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TechnoratiExcerpted from Where Have All the Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney
Had Enough?
Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."
Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?
I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.
My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to—as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.
Who Are These Guys, Anyway?
Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them—or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.
And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.
Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?
The Test of a Leader
I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points—not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.
So, here's my C list:
A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing this right? He's the President of the United States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.
If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.
A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President—the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush, "Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now, it wasn't.
Leadership is all about managing change—whether you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School.
A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while. Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.
A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths—for what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.
A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.
If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.
To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION—a fire in your belly. You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President—four hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.
It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress. Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.
A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right through the roof.
A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.
You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know—Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished Bush.
Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world—and I like it here."
I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while.
The Biggest C is Crisis
Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.
On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day—and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.
That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq—a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.
A Hell of a Mess
So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.
But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.
Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.
Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.
Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen—and more important, what are we going to do about it?
Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.
I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?
Had Enough?
Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises—the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.
Excerpted from Where Have All the Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney
Copyright © 2007 by Lee Iacocca
87 Comments so far
Show AllHas anyone heard about the "air car"? Why doesn't someone start manufacturing that car in the USA?
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/06/09/autoblog-qanda-miguel-celades-sa...
Check out our topic forum on www.treehugger.com where everyone is talking about the air car and it's development.
I love ya, Mr. Iacocca!
Find someone to produce the air car in the USA. You have the connections....
Everybody is criticizing Bush and his mistakes. That's fine but the next step is to see what can be done so that another Bush does not happen again. That could also lead us to the new leaders that Mr. Iacocca is looking for.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US could militarily dominate any other country in the world. It is the first time that has happened in human history. Unfortunately there is a price to pay for everything in this world. The price to pay for having the use of force at your disposal is that you must learn to restrain from using it. An adult is not supposed to fight with a child. This is something we learn as individuals. We also have to learn it as a country.
We did not learn our lesson of self-restraint in Vietnam. If we don't learn it in Iraq, another president will again put us in a similar predicament. We can predict that a similar conflict will happen every 20 or 30 years until we learn our lesson.
The need for more self restraint is not limited to politics. Have you noted that all our technical inventions of the past 50 years rely on the self restraint of the customer?
- The credit cards have erased the limit between paying your bills and getting into debts. Only your self-restraint will keep you out of trouble.
- We have learned to use chemicals to the point where life would be difficult without them. To put them in our food and under our skin may be going too far. A farmer has become somebody who packages chemicals into food. How many millions of people will have to become overweight and die of heart attack before we see a need for self-restraint?
- Five or six hours of TV every day represent 20 years of your life. Are you sure that TV is worth such a price?
Technology has changed our environment. Our environment is now creating a need to change our soul. Increased freedom from the laws of nature requires an increase of self-restraint.
Our western civilization is in the process of developing more of this self-restraint in the individuals and in their governments. The US is the first country to go through such a crisis. Other countries will follow. You may think that the death of thousands of people is a high price to pay for such a lesson. When China goes through a similar growing pain, millions could die. The dictator known as "Evolution" accepts casualties.
History may remember Bush as the president who demonstrated to the world that the strength of an army must be balanced by a strength of the soul. He was only carrying the message. He did not read it himself.
I propose that the way to avoid more casualties is to become willing participants in our general evolution. Our future leaders may come from those who read the message.
Where are the leaders? DENNIS KUCINICH is in Congress as we speak. He has said all of this many times before. Will Iacocca support him for president?
Now here comes the WMD cynic...that's WMD for White Male Dinosaur. First of all, Iacocca is really old. That's supposed to imply experience and wisdom. However, in a society besotted with Paris Hilton and 50 other tween sexpots, IPOD earphones as a fashion accessory, and all manner of way-too-young women--white, black, Asian, Latina, whatever--dressed to make Parisian whores look demure, and many offering oral sex behind the bleachers during high school sports events as if they were sharing an ice cream cone in days gone by (my son vouches for the veracity of this post-modern factoid), Iacocca is not gonna show up on their radar, let alone have anything to say that they want to hear. Unless he's aiming his bromides at the senior sun belt, he's pissing in a hurricane.
By the way, he's also full of crap. Greenman above nailed it. The class issues and economic fissures in our society, politics and culture are structural, at the "cell" level, not a matter of Madison Ave. cheerleading from a corporate folk hero whose carefully crafted ad and TV commercial image is 95% of his "leadership" substance. When he ran Chrysler, he had to beg for a federal government bailout to stave off financial ruin. Now he's just another re-tread "icon" selling a book, appearing on daytime talk shows watched mostly by soccer moms, shut-ins and the Oprah/View crowd...now there's a demographic that will change the world!
If he is serious, he'll be on hard news shows, making speeches at prominent colleges, talking to the military, saying the stuff in this article in person, trying to influence young people in a personal way, not through a traditional book most of them will never even see, let alone read.
Let's get real here. Most of the under-40 crowd gets its political and news information on the internet, either in the workplace or at home, or increasingly on the move through mobile broadband comms, which is why the TV networks are sweating bullets as their market share continues to evaporate, and network programming continues to degenerate like compost into mindless dreck not fit for prison TV, let alone a supposedly responsible, educated young workforce.
