has now been gone for a number of years, and is laid to rest alongside a deer path in his native state (it’s pronounced muh -zoor - uh) I learned a lot from him over the years, and one story, in particular, made a lasting impression on me.

For years, Don worked for Texaco Oil Company, and a lot of those years were spent in the complaint department. Like Jack Nicholson’s character in the 2002 film, About Schmidt, he was a creature of habit. For at least a decade, his daily lunch consisted entirely of a cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup. He was a very down to earth and humble guy, so he asked to be buried in his favorite sweater rather than a suit - and he was.

One of his relatives had a bad experience with a container of Borden’s blueberry ice cream, and was all ready to fire off a rant to the Borden Company when Don suggested an alternative: he would write the letter for her.

After years in the complaint department, he knew that the people that griped the most got the least possible response, and sometimes none at all, so he composed a letter that he felt would get better results. In essence, this is what he said:

****************************************

Gentlemen:

I’ve been a loyal Borden’s customer for a number of years.

I recently purchased a gallon container of Borden’s Blueberry Ice Cream. Although the picture on the container showed thick ribbons of blueberries scattered throughout the ice cream, the carton that I purchased had thin and anemic strands instead

I’m not asking for anything at all. I simply wanted to point out that your usual standards were not up to par on the gallon of blueberry ice cream that I recently purchased, and I just wanted to call the situation to your attention.

************************************************


A short time after he mailed the letter off, he got a response from Borden’s. Not only did they give his relative a full refund on the ice cream that she had purchased, they also included coupons for SIX additional gallons of ice cream at no additional cost.

There’s no guarantee that polite and well-researched letters will produce the kind of results that Don got with his letter, but it’s absolutely certain that they will produce better results than angry rants.

Cindy Miller of Equine Transportation recently wrote an angry letter to AARP because she was opposed to health care reform. Although she and her husband dropped their membership, her letter caused Sharon and I to reinstate ours. Not only did Cindy’s letter fail to stop health care reform, it also caused AARP’s membership to INCREASE rather than decline.

Using Don’s approach, I was able to convince the IRS to reduce my tax burden in 1999 by $4500. A few years later, I convinced our insurance company to pay for Sharon’s $1500 Optifast program after they initially denied her claim, and it also looks like Sharon is going to get reimbursed by the State of Illinois for the damage that the pothole in the Village of Winnetka bent her expensive alloy rim on the way to work. Her picture, as well as the story about the pothole, appeared on the front page of the Business Section of the Chicago Tribune on the morning of May 28.




The Borden Company was founded by Gail Borden, Jr. in 1857 in Connecticut as "Gail Borden, Jr., and Company." Its primary product was condensed milk. Struggling financially, the company was saved when Jeremiah Milbank, a partner in the wholesale food distributor I. & R. Milbank & Co. and the son-in-law of banker Joseph Lake, agreed to invest and acquired fifty percent of the stock. The company changed its name in 1858 to the New York Condensed Milk Company. The company prospered during the Civil War by selling condensed milk to Union armies. Borden began selling processed milk to consumers in 1875, and pioneered the use of glass milk bottles in 1885. Borden began selling evaporated milk in 1892, and expanded into Canada in 1895.




At one point in its history, The Borden Company was the largest U.S. producer of dairy and pasta products, but the company suffered some severe financial losses in the early 1990’s. By 2001, the investment banking firm of KKR had shut down all food production, and the company no longer existed in 2005.

Although The Borden Company is no longer in business, and Don Cole is no longer with us, his letter of long ago is proof that a small act of kindness can influence the actions of others years, and even decades, later.

Patience is a virtue

I first met Martez on February 1, 2008, when he came into our dealership to explore the possibility of purchasing a brand new, fully loaded Murano, which has an MSRP of around $40,000.At that point in time, he had between $2000 and $3000 to put down, an average income, and a spotty credit history (due to the fact that his identity had been stolen by a close relative). Needless to say, he wasn’t successful in purchasing his dream vehicle, but he never gave up hope.

