Government Is Not A Product, It's A Service

Instapundit links to Next Right with several interesting posts up. While this "Production Cycle" post by Rob makes great points and is interesting food for thought, it might do better to think of this stuff as a Marketing Mix. In successful businesses, production doesn't even begin before Marketing has had its say. And Government, good and bad, is more akin to a service, than a product. It matters.

In the beginning, services have to be sold before they become real. Products are tangible things. A product can sell itself but services rarely can. That's what makes messaging and state governorships so important in national politics. A quick aside, back when I sold telecom and divestiture was a word synonymous with ATT - we didn't sell business phone calls. We sold time through space. Try selling that successfully; still, many did.

The pieces the Right needs are already there. What it needs is better coordination and communication. I've consistently maintained that the Right could surpass the Left on the Internet in no time if it understood the value of the pieces it already has and put them together the right way.

In a product business, Marketing defines a product based upon public want and feedback, then goes to the production arm and asks them to build it, feeding back on what may or not be practical.

“Which comes first,” asks Michael Turk, “ideas or the message?” That’s an easy one. Of course it’s ideas. But to understand why, let’s think about politics in the context of the production cycle.

This concept is not my original thinking. It was explained to me a couple weeks ago during a presentation on the future of conservatism as a way to grasp our shortcomings and understand the gaps of our movement.

From a national political perspective, the Right's pre-production marketing arm is the state level. In a very real sense, they field test ideas and innovations, judge consumer (voter) response - and tweak ideas and programs. You can then at least begin to conceptualize a government service or approach as a product because it has a tangible component or result from being applied. But they only do it for the state level, unless the state's governor is planning a run for President: see Bobby Jindal on Health Care. Heh!

Along with assisting at the state level, this is where the think tanks - Rob mentions several - should come in.

Turning ideas into public policies. This is role of think tanks -- and on the right there is no shortage of them. Think tanks existed prior to the 1970s, but mostly in the form of academic institutions without students (AEI, Brookings, CSIS). The Heritage Foundation (my employer) helped usher in a new approach. These new institutions (Cato, ATR, NTU) began working directly with policymakers to have an impact.

Based on this statement from Heritage, for example, without a Republican administration, the state-level is where they can make the greatest contribution, ultimately taking tested ideas and tweaking them further for national scale. And then and only then is when the "selling," I prefer front-end marketing, actually begins.

Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institute - a think tank - whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

The GOP's current weakness rests in far too much funding going to the old line think tanks, with little or none of it going to the front end. And with all due respect to Rob and Heritage, our think tanks as a whole have done a miserable job in engaging the web. I know Rob and Heritage specifically try - so I'm not just knocking him. CEI sends out spammy emails. Woo Hoo!

Either our think tanks need to update themselves and develop solid destinations that interact and look like the Center for American Progress, Open Left and the rest over there, or some need to go away and make way for some new entities better suited for playing along in a new media world.

As long as the bulk of non-campaign related donors continue to fuel dinosaurs destined to die, or see their influence as primarily beltway-centric and not fund some serious new media approaches that give and take with bloggers, as opposed to simply solicitng links for themselves, the GOP will continue to languish on the web.

Don't even get me started on NRO and Kathleen Parker.

Lastly, that's why I would encourage my friends at The Next Right to soften their tone toward some of the old hands in the GOP like those who recently met in Virginia. Both sides of the equation have something serious to offer and we need to think about building up and coming together, not simply tearing down.

Comments

[ajacksonian]

What I find discouraging on the Right is that they equate plans to policy. They are two different things completely.

Policy tells me about how you approach government and what your major goals are. A policy of confronting terrorism and rolling it back with the help of friends and allies tells me that you will have a common approach to all terrorists that threaten our Nation and those who have befriended us. That is a policy of confronting terrorist organizations of all stripes.

The plans are how you execute policy. They get to the outlay of funds for programs, what those programs will do and so forth. Those plans need a direct tie to policy, so that they can demonstrate how they back such policy and are the detailed programmatics for it. In this last election we had two individuals with no clear policy, just lots of plans. They did have slogans, but no firm grasp of any policy behind them. Thus Americans had to choose between two slogans and two grab-bags of plans and really, there wasn't much difference between those. The individuals were different and packaged their grab bags similarly, but there was no clear and defining motivation behind either sets of plans.

