Month: August 2014

Hotels are making billions from added fees

Posted on August 28, 2014 in Industries, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

CU Blog - Hotels are making billions from added fees - Photo 1

The attack on the middle class continues…

The foregoing news article/VIDEO relates to the middle class in the US. Normally this would not be an issue for the Caribbean to consider except this story is relating the pressures on the customer base that the region relies on for its primary economic driver: tourism.

Plus most Caribbean resorts also apply a “resort fee”.

By: NBC News – The Today Show
How hotels are making billions from added fees – http://www.today.com/video/today/55935286#55935286
Hotels are taking a page from the airline industry, and it’s costing consumers a lot more. The fees added up to $2.5 billion just last year. NBC’s Kerry Sanders reports.

This subject is pivotal in the roadmap for elevation of the Caribbean economy, which maintains that tourism will continue to be the primary economic driver in the region for the foreseeable future. The book Go Lean…Caribbean calls for the elevation of Caribbean society, to re-focus, re-boot, and optimize all the engines of commerce so as to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. The Caribbean has become a playground for the US. So we cannot, indeed we must not ignore the middle class.

What is important in this discussion is the functionality of economic planning. Already the attacks on the middle class has shrunk their disposable income, retirement savings and buying power. We need to continue to monitor the progress of this economic group. This effort (the foregoing VIDEO and the Appendix) is an iteration in this monitoring charter.

The Great Recession came and went. The US lost $11 Trillion in the crisis, then gained $13.5 Trillion in the recovery (Go Lean book Page 69). Unfortunately the ones that lost are not the ones that gained. The world has changed; the middle class has shrunk, the poor has expanded, and the One Percent has expanded in affluence and influence.

So the markets that Caribbean tourism planners cater to have now changed. The Great Recession should have been a lesson enough for the Caribbean to develop a more resilient economy, to be nimble in strategies, tactics and implementation. Unfortunately, the experience (and the following list) shows that the planners are repeating the same mistakes and following the same bad American model. The following are resort fees of what are considered the best properties in the Caribbean, according to the US-based cable TV Travel Channel (http://www.travelchannel.com/interests/beaches/articles/top-10-caribbean-resorts):

Preface: Top 10 Caribbean Resorts

Welcome to paradise. We’re counting down Caribbean resorts with crystal-clear waters, powder-soft sands, sumptuous settings and world-class accommodations. These aren’t your average cookie-cutter beachfront hotels either. These Caribbean hot spots rank among the most luxurious and lavish in the world:

Resort Property

Resort Fee

1

 Hyatt Regency, Aruba Resort & Casino

– $0.00 –

2

 CaneelBay, St. John, US Virgin Island

10% Service Fee

3

 Parrot Cay By Como, Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands

– $0.00 –

4

 Little Dix Bay, Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands

$32.00

5

 Beaches Turks & Caicos Resort and Spa, Providenciales

All   Inclusive

6

 Ritz-Carlton St. Thomas, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands

$62.00

7

 Four Seasons Resort, Pinney’s Beach, Charlestown, Nevis

$33.85 + $20.00

8

 Atlantis, ParadiseIsland, Nassau, Bahamas

$20.70 – $65.95

9

 Sandy Lane, St. James, Barbados

– $0.00 –

10

 Hotel Maroma, Cancun, Mexico St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort, Puerto Rico

$60.00

According to the foregoing VIDEO and article in the Appendix, there are major issues in the acceptance of hotel resort fees. In the US, complaints have been made to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the US watchdog for deceptive business practices. Despite some queries, there has been no definitive regulatory action.

CU Blog - Hotels are making billions from added fees - Photo 2We must do better in the Caribbean. The fear is that these practices may lead more to embrace “cruises” as their mode for enjoying Caribbean shores. This may be how the US middle class “plays” in the Caribbean.

What is wrong with cruises? Nothing … per se. We welcome all visitors that come to the region. As it is, the Go Lean book describes 80 million visitors annually. If there is a preference though, we would choose air-hotel packages as opposed to cruise options. The Go Lean book details that cruise passengers average $237/day in spending while on a cruise ship. Unfortunately, the majority (80%) of that money is spent with the foreign-based cruise line, not in the destination; the port cities get trinkets ($20 – $30 per day) in port-side souvenirs and tours.

Resort hotels in the Caribbean generate a lot of economic activities down the line: airports, taxis, restaurants, casinos, shopping, etc. The strategy employed by cruise lines is to embed most of all these activities on the ship. This difference is not ignored in the Go Lean consideration of Caribbean commerce (Page 61).

This book Go Lean… Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU/Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and marshal against economic crimes.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

Early in the book, the responsibility of monitoring and managing economic trends were identified as a crucial role of the CU; these statements were pronounced in the Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 13) as follows:

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxv.  Whereas the legacy of international democracies had been imperiled due to a global financial crisis, the structure of the Federation must allow for financial stability and assurance of the Federation’s institutions. To mandate the economic vibrancy of the region, monetary and fiscal controls and policies must be incorporated as proactive and reactive measures. These measures must address threats against the financial integrity of the Federation and of the member-states.

The Caribbean tourism resort properties depend on their resort amenities. This commentary previously related details of the changing macro-economic factors (like demographics) that are currently affecting the region’s resorts, including amenities like golf and casinos:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1984 Casinos Changing/Failing Business Model
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1943 The Future of Golf; Vital for   Tourism
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=782 Open/Review the Time Capsule: The Great Recession of 2008
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273 10 Things We Want from the US and 10 Things We Don’t Want from the US – # 2: Tourists
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=242 The Erosion of the Middle Class
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=235 Tourism’s changing profile

Accordingly the tourist industry needs to be cognizant of the changing landscape in world economics; they need to minimize the downward pressure on their product. There needs to be a promoter for Caribbean commerce and a Sentinel for Caribbean image.

Who is up for this challenge? Not the FTC; despite having two Caribbean territories within its scope (Puerto Rico & US Virgin Islands), this agency has “fallen asleep at the switch” in its duty to regulate the markets and mandate a level-playing-field. For the Caribbean (region as a whole) we must perform this function on our own.

This roadmap posits that the Caribbean must not allow the US to lead for our own nation-building. We must step up and step forward for ourselves. We have the means and the methods to better ensure a quality experience to our hotel/resort visitors. The roadmap calls for oversight by an Interstate Commerce Administration within the Commerce Department of the CU. But there is no need for Caribbean hoteliers to fear! This agency will be more of a partner/promoter than that of a regulator. The plan is simple: require non-optional resort fee pricing to be fully disclosed as part of the base hotel rate. Then ensure a level-playing-field for all market participants.

This strategy, tactic and implementation features the heavy-lifting of Caribbean economic reform/reboot. Caribbean tourism is in need of this reform/reboot to attract and return visitors to our shores to enjoy our hospitality. But the interest of our visitors must also be protected, they are also stakeholders in the Caribbean reboot effort. The Go Lean… Caribbean book details the community ethos to adopt to proactively mitigate the dire effects of the changed demographic landscape, plus the executions of these additional strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies:

Community Ethos – Economic Principle – People Respond to Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Best Address on the Planet Page 45
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Trade and Globalization Page 70
Separation of Powers – Sports and Culture Administration Page 81
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media Page 111
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization Page 119
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008 Page 136
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Anecdote – Butch   Stewart – Sandals Resorts Growth in   Tourism – Responding to  Guests Needs Page 189
Advocacy – Ways to Enhance Tourism Page 190
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Cruise Tourism Page 193
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Help the Middle Class Page 223
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the One Percent Page 224

The book Go Lean…Caribbean purports that the Caribbean is the greatest address in the world and sets on a roadmap to extend the invitation of Caribbean hospitality to not just Americans, but also the rest of the world. In order to appeal to the global market, this roadmap, posits that regional tourism stakeholders must traverse the changing landscape, in which some of the agents-of-change are technology and globalization.

The plan also calls for establishing Trade Mission Offices in divergent cities like Spain and Tokyo for outreach to Mid & Far Eastern markets.

The issues in the foregoing news stories emerged mostly because of the different experiences in booking hotel rooms online and then engaging the resort properties at check-in/check-out.  The roadmap advocates the art and science of using Internet & Communications Technologies and Social Media for bookings, and also for the advertising and selling of Caribbean culture and amenities. The plan is also to monitor and track comments/complaints from online postings – many have complained about being “nickeled-and-dimed” in hotels due to various resort/amenity fees.

With this roadmap, the people (and governing institutions) of the Caribbean step up and declare that we have learned from the lessons of the past; we have streamlined our products/services and we are ready to be the best address for the world to visit, even for those among the middle classes. The Caribbean therefore prepares for a better future, one in which the world recognizes that we are the best place to live, work and play.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

—————————————————————————

APPENDIX

Title: News Article: Resort Fees Explained: How to Spot (and Avoid) Them on Your Next Trip
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shermans-travel/resort-fees_b_4098716.html

Ah, those pesky resort fees. We’ve all encountered them in our travels, lurking on our hotel bills.

They’ve been around since the 1990s when they were generally utilized to pay for the upkeep of high-end facilities at upscale resorts; the beach clubs and tennis courts, for example. However, in the last five years or so, more and more hotels have been tacking on these annoying — and often spendy — extra charges for considerably lower-end facilities. For example, almost every explanation of these fees we’ve encountered includes such uninspiring “perks” as a newspaper and local phone calls.

According to research by Bjorn Hanson, divisional dean of the PrestonRobertTischCenter for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management at New YorkUniversity, the U.S. hotel industry collected approximately $1.55 billion in fees and surcharges in 2009. Not all of which were resort fees, but you can see how fees and extras add up. Here’s a breakdown of these fees, how they work, when they’re charged, and how you can avoid them.

What is a Resort Fee?

A resort fee is a (usually unadvertised) mandatory fee tacked onto a nightly room rate. Fees can be as low as $3.50 per night at the Clarion Inn & Suites at International Drive, Orlando (they call this one a “safe fee”), to as much as $60 per night for the St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort, Puerto Rico.

A resort fee is almost always a fixed rate that is paid per room, per night, however some of the perks that come with the fee are only good for one person; like the one mai tai per day, per room offered by the Waikiki Beach Resort & Spa ($25 a day), or at Bally’s Las Vegas, where rooms sleep up to four people, but the $18 resort fee only allows two people access to the fitness center.

The things included in your fees run the gamut from the sublime ($25 resort fee applied towards some services at The Spa at the Trump Hotel, Las Vegas) to the ridiculous. Notary service at the Mirage Las Vegas ($25), anyone? But generally, the fee includes amenities such as WiFi, shuttle service, a newspaper, and the in-room phone.

Who Charges a Resort Fee?

You’ll find resort fees are most prevalent in a few specific destinations: Las Vegas, the Caribbean, Florida, and Hawaii. In Las Vegas, you’ll be hard pressed to find a hotel that does not charge a resort fee. The few that haven’t charged a fee in the past – such as Ceasar’s, which even launched a Facebook page at one point that asked visitors to “join the fight against Las Vegas resort fees” — are steadily jumping onto the resort fee bandwagon. From the point of view of the hotel, this is understandable. Why miss out on the extra cash that everyone else is already getting?