For most people that match his age and ethnic background, the dream car would remain simply that, only a dream. In his case, though, I knew (without a shadow of a doubt) that he would eventually succeed.

Martez was born into a middle class African-American family in Florida in the summer of 1988. He and his family moved to the Chicago area when he was a teenager because they wanted “a more challenging” school system. Since simply SURVIVING in some of the Chicago Public Schools is a challenge, they definitely made an appropriate choice about where to put down roots.

Martez never received a traditional high school diploma (he graduated from the Continental Academy in Coral Gables, Florida at the age of 16), and when he first came into the dealership, he was a 19 year old unmarried father of twins. It’s not a stretch to say that the odds were stacked against him. Although he attended Harold Washington College for about 18 months, he is NOT a college graduate.

What sets apart Martez from his peer group, as well as most other people, are an intense desire to success, a level of maturity far beyond people his age, a deep and resonant voice that evokes comparison with James Earl Jones, an above average level of intelligence, and a calm and forgiving temperament.

Due to the above qualities, he started his first job as a salesman for Pitney Bowes when he was only 14 years old, and in a short period of time, he was making more money than his father. At the age of 17, he was appointed a regional sales manager for a direct marketing company, but internal politics forced him out of his position before he could start work. Disillusioned, he gave his notice, and sought employment elsewhere. At the age of 18, he went through a series of rigorous interviews for a national internet marketing company, where he is currently employed as a sales manager with a staff of 11 people - a pretty heady achievement for someone who won’t be 22 years old until the summer.

Whenever he gets a chance, he reads books.

When he was 14 or 15, he read “The Success Principles”, by Jack Canfield. He’s read numerous other motivational books since that time (including “Think and Grow Rich“}, and he’s a regular subscriber to the newsletters of both Napoleon Hill and Norman Vincent Peale.

From time to time over the last couple of years, we’ve taken a few more steps towards helping him get his dream vehicle, but so far have come up short.

Recently, however, he discovered a connection at Ford Motor Credit Corporation that could help him out, and he was able to purchase a shiny red 2010 Ford Mustang. It’s not his dream car, but it’s a step in the right direction.



Like many people, he’s suffered some setbacks on his march through life. When he was 16, his best friend was killed. His friends grief-stricken parents GAVE Martez their son’s pristine 1967 Camaro, which subsequently was impounded by the Miami Police Department.



To top it off, he and his fiancé recently had a “parting of ways”, and a significant portion of the deposit on their wedding simply disappeared.

Martez is living proof that patience, and persistence, eventually produce benefits.

Another one of my customers, whom I’ll call Paul, first wandered in to the showroom in the summer of 2005. Although we’ve had frequent contact since our initial meeting, it wasn’t until just a few weeks ago that I finally sold him a car, nearly 5 years after our initial contact.

At some point in time, Martez will eventually acquire his “dream car”, even though that may turn out to be 5 or 6 years from now.

I’ve long been a believer in the fact that all of us can learn from anyone. Even though I’m older than Martez (as a matter of fact, I’m a LOT older than Martez) he’s still the kind of person that all of us can learn from.

All it takes is a little patience.

We are creating enemies faster than we can kill them

The 2010 U.S. Military Budget is $680 billion, larger than the GDP of Turkey, the 17th largest economy in the world. For fiscal year 2010, total defense spending will account for between 38 and 44% of our estimated tax revenue. The 2009 U.S. military budget was almost as much as the military spending of the rest of the world, and was approximately 9 times greater than the defense budget of the People’s Republic of China.

In addition, defense-related expenditures outside of the Department of Defense constitute between $216 billion and $361 billion in additional spending, bringing the total for defense spending to between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion in fiscal year 2010.

The recent invasions of Irag and Afghanistan have actually been funded by supplementary funding appropriations that are OUTSIDE the Department of Defense Budget. By the end of 2008, the United States had spent $900 billion on the direct costs of both wars, and the indirect costs (VA administration expenses involved in caring for the wounded) will eventually exceed the direct costs of the wars.

