Written by Lawrence Dillon. My rant on the pandemic, PPE, Vaccine, and the politics and corporate lack of leadership that lead to it all.
How do you feel?
I feel like crap. I am emotionally drained, worried for my family, friends, colleagues, and I am PISSED OFF at the continued lack of leadership in our country! As a country, we have lost our way and it is sad to watch in real-time.
This is the second article about the lack of leadership related to CoVid-19. The first article, “Rethinking our National Healthcare Supply Chain”, was originally posted on May 11, 2020. It is now April 28, 2021, and a lot has NOT CHANGED except the body count and the attempted overthrow of our government. I guess the good news is that the US is still #1 - so take that Brazil and India!
In April and May of 2020, ENKI thought that we would see a decline in the number of cases with the second round of infections coming in the Fall and Winter. Our email to the NGA even mentioned the “second wave”. We were not alone in this view as everyone thought national leadership would step up and engage in the supply chain effort needed to affect positive change. We were horribly wrong. The first wave never ended - the second, third, fourth and fifth waves have come along and only increased the number of cases and deaths. It is far worse than we imagined but only because there has NOT been a decline in cases. So, we did not have the time to prepare for the any of the future waves. Consider that businesses are being asked to remain close or close again, PPE is still in short supply, hospitals are bleeding money, ER and ICU beds are full in multiple hospitals across the nation, and we saw the same lack of national coordination with the vaccine rollout. . However, I hope it does not happen that way and that is why I am writing this post, because I know we can change this predicted outcome.
So, where have we gone wrong as a nation?
As I thought about this question, I could not help but think about the large companies that have gone through similar in-fighting and mixed messaging that our federal and state leaders are going through. Most of these companies are gone, others are smaller and less competitive versions of their once “Great Selves”, while a few have come out the other side as different companies but better, faster, and more competitive (not you GE, Motorola, IBM, or Blackberry). You can read more on the failure of companies to change and innovate here.
Great companies and countries are built on the strength of everyone working toward a common goal. In 2016, we elected a President with the goal of “Make America Great Again”. I am not going to question the goal since that is what Americans voted on in 2016 and I support Americans, period. What I can share is that to achieve any goal there are usually two very important questions that need to be answered before we can take action to achieve that goal:
What does the achievement of the goal look like (in this case, what does Great look like), and…
…what is keeping us from achieving the goal today (or what is/are the barrier(s) to becoming Great)
Now apply the “Build Back Better” slogan of the 2020 Biden/Harris campaign to the above. Do we know the answers to the two questions from BOTH elections?
There are many different ways to find related questions we need to answer and even to get these answers so I am only going to share the three-step process I like the most.
Picture yourself in that “Great Country” or “Better Built Country” and list all the things that make it great/better.
Once you have the list, come back to the present (today)
…and, list all the things we must stop doing…
…and, list all the things we have to change
…and, list all the things we have to start
As our country considers how the vaccines are getting distributed, I have to ask two questions which go back to being a great country. First, why was this distribution question not being asked sooner? Leadership is NOT implemented from behind or out of the tyranny of the urgent. Yet, that is what has happened with both PPE AND Vaccines.
Second, since there are people that want to reduce our government and turn over the keys of the kingdom to companies, why hasn’t McKesson (214.3 billion in annual revenue) and Cardinal Health (152.9 billion in annual revenue) been asked to step up and help with national distribution efforts? They are the two largest medical supply chain companies in the US. Where is Amazon or Walmart as the world’s largest retailers that also have pharmacy domination ambitions? So, this post is not exclusively about the lack of Political Leadership, although that is the cause of our situation, it is also the complete lack of corporate leadership for the benefit of Americans.
As a “capitalist pig” myself, I can explain the corporate position of “how do I make money on this pandemic while not pissing off the politicians”. However, as an American with a moral compass I cannot explain nor can I understand the deafening silence from America’s supposed corporate titans over the last year. I realize there is a large segment of the US population that believes we should shrink our government and turn over portions of “governing” to corporations, but this pandemic is exposing that the capitalist experiment of social and moral ownership for a country DOES NOT WORK. Giving companies the “right” or mandate to address social and moral needs does not work - no exception. Non-profit companies need government entities to provide support such as grants ($), logistics (knowledge), safety/security (experts), etc. because they cannot pay enough people to do that work on private donations alone. For profit companies need the government to address the non-profitable elements of our country so that companies don’t have to “waste” money on infrastructure that is fully utilized by all people and companies, and companies should not have to spend on areas such as a creating a skilled and educated workforce.
The separation of political (government) and capitalistic (company) responsibilities and their leadership is critical to the development and operations of a great country. Each has their place but in our case today, each has failed to step up and deliver to their social contract.
So, thank you corporate leaders for clearly in our demonstration to the American people that you are either incompetent in leading a national effort to provide PPE and Vaccines or you are complicit (or worse malice) as you believe it is not your responsibility as it is a social issue, i,.e., good for all people and not just your customers. In any case, you have abdicated the leadership role that Republicans have been pushing on you for at least the 5 decades I have paid attention and have successfully demonstrated your stance for all Americans to see that you do not want the social responsibility.
Honestly, I am okay with that and I hope others are as well. Separation of responsibilities is a good thing. Clarity of roles helps all of us focus on what we are responsible to perform/deliver. If government entities in the US cannot own business(s), then companies in the US should not be able to own civic responsibilities or entities.
