Erie County Executive Chris Collins

Brash and effective Erie County Executive (NY) Chris Collins (R) is thought to be the first political executive in the U.S. to employ the business management system Lean Six Sigma in government.  Six Sigma is a creation of Motorola, but it was famously implemented at General Electric some years ago, and it is credited with saving the company billions of dollars in losses, indeed, saving GE itself.

But The New Republic writes today that Lean Six Sigma is catching on within the GOP.  Former Minnesota Governor and 2012 presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty is extolling its benefits on the campaign trail and promising to apply them to the federal budget.

Collins, a former business executive, inherited a mess in Erie, which includes Western New York’s largest city, Buffalo.  Even detractors of Collins would admit that he has pared spending and stabilized the budget in that struggling area more than anyone thought possible.

It is good that Lean Six Sigma is getting a look in presidential politics.  All ideas should be on the table in tackling the budget beast in our nation’s capitol.  But it’s also good because Collins’s accomplishments may finally be recognized beyond Erie’s borders, and they deserve to be.

Is there a Do Not Save Me Registry for the Jehova’s Witnesses?

I feel awful saying that.  They are so nice.  But so am I, and I cannot figure out a polite way to make them stop coming to my door every weekend. I have pled Catholicism. I have thanked them for their generosity of spirit. I have assured them I’m on a path – “the” path, whatever that means. (But I’ve actually said it.) I have even leveled with one of them in a under-the-breath, conspiratorial tone: “Listen, Pam, it’s so nice to see you and your family – you’re lovely people – but you ain’t going to get me. But listen, off-the-record, I saw my next-door neighbors crossing their fingers at St. Patrick’s last Sunday – the whole lot of ‘em.  Know what I’m saying..” [wink.]

Seven days later, “ding-dong.”

It wouldn’t bother me so much; it’s only a couple of minutes out of my morning, but it’s crimping my style.  Take today.  My wife and girls left early for the city, so I began to lumber downstairs in the old boxers.  But wait.  Nope.  Can’t do that.  Pam and the kids should be by shortly. On went the shorts.  But no matter how I am dressed, I feel slovenly when they arrive. They always are in their Sunday best.

For a time last summer I was leaving my doors shut on beautiful cool mornings, when the house should be filling with fresh air.  Why you ask? Because I was lying on the floor when my doorbell rang.   Seriously.  And if a door was open my ruse was dubious; who leaves his house open when he’s not home?  They would know I was cowering to avoid them, and that would be rude. I want them to abandon me to Satan, not hurt their feelings.

Pam and company know us now.  They know our names, ages, what we do, where we go to school – when we are home – and all of our rhetorical defenses.  It is all in a notebook in their car or in a database in the world headquarters in Brooklyn  Heights.  But knowing that doesn’t make the smile and opening sentences any less disarming –“Good morning, Bill.  Where are Corrinne and the girls?  Off to soccer already? What a busy family.  I have just the verse in The New World Translation on that…”

And there I stand, bleary-eyed, unshaven, and head bowed listening.

If the AlarmClock goes abruptly goes dark one of these weekends, you’ll know what happened.  I have been saved.

Did I miss something or is the American political establishment and news industry overtly digging through hundreds of thousands of Sarah Palin’s emails in an openly stated effort to find something to embarrass her?  Just Sarah Palin’s?  And is it me, or this being reported in the news as a veritable gotcha game where the American public can play along?

Please tell me President Obama’s emails are being looked at, too (oh, of course not; he’s President of the United States.)  Or that Mitt Romney’s, Michelle Bachmann’s, and Tim Pawlenty’s emails are being systematically scoured.  Please tell me it isn’t just Sarah Palin being targeted here…

Is this really happening right before our eyes with no one protesting?

Senator Chuck Schumer as Purportedly Caught on Camera in Washington Thursday

Another good story out of Politico this morning; this one on Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) disappearing act in the face of the Weiner controversy. Schumer is, indeed, as media savvy as he is a media hooker.