In recent years, the military has relied increasingly on unmanned drones to take out insurgents in both countries, a campaign that has been generally successful. Eventually, of course, the guys who are having bombs dropped on their heads are going to take offense. Regardless of how much we beef up our security both overseas and at home, they are going to try to find ways to retaliate.

On the evening of May 1, 2010, a young man named Faisal Shahzad drove a bomb-laden Nissan Pathfinder into Times Square in New York, and parked it at the curb. Fortunately, the bomb mechanism did not work as intended, and Mr. Shahzad was arrested before he could catch a flight to Dubai on Monday, May 8. Two days of intense questioning has brought out the fact that Mr. Shahzad had been trained by the Pakistani Taliban, precisely the groups that our drones have targeted.

Believe it or not, there is a MUCH better way of defeating the enemy than the course we have been following, and it’s primarily the actions of ONE man that have made it all possible.

In July 1992, Greg Mortenson's young sister, Christa Mortenson, died from a life-long struggle with severe epilepsy on the morning she had planned to visit the cornfield in Dyersville, Iowa, where the iconic baseball movie Field of Dreams was filmed.

In 1993, to honor his deceased sister's memory, Mortenson went to climb K2, the world's second highest mountain, in the Karakoram range of northern Pakistan. After more than 70 days on the mountain, Mortenson and three other climbers completed a life-saving rescue of a fifth climber that took more than 75 hours. The time and energy devoted to this rescue prevented him from attempting to reach the summit. After the rescue, he began his descent of the mountain and became weak and exhausted. Mortenson set out with one local Balti porter by the name of Mouzafer Ali to the nearest city, but he took a wrong turn along the way and ended up in Korphe, a small village, where Mortenson was cared for by the villagers while he recovered.

To pay the community back for their compassion, Mortenson said that we would build a school for the village. After a frustrating time trying to raise money, he eventually convinced Jean Hoerni, a Silicon Valley pioneer, to fund the Central Asia Institute, a non profit organization that has now funded a total of 131 schools in rural Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The school in Korphe was NOT the first school that Mortenson helped to establish. In fact, it took him more than 10 years before he was finally able to fulfill his promise to the people of the village.

Mortenson believes that education and literacy for girls globally is the most important investment all countries can make to create stability, bring socio-economic reform, decrease infant mortality, decrease the population explosion, and improve health, hygiene, and sanitation standards globally. Mortenson believes that "fighting terrorism" only perpetuates a cycle of violence and that there should be a global priority to "promote peace" through education and literacy, with an emphasis on girls' education. "You can drop bombs, hand out condoms, build roads or put in electricity, but unless the girls are educated, a society won't change," is an often-quoted statement made by Mortenson. Because of community "buy-in," which involves getting villages to donate land, subsidized or free labor ("sweat equity"), wood and resources, the schools have local support and have been able to avoid retribution by the Taliban or other groups opposed to girls' education.

Mortenson’s first book, Three Cups of Tea, was published in 2006, and was on the New York Times bestseller list for three years. It is now required reading at 100 college campuses in American, and it’s also required reading for members of the U.S. Military who are involved in counter-insurgency work in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I finished reading his second book, Stones into Schools, about two days before the attempted bombing in Times Square, which really drove home the message that HIS way of doing things works a lot better than the brute force approach that failed our country so miserably in Vietnam (we dropped 864,000 tons of bombs during
Operation Rolling Thunder), and continues to be the less desirable way to resolving conflicts.



In Afghanistan, $20 will pay for a year of education for a first grader, and $340 will pay for 4 years of high school. It costs approximately $50,000 to build a school in rural Afghanistan or Pakistan, and pay for a teacher’s salary for 4 years after the schools opening. Since its founding, the Central Asia Institute has probably spent less than $10,000,000, which is approximately the cost of TWO unmanned drones.



In my opinion, education is ALWAYS a better solution than armed conflict. If we could somehow create 100 people just like Greg Mortenson, the world would never see another war, and THAT’S a thought that should bring a smile to your face!