Iacocca was always a "character" worth a listen, but if he's serious, he needs to reach young people with a serious, attention-grabbing style and substance. Most of them don't relate to American history, since most of them are not even aware of it, having been born long after the upheavals of WWII, the Korean War, the Civil Rights movement, the assassinations, the Viet Nam war and Watergate, to name a few reasonably meaningful events in recent history.
Listing these momentous events in a menu is worthless. Telling us about all the rehashed horrors of this administration is redundancy cubed...we've all heard it 1000 times before. The millenial questions are: Given this history, how do we turn this ghost ship around? Does this history still matter, given 9/11 and the "new world order"?
Can we ever return to the domestic American template of FDR, JFK or LBJ, or are we destined to live in a George Bush/Neocon world of pre-emptive war, perennial fear and police state "homeland security"? (Just the word "homeland" has the vague wiff of Third Reich delusions of grandeur that has always given me the creeps).
Mr. Iacocca, put up or shut up. At least those of us here are tired of empty rhetoric. We want real leaders who are willing to risk something to create positive change for all of us. Not just another book hustler. Let's see what you're made of, Lee.
What's happened is the lethal intersection of digitalia and politics. Marshall McCluhan saw it all coming. 500-channel niche TV, MP3-video players, PDA's, ominpresent cell phones, bluetooth, laptops, MTV-centric visual and cinematic imagery, hip-hop culture...the whole awesome package of self-encapsulating, distracting, ADD-promoting technology and wraparound culture that has steadily rendered serious, let alone persuasive human discourse, especially between the red state vs. blue state mindset, virtually irrelevant, even on matters of war and destruction, let alone gay marriage and abortion.
The bottomless skepticism of even so many educated young people, and the hard cynicism of the great mass of poorly educated or near illiterate poor and working classes all over the country, the loss of trust and respect for our so-called "elected" officials, many of whom take office on the flimsiest of voter turnout or under the cloud of likely election fraud, yet again a reflection of widespread apathy toward the political process as anything more than a well-honed racket, be it local, state or national.
If you turn on C-span to see your government at work, you get widget congressmen and women speaking at the House lecturn for no more than a minute, filling their Attention Deficit Disorder-crafted time with empty platitudes and soundbite drivel that say little and really mean nothing. The occasional exception is reported nowhere, or on page 28. If you watch "special orders" at night, where they can wax eloquent on various topics, you soon realize there's no one listening in the chamber, or anywhere else. It's all an elaborate game of narcissism and "branding", the new religion of "communication" in public life, with only the tiniest mythic thread connecting it to any solid notion of democracy of, by and for the people. If Abe Lincoln were here, now, he'd likely be on the phone with Jack Abramoff.
So, Mr. Iacocca, give us a break. You're just another warmed over, ultra-rich has-been celebrity CEO coming along way too late to tell us all how to miraculously recover the mythic America of our youth, the one that really never existed in the first place, but which we all believed was there and has somehow been obliterated by Shrub and his capos. You're gonna help us all continue to "swallow" the RICO shenanigans of ExxonMobil and BP and Shell and GE, and the empty rhetoric of Bush and Cheney and Rice, as our arms and legs cramp up, our credit and savings and pensions disappear and our homes are repo'ed, and we slip beneath the waves of lies, hypocrisy, brazen theft of public treasure, arrogance, psychopathy, and the exercise of raw power at the expense of our own personal security and that of our kids down the road, assuming there is a road.
So, Mr. Iacocca, put up or shut up. Don't be just another celebrity book hustler, on the same continuum as Ann Coulter and other fungus among us. Get out there and use that charming, blunt persona to reach the young, try and get them fired up, tell them the truth, take some real risks with your brand and your treasured status as a media "icon" in this media-addled society. Show us what you're made of, Lee. We need all the real help we can get.
Well, I'm not as certain as psilver above, but I could swear Mr. Gore has most of the C's covered, and seems like a statesman to me, a word I find conspicuously absent from these posts. Maye they could do it together...
The article is worth thinking about. We need to pick leaders based on something more concrete than how they look on TV during the debates. This author is a captialist CEO however and that should not be discarded in judging his weltanschauung (world view). He does demonstrate that we do have some things in common with even americans who we are judging at face value. Even rich corporate CEOs may have some useful advice as this article suggests.
By the way, I paid way too much for my 1984 Chrysler LeBaron. Unreliable, cheap cruise control, vapor lock in the summer and stopped dead even with 1/4 tank of gas left. I had the computer replaced in that car so many times they quit charging me for it at the dealer. Piece of guano as Mr. Iacoca got richer, not to mention the tax money he reaped to give his cronies huge bonuses at the end of the federal bailout year. Yes I am verbally shooting the perpetrator but not the message of the article.
By the way, I tried to edit one of my comments during the edit time a couple of days ago and couldn't get any to take.
Its time for all the like minded people in this country to get together in one place and organize. Its time to take back our country from these idiots. Washington would look alot different with a couple million pissed off middle class americans marching down the streets with the sole intent of taking back our country. The current situation hasnt been this bad since the british ruled. and we all know what we did to them...maybe its time again?