What I found most striking was Schumer’s extended vanishing act during the credit-default-swap crash and subsequent bank and insurance bailouts (2008-’09.)  Schumer was in the middle of that world for years, and then, for a period of months, he was gone. (As a friend would say, Kaiser-Soza-pfft-gone.) Schumer barely appeared in his 2010 re-election campaign other than in TV commercials, and that wasn’t until October.  It became extremely difficult for his challenger, Republican Jay Townsend, to gain any purchase in the free media.

New York’s senior is no press addict. He knows when to hold them and he knows when to fold ’em. Unfortunately.

*jutiagroup.com

Great story in Politico today by Glenn Thrush detailing what I touched on this morning. President Obama, who famously targeted “Red” states in 2008, now looks like he will have to defend formerly reliable  “Blue” states in 2012, plus those in which he made inroads in the last election.

Team Obama is, according to Thrush’s story, constructing multiple state strategies based on various GOP candidate scenarios. One strategy virtually abandons Midwest states like Ohio and Indiana that were considered key in 2008 in favor of Mountain West states like Colorado and Nevada. Based on Las Vegas’s nation-leading real estate bust, that’s no slam dunk. Obama is also reportedly relying on winning North Carolina and Virginia, both of which will be tough fights. Even Wisconsin and Minnesota could be up for grabs.

One thing is clear though: with so many states in play in 2012, the Obama campaign will be stretched all over the map, financially and logistically.  The offense has unquestionably turned the ball over to the other team in three short years.  Team Obama will be playing defense from here on out.

http://youtu.be/e07vlQNz88c

This 1984 Mondale-Ferraro ad hints at the beginning of outright “negative” — or “comparative” — political television advertising.   (That really began in 1964 with Tony Schwartz’s “Daisy Ad” for Lyndon Johnson. But here the opponent, Ronald Reagan is named outright, which was rare for the time.)

The ad fell short — way short.  Mondale-Ferrer lost 49 states, and some still say all 50.  Mondale’s home state of Minnesota was to go to recount, but Reagan’s team graciously decided not to challenge it so as not to humiliate Walter Mondale where he lived.  It was the biggest blow-out in presidential history.

Great piece in The New York Times today by Matt Bai on President Obama’s re-election strategy.  Bai nails the point that Americans have become increasingly impatient with their politicians in recent years — with everything — and that the President’s essential re-election theme of don’t change horse in midstream is a loser. Sounds like a loser to me, too.  Objectively.

If President Obama doesn’t find a way to begin gathering momentum on something, I think he’s going to get trounced, no matter what the polls say today. This is a state by state contest, and when you begin to look at it that way, he’s already in trouble. Several states he won in 2008 are very much in play.

The President’s fundamental problem is that he is stretched too thin.  From the beginning, his administration showed no discipline in focusing on achievable tasks.  So what we see are dozens of half-started economic, environmental, industrial, healthcare, and foreign policy projects.  They are like half-put-together toys on the Oval Office floor.

The two biggest accomplishments of his administration are Obamacare and bin Laden’s elimination.  The first, though, is hated and coming apart at the seams and the second is now already factored into the polls — his approval rating is at 48% today and dropping.  The bin Laden bounce is indeed gone.  What sustainable initiative — one with which he can build momentum — does he have?

This race is the Republicans’ to lose.

There’s a gag that’s gone around Albany for awhile. Widows no longer look for millionaires to marry; they look for single retirees with “Tier I” pension plans.

Who could blame them if it were true? New York’s pension benefits are solid gold.  The only problem is that they are printed on paper — they are IOUs that taxpayers and future taxpayers have promised to pay retirees. That promise, by irrefutable math, will soon will crowd out almost all other spending in New York State. Discretionary programs like senior centers and pre-K programs could virtually cease to exist if we don’t reign in pension costs.  Public employee retiree obligations are bankrupting the state and its local governments.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo (D) and the Republican Senate logically want to do something about it.  It is the responsible thing to do — the only choice for a state facing economic disaster. So Cuomo today officially proposed a “Tier VI” pension plan to make modest reforms in the pensions of future hires. The new tier is generous, and it affects no one working or retired today.  Again, it would only apply to future hires. The kind of thing it does? Prohibit calculating overtime pay in pension calculations.  (Public employees routinely run up staggering overtime hours in their final year of service to artificially boost pensions.)