A few ski resorts also add resort fees, One   Ski Hill Place in Breckenridge, Colorado, for example, charges $30 a night, and the Viceroy Snowmass, also in Colorado, charges $16 a night.

How Do You Know if Your Hotel Charges a Resort Fee?

Read the fine print before you book. Resort fees tend to be hidden from advertised rates – the rationale presumably being that the site can lure guests in with low room rates before hitting them with an extra fee later. Say you’re searching for a hotel in Las Vegas on a third-party web site. You might see a good deal pop up like this one we found: The Palms Casino Resort for $67 on October 22. However, it’s not until you get to the booking page that you see the resort fee listed ($20 per night); bundled together with the taxes.

Several hotels hide the resort fee from their advertised room rates until you are ready to book; and even then they often do not include the fee in the reservation total, instead running a strip of (literally) fine print saying something like “rate and total room rates do not include the daily resort fee of $22 or applicable taxes.” (That’s taken from the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas). You usually end up handing over the money at check-in or check-out.

While there’s often an element of surprise with resort fees, hotels have at least become more upfront about them since the FTC sent a letter to 22 hotel operators last year warning that their online rates may have been deceptive and in violation of FTC regulations. If you are still unsure, don’t hesitate to call the hotel before booking to ask exactly how much you will be paying, and for what.

Do You Have to Pay It?

The short answer is yes. There are a few resources available if you’re looking for more detail about resort fees. VegasChatter, for example, keeps an up-to-date list of Las Vegas hotels not charging resort fees (it contains only 11 hotels). There’s also no harm in trying to get the fees waived, especially if you advise management that you have no intention of using the facilities, or if you don’t want a newspaper or WiFi. This is more likely to be successful if you have status with the hotel’s loyalty program, which brings us to our final point…

Do You Earn Points on Resort Fees?

No. The extra money you are paying per night does not go toward your loyalty program status – even more reason to read the fine print, and keep yourself informed.

By Karen Dion.

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Students developing nail polish to detect date rape drugs

Posted on August 27, 2014 in Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

CU Blog - Students developing nail polish to detect date rape drugs - Photo

It’s back to school time! For K-12 and colleges. At the tertiary level, it’s time again for all the good, bad and ugly of the college experience.

The issue in the foregoing news article/VIDEO relates more to the ugly side of the college experience, especially for young girls on and near college campuses – sexual violence. But this issue is bigger than just college, date-rape, and university mitigations, this is about human rights.

By: NBC News – The Today Show
A group of male students at North Carolina State University is taking on a problem on campus, developing a nail polish that changes color to indicate the presence of date-rape drugs. NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez reports, as follows:


NBC News – The Today Show – August 26, 2014 –
http://www.today.com/video/today/55935260#55935260

This story is being brought into focus in a consideration of the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the economic optimization in the region. How does this story relate?

Education
College Campuses
Justice Systems – Bad Actors
Women Rights
The Greater Good

This CU/Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The roadmap posits that the economy of the Caribbean is inextricably linked to the security of the Caribbean. The security scope of the CU is mostly focused on the “bad actors” that might emerge to exploit the new Caribbean economic engines. The book also focuses on traditional crime-and-punishment issues. The subject of date rape and sexual violence falls on the member-state side of the separation-of-powers divide, the CU does retain jurisdiction on Self-Governing Entities (SGE’s). A growth strategy of the roadmap is to invite, foster and incubate academic institutions to the region under the SGE scheme. The CU will also feature a jurisdiction of monitoring and metering (ratings, rankings, service levels, etc) the delivery of local governments in their execution of the Social Contract. For these reason, 3-prong focus of the CU prime directive is apropos: economic, security and governing engines.

Change has come to the Caribbean, but as the roadmap depicts, the problem of sexual violence (a human rights abuse) had persisted long before, so there is the need to mitigate recidivism in the region. Who are those most at risk for this behavior, and their victims? What efforts can be implemented to mitigate and protect our citizens, especially young innocent girls, venturing into the brave new world to foster their education and impact their communites.

Remember Natalee Holloway? (See the consideration on Page 190 of the Go Lean book).

“Serve and protect”. This is the new lean Caribbean!

The Go Lean roadmap posits that every woman has a right to a violence-free existence, on campus, in the family and in society; it is reprehensible that in so many Caribbean/Latin countries women are still viewed as lesser beings that can be abused at the whim of men.

What should be done to mitigate these bad practices? How does the Go Lean roadmap address this issue?

The solution in the foregoing VIDEO is “a good start”.

We made this issue personal, and interviewed a College Counselor for Freshman Women in one tertiary school in the Bahamas. (See Appendix).

There needs to be more research and development of more solutions.

This is the charge of the Go Lean…Caribbean roadmap: embrace R&D as a community ethos so as not to accept the status quo – keep moving forward. There are more ethos, strategies, tactics and operational advocacies presented in the Go Lean roadmap as well, so as to ensure that those vulnerable are protected and perpetrators are held accountable for their actions. The following are samples (with page numbers) from the book:

Community Ethos – Privacy –vs- Public Protection Page 23
Community Ethos – Whistleblower Protection Page 23
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering Page 23
Community Ethos – Witness Security Page 23
Community Ethos – Anti Bullying & Mitigations Page 23
Community Ethos – Light Up the Dark Places Page 23
Community Ethos – Minority Equalizations Page 24
Community Ethos – Impacting the Greater   Good Page 34
Strategy – Rule of Law –vs- Vigilantism Page 49
Separation of Powers – CariPol Page 77
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Steps to Implement SGE’s Page 105
Ways to Improve Education Page 159
Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Ways to Impact Justice Page 177
Ways to Remediate and Mitigate Crime Page 178
Ways to Improve Gun Control Page 179
Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering Page 182
Ways to Improve Communications Page 186
Ways to Enhance Tourism – Mitigate Economic Crimes Page 190
Ways to Impact the Prison Industrial Complex – Recidivism Page 211
Ways to Impact Foundations Page 219
Ways to Protect Human Rights Page 220
Ways to Empower Women Page 226
Ways to Impact Youth Page 227
Ways to Impact Persons with Disabilities Page 228

In addition, many related issues/points were elaborated in previous blogs, sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1634 Book Review: ‘Chasing Youth Culture and Getting It Right’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=809 Muslim officials condemn abductions of Nigerian girls
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=695 Brazil’s abused wives find help by going to ‘Dona Carmen’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=392 Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight

For the CU’s deployment of SGE’s, we are front-and center in monitoring, managing and mitigating the issues in this foregoing article/VIDEO. For the Caribbean member-states in general, while the CU does not have sovereignty (its a deputized agency only), it can still provide support services to ensure compliance, accountability and service-level assurances. Yes, in addition to monitoring and metering, the CU can also provide ratings, funding, training, intelligence gathering, and cross border (fugitive) law enforcement.

The goal is simply to make the Caribbean a better place to live work, learn and play; with justice for all, regardless of gender. Simple goal, but heavy-lifting in the execution.

To the Caribbean communities, we say: “Bring it!”

This is not politics or feminism; this is law-and-order. This is just right!

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

——————————————————————

Appendix – Interview

Camille Russell-Smith (CRS) is employed at the College of the Bahamas as a Counselor in the Counseling and Health Services Department. She pays it forward. One task among her duties that grabbed our attention is the “Violence in Interpersonal Relationships” workshops she conducts each semester for incoming freshmen.

Here is the interview with the Go Lean…Caribbean publishers (GLC):

GLC: In this day and age, do you find that it is difficult to reach young men and young women on proper behavior with regards to date-acquaintance-rape threats and risks?

CRS: Definitely a challenge exists in getting young people to realize proper attitudes they must have towards each other in order to foster healthy relationships It is important to raise their awareness of how they can easily abuse the rights of others. Further it is important to remind all students, particularly women, of the need to be ever vigilant, not to assume that a friend-date-acquaintance will respect their rights and not take advantage of any vulnerabilities.

GLC: Is there an ongoing problem on your campus with date- acquaintance rape?

CRS: There have been some related incidents between students of the College, though not necessarily on campus. However, I continue to counsel young women on the fallout and consequences of what happens when they go out at night. What I worry about the most is the fact that so many women believe that the rape may be their fault, for example if they went to a bar, but told their family/friends that they were going somewhere benign, like the library. However, the penalty for lying is definitely not being raped.

GLC: How do you hope to mitigate these threats?

CRS: Education, awareness, advocacies. But it is hard. I am going against a “tidal wave” in the other direction. The music, videos, images in the media, makes many young men feel as if they have some sense of entitlement. Then many women feel as if they can only be accepted if they allow, tolerate sexually abusive behavior without “making waves”.

GLC: How do you feel about the innovations in this foregoing VIDEO?

CRS: This innovation of a chemical that can detect the presence of a date-rape drug is a good start. We need more such innovations. The special glass, as mentioned in the foregoing article, sounds like another good innovation. I can imagine that other such developments will come soon.

GLC: What hope do you see for the future in our communities regarding these kinds of attitudes that can lead to unhealthy relationships?

CRS: We need to get our communities to the point that it is commonly accepted that “no means no”. Also, that those prosecuted for sex crimes would not be cuddled or excused and most importantly that women that report crimes would not be shunned. We can be successful. The acceptance in the community has changed regarding domestic violence and I believe that acceptance of date-acquaintance-rape will change also.

GLC: Thank you for your insights. Any final words?

CRS: We must do this. We must try to change our country and the Caribbean region as a whole. There are far too many “old views, old habits, and old philosophies” in our communities where some men think they can ignore the rights of women. Let’s please fix this…once and for all.

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Blog # 150 – Why So Long? Can’t We Just…

Posted on August 26, 2014 in Ethos, Implementation

Go Lean Commentary

CU Blog - Why so long - Can't we just - Photo 1We have now reached a milestone in the publishing of the (sometimes) daily blogs from the publishers of Go Lean…Caribbean, 150 submissions. This is a good time to address a consistent question we’ve gotten from some readers:

Why are the blog commentaries so long?
Can’t you accomplish the same objective with shorter blogs?

This submission here is meant to be a practice in active listening: We hear you! Consider this attribute of  one blog published on August 20, 2014:

3742 words: NYC’s MetroCard – A Model for the Caribbean Dollar – https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2074

So can we accomplish the same objectives with shorter commentaries? The answer: No!

The question is interpreted by us as “Can’t we just…?”

There is a serious reason why this is the answer: These are serious issues. We cannot, must not skim on the consideration of the solutions.

Our experience has taught us that serious problems require thorough and thoughtful consideration. There is no place for abbreviation in this exercise.

Our experience?

Consider these events from 2008, (a frequent topic of discussion in Go Lean…Caribbean blogs):

Video: Too Big To Fail – 2011 Movie (Pardon the adult language):
YouTube Video Sharing Site (Retrieved 08/20/2014) –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqf97p1Rdm0

As the events of September 2008 unfolded where the financial system (Wall Street) was on the brink of collapse, stakeholders from the US Treasury Department assembled a representative body to conceive a remedy.