I appreciate him for atleast stepping up to the plate on this one. I also feel that it is important that fat heads like Limbaugh and OReilly cant just dismiss him as another liberal kook.
Nader4prez said, "As the name says, Nader is the only leader I have seen lately." Whaaaaaat?????? Selfish Nader and his miserable few percentage points in the 2000 election are the reason we are in this mess to begin with! He's a smart man, so when he told them that Bush and Gore were basically the same, people listened. I will NEVER forgive him for that.
NMBill and Adam West: your synchronicity was on media.
Allied Media Conference this June.
www.AMC2007.org
All this guy needs is a cane to shake.
Â"I may be senile but..."
America has fallen over the edge. It`s just so stoned that it thinks its flying.
It`s not that a president is able to send the nation to war without the approval of congress. He did, in 1991, when papa Bush liberated Kuwait.
It`s not that it`s bankrupt. It`s that if it is no one else isn`t. Clinton didn`t balance the budget out of resposibile discretion.
He did it to stave off insolovency. 10 years afer Canada, the UK etc etc etc.
Where did all this new cash come from? King Faisal`s oil reserves doubled in value in 1 year.
And when some guy in charge of Basra Prefecture is selling 10 000 barrels of oil a day at 20 Euros yer fuct, plainly, absolutly fuct.
fuct
This anus is simply plugging his new book. Where were the leaders when Chrysler was bankrupt? Iacocca had no problem stealing US tax dollars for his corporate entity then... The S & L bailout, Enron, WorldCom, Halliburton, Bechtel and the rest are simply following his lead from the 70's. The fact that he has the nerve to say otherwise is amazing. Clearly Iacocca is banking on the fact that most people under 30 have no idea who he is and what he has already done.
If things are going to change in our political system you have to do 3 things.
1 - Remove all private funding from elections and mandate equal access to media time.
2 - End the class system of funding education by removing the direct connect from property taxes to education systems state by state. Fund all public educations systems based upon the number of students (per capita) rather than how much money their parents or their district has.
3 - Tax everyone at the same rate across the board. NOT the Fair Tax - but a truly fair tax. Sales taxes should all be the same and income tax, if ever made properly legal should also be the same for all. If you make $1.00 or $1 billion you should have to pay 10% for example.
Until these things are corrected there is no republic and no free enterprise only the continuation of the system of exploitation which will only further complicate and erode things in the world as well as this nation.
Mr Iacocca has enumerated some of the problems America is facing, which is good in itself. However, I'm sure that almost everyone who visits this website is already aware of them. What we really need, as someone had already mentioned before me, is a clear course of action. I am asking anyone who is reading these lines to come up with suggestions as to what people should do to rectify the situation. Instead of whining and rehashing how bad that son of bush is, let us all come up with solutions.
You can't have a bloody revolution in America because people are still not that hard pressed. Besides, a revolution is not even necessary if reform can be archived peacefully. A few suggestions comes to my humble mind:
1. Each one of you should ask and encourage your friends and associates to read progressive sites such as CommonDreams and CounterPunch.
2. The two-party system is a Mafia arrangement. Would someone please indicate how this can be changed to a multi-party system?
3. You should also do away with campaign financing and lobbying. Lobbying pays and buys your so-called representatives (the AIPAC bobby group comes to mind). Would someone please indicate how to proceed to achieve that?
4. I would like CommonDreams to set up a permanent page called Suggestions/Solutions where readers could come up with practical solutions.
5. You should replace Electoral College with popular vote.
6. Sundays should be set aside for all voting time. Voting on weekdays is inconvenient, and not all will participate.
7. If you do all the above, the media would automatically reform itself.
Undoubtedly, the present system will stubbornly resist any changes because it would cut off the hands of the crooks in power, but I'm sure some knowledgeable people who are reading these can come up with solutions. If all this gives you the impression that what I'm saying is: the system sucks—you are absolutely right.
Well, Lee Iacocca certainly has the problem(s) nailed. But his thesis remains, as a symbol of the Modern American syndrome of complacency. Our government has already changed. Complaining without acting will accomplish nothing. I strongly believe that the "Smirker-in-Chief" and his gang of neocon bastards will refuse to leave in January 2009. The only thing that may delay that will be if the "Right" candidate gets elected to the Oval Office. So - the vast majority of the citizenry with their heads up their rectums - who "just can't be bothered by politics" - will be shocked when the thugs are thusly exposed as the evil charlatans that they are. But it will be too late. Personally, I am ready for these guys when that happens, but realize that I am a distinct minority among the American sheep.
Mind/Body PE 101: For freeing capacity of action and recognition of leadership in the moment.
First let us recognize what NMBill and Adam West relate here: "It's cosmic" - a more concise term in this dialogue is synchronistic. Synchronicity is a function of the universe. The following will help reinforce this in some and move others out of the "wow!" euphoria, helping both, leading both, to a practical organic plane application.
A synchronistic happening for me this Spring is the birth of 6 kittens. In observing their subsequent development a highlight has been on the sensory-motor process.
"Un-Cheneng" the sensory-motor function is step one of MB PE 101:
In the embryonic phase the skin and "brain" stem together when the "one" complexes to the "triune". Thus, like the Native American walking through a Boston snow in the 1900's, and is asked how he can do that clad only in a loin cloth, with the reply being, "Me all face" - we are functionally in fact "all brain".
