You want a bailout plan? Here's a BAILOUT plan!
- By l.t. Dravis
- Published 11/18/2008
l.t. Dravis
I created and have written the nationally distributed marketing newsletter, BOTH SIDES NOW, since 2003. I authored two books, BOTH SIDES NOW, Sell Like Professional Athletes Win and DEATH OF A SALES MANAGER. In 2008, I introduced a daily column for national syndication to newspapers.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Monday, November 17, 2008 – We can’t afford to waste another minute watching the Bush Administration, the House of
Representatives, and the United States Senate waste their time and our money
with the absurd, nonsensical political gamesmanship that has defined the state
of this government’s so-called efforts to ‘fix’ the economy.
Isn’t it time we told
those geniuses what to do, how to do it, and when to do it?
Where do we start?
We’d be wasting our
time trying to tell George Bush or Dick Cheney to get to work, so we have to
get after Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
We have to tell them to
get to work and stay at work until the economy is headed in the right direction
. . . if that means no more recesses or holidays for the House and the Senate .
. . so what?
Hey, Harry and Nancy
. . . if you want to take off Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s
Day . . . okay, but that’s it!
You and all your
colleagues have been paid big bucks by taxpayers for years; we’ve paid your
office expenses; we’ve paid for your health insurance; we’ve paid for your
security; we’ve supported your staff; we’ve supported your cushy lifestyle for
too long and, now, it’s time for you to earn your keep.
It’s time for you to
fix the economy.
How?
You do two simple
things.
1. You stop handing
out billions of taxpayer dollars to financial institutions . . . it ain’t
working.
2. You create jobs .
. . because if you want people to spend, they need to work.
And, to make sure
people work, you gotta create jobs.
By the way, if you
want to keep your paychecks from bouncing, you need to create some tax revenue.
To generate tax revenue,
you gotta create . . . yep, you got it
. . . jobs!
Okay . . . now that
the concept is clear, where do you start?
Simple . . . convene
a joint session of the House of Representatives and the United States Senate to
write legislation necessary to:
1.
Implement Job Retention and Job Creation Strategy – Short-Term
– 30 to 60 days from start to job creation
a. Convene a Small Business conference in each Congressional District to
determine how best to use private and public funds to prevent layoffs and
create new jobs
b. Provide private and public funding, technologies, and information to assist
Small businesses to generate sales revenues, cash flow, and profitability
required to retain employees and create new jobs as they develop, build,
and rebuild community assets and
infrastructure utilizing Green technologies and products
c. Provide fast-track contract bid processes for qualified Small Businesses
to win contracts and retain employees and create new jobs as they build, rebuild,
and repair infrastructure assets
2.
Implement a Job Retention and Job Creation Tactics –
Long-Term – 61 to 180 days from start to job creation
a. Convene General Business regional conferences in ten standard Federal
Regions to determine how best to invest institutional, private, and public resources
to increase Medium and Large business participation in product and service
job-intensive, inclusive, and innovative markets
b. Assess occupational mobility to help Medium and Large businesses retain
employees and create new employment opportunities as they develop, build,
and rebuild community assets and
infrastructure utilizing Green technologies and products
c. Provide contract bid opportunities for Medium and Large businesses to
retain employees and create new jobs by rebuilding, repairing, and building
infrastructure assets
3.
Keys to Ensure Success
a. Create jobs that not only produce products and deliver services, but also
provide pathways to meaningful, secure, upwardly mobile, long-term employment
b. Build-in the training necessary to prepare workers to perform job
functions as required
c. Provide flexible, efficient, and proactive public service support for
each Private and/or Public project
LIKE IT OR NOT, FOLKS, we’re in uncharted
economic waters these days. The old saw
about how government should allow markets to seek their own levels is as
obsolete today as white wall tires.
Who else has the resources?
Who else can borrow or print the
trillions of dollars it’s going to take to get us back on our economic feet?
It ain’t Chrysler, GM, or Ford; it
ain’t Bank of America, Citigroup, or Wells Fargo; it ain’t even Microsoft or Oprah!
It’s the government.
Don’t like it?
I don’t.
But what choice do we have?
As he said so often in the campaign,
President-elect Obama understands that the only way to move consumers back into
malls, restaurants, car dealerships, RV dealers, and realtors’ offices, is to
put them back to work.
American workers need to keep the jobs they have or
replace the jobs they’ve lost . . . NOW!
We have to create a new economy that continually
expands its capacity to absorb more and more jobs; an economy that continues to
create jobs as we shift from the initial, ‘rebuild-the-long-neglected-infrastructure’
phase to the production of high value products, services, and technologies.
I’m not talking about ‘make-work’ jobs . . . I’m
talking about creating jobs that challenge workers to learn new capabilities
and skills; I’m talking about jobs that provide a living wage; jobs that give
workers and their families the security of knowing they’re covered by adequate
health insurance; jobs that provide meaningful retirement benefits; jobs that
generate significant local, state, and federal tax revenues.
I’m also talking about productive jobs that make
businesses healthy by generating consistent revenues, cash flow, and profits.
Additional points to
ponder include:
·
Offer tax credits of
up to $5,000.00 for each new job created . . . provided the employee is
retained for two years
·
Offer additional financial
and contractual incentives for businesses that create products and technologies
to reduce energy consumption and offer contract extensions for companies that
cut costs, improve quality, and reduce delivery times
·
Create mutually
profitable training partnerships between private enterprise and public
education to train workers to produce and deliver Green products and
technologies (design, development, and production of high-efficiency wind
generators, etc.)
·
Create joint
Public/Private partnerships to leverage investment in core business enterprises
(infrastructure and transportation innovations)
·
Establish
electronically connected local Public/Private service centers to coordinate,
manage, and monitor individual and joint projects
·
Coordinate, manage,
and monitor the delivery of funding for each project to maximize local economic
development
·
Invite union
participation in training and job placement wherever and whenever possible
EPILOGUE: Come
on, folks . . . we need to take a stand here! We can’t let Washington
It’s time for Congress to look at this crisis for
what it is, not for how each party can twist it to gain some stupid political
advantage.
They can’t work their usual 3-day
weeks any more.
They can’t take all their little ‘recesses’ and holidays.
It is time for each of the 535 Representatives and
Senators to finally stand up and do their jobs by creating jobs.
It’s time for them to work as hard as we do!
Anything less – at this critical moment in time –
would be shameful.
Isn’t it time to contact your Representative and
your Senator and tell them what you want them to do?
If not now, when . . . ?
Copyright © 2008 by LTD
Associates West, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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