The resultant plan/proposal was introduced on September 20, by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and was later named the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)[a].

The plan/proposal was only three pages long, intentionally short on details to facilitate quick passage by Congress.[b]

The plan called for the U.S. Treasury to acquire up to $700 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities…

… in the end, in an analysis by Bloomberg Business News Source, it was disclosed that the Federal Reserve had, by March 2009, committed $7.77 trillion to rescuing the financial system. This amount is more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.[c]
Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia Source (Retrieved 08/20/2014) –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008

So can’t we just…?

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB). This Caribbean empowerment roadmap has 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The book described both the CU and CCB as hallmarks of technocracy, a commitment to efficiency and effectiveness. The book itself is 370 pages and covers 144 different missions.

As alluded above, principals in the Go Lean…Caribbean movement were front-and-center in the events that unfurled in 2008.

CU Blog - Why so long - Can't we just - Photo 2

The roadmap was constructed with the ethos to be thorough in the assessment, strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies to understand the complexities of our time and forge permanent change in the Caribbean region. The following is a sample of these specific details from the book:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering Page 23
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States Page 45
Strategy – Missions – 144 Advocacies Page 457
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region Page 127
Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008 Page 136
Planning – Lessons Learned from New York City Page 137
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Reforms for Banking Regulations Page 199
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Wall Street Page 200
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood Page 202
Appendix – Credit Ratings Agencies in 2008 Page 276

Imagine following a long complex and detailed recipe for baking a cake. To get the best results, it is important to include all the ingredients and follow the exacting instructions, the more detailed the better.

The quest for Go Lean…Caribbean is not as simple as baking a cake, rather a goal that is so much more important, to make the Caribbean region a better place to live, work and play.

We cannot skim on this effort – too much is at stake!

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———————

Appendices:
a.  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21draftcnd.html?_r=0; retrieved August 20, 2014.
b.  http://content.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1843642,00.html; retrieved August 20, 2014.
c.  Ivry, Bob; Keoun, Bradley; Kuntz, Phil (November 28, 2011). “Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress”. Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved May 14, 2012 from: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html.

 

 

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A Textbook Case of Price-gouging

Posted on August 25, 2014 in Economics, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

Its déjà-vu all over again.

Didn’t we see this before? Yes, just recently as the cause of the Great Recession, where the global economy was brought to the precipice (2008) due to a defective eco-system with American home mortgage financing and servicing. Now, the foregoing VIDEO alludes to a similar “fox in charge of the hen house” scenario – this time with college education textbooks.

Why university books in America are so expensive? (Click ad-supported VIDEO here)

The Economist Magazine (Posted 08-20-2014) –
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/08/daily-chart-11

Textbook Price 1The issue in this VIDEO reflects American Capitalism 101 – not free market economics – where public policy is set to benefit private parties. (This is defined by some as Crony Capitalism). Since many college expenses are subsidized by governments (federal and state) by means of grants or low-interest, deferred student loans, the marketplace knows that governmental entities will pay…unconditionally, so of course prices go up … and up.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that the Caribbean region must not allow the US to take the lead for our own nation-building, that American capitalistic interest tends to highjack policies intended for the Greater Good.

This assessment applies to the mortgage bubble/crisis of the 2000’s, foreign policy in the Latin America and now to college education textbooks. When will we learn?

The Go Lean book, and accompanying blog commentaries, go even deeper and hypothesize that the traditional American college educated career paths has led to disastrous policies for the Caribbean in whole, and for each specific country in particular. This is a conclusion based on a macro focus, not the micro.

From a micro perspective, college education is great for the individual, enabling them to increase their earning potential in society – every additional year of schooling increases their earnings by about 10%. But on the macro, the Caribbean assimilation of an American college education strategy has been one disaster after another – an incontrovertible brain drain, capital flight of unpaid student loans and illegal immigration.

Now we are learning from this VIDEO, that the American Textbook Publishing schema is designed to take even more of the treasuries from the parents of Caribbean students that are paying tuition, plus room-and-board.

This broken system in America does not have to be tolerated in the Caribbean, anymore. Change has now come. The driver of this change is technology and globalization. The Go Lean book posits that the governmental administrations and educational institutions of the region should invest in alternative higher education options and as much technological educational advances (e-Learning) as possible, for its citizens.

This book Go Lean… Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), which represents change for the region. The CU/Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean roadmap provides turn-by-turn directions on how to forge this change in the region for a reboot of the Caribbean tertiary education systems, economy, governance and Caribbean society as a whole. This roadmap is presented as a planning tool, pronouncing this point early in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12 & 14) with these statements:

xix.      Whereas our legacy in recent times is one of societal abandonment, it is imperative that incentives and encouragement be put in place to first dissuade the human flight, and then entice and welcome the return of our Diaspora back to our shores …

xxi.      Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

xxvii.      Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

The Go Lean book posits that even though education is a vital ingredient for Caribbean economic empowerment, there has been a lot of flawed decision-making in the past, both individually and community-wise. The vision of the CU is a confederation of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean to do the heavy-lifting of optimizing educational policies. The Go Lean book details those policies; and other ethos to adopt, plus the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the tertiary education in the region:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments (ROI) Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Close the Digital Divide Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing – Purchasing Cooperatives Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization Page 57
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Education Department Page 85
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Labor Department – On Job Training Page 89
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization Page 119
Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008 Page 136
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Education Page 159
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Student Loans Page 160
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance Page 169
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Libraries Page 187
Appendix – Education and Economic Growth Page 258
Appendix – Measuring Education Page 266
Appendix – New Student Loan Scandal – Rolling Stone Magazine Page 286

The foregoing video relates to topics that are of serious concern for Caribbean planners. While the US is the world’s largest Single Market economy, we want to only model some of the American example. We want to foster an education agenda that propels the Caribbean’s best interest, not some American special interest group. There are many Go Lean blog commentaries that have echoed this point, addressing the subject of Caribbean education decision-making and ramifications. See sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126 Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping   Global Job Market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1698 STEM Jobs Are Filling Slowly
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1596 Book Review: ‘Prosper Where You Are   Planted’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1470 College of the Bahamas Master Plan 2025 – Reach   for the Lamp-Post
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1433 Caribbean   loses more than 70 percent of tertiary educated to brain drain
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1256 Traditional 4-year Colleges – Terrible   Investment for Region and Jobs
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=459 CXC and UK   textbook publisher hosting CCSLC workshops in Barbados
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=398 Self-employment on the rise in the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273 10 Things We Don’t Want from the US – American   Self-Interest Policies

The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that many problems of the region are too big for any one member-state to solve alone, that there is the need for the technocracy of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. The purpose of this Go Lean/CU roadmap is to make the Caribbean homeland, a better place to live, work, learn and play. This effort is more than academic, this involves some alleviation of the pain and suffering back in the homeland.

We need jobs, and we need an educated labor-force to facilitate the demands of a competitive world. The roadmap posits that to succeed in the global marketplace, the Caribbean region must not only consume but rather also create, produce, and distribute intellectual property. So subjects like prices of textbooks and e-books are germane for our consideration, (see Appendix below). Plus with tactics like Group Purchasing (GPO), there are effective ways to minimize the associated costs of educating the general population, and specific learning needs.

Textbook Price 2

There is the need for specific skills training – we need more STEM enthusiasts (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). So the issue, as expressed in the foregoing video, and the remediation as expressed in Go Lean…Caribbean is an important reflection of technocratic problem solving being advocated for the CU.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the changes described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean.

Download the book Go Lean…Caribbean now!

—————————————————————————————————————-

APPENDIX

High Textbook Prices Anecdote #1: (http://www.timesheraldonline.com/news/ci_25464834/throwing-book-at-high-costs-college-textbooks)

Former Napa College student Jena Goodman of Vallejo said student higher education leaders from across California are working to find ways to lighten the financial load of buying textbooks.

“For me, I’ve spent up to $150 for a textbook and as much as $500 to $600 per semester on books,” said Goodman.

High Textbook Prices Anecdote #2: (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/why-are-college-textbooks-so-absurdly-expensive/266801/)

According to the National Association of College Stores, the average college student reports paying about $655 for textbooks and supplies annually, down a bit from $702 four years ago. The NACS credits that fall to its efforts to promote used books along with programs that let students rent rather than buy their texts.

Proposed Solution: (http://www.vox.com/2014/8/25/6058017/why-are-college-textbooks-so-expensive)
…
One [option] is to treat college textbooks more like high school textbooks — a college would purchase the textbooks, then rent them out to students for a fee. That spreads out the cost of materials over multiple years and for multiple students, and makes textbooks cheaper. But to be effective, it also has to work in bulk, which means faculty have to agree on texts to use for their classes.

Another alternative is open educational resources, which are open-source materials available for free that can take the place of textbooks. Peter Thorsness, a University of Wyoming professor [and a father of a first time college student], said upper-level science classes are now more likely to use such materials from the National Institutes of Health. And some researchers think that open educational resources and other online materials are poised to disrupt the textbook market.

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Sports Role Model – Turn On the SEC Network

Posted on August 24, 2014 in Economics, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

There is a new religion in the South (United States). It is SEC football. For many in the South, football is life, “everything else is details”. Now, (starting August 28) the SEC adherents can worship 7-24-365 on the SEC Network cable channel. This is a melding of sports, television, southern culture and economics – this is big business – and a religious-like devotion.

The SEC (South East Conference) is the Number 1 (American) football conference in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Their revenues, attendance, championships, NFL draft picks and TV ratings are the best-of-the-best of all other conferences. This last subject is the focus of this commentary: TV ratings and broadcast rights.

Title: Turn On the SEC
By: Jon Saraceno

CU Blog - Sports Role Model - Turn On the SEC - Photo 1In a melding of two powerful sports brands, cable-television behemoth ESPN and the football-crazed Southeastern Conference have joined forces to form the SEC Network, debuting August 14. ESPN Radio host Paul Finebaum, a veteran observer of all things SEC, believes ­audience response will be rabid. That view seems particularly valid given that college football is the unquestioned autumnal king of the South.

“SEC fans are an interesting bunch,” Finebaum observes. “They don’t like being subjected to other leagues [that have TV networks], like the Big Ten or the Pac-12. Now they can say, ‘Nothing else exists but us — the rest of the world can vaporize, for all we care.’ It is as irritating to non-SEC fans as it is pleasing to a son of the South.”

CU Blog - Sports Role Model - Turn On the SEC - Photo 3Finebaum understands the parochialism. The Memphis, Tenn., native worked for three decades in Birmingham, Ala., before relocating to Charlotte, N.C., as the SEC Network’s first on-air hire when ESPN announced the formation of the network last year. The network launches with a well-timed countdown to the start of the 2014 football season. Blastoff is Aug. 28, when Texas A&M travels to South Carolina. Brent Musburger, one of several marquee on-air hires, will call the game. But the SEC Network’s most popular personality might be former Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow.

Programming for the 24/7 multiplatform channel will be highlighted by 45 SEC football games. The network also will showcase men’s basketball (an estimated 100 games), women’s basketball (60 games) and baseball (75 games), along with select coverage from the league’s 21 sports. In all, more than 1,000 events will be aired across the network’s digital platform.