Thus, the salient point here being that with an optimally functioning sensory-motor network the whole being - from toes to finger tips, ears and nose, wherever "stardust" goes (see Bio-dynamic gardening) - is a processing "brain". Processing and fuctioning information from synchronistic sources as well as the skin and the courser teleceptors of eyes, ears, and nose.
More importantly this "all brain" state with proper function returns constantly to the beings most potent state. The potent state allows for recognition of the leader of the moment based on energy economics of biological systems, this can change to be anyone in the room (see Thich Nhat Hanhs Night of Prayer..."and the babble of a child shall teach the law". For Christian Scripturalists this is "the easy way and burden of light", for scientists this is the Weber-Fechner law of physics: if you reduce the stimulus (effort) you increase the sensitivity which increases the organization of the biological network and thus it's capcity for action.
One can proceed from here on curiosity or faith alone. This is thus because allowed to function without conscious control the sensory-motor network will reflectivly organizie the neuromuscularskeletal system to the potent state with any stimulus to the skin. This can be perceived as the increasing aesthetical pleasure in repetitive actions or skin touch applications (when functioning in the "easy way").
For assistance in "un-Cheneying" find a CranioSacral practitioner ( www.upledger.com ) or another way to learn to palpate the craniosacral rhythmn. Reich teaches us that life force flow exhibits a contraction and expantion pattern. Most of us have been "Cheneyed" to the extent that this expantion and contraction are restricted to some extent.
Thus, find someone to contact the skin surface until the craniosacral impulse, and it's harmonizing function, brings the expansion contraction capacity back to the entire skin surface. For recognition of the leader of the moment skills reciprocate this process.
Next find a Feldenkrais practitioner (www.feldenkrais.com). A yoga, thi chi, or golf instructor may work, but a Feldenkrais practitioner is specially trained to elicit righting reflex responses. Most, 90% or so, in the Feldenkrais community are only non-verbally aware of this, but they are still highly effective. (Feldenkrais teaches us that without cognitively arrested alternatives the human organism returns to it's most potent state - center of gravity at it's highest point, nose, ears, and eyes able to move around a vertical axis with the greatest ease and efficiency - after each action pattern)
Thus MB PE 101 methodology has many applications. I have used it personally to assist the restoration of hand and arm function due to brachial plexus birth trauma, and create a relationship where a 2 year old boy with "cerebral palsy" transforms from moving like a crabby old man to joyously joining in the rough and tumble play (learning) of the child and adolescent.
Finally, and most important here, or just as, was the use of MB PE 101 methodology to assist an environment where a person with an excruciatingly painful cancer tumor on the spine was able to move into pain free states of being that were accompanied by a clarity of thought. Thus, MB PE 101 can help progressives get out of the loop of cognitively arrested alternatives that lead to superflous and repetitive "bellyaching", as well as lead to the state of organization that chooses it's leadership and actions based on energy economics of biological systems, whether that choice is made predominately from faith filled synchronicity or a detailed analysis.
Thanks to Lee, thanks to Common Dreams Editors, thanks to the commentators...
And Peace Be With All.
evansdadop@aol.com
I believe that an adequate number of leaders do run for office. They understand that issues are complicated, so they don't make simple snappy sound bites. They realize that democracy is more important than money so they don't raise as much.
Most of these people are brought to a halt in their political career as really good town chair, alderman, state legislature etc.
Occasionally, a few of this cream of the crop rises to the top where they are surrounded by the mass of scum that also floats up in our cesspool election system we allow to exist.
it's about time someone with some balls has said what 98% of the american people are afraid to say... and someone who should be president of the U.S. and not just Chrysler. but i'm afraid the republican party owns them media and the journalists who want to ask those important questions aren't allowed by their bosses. even the canadian journalist's that are invited onto the political shows are told beforehand that if they "dis" bush and his administration they will no longer be invited to sprew the truth. bush and his administration make hitler and his thugs look like little school kids.john dean, of the nixon administration stated that what bush and his people are doing are ten times worse than nixon had ever done. i'm afraid the journalists are too afraid to ask the tough questions or they are paid off by bush and his thugs, the pentagon, secratary of state dept., ect. ect.. until the people of this country stand up to say what they feel, like you have Mr. Iaccoa, i'm afraid we are doomed. we are now living in a facist country, controlled by a dictator and his thugs and slowly becoming a communist country. the wall that we are building along the mexican border is not to keep illegal and terroists out, but to keep the americans from leaving for another country when ten years from now there will be more than 100 million people out of work. when congress overturns the "posse comma totis" law, the time to protest and rebell, i'm afraid will be far too late. the irag war is just a test for the military to learn how to quell large crowds rioting, when it happens here in america. but i thank you Mr. Iaccoa for standing up and telling like it is. i hope you can get your friends in power to do the same. we can't wait any longer. P.s. your daughter was a guest at our house in the mid 70's after graduating from Eastern MIch. she came with my cousin Charlotte Rheam. they were very good friends. although we thought you were coming over but we soon learned it was your daughter , whom i might add was delightful. thank you again for all that you've done for our country. bush and his administration reminds me of charlie luciano, meyer lansky and his thugs, although bush could teach them alot in illegal activity.