So listen to how New York public service union leaders received Cuomo’s modest proposal in Thursday’s New York Times story:

“Congratulations to Governor Cuomo for another grandstand play for the attention of his millionaire friends at the expense of the real working people of New York,” Danny Donohue, president of the largest union of state workers, the Civil Service Employees Association, said in a statement.

“Governor Cuomo’s proposal can only be viewed as an attack on working people to score some cheap political points.”

The president of the New York State Public Employees Federation, Kenneth Brynien, attacked the proposal as “draconian pension cuts that would inflict permanent damage on middle-class workers such as nurses, parole officers, bridge inspectors and cancer researchers for what is a transient problem.”

“This is about politics and placating big-business special interests, plain and simple,” Mr. Brynien added.

New York is a pro-union state, a liberal state.  We value our teachers, and cops, and firefighters.  It’s why they got the most money in the nation when we had money, but we don’t now, so we have to find a compromise.  Most public employees I speak with understand that completely, but their leadsership has begun to sound hysterical in recent years. “Draconian cuts?” “Permanent damage?” “Grandstand plays for the attention of  millionaire friends?”

What planet are these guys living on?

The gap between what union bosses are saying and what ordinary New Yorkers are saying is growing wider by the day.  Public employee union members would be wise to speak with their leaders about that before New York is no longer a pro-union state.  Anyone who doesn’t believe that’s possible need only look to Wisconsin.

http://youtu.be/4RZ4G251WR4

Here is an ad for Alabama Governor George Wallace’s 1968 independent bid for President. It was Wallace’s fourth run for President. The first three times he ran for the Democratic nomination, but in 1968 he ran as the candidate of the American Independent Party. The anti-integration, populist governor won five states — all southern — and garnered 13.5% of the popular vote. A 1972 assassination attempt — I remember watching it on the news that night — put Wallace in a wheelchair  for the rest of his life. That experience, or maybe something else, moderated Wallace’s views, and in his final years he worked closely with African-American community groups from which he asked forgiveness.  They gave it to him. His is a remarkable story.

To say “keep an eye out for Corey Booker” is like saying keep an eye out for the Yankees in the playoffs this year.  An idiot could tell you that. But keep an eye out for Corey Booker (D).

The Newark Star Ledger today reports that the dynamic Newark reform-oriented mayor may be eying a run for the U.S. Senate either in 2012 or in 2014 when Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D) is likely to retire again.  He’d make a terrific candidate.

I got to see Booker in action a couple of years back at a news conference I helped arrange. I had obviously heard a lot about the young talent, so I was eager to eyeball him up close. He did not disappoint.  Two things about him off the bat:  There is an unmistakable celebrity air about him — he is tall, handsome, and self-assured — but one also gets the feeling that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He is nice — and a talented speaker.

But here’s the thing that got me:  During the news conference, held in the Newark City Hall rotunda, the sound system shorted out.  It happens sometimes, and typically the principle speaker makes a funny remark and steps back until audio visual personnel comes and fixes it. Not Booker. He decided to fix the thing himself — right there on the spot — with a half dozen television cameras rolling and with a roomful of print reporters taking notes. There was no showboating to it whatsoever; he just instinctively went to fix it.

As a press person, I cringed. Here is a mayor, on camera, begging to be made to look stupid.  Clips last a political lifetime and I thought, “he’s green; he doesn’t know yet…”  I could barely stand to watch.

Booker went down to his knees and began fiddling with wires and turning knobs on an amplification mult box, with his AV team watching over his shoulder.  Silence in the room. And then, as quickly as the audio went out, it was back on — Booker had fixed it — and he went right back to the point he had been making before the thing had shorted out, without missing a beat.  There wasn’t a trace of cockiness about him. Not a trace.

Booker reminded of me of the college quarterback who might say “give me the ball” without a hint of arrogance.  There is something about those guys, and Booker is one of them. I wish he was on my team.