Following ESPN’s time-tested formula of bracketing programming and analysis around live events, the SEC Network will televise studio shows and live-event days such as spring football games and national signing day for college-football recruits.

Beyond content, the marriage between ESPN and the conference should be a match made in financial heaven. Disney-owned ESPN expects to reap untold hundreds of millions in advertising revenue during the 20-year deal. Increased exposure and lucrative media rights bode well for all 14 SEC schools.
American Way August 2014 – American Airlines Inflight Magazine –
http://hub.aa.com/en/aw/turn-on-the-sec

CU Blog - Sports Role Model - Turn On the SEC - Photo 2

The Caribbean does not currently have an eco-system for intercollegiate athletics. The book Go Lean…Caribbean, and aligning blog commentaries, asserts that the region can be a better place to live, work and play; that the economy can be grown methodically by embracing progressive strategies in sports at all levels: professional, amateur and intercollegiate.

While the Caribbean may not have the sports business eco-system, we do have the underlying assets: the athletes. The Caribbean supply the world, including the NCAA, with the best-of-the-best in the sports genres of basketball, track-and-field, soccer-FIFA-football and other endeavors. The Go Lean book recognizes and fosters the genius qualifiers of many Caribbean athletes.

The goal now is foster the local eco-system in the homeland so that  those with talent would not have to flee the region to garner the business returns on their athletic investments.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a technocratic federal government to administer and optimize the economic/security/ governing engines of the region’s 30 member-states. At the outset, the roadmap recognizes the value of sports in the roadmap with these statements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13 & 14):

xxvi. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

xxxi. Whereas sports have been a source of great pride for the Caribbean region, the economic returns from these ventures have not been evenly distributed as in other societies. The Federation must therefore facilitate the eco-systems and vertical industries of sports as a business, recreation, national pastime and even sports tourism – modeling the Olympics.

The Go Lean roadmap calls for the market organizations to better garner the economic benefits of sports. One of the biggest contribution the CU will make is the facilitation of sports venues: arenas and stadia. Sports can be big business! But even when money is not involved, other benefits abound: educational scholarships, image, national pride, and something more, something non-tangible yet of utmost importance for the Go Lean roadmap: less societal abandonment. A mission of the CU is to reduce the brain drain and incentivize repatriation of the Diaspora.

Another area of the Go Lean economic empowerment roadmap that relates to the foregoing article is the strategy is to create a Single (Media) Market to leverage the value of broadcast rights for the region, the resultant consolidated market would cover 30 member-states, 4 languages and 42 million people. The successful execution of this strategy will elevate the art, science and genius of sport enterprises in the region. Now is the time for all of the Caribbean to lean-in to the following community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies detailed in the book Go Lean … Caribbean to re-boot the delivery of the regional solutions to elevate the Caribbean region through sports:

Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways Page 21
Community Ethos – Return on Investments Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Negotiations Page 32
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness Page 36
Strategic – Vision – Consolidating the Region in to a Single Market Page 45
Strategic – Staffing – Sporting Events at Fairgrounds Page 55
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Sports & Culture Administration Page 81
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Fairgrounds Administration Page 83
Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities (Fairgrounds) Page 105
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Education – Reduce Brain Drain Page 159
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Local Government – Parks & Recreation Page 169
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Events Page 191
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Fairgrounds Page 192
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology Expositions Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth Page 227
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Sports Page 229
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living – Sports Leagues Page 234

The Caribbean is the best-of-the-best address on the planet, but there are certain missing features, such as intercollegiate athletics… and jobs. The foregoing article aligns with this Go Lean…Caribbean roadmap to fill these voids. This effort is bigger than sports; this is about Caribbean life; we must elevate our own society. The CU is the vehicle for this goal, this is detailed by the following 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean roadmap anticipates 21,000 direct jobs at fairgrounds and sport venues throughout the region; plus 40,000 new jobs by re-optimizing the region’s educational engines, including colleges & universities.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the empowerments of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. Now is the time to make this region a better place to live, work and play.

Download the book Go Lean…Caribbean now!

APPENDIX – SEC Conference Schools/Teams

CU Blog - Sports Role Model - Turn On the SEC - Photo 4

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Cooling Effect – Oceans and the Climate

Posted on August 23, 2014 in Planning, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Are you smarter than a 5th Grader?

The following is an analysis based on some basic elementary school science. For starters, salt (salinity) has an effect on the absorption of heat – it freezes at a colder temperature (28.4 degrees Fahrenheit) than the 32 degrees for water – salt is thusly the #1 tool for managing snow removal during the winter months in the colder climates. (This dynamic may be unfamiliar to many residents in the Caribbean). When salt is scattered/applied on sidewalks or roads, affected snow would melt … on its own.

Another principle in consideration of this discussion is that Climate Change is mostly associated with Global Warming, and yet, this year (this summer especially in the Northeast US) has been cooler than usual.

So do we have Global Warming or not? Is this a fluke that this summer is cooler than usual? Do we need to prepare for more devastating effects of Climate Change?

Yes, yes and yes!

The book Go Lean…Caribbean calls for the establishment of a regional sentinel to monitor, mitigate and manage the effects of Climate Change on the region’s economic, security and governing engines. This subject is more than just academic for the Caribbean, this affects our life and livelihood. When we get this stewardship wrong, and for 50 years this has been the assessment, we lose out. We have a long track record of losses associated with the perils of Climate Change; consider this sample: Hurricane Andrew (1992 – Bahamas), Hurricane Marilyn (1995 – Virgin Islands), Hurricane Wilma (2005 – Bahamas) and Hurricane Dean (2007 – Belize).

Caribbean losses have not only been property damage and the disruption of commerce. Inevitably, each storm episode created “push” factors for societal abandonment. Then as a community, we lost out on even more economic opportunities associated with the time, talent and treasuries of the Caribbean residents who left – we experienced a brain drain. Today, our “sorry state of affairs” find some regional member-states with an abandonment rate of more than 50% (Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands) and the absence of more than 70% of college-educated citizens.

While 5th Grade Science is important for this empowerment effort, the book Go Lean … Caribbean is not a book of science; it gleans from scientific concepts in communicating the plan to elevate Caribbean society. The book focuses on economics, and relates that the resultant societal engines can be seriously impacted by climate change-led natural disasters: threats and actual impact. The book thusly serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The prime directives of this agency are described as:

  • Optimize the economic engines of the Caribbean to elevate the regional economy to grow to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establish a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean roadmap immediately calls for the establishment of a Homeland Security Department, with an agency to practice the arts and sciences of Emergency Management. The emergencies include natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, flooding, forest fires, and droughts – all now of more frequent occurrences. These types of emergencies should be impacted even further based on the dynamics described in the foregoing article. Emergency Management is not just reactive, it must be proactive as well. This direct correlation of warmer seas and cooling temperatures with the economy, thusly depicts the need for this CU charter and mission:

Title: Davy Jones’s heat locker
Subtitle: The mystery of the pause in global warming may have been solved. The answer seems to lie at the bottom of the sea

CU Blog - Cooling Effect - Oceans and the Climate - Photo 1Over the past few years one of the biggest questions in climate science has been why, since the turn of the century, average surface-air temperatures on Earth have not risen, even though the concentration in the atmosphere of heat-trapping carbon dioxide has continued to go up. This “pause” in global warming has been seized on by those skeptical that humanity needs to act to curb greenhouse-gas emissions or even (in the case of some extreme skeptics) who think that man-made global warming itself is a fantasy. People with a grasp of the law of conservation of energy are, however, skeptical in their turn of these positions and doubt that the pause is such good news. They would rather understand where the missing heat has gone, and why – and thus whether the pause can be expected to continue.

The most likely explanation is that it is hiding in the oceans, which store nine times as much of the sun’s heat as do the atmosphere and land combined. But until this week, descriptions of how the sea might do this have largely come from computer models. Now, thanks to a study published in Science by Chen Xianyao of the Ocean University of China, Qingdao, and Ka-Kit Tung of the University of Washington, Seattle, there are data.

Dr Chen and Dr Tung have shown where exactly in the sea the missing heat is lurking. As the left-hand chart below shows, over the past decade and a bit the ocean depths have been warming faster than the surface. This period corresponds perfectly with the pause, and contrasts with the last two decades of the 20th century, when the surface was warming faster than the deep. The authors calculate that, between 1999 and 2012, 69 zettajoules of heat (that is, 69 x 1011 joules—a huge amount of energy) have been sequestered in the oceans between 300 metres and 1,500 metres down. If it had not been so sequestered, they think, there would have been no pause in warming at the surface.

Hidden depths
The two researchers draw this conclusion from observations collected by 3,000 floats launched by Argo, an international scientific collaboration. These measure the temperature and salinity of the top 2,000 metres of the world’s oceans. In general, their readings match the models’ predictions. But one of the specifics is weird.

Most workers in the field have assumed the Pacific Ocean would be the biggest heat sink, since it is the largest body of water. A study published in Nature in 2013 by Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in San Diego, argued that cooling in the eastern Pacific explained most of the difference between actual temperatures and models of the climate that predict continuous warming. Dr Chen’s and Dr Tung’s research, though, suggests it is the Atlantic (see middle chart) and the Southern Ocean that are doing the sequestering. The Pacific (right-hand chart), and also the Indian Ocean, contribute nothing this way—for surface and deepwater temperatures in both have risen in parallel since 1999.

This has an intriguing implication. Because the Pacific has previously been thought of as the world’s main heat sink, fluctuations affecting it are considered among the most important influences upon the climate. During episodes called El Niño, for example, warm water from its west sloshes eastward over the cooler surface layer there, warming the atmosphere. Kevin Trenberth of America’s National Centre for Atmospheric Research has suggested that a strong Niño could produce a jump in surface-air temperatures and herald the end of the pause. Earlier this summer, a strong Niño was indeed forecast, though the chances of this happening seem to have receded recently.

But if Dr Chen and Dr Tung are right, then the fluctuations in the Atlantic may be more important. In this ocean, saltier tropical water tends to move towards the poles (surface water at the tropics is especially saline because of greater evaporation). As it travels it cools and sinks, carrying its heat into the depths—but not before melting polar ice, which makes the surface water less dense, fresh water being lighter than brine. This fresher water has the effect of slowing the poleward movement of tropical water, moderating heat sequestration. It is not clear precisely how this mechanism is changing so as to send heat farther into the depths. But changing it presumably is.

Understanding that variation is the next task. The process of sequestration must reverse itself at some point, since otherwise the ocean depths would end up hotter than the surface—an unsustainable outcome. And when it does, global warming will resume.

CU Blog - Cooling Effect - Oceans and the Climate - Photo 2

A lot is at stake with this consideration. Our economic drivers in the region – tourism and fisheries – depend on the strength of the Caribbean climate compared to other parts of the world. If change is coming to our climate, then we must be front-and-center in the planning of the mitigations and responses.