NIARAL...
Well said. But I'm beginning more and more to believe that the definition of Progressive is becoming "WHINER".
Mr Iacocca
Please show us real leadership, donate ALL your wealth to improve the mess you are talking about.
Talk is cheap.
Wow. All this from the guy who brought us the K car.
Just kiddin. Thank you Mr. Iacocca!!!
TIMING is also very important. WHY THE HELL AM I READING ABOUT THIS IN 2007 and not in 2004 when it MIGHT have actually made a difference?!?
Sally Camelately is better than Sally Camenotatall. True, but...?
Peace to you and yours.
As a mother, grandmother and activist, I wonder if any of you dig in at the grassroots -- party affiliation, regular postings to your Congressmen, discussion groups (yes, including blogs),letters to the editor -- where you can make a difference. Some of the attitudes I read here are not constructive outrage, they are whines of those who do not choose to get out in public, participate in the established democratic process, and challenge the status quo. YOU are the future of America, and a leader of the future will come from the ranks of those who participate in local politics.
Huck:
OK, smartA$$, ya better be marchin' pretty fast! :)
There's a few live ones out there still.
Of course, America is without leaders of courage and distinction. Just watch the Daily Show to see the fools we have in Congress, setting an "example" for Americans and people of the world. Read newspapers and magazines and watch television and see how they "dumb down" Americans with "news" of celebrities rather than hard, important news.
Damn, I ran out of time on my edit.
Where was Iacocca in 2004? Probably being ignored by the MSM and both political parties precisely because he is not one to mince his words.
The only presidential candidate who is even close to being this honestly blunt is Mike Gravel. I think I'll take that quote from Lee and put it on t-shirts and bumper stickers and donate the proceeds to Gravel.
Like him or not, Lee Iacocca is saying what needs to be heard."Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic."
You are not alone. Australian politicians are systematically killing this country. They sell all our assets, allow foreign takeover ; under the guise of "Privatisation", and continually fed us their "spin"; and our Government is just a puppet of the US administration. Its an interesting worldwide phenomina that most citizens of countries, although they may disagree strongly with Government policies - in the main they are "lemmings" and just blindly go where directed. Our Goverment has just realeased its Budget - just before our Federal Elections in November. And guess what, they now "promise" (if elected) to give major funding to several areas that should have been well funded as the "Norm". And, as our Government does not believe in Global Warming; or that the human impact on the environment is serious.........yes you guessed it - very little was given to R & D for sustainable energy systems and other vital basic human needs such as water; we have a serious problem in Australia at present as we are now in our 7th year of well below average rainfall. Our Government has not a clue as to what the word "Sustainable" means. According to our government Oil is sustainable, Coal is sustainable, gas is Sustainable and now Nuclear is Sustainable. But do the general uneducated and ignorant public wise up, or even want to wise up....no. Sad isnt it.
OuterBeltWay,
Thanks for making my point for me. =]
And change can come from anywhere. Collapse comes from the bottom up.
Oh, and you can march beside me when you can keep up with me. =]
To the naysayers;
Anyone of us could be condemned for our past. We cannot condemn Lee I's words or his tone. Let's take allies where we can. Some of our former corporate overlords may have been duped and drawn into their seats of power. Did we not want them to wise up?
Hello...?
"for the lack of vision the people perish..."
I guess as we approach death, we realize too late that the real values are community, fairness, and truth. Unfortunately when Mr. Iacocca had the opportunity to effect change when he was at the helm, he chose financial profit over community, just like Bush and Company are doing now.
Change can only occur when people in power are willing to make a change. There are two ways to do this, hold out elected officials accountable (impeach Bush) and stop re-electing them, or have more community-minded people run for office and hope they realize that they will be living under a barrage of insults, lies, and innuendos, if not outright violence.
The sooner we start on the long and rocky road to a society based on peace and justice, the longer we will get to enjoy it.
peace
AG
I'm not specifically familiar with Iacocca's reign at Chrysler. But with such insightful words, all I can say is "Give 'em hell, Lee."
Contact Stephanie Miller and lead us in the quest to "Take back America."
Thankyou Mr. Iacocca. Your expression has the power of being heartfelt. A person of your political and business past can have a lot of impact on conservatives . One can feel a kind of critical mass of frustration developing in a transparty way.
Many people have felt these critcisms of Bush for several years and have been dismayed at the level it had to reach to finally shake things up.
The only line I take issue with is, "Like it or not this crew is going to be around until Jan.2009". I would hope that knowing what you now know you could not find that acceptable. This nation cannot afford that. We've seen this crews capacity for damage and there's no indication that the magnitude could not yet be multiplied.
Huckleberry:
If you hit this thread again, I encourage you to develop and expand on that "followership" notion of yours.
The expectation that some Moses is going to come along and lead us all to salvation is a mirage. A fairy tale.
Change comes bottom up. It comes from the so-called "followers". MLK, Selma, et. al. never would have happened without hundreds of courageous, fearful, un-named black people willing to take a chance on a better world. A lot of them got lynched, and beaten, and ridiculed, and hated. They did it anyway. And they WON.
