POLITICS - Carlini's Comments

NATIONAL ISSUES FOR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

Filed Thursday, December 6. 2007

What other issues do we need to address to get our country focused on a real direction for success?

Last week’s column on broadband as a national issue, which should be on the tip of every tongue in the presidential debates, elicited some great feedback. Others are starting to question the value that the presidential debates (from both parties) are providing the voters.

People want some definitive ideas and answers to complex questions. You could say this boils down to “where’s the BEEF” (broadband, education, energy and feedback). This feedback came from a reader in Colorado on last week’s column on the presidential candidates not focusing on broadband connectivity:

Like you, I am tired of these puffed-up, self-important morons in New Hampshire and Iowa driving national policy and what we define as strategic national issues.

If they really spoke for the other 48 [states], this issue along with a handful of other ones would be getting more press than we’ve seen on some of these choreographed, manicured debates over the last three months for both major parties.

I don’t want some Iowa corn farmer or some New Hampshire ice cream entrepreneur driving national policy out of the gates in January.

Frankly, their issues are too narrow for me and lack some of the big-picture discussions that we should be having leading up to the 2008 campaign regardless if one is Democrat or Republican.

If we have to put small minds out for the debates, let’s at least make them mull some long-term issues aside from the war, national health care and global warming.

There are other issues that need some attention and on which we need some direction. The candidates have already rehearsed answers to the ones I’ve mentioned. This one could be the litmus test for who out there is truly a strategic and original thinker.

At any rate, great column. I know you keep bashing the network infrastructure in our faces, but it is a real issue in a set of American competitiveness issues that we just don’t seem to want to tackle as a nation. I wonder why.

The need to get candidate views on competitive strategies is important to voters. That doesn’t seem to be happening with the mainstream media.

American Competitiveness Issues

There are real issues that should be addressed by candidates and correspondents trying to get an insight on where the candidates stand on issues beyond the two or three that everyone is tired of hearing.

One issue is education. We need more than the typical mantra that “we need to spend more money on education”. We need to address what we’re focusing on in education and make sure we aren’t funding obsolete programs and ideas. Before throwing more money into education budgets, some clear accountability about what’s being accomplished needs to be performed.

While the three “R”s of rote, repetition and routine might have been good skill sets to prepare a young work force for Industrial Age jobs decades ago, they do nothing for preparing students in a post-Information Age that could be called the Mobile Internet Age.

That’s where we’re at today. Today’s competitive work force needs new skill sets. We need FACT (flexibility, adaptability, creativity and technology) skills. In a recent interview at the Illinois Municipal League conference, these issues were discussed.

Education that falls short of instilling these new skill sets should also fall short in funding and governmental support. How much money is wasted in education today? That is the accountability question that most public school administrators don’t want to answer because they’re afraid they will lose their bloated budgets.

They face an angrier and angrier school district as parents and taxpayers who have cut back household budgets start to question whether or not school budgets are being wasted. The lemming approach of school-district funding (“no taxpayer left behind”) for property tax increases and paying for waste in education has to stop.

There is a real concern that education needs a big overhaul. That doesn’t mean spending more money blindly. It means getting people in leadership positions who question the status quo and commit to break the logjam of bad ideas and obsolete educational policies.

Energy is another topic that should really be worked on instead of getting some lip service. There’s a disconnect about what’s important in transportation and what’s being funded. Mass transportation is something that’s deemed necessary. Still, we also need to look at the areas that are a waste of money.

Having a large diesel bus go down the street with one or two passengers and polluting the air with as much as what 26 cars do isn’t mass transit. It’s a waste of money. Better management of resources is needed and the grim finality of cutting the service is a real option rather than just an unlikely doomsday scenario.

After some initial research on energy consumption, there are some questionable issues when it comes to carbon footprints. In terms of paying a buck a ton to an environmental group to justify huge personal energy consumption (with limousines, private jets, yachts, etc.), that’s not conservation. That’s a joke.

More Debate, Discussion is Needed

If correspondents and presidential candidates don’t focus on these issues, the means to get these issues under the spotlight is out there. New uses of video-based applications are providing new avenues of discussion.

Based on the geometric growth of these new social networks, the mainstream media is failing to get the message out. People fed up with a lack of real news are turning to these new technologies to get the discussions out there. I was recently part of a national discussion on broadband with several other people across the country. Having this type of discussion gets real issues out and hopefully someone in the mainstream media or the campaigns realizes this is something to address. To summarize, I received this:

We have no shortage of serious issues facing this country. We just lack serious politicians and a serious electorate to discuss and address them.
We are going down the road of facing the same problems starting to confront European countries that never properly assimilated their immigrants. Anyone who dares raise the issue is labeled a closet racist or a conservative freak.
Of course, if you support American competitive policies, you must be a protectionist, right? Everyone who stands for something is condemned to a little label.

People are tired of the same speeches and hollow talking points. Today’s critical issues have to be dealt with and many people are looking for the litmus test for candidates to see if there are any real choices.

Carlinism: The companies and countries with the best-trained work force are also the toughest competitors.