The Go Lean book posits that Climate Change is wreaking havoc on Caribbean life now, for the potential for even more harm in the future. This point is pronounced early in the book with this Declaration of Interdependence (Page 11), with this opening statement:

i.     Whereas the earth’s climate has undeniably changed resulting in more severe tropical weather storms, it is necessary to prepare to insure the safety and security of life, property and systems of commerce in our geographical region. As nature recognizes no borders in the target of its destruction, we also must set aside border considerations in the preparation and response to these weather challenges.

To counteract the changes in nature, the Go Lean book advocates the immediate confederation of the 30 member-states into a Trade Federation with the tools/techniques to bring immediate change to the region to benefit one and all member-states. This includes the monitoring/studying of the dynamics of Climate Change. The region’s total population is only 42 million, compared to the whole world’s 6 Billion. We may not be able to change the world’s habits and practices that may exacerbate Climate Change – we must still try – but we can better prepare our homeland for nature’s onslaughts. The empowered CU agencies must therefore liaise with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and foreign entities with the similar scope to monitor, mitigate and manage the causes-and-effects of oceans warming/cooling trends.

The book details that we must first adopt a community ethos, the appropriate attitude/spirit, to forge change in our region. Go Lean details this and other ethos; plus the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to better impact the region’s response (& preparation) for Climate Change:

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices Page 21
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives Page 24
Community Ethos – Non-Government Organizations Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing Page 35
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Single Market & Economy Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Prepare for Natural Disasters Page 45
Strategy – Agents of Change – Climate Change Page 57
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Separation of Powers – Emergency Management Page 76
Separation of Powers – Meteorological & Geological Service Page 79
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Security Initiatives at Start-up Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization Page 119
Planning – Ways to Measure Progress Page 148
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Natural Disasters Page 184
Advocacy – Ways to Ways to Enhance Tourism in the Region Page 190
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Fisheries Page 210
Appendix – History of Puerto Rican Migration to US Page 303
Appendix – US Virgin Islands Economic Timeline Page 305

Change has come to the Caribbean.

The foregoing news article discusses the threats of warming oceans and cooler temperatures. This is today’s issue. New issues will emerge tomorrow and the days after. This establishes that there is a need for a permanent union – a sentinel – to provide efficient stewardship for Caribbean economy, security and governing engines.

The Go Lean…Caribbean posits that the problems of the region are too big for just any one member-state to tackle, there is the need for a regional solution, a regional sentinel. The Caribbean Union Trade Federation submits for this job to be the Caribbean sentinel for the issues, conditions and threats of Climate Change. The people and institutions of the region are hereby urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap, to embrace these changes to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

At the time of this writing, it is 76 degrees in the peak of a mid-summer day in Philadelphia. It should be 96 degrees. The weather forecast for parts of Montana is a winter weather advisory during the next 24 hours, usually it would be 90 degrees. Despite the detractors and naysayers to Climate Change, something is wrong! Even a 5th Grader can discern this.

 

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Sports Role Model – US versus the World

Posted on August 23, 2014 in Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

This is a big weekend in the world of sports, its the US versus the World … again. This time, its the Little League World Series, the baseball tournament in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Even though baseball is played in many countries around the world, the expectation is that it takes an All-Star team from the rest of the world to compete against one American team.

This is the tournament’s Final Four teams, (see Appendix-Bracket below):

US: Chicago* -vs- Las Vegas
World: South Korea* -vs- Japan
* = Winner

The attitude of the US versus the World is the attitude in many other sports endeavors as well; sampled as follows:

  • The NCAA College Baseball Championship Tournament is called the College World Series.
  • The NBA Playoff Champion is referred to as World Champions.
  • Major League Baseball Championship Best-of-Seven Match-up is branded the World Series.
  • National Hockey League All-Star Game is a Match-up of North America (US and Canada) versus the World.

It is evident that the sports eco-system is bigger in the US, than anywhere else in the world. Needless to say, the Caribbean region pales in comparison in accentuating the business of sports. Deficient would not even be a fitting adjective, as there is NO arrangement for intercollegiate sports in the region, despite having 42 million people in 30 different countries. The Caribbean misses out on many opportunities associated with the games people play – especially economic ones: jobs, event bookings, media coverage.

This is the assertion of the book Go Lean…Caribbean, that the Caribbean can be a better place to live, work and play; that the economy can be grown methodically by embracing progressive strategies in recognizing and fostering the genius qualifiers of many Caribbean athletes. So many times, those with talent have had to flee the region to garner the business returns on their athletic investments.

It does not have to be.

The following news article indicates that even amateur Little League baseball is big business:

Title: Little League means big business as revenues soar
By: Josh Peter, USA Today

CU Blog - Sports Role Model - US versus the World - Photo 1The images remain quaint — kids sprinting around the base-paths, fans watching from grass hills, Norman Rockwell-like scenes abound at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa., which culminates Sunday with the championship game. But make no mistake, Little League is big business.

Little League Inc. reported revenue of almost $25 million and assets of more than $85 million in 2012, according to the most recent publicly available tax return it must file to maintain tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Over a five-year period, compensation for Little League Inc.’s CEO, Steve Keener, nearly doubled to $430,000 a year. And in 2012, the 100-person full-time staff made almost $7.5 million in salaries — a year before ESPN agreed to more than double broadcast fees as part of an eight-year, $76 million contract to televise the games during the two-week tournament.

“That’s a lot of money when all the grunt work is volunteer,” said Randy Stevens, president of the Little League in Nashville, Tenn., whose all-star team qualified for the World Series each of the past two years. “Now I’m wondering where it’s all going.”

Keener, elected as CEO in 1996, said revenue has grown at a steady pace and said new money is going back into the program.

“I’m not going to apologize for generating revenue to support the programming issues of this organization,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “But I would apologize if I felt we were not using it to the best of our ability in a prudent manner and getting the most out of the money to benefit this program.”

Keener said the majority of the organization’s costs stem from maintaining the national headquarters in Williamsport, five regional centers — in Connectcut, Georgia, Texas, California, Indiana — a full-time facility in Poland and offices in Hong Kong, Puerto Rico and Canada.

When Little League signed its contract with ESPN in 2007, Keener said, it lowered affiliation fees for the local leagues. He also said Little League pays for 125 criminal background checks for each local league and provides training program for coaches.

“Those are ways we try direct the funds right back to the local programs,” he said.

Little League also pays for travel, lodging and food costs for 16 teams, each of which include 13 players and three coaches. But Stevens, affiliated with the Nashville-based league, said families of the players should receive financial help for travel costs.

He estimated the parents of his players needed up to $35,000 to cover those expenses. A father with the team from Chicago said parents were unsure how they would pay for the trip until five Major League Baseball players offered to cover all travel expenses for the parents.

Keener said the idea of travel assistance is not under consideration.

“I’ve learned never to say never, but it’s unlikely at this point,” he said. “Our responsibility is to provide the travel, the accommodations and all the expenses related to participating in the World Series for the players and the coaches and the umpires who are here working the World Series.”

Keener said giving the players money that could be used for scholarships is not under consideration.

“Anything we would do for one group of kids, we would do for all of the kids. And it’s just not feasible to think that they’re all going to head off to college when they’re getting out of high school, particularly with the kids from the international region,” he said. “It’s just not something we feel is necessary for us to be thinking about when they’re 12 or 13 years old.”

Little League does not charge admission for games at the World Series, but officials do solicit donations while passing around cans during games.

“Whatever money they’re getting, they’re looking for more,” said Ellen Siegel, affiliated with the team from Philadelphia.

But Keener said the $25 million a year pales in comparison to organizations such as the Boys Scouts of America, which reported revenue of $240 million in 2012. He said Little League could not operate without the support of about 1,250,000 volunteers in 7,500 communities.

As far as his salary is concerned, he declined to comment other than to say his compensation is set by a committee of Little League Inc. board members.

Davie Jane Gilmour, Little League International Board of Directors Chairman, said Keener’s salary — and that of the other senior staff members, who in 2012 earned between $100,000 and $250,000 apiece — are in line with salaries at comparable non-profits.

“To be perfectly honest with you, there are many board members on that (compensation) committee who think that our senior staff, and in particular Steve, are underpaid at this point in time,” Gilmour said. “There’s a a pretty strong feeling on the compensation committee that they are highly marketable based on their success here in their work here at Little League.”

The claim of the book Go Lean … Caribbean is that excellence in sports requires a genius qualifier and that genius ability can be found in abundance in the Caribbean. Further that there is something bigger than sports alone at play here, that this is the full effect of globalization in which the Caribbean can export products and services to benefit the homeland.

This commentary has previously promoted the monetary benefits of the sports eco-systems and how Caribbean progeny participate on the world stage:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1508 St Croix’s Tim Duncan to Return to Spurs For Another Season
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1446 Caribbean Players in the 2014 World Cup
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1341 Sports Landlord Model of the College World Series Time
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1148 Sports Bubble – Franchise values in basketball
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1214 Sports Landlord Model – The Art & Science of Temporary Stadiums
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1020 Caribbean Sports Revolutionary & Advocate: FIFA’s Jeffrey Webb
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=498 Sports Nature -vs- Nurture: Book Review of ‘The Sports Gene’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=334 Bahamians Basketballers Make Presence Felt In Libyan League
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=318 The Need for Collegiate Sports Eco-System in the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=60 Could the Caribbean Host the Olympic Games?

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a technocratic federal government to administer and optimize the economic/security/ governing engines of the region’s 30 member-states. At the outset, the roadmap recognizes the value of sports in the roadmap with these statements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13 & 14):

xxvi.      Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

xxxi.      Whereas sports have been a source of great pride for the Caribbean region, the economic returns from these ventures have not been evenly distributed as in other societies. The Federation must therefore facilitate the eco-systems and vertical industries of sports as a business, recreation, national pastime and even sports tourism – modeling the Olympics.

The Go Lean roadmap calls for the market organizations to better explore the economic opportunities for sports. Sports can be big business! But even when money is not involved, other benefits abound. As such the CU will enhance the engines to elevate sports at all levels: amateur, intercollegiate and professional.

The Go Lean book’s economic empowerment roadmap features huge benefits for the region related to sports. The strategy is create leverage for a viable sports landscape by consolidate the region’s 30 member-states / 4 languages into a Single Market of 42 million people. The CU facilitation of applicable venues (stadia, arenas, fields, temporary structures) on CU-owned fairgrounds plus the negotiations for broadcast/streaming rights/licenses will elevate the art, science and genius of sports as an enterprise in the region. As depicted in the foregoing article/VIDEO, even young children, Little League, will participate/benefit in the sports eco-system.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean to lean-in to the following community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies detailed in the book Go Lean … Caribbean to re-boot the delivery of the regional solutions to elevate the Caribbean region through sports:

Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways Page 21
Community Ethos – Return on Investments Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Negotiations Page 32
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness Page 36
Strategic – Vision – Integrating Region in to a Single Market Page 45
Strategic – Staffing – Sporting Events at Fairgrounds Page 55
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Sports & Culture Administration Page 81
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Fairgrounds Administration Page 83
Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities (Fairgrounds) Page 105
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Local Government – Parks & Recreation Page 169
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Events Page 191
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Fairgrounds Page 192
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology Expositions Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth Page 227
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Sports Page 229
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living – Sports Leagues Page 234

The foregoing VIDEO features many sub-stories associated with this year’s Little League World Series (LLWS) tournament, the compelling stories of the rise from the despair of the Chicago inner-city, and Philadelphia’s Mo’ne Davis, the only girl in the tournament. The drama of sports is a microcosm for the drama in life.