So, a national healthcare supply chain in the US is a complicated topic as it is civic, social, and capitalistic with a moral objective of do no harm and save all that can be saved. Hence the ENKI LLC proposal in the first article. A symbiotic relationship of government and corporate entities tied together with a national non-profit entity and for profit entity to address the two major responsibilities - social and moral good but financially self-sustaining with the ability to pay back the funding initially required by government and corporate entities. However, after a year of trying to get anyone to pay attention to this idea, including the national and local media, I have come to the conclusion that the topic of a national supply chain organization as structured was too complicated for the current leadership of our government(s), companies and media empires.
What could we have done?
Consider the national supply chain organization we could have cobbled together to address the PPE challenge we had in March with the support of companies and state leaders as proposed in the first article. Could this have been used to help distribute vaccines? I know many skeptics will find all sorts of flaws with that idea but recall that in the first article I commented that the supply chain should be built with the intent of helping our entire healthcare system and could help with other national distribution challenges. Granted, would eight months have been enough time to pull together a national supply chain organization? Yes, this is a great question but consider the alternative, could we have done any worse than where we are right now? Maybe there would be a skeleton structure with some capabilities but it would still be better than what we have. Also, if you never start, you will never benefit! So, when do you start a national healthcare supply chain effort - after the need passes by?
I recall a quote from Will Rogers, probably obtained by him from someone else, that summarizes to me what I have seen: “If you don’t know where you are going, any wind will do”. Leadership is knowing where you need to be. Operations is knowing how to get there. Without leadership, you just move in any direction you think the wind is blowing…
Real Cost of Social Enablement
Truth is, doing this right and doing what is socially right for all Americans is FREE! It costs NOTHING. I know - hard to believe but what is going to really blow your mind is that this has been true for 50 years and economists, media, educators, and politicians know it. They reason they don’t want to tell anyone publicly is because it would take away their power. Imagine if healthcare (not insurance) was free for all Americans and it only added to our economy. Imagine if everyone in our country could have a place to live that they wanted, with enough cars or mass transportation to get to and from work, enough savings to pay for their kids’ college AND enough for retirement without worry (even without Social Security). Imagine that a strategic view of our country could be one of property with educational, economical, and civil growth instead of division, suffering, starving, and hatred. There is an old saying of “Divide and Conquer”. Politicians are purposely dividing and conquering us - all Americans. They are cutting up the pie for themselves instead of growing the pie for everyone. They are making us fight each other so we do not have time to discover and talk about the truth.
Since I posed the previous article on a national healthcare supply chain in May of 2020, I read a book by Stephanie Kelton on “The Deficit Myth”. This book opened my mind and the concept in the book, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). It blew my mind by exposing the real US monetary system and how it actually works vs. what we are told everyday. I heard it again this morning on the news about the Infrastructure Bill and “How are we going to pay for it?”. Paying for it is simple: Congress passes the law and tells the Treasury to pay for it. The Federal Reserve (an arm of the Treasury) deposits, electronically, the money into the appropriate accounts for paying the people/contractors/suppliers for the work. There is no need to collect taxes for this. There is no need to issue debt either. That is all BULL SHIT. The US Federal Government creates the US money. You, me, companies, states, local townships, and other countries do not. We have to earn the money or take a loan to get the money before we can spend it. The US Government does the exact opposite. They HAVE TO CREATE THE MONEY FIRST. Otherwise there is no money to tax or borrow.
I encourage you to discover the truth for yourself but I will leave you with the following: There is no reason for financial suffering for anyone who wants to work in the US other than for political reasons or hatred. Funding a bold effort like the worlds most educated society, a national healthcare system (not insurance) for all US citizens, a trip to the moon, the first nuclear weapon, 100% green economy, full employment with real jobs for anyone who wants one, most admired infrastructure, best place in the world for every kind of company, easiest place to start a new business, healthiest society, most relaxing country, most friendly country, most family friendly country, most backyard BBQ country, or any other bold effort is only a matter of will/desire and not about money. The economists, politicians, and media pendants are all lying to us and have been for decades.
My bold idea in April that triggered my post in May is not so bold anymore because of where we are with the pandemic and with what I learned about MMT. Our country could pay everyone not making things in a plant or delivering services $10K+ a month to stay home and we could do that for as long as we needed or wanted to without any negative impact to our economy. We could pay everyone working in a plant or restaurant that delivers $10K a month extra for being amazing and helping everyone in the US survive during a pandemic. We could give companies $500K+ per location to improve working conditions to reduce exposure to the Pandemic too.
After the pandemic goes away, we could let everyone know they have a job that will pay them the same weekly income they made in 2019 and all they have to do is show their income taxes from 2019 and they will be hired to do work for their local government in the same or similar role, and the federal government will pay for it. This will stabilize our economy to allow companies to have confidence to hire people back. Those hirings will reduce the workers that local governments have and will reduce the money the federal government pays. If you want to keep the government job, you can! Retirement, benefits, and income remain. You don’t have to leave unless you suck and get fired from a government job (has that ever happened?). That is right, you can still get fired. So you will still have to work and be good at your job. If you decide not to work, that is your call. No welfare, no unemployment, no handouts. Entry level jobs will be available too at a federal government set rate (make it $15 for all I care). Jobs with education, training, and child care built in can also be created to help develop skills and build careers.
Our country was founded on the power of the people. Our constitution is the only one I have ever seen that is based on, supported on, written for, and rests upon “THE PEOPLE”. Not a Queen or King, not a government, not natural resource such as oil, gold, or diamonds, it is built upon and rests upon the people. We the people… So, we the people need to know that there are Americans that are suffering and dyeing and that is dragging down “We the people” while lifting up “us the political, corporate, and media elite”. Our suffering gives them the topics to hype, the sound bite, and to get the ad dollars or political donations or snake oil sales from the rest of us.
Thank you for reading.