Representative Will Kraus - MO District 48; Good thoughts on a sad day

Enough of Health Care.  Enough of the bad economy.  Enough of all the doom, on a day when many soldiers at Fort Hood lost their lives.  Enough of the negativity.  Enough of politics as usual.  Simply: Enough!

There is a State Representative I met a few years ago on my front yard, who was running for District 48 in Missouri.  A veteran and a person with a positive outlook and it has shown in the legislature he has pushed forward in Missouri’s congress.  He is the Vice Chair of the Utilities committee, Vice Chair of the Health Care Policy Committee, and a member of the Job Creation and Economic Development committee as well as a member of the Real ID & Personal Privacy Committee.

He works hard for us in the 48th District and then he works hard with his family and with his military obligations to ensure that he does not let people down.  Will Kraus just spent time in Uganda on a training exercise for the U.S. Army Reserves.  He tells the story of an “impromptu” assistance effort.

Jobs saved? I truly have to question the logic and numbers.

Saved jobs are a great idea and something very hard to prove, no matter how many equations and mathematicians are involved.


Have you ever had a moment when just wanted to go back in time and put duct tape in your mouth?  Professionally, the next few words have been in my mind ever since, and I cannot believe I was not fired right there and right then.  I said, and I quote myself “…but Howard, you have to understand we avoided the cost of an additional 80 people…” and the world came to a complete stop; long before Howard’s face turned white with rage.  I realized what I had just said.  It was a rookie engineer’s mistake.  I had been taught that lesson in my very first cost accounting class.  I had been taught that in every single management accounting class.  I had been taught clearly that cost avoidance is the hardest thing to prove, and the easiest thing to hide behind if you have no idea if your idea worked or not.

Cost avoidance, one professor said, is best understood in the next parody (just like Job Loss Avoidance is playing with numbers).

Global Warming, Cap and Trade; what a boondoggle

New report shows Cap-and-Trade is really a 3.6 Trillion Dollar Gas Tax.

Among all the urgency, hype and congressional ramrodding around Health Care the waste of money and political goodwill on fact-less, science-less (consensus is NOT the scientific approach that guided the technological boom of the 19th and 20th century), driven by the almost religious fervor of those who seek to blame global warming solely on human activity, the global warming boondoggle continues.

Boondoggle, have you ever looked at the definition?  Let me help you.  According the the Merriam-Webster OnLine dictionary it is defined as:

Pronunciation: \’bün-, dä-gəl, -,dȯ-\
Function: noun
Etymology: coined by Robert H. Link †1957 American scoutmaster
Date: 1929

1 : a braided cord worn by Boy Scouts as a neckerchief slide, hatband, or ornament
2 : a wasteful or impractical project or activity often involving graft

— boondoggle intransitive verb 

A Bad Day For Health Care All Over The United States

The root cause of the problem is ignored (as is typical in Government) and the wall paper is being applied.  The fundamental problems with health care have not been addressed by Chairman Max Baucus of the Senate Finance Committee.  Senator Baucus sent out a bill from committee with only liberal and liberal leaning support and Senator Olympia Snowe is certainly not what anyone in the Conservative side of the argument would consider a “principled conservative” senator.  At best she’s just a bit left of moderate center.

Health care’s fundamental problems are simple to state: Costs are too high.  No one can dispute that.  What is in dispute is: what are the root causes?  The root cause is a simple thin to define, yet hard to find, and sometimes counter productive to correct if taken in a political context.  The root cause of a problem is defined simply as: That cause the when removed, the effect goes away 100% of the time, and when reinserted the effect returns 100% of the time.  This is fundamental engineering thinking.

Single Payer Socialized Government Health Care - Just Say No Thank You

All over Kansas City, the heartland of America the people I talk to about the health care issue keep the same opinion they’ve had throughout the debate: Just Say No. 

Chief fears (and I’m not talking about our Football team – that’s a whole other story for a different blog) among those I talk to:

1) What is the bill really going to have in it?
2) What kind of runaway costs are we going to have to deal with?
3) I don’t know who to believe anymore, do you?

These are real fears by people from managers and heads of companies, and for hourly people that I talk to at lunch daily.  I still believe that the true answer to the problems we face in healthcare boils down to three things:

David Letterman: A case for sexual harassment

What a bombshell!  Extortion allegedly and the sexy goings on behind the scenes are fun and games, till someone gets sued (or as my friends mom used to quip “till someone pokes an eye out”).

In my 30 years in business I’ve been through more “Sensitivity Training” classes, more “Sexual Harassment” classes and seminars to know that in general workplace sexual relationships are a bad idea.  They harm the professional environment.  They harm the effectiveness of the team. They tend to go wrong at some point in time and then that too has a negative impact on the full group.  That is all before you paint the picture from a legal point of view and ask “Is there or was there a Quid pro Quo?”  If the answer is yes, then you are bordering on legal issues that will hamper the performance of the group.

According to the interpretive regulations of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"), sexual harassment consists of the following: [u]nwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature . . . when

Health Care Debate Continues

The Blogosphere continues to buzz about how Congress is being held hostage by a few Republicans.  To those out there who need a refresher course, the Democratic Party controls the Presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate by vast majorities.

As I see it the Senate is split as follows:
Democrats - 58
Republicans - 40
Independents - 2 (one votes Democrat)

The Congress is split as follows:
Democrats - 257
Republicans - 178

With the vast majority in Congress (both the House and the Senate) How exactly are the Republicans holding anything hostage?