Despite the presence of a Caribbean team in this LLWS tournament, no compelling Caribbean stories have emerged. This is an American drama: the United States versus the World. This is not just an attitude in sports, but in many other endeavors as well. The drama and challenges in the Caribbean are of no consequence in the US, we are just a playground for their world.

We need our own tournament to foster Caribbean sports drama and economic benefits.

We need to lean-in to the Go Lean roadmap to build the sports eco-systems to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. We must elevate our own society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———–

APPENDIX – LLWS BRACKETS   (Double-Click for a legible Viewer)

CU Blog - Sports Role Model - US versus the World - Photo 2

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Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market

Posted on August 23, 2014 in Ethos, Industries
Go Lean Commentary

The legend of John Henry [a] illustrated the struggle of man versus machine.

Man lost!

Was that story just an allegory or an anecdote of an actual person and actual events? While the setting of the story is true, the construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in the 1870s (shortly after the US Civil War), the rest of the account may be mere fiction and exaggeration. But the battle of man versus machine continues even today; and man continues to lose.

The below news article asserts that the next round of new jobs are to be found in the acceptance of that defeat, man conceding to the machine.

This point aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean which calls for the elevation of Caribbean economics. The book asserts that the Caribbean region has been losing the battle of globalization and technology. The consequences of our defeat is the sacrifice of our most precious treasure, our people. The assessment of all 30 Caribbean member-states is that every community has lost human capital to emigration. Some communities, like Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands have suffered with an abandonment rate of more than 50% and others have had no choice but to stand on the sideline and watch as more than 70% of college-educated citizens flee their homelands for foreign shores.

There are both “push and pull” factors as to why these ones leave. But the destination countries, North America and Western Europe, may not be such ideal alternatives. These communities have also been suffering from agents-of-change in the modern world and losing badly in the struggle of man-versus-machine, the industrial adoption of automation, and  the corporate assimilation of internet & communication technologies.

Everything has changed…everywhere! It is what it is! The poor is expanding, the middle class is shrinking, and the rich, the One Percent is growing in affluence, influence and power.

The Go Lean book therefore posits that there is a need to re-focus, re-boot, and optimize the engines of commerce so as to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. Considering this article here, depicting that there is the opportunity to create jobs:

Title: Computers reshaping global job market, for better and worse
By: Ann Saphir (Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

CU Blog - Where the Jobs Are - Computers reshaping global job martket - Photo 2(Reuters) – Automation and increasingly sophisticated computers have boosted demand for both highly educated and low-skilled workers around the globe, while eroding demand for middle-skilled jobs, according to research to be presented to global central bankers on Friday.

But only the highly educated workers are benefiting through higher wages, wrote MIT professor David Autor in the paper prepared for a central banking conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Middle- and lower-skilled workers are seeing their wages decline.

That is in part because as middle-skilled jobs dry up, those workers are more likely to seek lower-skilled jobs, boosting the pool of available labor and putting downward pressure on wages.

“(W)hile computerization has strongly contributed to employment polarization, we would not generally expect these employment changes to culminate in wage polarization except in tight labor markets,” Autor wrote.

Any long-term strategy to take advantage of advances in computers should rely heavily on investments in human capital to produce “skills that are complemented rather than substituted by technology,” he said.

Recounting the long history of laborers vilifying technological advances, Autor argues that most such narratives underestimate the fact that computers often complement rather than replace the jobs of higher-skilled workers.

People with skills that are easily replaced by machines, such as 19th-century textile workers, do lose their jobs.

In recent years computer engineers have pushed computers farther into territory formerly considered to be human-only, like driving a car.

Still, computer-driven job polarization has a natural limit, Autor argues. For some jobs, such as plumbers or medical technicians who take blood samples, routine tasks are too intertwined with those requiring interpersonal and other human skills to be easily replaced.

“I expect that a significant stratum of middle skill, non-college jobs combining specific vocational skills with foundational middle skills – literacy, numeracy, adaptability, problem-solving and common sense – will persist in coming decades,” Autor wrote.

Autor, who has been studying technology and its impact on jobs since before the dot-com bubble burst, notes that some economists have pointed to the weak U.S. labor market since the 2000s as evidence of the adverse impact of computerization.

Such modern-day Luddites are mistaken, he suggested. U.S. investment in computers, which had been increasing strongly, dropped just as labor demand also fell, exactly the opposite of what ought to happen if technology is replacing labor.

More likely, he said, globalization is to blame, hurting demand for domestic labor and, like technology, helping to reshape the labor landscape. While in the long run both globalization and technology should in theory benefit the economy, he wrote, their effects are “frequently slow, costly, and disruptive.”

The book Go Lean… Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) with the charter to facilitate jobs in the region. The book posits that ICT (Internet & Communications Technology) can be a great equalizer for the Caribbean to better compete with the rest of the world, relating the experiences of Japan – the #3 global economy – who have competed successfully with great strategies and technocratic execution despite being a small country of only 120+ million people. This modeling of Japan, and other successful communities, aligns with the CU charter; as defined by these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

Early in the Go Lean book, the responsibility to create jobs was identified as an important function for the CU with these pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 14):

xxvi.  Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of ship-building, automobile manufacturing, prefabricated housing, frozen foods, pipelines, call centers, and the prison industrial complex. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

xxviii. Whereas intellectual property can easily traverse national borders, the rights and privileges of intellectual property must be respected at home and abroad. The Federation must install protections to ensure that no abuse of these rights go with impunity, and to ensure that foreign authorities enforce the rights of the intellectual property registered in our region.

xxx.  Whereas the effects of globalization can be felt in every aspect of Caribbean life, from the acquisition of food and clothing, to the ubiquity of ICT, the region cannot only consume, it is imperative that our lands also produce and add to the international community, even if doing so requires some sacrifice and subsidy.

According to the foregoing article, computers are reshaping the global job market, for better and worse. The Go Lean book, and previous blog/commentaries, detailed the principle of job multipliers, how certain industries are better than others for generating multiple indirect jobs down the line for each direct job on a company’s payroll. Industries relating to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics/Medicine) fields have demonstrated high job-multiplier rates of 3.0 to 4.1 factors (Page 260).

The Go Lean… Caribbean book details the creation of 2.2 million new jobs for the Caribbean region, many embracing ICT skill-sets. How? By adoption of certain community ethos, plus the executions of key strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies. The following is a sample from the book:

Assessment – Puerto Rico – The Greece of the Caribbean Page 18
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier Page 22
Community Ethos – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide Page 31
Strategy – Mission – Education Without Further Brain Drain Page 46
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Tactics to Forge an $800 Billion Economy – Japanese Model Page 69
Tactical – Tactics to Forge an $800 Billion Economy – High Multiplier Industries Page 70
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Commerce Department – Patents & Copyrights Page 78
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Trends in Implementing Data Centers Page 106
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact ICT and Social Media Page 111
Planning – Ways to Improve Trade Page 128
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Education Page 159
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Labor Markets and Unions Page 164
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Empowering Immigration – STEM Resources Page 174
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce Page 198
Advocacy – Lessons from America’s Peonage History – John Henry Historicity Page 211
Advocacy – Ways to Promote a Call Center Industry Page 212
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth Page 227
Appendix – Growing 2.2 Million Jobs in 5 Years Page 257
Appendix – Job Multipliers Page 259

The CU will foster job-creating developments, incentivizing many high-tech start-ups and incubating viable companies. The primary ingredient for CU success will be Caribbean people, so we must foster and incite participation of many young people into STEM fields, so as to impact their communities. A second ingredient will be the support of the community – the Go Lean roadmap recognizes the limitation that not everyone in the community will embrace the opportunity to lead in these endeavors. An apathetic disposition is fine-and-well, we simply must not allow that to be a hindrance to those wanting to progress. The community ethos or national spirit, must encourage and spur “achievers” into roles where “they can be all they can be”. The book posits that one person can make a difference.

The Caribbean is arguably the best address on the planet, but the missing pieces for many people are jobs. The Go Lean roadmap starts with the assessment of the true status of the region, then the development of the plan to remediate the status quo, and finally the turn-by-turn directions to get to a new destination: a better place to live, work and play.

This Go Lean roadmap describes that the Caribbean is in crisis, a war with many battlegrounds. Our effort is worth any sacrifice, but this time our battle is not man versus machine, but rather man with the machine.

Download the book Go Lean…Caribbean now!

—————————————————
Footnote – a: John Henry

John Henry is an American folk hero and tall tale. He worked as a “steel-driver”—a man tasked with hammering a steel drill into rock to make holes for explosives to blast the rock away. He died during the construction of a tunnel for a railroad. In the legend, John Henry’s prowess as a steel-driver was measured in a race against a [machine], steam powered hammer, which he won, only to die in victory with his hammer in his hand and heart giving out from stress. The story of John Henry has been the subject of numerous songs, stories, plays, books and novels.

Historicity
The historicity of many aspects of the John Henry legend is subject to debate. Until recently it was generally believed that the race between a man and a steam hammer described in the ballad occurred during the construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Railway in the 1870s.

In particular, the race was thought to have occurred during the boring of Big Bend tunnel near Talcott, West Virginia between 1869 and 1871. Talcott holds a yearly festival named for Henry and a statue and memorial plaque have been placed along a highway south of Talcott as it crosses over the Big Bend tunnel.

CU Blog - Where the Jobs Are - Computers reshaping global job market - Photo 1

In the 2006 book Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend, Scott Reynolds Nelson, an associate professor of history at the College of William and Mary, contends that the John Henry of the ballad was based on a real person, the 20-year-old New Jersey-born African-American freeman, John William Henry (prisoner #497 in the Virginia penitentiary). Nelson speculates that Henry, like many African Americans might have come to Virginia to work on the clean-up of the battlefields after the Civil War. Arrested and tried for burglary, he was among the many convicts released by the warden to work as leased labor on the C&O Railway.

According to Nelson, conditions at the Virginia prison were so terrible that the warden, an idealistic Quaker from Maine, believed the prisoners, many of whom had been arrested on trivial charges, would be better clothed and fed if they were released as laborers to private contractors (he subsequently changed his mind about this and became an opponent of the convict labor system). Nelson asserts that a steam drill race at the Big Bend Tunnel would have been impossible because railroad records do not indicate a steam drill being used there.

Instead, Nelson argues that the contest must have taken place 40 miles away at the Lewis Tunnel, between Talcott and Millboro,  Virginia, where records indicate that prisoners did indeed work beside steam drills night and day. Nelson also argues that the verses of the ballad about John Henry being buried near “the white house”, “in sand”, somewhere that locomotives roar, mean that Henry’s body was buried in the cemetery behind the main building of the Virginia penitentiary, which photos from that time indicate was painted white, and where numerous unmarked graves have been found.