I'm here looking for great ideas. I'm not wasting any time looking for a leader. I follow ideas, and if you happen to be following similar ideas, then I'm marching beside you.
I wasn't going to read this article because I didn't think I wanted to hear what some ex-corporate bigwig was selling. But boy, he lambasted the "idiot bastard son" as good or better than I would have. I agree that he has been part of the problem in the past, but he looks like part of the solution now. It might help if more folks of his ilk that conservatives respect come down against Bush policies; his outrage can't hurt.
Obama. He's not perfect, but he fits the leadership shoes better than the others.
A little off-topic, but VERY important:
http://nationalinitiative.us/
It doesn't matter what you think of Mr. Iacocca's past. To have one of the most famous business executives in the country come out and denounce Bush in no uncertain terms indicates that EVERYONE is running away from the Chimp.
damn it! all you progressives are complaining about the Corporate take over and when someone with some clout gets up and says the same things you are saying you bitch about him "having a book deal" or "where was he in 2004". Shut the hell up and hope his comments open the way for more Corporate types like Iacocca with the respect that he has will be emboldened enough to step forward.
Well, I did speak up. I said in an intra-office email that we need to give more thought to the implications of the deep and continuing economic integration of the US economy with the economies of other countries that have vastly different economic systems than that of the US. I thought that I was just making an obvious, common sensical statement, but some of the "higher ups" were furious. I received a stern "talking to". I was lucky that I wasn't fired....
That's for all the people to decide. Let's use the Internet in government like we use it here.
As discussion sites go, this one appears to be one of the best.....I lean strongly with gsemel and greenman.....I suggest Mr. Iacocca sends every member of Congress his rant before the 1st class postage rate goes up and also to every MSM source in the standard media book. Finally, would he donate the profits he will reap from his high-profile tome directly to those lowest-level exEnron employees gypped out of their retirement pay by rapacious members of his Very Fat Cat Class of CEOs!!?? Ah, Let's have Compassionate Capitalism for tenured workers.
Warfare's first rule:
DIVIDE
Warfare's second rule:
CONQUER
It is we who have been divided.
The neocons have been working the church for generations. They will fervently boycott, march, and swamp congress with mail. Why? Because they are natural born followers. They listen to the same broadcasts, read the same books and shop at the same Mart. But in our haste to demonize the real and significant evils we face, we have demonized FOLLOWERSHIP.
It has been said that a leader without followers is just out taking a walk. The left has been so busy infighting (like us on these comment pages) that we have accomplished nothing.
Perhaps if we were better followers, true and visionary leadership would meet the challenge.
Perhaps if we abandoned the title "progressive" and embraced the tag of RADICAL...
NO? Just keep on pursuing glacially slow change? Hmmm...
If any of you care to join us here in reality, there already is a leader. You just aren't a follower.
Yet
That's right Lee. Where the hell have you been for 4 years? You write NOW about what has been going on for more than 4 years. Many of us have been agitating about this since day ONE, wondering where people like you were. Thanks for coming out of the closet.
Right on NM Bill, Adam West and others!
Media reform is absolutely the first thing Lee I. and anybody else seriously promoting real solutions needs to endorse. Public financing of campaigns is the second thing that he needs to endorse. Until the monopolized media is controlled and the revenues they receive for political advertising reduced, only puppets of the fascist corporations will have adequate funding to run in, let alone win an election.
"Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it)."
Like the baseball fans do in Chicago and now in Philadelphia when someone from another team hits a homerun: "throw it back!!" Give it to your workers, the public schools, the country's infrastructure (levees!), vehicles that run only on renewable energy, "mom and pop" (small) businesses, health care for all who live here. Tell your rich friends to do the same. Tell the rich people who hide their money so little of it is taxed to pay their fair share.
That is one way you can help.
As for the rest of us, we need to turn off our stupid-tubes, read more, and have more conversations. Like this one. Or in person.
I don't think it's a wise strategy to criticize people such as Al Gore and Arnold S..(I don't want to spell that one right now) because they are not impeccable. Those two are doing more than anyone else to make meaningful changes. Mr. Iacocca probabaly doesn't need book money; it sounds to me like he is fed up with the same things most of the people who visit this website are. Perhaps reform came late, but this is a man who, as Adele says above, is less likely to be dismissed, and wields a great deal of influence. I hope he keeps spreading the word.
Mr West-It's cosmic trust me!
No, Greenman, I didn't miss your point. It was rather that I was looking ahead, not back. When Iaccoca said "If this keeps up [the gross imbalance of wealth] we will destroy capitalism!" it struck me that because he has always been a blunt-spoken popular figure, the message may get through to many a blue-collar Republican who wouldn't pay attention if a "liberal" said it.
At least that's my hope.
"The people" have had PLENTY of reasons to organize and to agitate, yet they (we) still sit on their collective asses.
If one thing is true, it is certainly true that we get the government we deserve.
NMBill! I can't believe you wrote "He never mentioned MEDIA REFORM!', seconds before I wrote mine.
Weird!!
adamwestfakey@yahoo.ca
I think what Lee is really trying to say is that we need some 'media reform'.