Prison records for John William Henry stopped in 1873, suggesting that he was kept on the record books until it was clear that he was not coming back and had died. The evidence assembled by Nelson, though suggestive, is circumstantial; Nelson himself stresses that John Henry would have been representative of the many hundreds of convict laborers who were killed in unknown circumstances tunneling through the mountains or who died shortly afterwards of silicosis from dust created by the drills and blasting.
 Songs
The well-known narrative ballad of “John Henry” is usually sung in at an upbeat tempo. The hammer songs (or work songs) associated with the “John Henry” ballad, however, are not. Sung slowly and deliberately, these songs usually contain the lines “This old hammer killed John Henry / but it won’t kill me.” Nelson explains that:

…workers managed their labor by setting a “stint,” or pace, for it. Men who violated the stint were shunned … Here was a song that told you what happened to men who worked too fast: they died ugly deaths; their entrails fell on the ground. You sang the song slowly, you worked slowly, you guarded your life, or you died.

There is some controversy among scholars over which came first, the ballad or the hammer songs. Some scholars have suggested that the “John Henry” ballad grew out of the hammer songs, while others believe that the two were always entirely separate.

(Source: Retrieved August 22 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore))

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Recessions and Public Health

Posted on August 21, 2014 in Economics, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

A man needs three things to be happy: something to do, someone to love and something to hope for – declares the book Go Lean… Caribbean (Page 36).

CU Blog - Recessions and Public Health - Photo 1In this vein, there is a whole field of study referred to as Public Health Economics, a subset of Econometrics. One champion of this field is the European Public Health Association or EUPHA; this is an international, multidisciplinary, scientific organization, bringing together around 14,000 public health experts for professional exchange and collaboration throughout Europe. They encourage a multidisciplinary approach to public health. Imagine a group studying the link between a failing economy and increased medical ailments.

While the logical connection of economy-stress-illness may be common sense, the quantification of actual ailments is a science… and art.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean is not a book of science, but gleans from scientific concepts in communicating the plan to elevate Caribbean society. The book focus on economics, and relates that the resultant societal engines can be seriously impacted by public safety/health threats. The book thusly serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of a regional sentinel for public health, the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The complete prime directives are described as:

  • Optimize the economic engines of the Caribbean to elevate the regional economy.
  • Establish a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean roadmap immediately calls for the establishment of a federal Health Department, with a charter to manage the health care and medical dimensions of the Caribbean, in conjunction with, and on behalf of the member-states. This charter will include mental health in its focus, just as serious as any other areas (cancer, trauma, virus, immunizations). This direct correlation of physical and mental health issues with the economy, in this foregoing article, thusly depicts the need for this charter:

Subtitle: The impact of downturns on physical and mental health

Exam results capture pupils’ achievements but not their enjoyment of learning. Life expectancy does not say anything about quality of life. Similarly, statistics on unemployment rates and wage levels do not tell the full story of recessions. Social scientists are increasingly interested in the effects of downturns on public health.

These effects are unclear. There is some evidence that physical health may actually improve in downturns. One paper by Christopher Ruhm[a], now of the University of Virginia, looking at American data from 1972 to 1991, suggests that a one-percentage-point increase in unemployment reduced mortality by 4.6 deaths per 100,000 people. “With shorter working hours, people spend more time at home with their families and may be less stressed from overwork,” suggests Stephen Bezruchka of the University of Washington.

But there is also evidence that big economic crises are correlated with a deterioration in health. The Depression of the 1930s was associated with increases in malnutrition because people had less money to spend on food. In 1928, 14% of adults over 20 in Philadelphia were deemed to be suffering from malnutrition. By 1932 the figure had risen to 26%.

Social scientists are now scouring public-health data for clues about the impact of the recent crisis. A National Bureau of Economic Research paper [b] found that in America there has been a 4.8% increase in the likelihood of self-reported poor health for every one-percentage-point drop in state employment rates.

Some diseases have become more prevalent. In Greece incidence of HIV has risen, with a 50% increase in new infections in 2011 compared with 2010. The jump has been concentrated among injecting drug-users, and has been linked to large cuts to health services. Needle-exchange projects have been pared back, making transmission more likely.

CU Blog - Recessions and Public Health - Photo 2Mental health does appear to suffer during downturns. Mr Ruhm’s work found that suicide rates rose with unemployment. The East Asian crisis of the late 1990s was marked by a spate of suicides: in Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea the crisis was responsible for 10,400 more suicides in 1998 than might normally have been expected. Research on Spain indicates that in the current crisis the suicide rate has increased by 8%. The rise is concentrated among people who are most likely to have lost their job.

Working out how health is affected by recessions is made harder by time lags. Job insecurity may lead people to the bottle, which will have repercussions later. A recent paper co-authored by Paul Frijters at the University of Queensland[c] found that the latest recessionary period was associated with an almost 20% increase in alcoholism-related Google searches in America. Higher alcohol abuse today will worsen health outcomes over time.

Obesity is another slow-burning health problem. Higher unemployment leads to lower incomes, which can make it more difficult for people to eat well. Research from the University of Nebraska finds that “financial stress”—not being able to pay for essentials such as food or rent—is a strong predictor of obesity. In Australia the risk of being obese in 2010 was 20% higher among individuals who experienced financial stress in 2008 and 2009 than among those who did not experience it in either year. Policymakers should keep an eye on this growing body of research for guidance on how to marshal health-care resources when economies fall ill.

Sources

“The effect of the late 2000s financial crisis on suicides in Spain: an interrupted time-series analysis“, by J. A. L. Bernal, A. Gasparrini, C.M. Artundo and M. McKee, The European Journal of Public Health, 2013

“More Than 10,000 Suicides Tied To Economic Crisis, Study Says“, by Melanie Haiken, Forbes Magazine, quoting study published in June (2014) in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

“Was the economic crisis 1997–1998 responsible for rising suicide rates in East/Southeast Asia? A time–trend analysis for Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand“, by S.S. Chang, D. Gunnell, J.A. Sterne, T.H. Lu and A.T. Cheng, Social science & medicine, 2009

“Decomposing the Relationship between Macroeconomic Conditions and Fatal Car Crashes during the Great Recession: Alcohol-and Non-Alcohol-Related Accidents“, by C. Cotti and N. Tefft, The BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2011

“Exploring the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and problem drinking as captured by Google searches in the US“, by P. Frijters, D.W. Johnston, G. Lordan and M.A. Shields, Social science & medicine, 2013

“Financial crisis and austerity measures in Greece: Their impact on health promotion policies and public health care“, by A.A. Ifanti, A.A. Argyriou, F.H. Kalofonou and H.P. Kalofonos, Health Policy, 2013

“Is Malnutrition Increasing?“, by E. Jacobs, American Journal of Public Health and the Nation’s Health, 1933

“HIV-1 outbreak among injecting drug users in Greece, 2011: a preliminary report“, by D. Paraskevis, G. Nikolopoulos, C. Tsiara, D. Paraskeva, A. Antoniadou, M. Lazanas, P. Gargalianos, M Psychogiou, M. Malliori, J. Kremastinou and A Hatzakis, Euro Surveill, 2011

“Are recessions good for your health?“, by C.J. Ruhm, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2000

“Prolonged financial stress predicts subsequent obesity: Results from a prospective study of an Australian national sample“, by M. Siahpush, T.T.K. Huang, A. Sikora, M. Tibbits, R.A. Shaikh, G.K. Singh, Obesity, 2013

“Health and Health Behaviors during the Worst of Times: Evidence from the Great Recession“, by E. Tekin, C. McClellan and K.J. Minyard, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2013

Appendix – Cited References:
a. Retrieved August 21, 2014 from: http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/C_Ruhm_Are_2000.pdf
b. Retrieved August 21, 2014 from: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19234
c. Retrieved August 21, 2014 from: http://www.york.ac.uk/media/economics/13_02.pdf

The Economist Magazine (Posted 08-24-2013; retrieved 08-21-2014) –
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21584020-impact-downturns-physical-and-mental-health-body-research

Consider these crises:

  • Suicides
  • Alcoholism
  • Drug Abuse (Prescription & Illegal Street Varieties)
  • Rage

No one wants to live in a society where these mental health crises remain unmitigated. But the foregoing article relates that increases in many physical ailments (HIV, malnutrition, obesity, etc) also constitute a crisis. The book declares that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”, so the required mitigations start with this Go Lean roadmap.

A lot is at stake – from a declining quality of life all the way to early death.

The Go Lean roadmap immediately calls for the coordination of the region’s healthcare needs. This point is declared early in the Go Lean book, commencing with this opening pronouncement in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12), as follows:

ix.  Whereas the realities of healthcare … cannot be ignored and cannot be afforded without some advanced mitigation, the Federation must arrange for health plans to consolidate premiums of both healthy and sickly people across the wider base of the entire Caribbean population. The mitigation should extend further to disease management, wellness, obesity and smoking cessation programs.

There is no doubt that the Great Recession devastated Caribbean economies, but what were the affects on the region’s physical and mental health? If we want to minimize the “push-and-pull” factors that lead people to emigrate, we must answer this question very thoughtfully, then be prepared for the next crisis. This point was also anticipated in a further pronouncement in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13), as follows:

xxv.   Whereas the legacy of international democracies had been imperiled due to a global financial crisis, the structure of the Federation must allow for financial stability and assurance of the Federation’s institutions. To mandate the economic vibrancy of the region, monetary and fiscal controls and policies must be incorporated as proactive and reactive measures. These measures must address threats against the financial integrity of the Federation and of the member-states.

Go Lean … Caribbean therefore constitutes a change for the Caribbean. This is a roadmap to consolidate 30 member-states of 4 different languages and 5 colonial legacies (American, British, Dutch, French, Spanish) into a Trade Federation with the tools/techniques to bring immediate change to the region to benefit one and all member-states. This includes the monitoring/tracking/studying the physical and mental health trends. This empowered CU agency will liaison with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and agencies like EUPHA, plus other foreign entities with the similar scope, like the US’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The book details that there must first be adoption of such a community ethos, the appropriate attitude/spirit to forge change in the region. Go Lean details this and other ethos; plus the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the region’s public health:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Community Ethos – Economics Influence Choices Page 21
Community Ethos – Privacy versus Public Protection Page 23
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives Page 24
Community Ethos – Non-Government Organizations Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness Page 36
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Reform   our Health Care Response Page 47
Strategy – Agents of Change – Aging Diaspora Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Separation of Powers – Department of Health Page 86
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Planning – Ways to Model the EU Page 130
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Planning – Ways to Measure Progress Page 148
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Healthcare Page 156
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Cancer Page 157
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management Page 196
Appendix – Disease Management – Healthways Model Page 300
Appendix – Trauma Center Definitions Page 336

The foregoing news article links economic downturns to physical and mental health ailments – there is no denying. There is need for a permanent union to provide efficient stewardship for the Caribbean economy, security and governing engines – plus serve as a Health and Medical Sentinel.

Who will be that Sentinel? The Caribbean Union Trade Federation hereby submits for this job. The region’s stakeholders (people and institutions) are hereby urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap, to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work, heal and play.

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Breaking Up – The Port Authority – Is Hard To Do

Posted on August 20, 2014 in Implementation, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

The concept of a super-national / multi-state administration to foster development and growth in the Caribbean sounds so revolutionary.  Has such a concept ever been attempted or succeeded before?

Yes … and yes.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean identifies one such winning role model (Page 137): The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ).

This entity was created in 1921 by an act of the US Congress, an interstate compact, to coordinate the common interest of the two states, even above and beyond the self-interest of each state. The focus is on common interest, not self interest. This charter facilitates trade and transportation. This is a very exacting model for a Caribbean focus, as the Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). Facilitating trade is a parallel objective of both the CU and the PANYNJ. In fact, this Go Lean/CU roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey operates much of the region’s key transportation infrastructure. But some assets are profitable while others are not; some hubs chew up a lot more cash than they generate. So says the following news article:

By: Aaron Elstein
Subtitle: Why the agency endures despite political interference, scandal and lots of red ink.

PANYNJ 1

It didn’t take long after the George Washington Bridge traffic caper erupted for people to start demanding dramatic change at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. By a unanimous vote, the New Jersey state Senate urged Congress to examine the “organizational structure” of the agency, which runs the region’s bridges, tunnels, airports and much else. Others called for more drastic measures.

“I’ve started hearing people say that it’s time to break the Port up,” said Carol Kellermann, president of the Citizens Budget Commission.

A breakup might sound like fair comeuppance for the Port Authority, a massive government body that’s now seen as a jobs bank for Gov. Chris Christie’s friends. Carving up the agency into its New York and New Jersey parts would certainly simplify the chain of command in an unwieldy organization that effectively has two chief executives and a board that reports to two governors, who each have veto power over decisions. Even a consulting firm hired by the authority described management two years ago as “dysfunctional.”

“It could be simpler and cleaner if you separated the different parts of the Port into individual agencies,” said Stephen Berger, a former Port Authority executive director. “It would also be insane.”

PANYNJ 3Dismantling the agency is not a new idea. The idea was first broached in the 1940s and most recently in 1996, when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani unveiled a plan to merge PATH into the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, sell the World Trade Center, fold the Port Authority police into the city’s Police Department and create a new agency called the New York Airport Authority that would have been in charge of rebuilding the city’s airports.

Mr. Giuliani, who didn’t return a call seeking comment, argued at the time that the Port Authority was riddled with inefficiencies and mismanagement. The idea went nowhere.

The agency endures for a simple reason: The economics of a breakup don’t work. Many of the authority’s operations lose substantial sums and couldn’t survive without hefty subsidies from other parts of the organization.

PATH, for instance, devoured $2.3 billion in cash between 2007 and 2011. The harbor ports and midtown bus terminal chewed up $755 million and $537 million, respectively, during the same period. Rebuilding the WorldTradeCenter has cost the agency about $8 billion in the past decade.

Cash Cows

Yet even amid these gushers of red ink, the Port Authority in 2012 managed to generate $1.1 billion in net income on $4 billion in revenue. That gain was all thanks to the huge toll and fee revenue coming from the region’s three major airports and the George Washington  Bridge. Those four hubs generated about $5 billion in operating cash between 2007 and 2011.”One of the most powerful things about the Port is how it moves revenues from one place to another,” Mr. Berger said.

PANYNJ 2The Port Authority’s diverse revenue streams also mean it can borrow more cheaply than the airports or bridges could on their own. That’s an important consideration because the agency has $20 billion in debt obligations and is expected to borrow another $8 billion over the next four years to pay for such projects as completing the World Trade Center, building a new central terminal at LaGuardia Airport and raising the Bayonne Bridge so larger ships going to and coming from the Panama Canal can dock here.

“The Port is different from just about any city or state in that they can go to the market and raise whatever capital they need whenever they want,” said Matt Fabian, a managing director at independent debt-research firm Municipal Market Advisors. “The management team is seen by investors as very sophisticated.”

“Sophisticated” might not be the word preferred by most people to describe the management team behind the Fort Lee traffic jam engineered by aides of Mr. Christie, but interference from elected leaders and their lackeys isn’t new at the agency.

Jameson Doig, a professor of government at DartmouthCollege, dates the first example to 1927, six years after the Port Authority’s creation. That’s when the governor of New Jersey demanded—and won—the right to veto agency decisions because he wanted to help a company get a contract installing wire cables on the GeorgeWashingtonBridge.

Political Interference

Mr. Doig said many of the Port Authority’s current problems stem from an agreement made in 1995, when Gov. George Pataki appointed an investment banker with no experience in transportation to the executive director job. After New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman objected, the leaders compromised by creating a new deputy executive director position to be filled by the New Jersey side. The executive director and the deputy share the same box on the authority’s organizational chart, and the deputy can’t be fired by the executive director.

At the time, the move was applauded as a sensible division of power, but “that’s when you started seeing the management problems that are blindingly obvious today,” said Mr. Doig, author of a book about the agency called Empire on the Hudson.

He added that Port Authority management suffered further when Mr. Christie rewarded up to 60 political backers with jobs for them or their family members after he was elected in 2010. In the past, governors have appointed no more than five supporters to Port Authority jobs.

“The first thing you change with the Port is eliminate those patronage appointees and put in people who are strong and independent,” Mr. Doig said. “And get rid of that deputy executive director job.”

At least for now, that job is vacant. Bill Baroni, one of the masterminds behind the Fort Lee traffic jam, resigned last month.

See Revenue/Profit Appendix below.

Crains New York Business News Online Site (Posted 01-19-2014; retrieved 08/18/2014) –http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140119/POLITICS/301199988/breaking-up-the-port-authority-is-hard-to-do#

The foregoing article was a published news item; this generated feedback and commentary. As follows is a valid and relevant comment by a regular citizen identified as Roger. His comments are “spot on“, as follows:

Roger wrote on 01/19/14 at 6:44 AM:

Breaking up the Port brings the region back to the bad old days of NY-NJ rivalry and stalemate that necessitated the creation of the bi-state Authority in the first place in 1921.  The Port Authority for most of its history was an incredibly effective, highly professional and often visionary agency of development of the region’s essential trade and transportation infrastructure.  This it did reasonably free of political interference and cronyism, especially considering the political cultures of the two state parents.  Its great fault was a dearth of public accountability and transparency, in response to which the Governors have steadily sought greater oversight which morphed into outright control, ending in the current miasma of political patronage that now afflicts the Port Authority.  What is needed is a new regime of state oversight that provides broad policy direction but keeps hands-off to let the agency do what it once was permitted – as intended – to do so well.

This subject of regional administration is important in the consideration of Caribbean elevation. How do we learn from the successes and failures of PANYNJ and ensure that we do our multi-state compact right. (The CU is a confederation of 30 member-states). Some previous Go Lean blogs, highlighted here in the following samples, showed how the application of the Go Lean roadmap is designed to benefit the region, and glean insights, intelligence and wisdom from other models/examples:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=888 Book Review: ‘Citizenville – Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=829 Trucks and Trains Play Well Together
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=798 Lessons Learned from the American Airlines merger
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=353 Book   Review: ‘Wrong – Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn…’

The people and institutions of the Caribbean must lean-in to the initiatives spelled out in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. Similar to the PANYNJ, there is no need for CU member-states to fund the CU Trade Federation, just the opposite, the CU will generate revenues to remit back to each member-state. This commission involves duplicating a lot of the functions that PANYNJ conduct now, but we must do it better (efficiently and effectively). This point is clearly defined in (Page 12) of the Declaration of Interdependence, with these statements:

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xiv. Whereas government services cannot be delivered without the appropriate funding mechanisms, “new guards” must be incorporated to assess, accrue, calculate and collect revenues, fees and other income sources for the Federation and member-states. The Federation can spur government revenues directly through cross-border services and indirectly by fostering industries and economic activities not possible without this Union.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

Enacting a multi-state compact, and the related governance, is “Step One, Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap. Implementing the CU with a heightened regulatory framework compared to PANYNJ as depicted in the foregoing news article, allows the transparency and checks-and-balances that stakeholders deserve, but not to undermine the fundamentals of a technocracy – we must be able to deliver first and foremost on our obligations, irrespective of political maneuvering. The CU emergence would therefore provide the foundation so that the regional society can be elevated, economically and governmentally.

The Go Lean book details samples in this series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster progress in regional administration:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Community Ethos – Voluntary Trade Creates   Wealth Page 21
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederating 30   Member-States Page 45
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Growing the Region’s Economy to   $800 Billion Page 67
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Legislative   Oversight Page 72
Anecdote – “Lean” in Government Page 93
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Start-up Benefits from the   EEZ Page 104
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Implementation – Ways   to Re-boot an Existing Port Authority Page 112
Planning – Ways to Improve Trade Page 128
Planning – Lessons from New York City Page 137
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance Page 168
Advocacy – Revenue Sources … for Regional Administration Page 172
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Transportation Page 205
Appendix – Enacting Interstate Compacts Page 278

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey set out to manage the common waterways (and related trade) of the Hudson River as it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. That was the initiation; it has since over-reached, but still for the providential benefit of the people of States of New York and New Jersey. As a parallel, the Caribbean Union Trade Federation sets out to manage the common waterscapes of the Caribbean Sea, with the built-in “over-reach” mandate from the beginning – the focus is not just limited to port activities. In fact the Go Lean roadmap details 144 different mission/advocacies.

This, the CU, is not for political gain, or to accumulate power and wealth for a few. No, the purpose, planning and execution of the CU is for the Greater Good. In fact, a lot of the executions for the CU is neutral/agnostic of politics. While politicians may have influence on budgets and policies, as a technocracy the Federation is required to just deliver – think postal mail (“neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”).

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the elevations described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The benefits are too alluring, a better place to live, work and play.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

—————————————————————————–

APPENDIX – PANYNJ Revenues / Profits

TOTAL AVIATION: +$2.5 BILLION

Airport

Profit

JFK

+$990 million

LaGuardia

+$273 million

Newark

+$1.3 million

Teterboro, Stewart, heliports

-$65 million

TOTAL BRIDGE AND TUNNEL: -$537 MILLION*

Bridge/Tunnel

Profit

GW Bridge

+$1.3 billion

Lincoln Tunnel

+167 million

Holland Tunnel

+$141 million

Port Authority Bus Terminal

-$479 million

PATH

-$2.3 billion

TOTAL PORT COMMERCE: -$755 MILLION*

Port

Profit

Port Newark

-$317 million

Port Jersey

-$184 million

Howland Hook

-$160 million

Brooklyn Marine   Terminal

-$27 million

TOTAL WORLD TRADE CENTER: -$3.1 BILLION

GRAND TOTAL: -$2.5 BILLION

The total shows the authority doesn’t generate enough from tolls, fees and grants to cover its costs. It borrows to cover the shortfall.

*Total includes other entities not listed here.

Source: Phase II report to the special committee of Port Authority’s board, prepared by consulting firm Navigant in September 2012.

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