MEDIA REFORM is more important than the war on terror. MEDIA REFORM is more important than global warming. And yes, MEDIA REFORM, is more important than ousting the current administration.
It is so simple it's celabratory.
Atta go Lee. I still love the K-car.
adamwestfakey@yahoo.ca
He never mentioned MEDIA REFORM!
I am heartened at Mr. Iacocca's article in that most of us on this thread can yell, scream and tear our hair out at the frustration of having an imbecile representing us to the world and no one in power listens. Liberal is a term for a group of people (progressive if you like) that have successfully been minimalized. Mr. Iacocca may have been on the sidelines in 2004 and for what ever reason comes out against all that has come down but it could be a watershed event. There may be others respected in the financial circles that feel the same way but were afraid of the Karl Rove syndrome, maybe they will feel emboldened to come forth and speak their mind.
I agree with gsemsel that we are in sorry need of some sort of revolution but it won't come from the middle class, it has to come from the ruling class as the general population is too mesmerized by wide screen TVs and Sunday afternoon football (think roller-ball)to participate in a revolution of any sorts that takes them away from "being entertained" very long. They got out to vote for a change in the war (if that was what inspired them) but there is no follow-up and probably won't be during "Ws" term in office. It now is virtually impossible for a third party candidate to get heard so our revolution won't come that way.
Welcome aboard Lee, we needed you a long time ago but are thankful you are here with or without your book.
AdeleTheCzech, I think you are missing my point, I don't care what he says, look at his actions. You say that was then this is now, yes now that he is retired, he thinks CEOs compensation is obscene. Let's see, has he given the obscene amounts he was making back then to the people who worked for him back then, now that he thinks it's obscene. Whatever he said on TV is suspect,he's selling a book. If he really believes this, why doesn't he give the book away, I mean if he's really worried about the destruction of capitalism? It all sounds like some carpet-bagging profiteer to me, there's a market to be exploited(mad as hell citizens) and he's exploiting it. He isn't calling for a change in the system either, capitalism always ends up here, a hadfull of elites who are out of touch with the rigors of everyday life for average person, are in control of everything and own all the capital.
Remember the game Monopoly, when was the least time you played it? It's fun to play a few times. It's not a game for a very large group of people, you can start out with as many players as you like, but the majority of the game is played by the last 2 players fighting it out. The rest of the people that started playing the game have left or are doing something else. In life you are stuck playing. The game wasn't invented by Milton Bradly either, it was invented by an economist who was trying to illustrate this very point.
very good comments and ideas; I'd feel better about it if at the end, he'd say all profits from the book will go to the Ron Paul campaign . . . who is such a leader!
BUT- will he energize and empower the people?
Mr. Iacocca's ideas generally make sense. It is about time someone from his class told it like it is. However, I have a huge problem with this statement: "Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen—and more important, what are we going to do about it?" How did it happen? Lee should know. His "turn around" of Chrysler was based on introducing "new" models that were nothing more than new bodies on old designs. The comeback cars of the eighties and nineties were nothing more than K cars (The horrible Omni and Horizon) with van, convertable, or sedan bodies slapped on them. For a generation, Chrysler simply reheated old designs and dumped the pieces of crap on the American public. While he was being toasted as a miracle worker, the Japanese car makers were actually designing better and better cars. We are now at the point that Detroit is on life support because of the lack of leadership of people like Iacocca. The reason that the "Big Three" are not so big is that they have not introduced an exciting new design on their own for thirty years! During that time jackasses like Lee sold the myth that it was the auto workers that were killing their companies with high wages and benefits. In reality those at the top put short term profits above long term corporte health. Finally, was it not the great Lee Iacocca that signed off on the Ford Pinto gas tank design? Yeah the one that took out the splash guard, saved Ford $.50 per car and was linked to scores of deaths, finally costing Ford millions of dollars in judgements.
Mr. Iaccocca doesn't know where the leaders are? He mentions JFK as if an Oswald killed him,what about RFK, MLK, Wellstone,and JFK jr.(and all the foreign assasinations)? Then he writes "the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11". Is not 2007 the culmination of 9/11, not the other way around?
Where was Mr.Iacocca's corporation when the electric car (and street railways) were assasinated? I'm afraid he judges our problems as being of excess not direction.
Bob in Canada
I don't agree with you about Lee Iaccoca, Greenman. That was then, this is now. I watched him being interviewed a couple of days ago, and near the end he made the following point about executive pay vs. workers' earnings [this is not verbatim, except for the words in quote marks, but the gist is correct]: Corporate executives are getting obscene amounts ($200,000,000 a year and more) without any regard for their performance, while workers are losing ground. "If this keeps up, we will destroy capitalism!" My jaw dropped -- the man gets it, just as FDR did when the Great Depression hit.
Mr. Iacocca, Thank you for standing up. Would you please contact Mr. Gorbachev and maybe the two of you, coming out of retirement, could set up a committee to rescue our Nation from the mess it has gotten into. We are very close to the point of no return. The lice at the head of our government need a good dose of FLIT.
Difinition of a "Punk":
A punk is a guy, not even courageous enough to be a bully, who hires a bully (a guy who picks on people weaker than himself), to harm other people that he himself wouldn't have the courage to face himself.
The typical punk is a tremendous weakling, empowered by some protective organization, or money or connections.
A punk is warped and repulsive.
Americans detest punks. And what amazed me Mr. Iacocca, is that they can stand to be identified with "punkhood."
AMEN
Whoooole lotta whinin' goin' on around here.
Iaccocca turned around a moribund manufacturing company. He's got most of the "C"'s he sets out as key dimensions of leadership. I'd say he stacks up pretty well against most of the Progressive armchair pundits I've read on this website.
Iacocca's message is to have the guts to hope, and to convert hope into action. Vigorous action.
If you examine most of the responses above, the common theme seems to be "all is lost, so let's not try anymore".
That is so, so lame, and it is exactly why Progressives have no political power to speak of. The one thing Repubs can do is to execute. They have no imagination, and they are frightened little weasels inside. But they sure can organize, and they're willing to work. So they win.
Whining is for losers.
You are very right greenman
More importantly, where the hell has all the citizenry gone?
People that are asleep wouldn't reconize a good leader from a bad one. People who haven't the ability to think critically, will not be able to decide which issues are critical and which are red-herrings. They will vote out of imagined fears rather than look at the real ones--and much of this can be blamed on the purchased press and mind-numbing media. Many people are more concerned about who's going to win American Idol or Survivor than they are about political catastrophies that herald in a world of war, disease, climate change, nuclear/chemical/bio weaponry use, religious conficts, extinction of flora and fauna--or even themselves.
We are about to collapse. I agree, also, with greenman's comments. He makes some very important observations.
Great article! I have been thinking the same thing for a long time. When will someone run who wants to do something good for the Country, not rape it.
As the name says, Nader is the only leader I have seen lately.
wow very interesting, I'm reading this thinking, really, a captain of industry coming out against his fellow fascists, then I get to the end and find out it's a plug for his new book. What we really need is someone worth hundreds of millions of dollars to do something for free. I'm sorry Mr. Iacoca doesn't seem to realize that he is the problem. I don't care how productive you are, how innovative, or whatever your rational for thinking you are worth this much more than anybody else, your not. As long as we believe this sort of nonsense, that CEOs, board members, chief officers or anybody else at the top who makes hundreds of times as much as the average worker does, we are going to have these problems. The workplace is where this kind of disillusion comes from. When you work all day for a meager portion only to watch the guys at the top drive away with dump truck loads you tend to get disillusioned, when folks that have more than they could possibly need in a whole lifetime tell you that YOU have enough while they still grasp for more, you get disillusioned. So Mr. Iacocca if you wonder where the outrage is, it's your fault. The folks that get up everyday and go to work 50 weeks a year have been outraged for decades and they've given up. Where are the leaders that are willing to say I'm willing to give my employees their fair share, that aren't rabidly afraid of collective bargaining, that's what I want to know.
P.S. thanks Mendo Chuck, I wasn't sure if the bailout was before or after Mr. Iacocca, I think he was brought in as part of the bail out of chrysler. My point is that is where the outrage went. When joe average watched his tax dollars go to bailout fatcat investors and corporate executives, he was outraged and no one cared. Chrysler should have become a solely employee owned company as a result of that bailout. Instead investors and banks that made bad decisions got rescued while union employees had to take wage rollback and benefit cuts, where is the outrage about this?
While I do like Mr Iacoca's piece and agree with a lot of what he says and will buy his book and read it just as soon as it shows up in the remainered rack, my recollection of his leadership is in 1979 he led the way hat in hand to ask for $1.2 billion dollars in loan guarantees from the United States government to keep Chrysler Corporation, the organization through which he was enacting his leadership skills, from going economically belly up.
I will vote for anybody that is honest!
We elect a leader so we can be lazy and blame all the problems on them.
The people need to lead, it's called grassroots!
In a Wikigovernment leaders spell out their goals and methods using their site and we the people can express how those methods affect us. As ideas gel we can rate what is most agreeable to everyone.
Thanks to Mr. Iacocca for this attempt to shake up the American public and its leaders. It is incredible that we elected a man who doesn't read newspapers. It is quite apparent that Bush is not only of below average intellect but is also departed from reality. Has he been correct on any issue yet? He didn't know to end his vacation when the biggest hurricane ever was headed for our coast. The November elections caught him completely unaware. He looked at the recommendations from the Iraq Study Group and did the exact opposite. There are indications that his father and his wife are ashamed of him, now. How is it that Congress continues to follow his lead? The Republican presidential candidates refuse to talk about exiting Iraq, a strategy which is certain to send votes to Hillary.
How stupid they will all look for blindly following this one unworthy man.
bandido,
I enjoy many quotes from Mencken, but that last one sounds a bit too much like Grover Norquist.
This is the most important article I have read in a long time!
whatever iacocca's faults might be, it's good to hear ANYONE speak out. i put in my two cents wherever i can, and if anyone who disagreed w/ me knew my pedigree, they'd be hard-pressed not to attack w/ an argumentum ad hominem. but that doesn't make me wrong. we need as many voices as we can get to speak out against the madness that's taken over our government and our media.
Never mind getting the best for leaders--how can we stop choosing the worst?
Dear Mr. Iacocca,