Plans, as I have taken pains to point out, are not policy ( http://ajacksonian.blogspot.com/2008/06/plans-arent-policy.html ). Those on the Left present plans, but rarely, if ever, policy: the guiding light behind the plans. The Right has decided to follow suit for years now.

Policy when clearly stated up front, tells what kinds of plans will be drafted from such policy - they are the views that cue how things will be done ( http://thejacksonianparty.blogspot.com/2008/04/view-that-cues.html ). That tells voters how you will react to new situations and what background you will apply to problems. If you run on a Federalist outlook, that tells voters that you will send back problems to the States and not try to handle them at the federal level when the federal government is not given power to deal with them. Instead of seeking to add new powers to the federal government, you will acknowledge that it can't do everything and seek to remove powers from it that don't belong to the federal level, using Amendments IX and X as pure backing for that. That would mean a stricter interpretation of the Constitution for all branches of government, not just the Judicial, and examining each department and power behind it and seeking to ensure that it really is there in the Constitution for government to do. A party backing that would then seek to remove those things not handed to the federal and ensure the States know this is *their* area to handle, not that of the federal government. A simple Federalist platform would say that abortion belongs wholly to the States to decide upon, and a party following that would do everything possible to keep legislation and litigation at the local level, not the federal. It is not that the federal should be pro/con, but that it should have zero say in the matter as it isn't given to the federal level to have in the first place. Such a party would then have great diversity (a 'big tent') at the State level, but adhere to a strict set of policies to limit what is handed up to the federal level for work. This acknowledges that there are very few 'National' problems not better suited to the States to figure out. Such a KISS policy would be simple to say, run on at the federal level and allow States to experiment with things and see if a greater State-to-State system of party interaction could find better solutions for the Nation at a localized level and try to limit the 'one size fits all, fits none well' area of the federal level.

That is what policy *does*: it informs on how decisions will be made. It drives plans and programmatics, not the other way around as it is now. State the policy and the plans become self-evident as well as the programmatics. A simple party platform does not need lots of plans if it has good policy and rationale behind it that is clear, simple and easy to explain.

I would vote for a party that had any idea of what it was doing and had any basis for creating policy that works at a federalist system, not against it. There are currently zero of those in the United States.

[WBestPresidentEver]

There has been a lot of talk about this crap lately. Wonder if this is a part of the secret plan ?

South American Union Will Also Have Common Currency
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva recently revealed that the South American countries are planning for a common currency as part of the integration of the individual countries into the Union of South American Nations. This integration is patterned after the formation of the European Union, and parallels the plan for the North American Union.

The union of South American nations would More.. create a trade block designed to be competitive with the European and North American trade blocks. Central to the formation of the union is the creation of a central bank to oversee the new common currency that would replace the currencies of the individual countries in the block. In a recent broadcast, President Lula stated that he sees the implementation of this plan as not being a fast one.

In his message, the president stressed the need to help the countries of South America that are economically weak, such as Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia. "We have to help them because the stronger the countries in South America economically are, the more tranquility, peace, democracy, trade, companies, jobs, incomes and development", he is quoted at ((http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/articles/...) .

Another unfolding feature of the South American Union similar to that of the North American Union is its dependence on newly created infrastructure. The South American alliance will promote the cross-nation construction of railroads, highways, bridges and transmission lines that will connect the entire region resulting in smooth interaction and movement within the trading block. The NAFTA and CAFTA Superhighways epitomize the infrastructural development of the North American Union trading block.

The union plan also calls for a regional defense council, apparently the beginning of the imposition of a regional government. This council would resolve regional conflicts, promote military cooperation and allow for the regional coordination of weapons production, much as the military integration of Canada and the U.S. initiates the unification of governments in the North American Countries.

The plan to establish a new common currency for the Union of South American Nations is the latest development in the initiation of common currencies representative of multi-country trading blocks. The euro was the first trade block currency, established as part of the European Union. The amero is the name of what may be the North American Union's counterpart to the euro, debuting after economic integration and homogenization of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada have been completed, at exchange rates that represent the lowered standard of living of the Americans and the Canadians.

Critics of the Union of South American Nations' efforts to establish a common currency see it as playing right into the hands of the world banking cartel. The clustering and assimilation of currencies facilitates the eventual merger into a one world currency promoted by the Council on Foreign Relations and its political puppets. They see the move toward the South American Union with its single currency as easily fitting with the European Union and current efforts to establish the North American Union. Once the formation of these major trading blocks is completed, the next step would be the unification of the blocks into a one world government.

This one world government is sometimes referred to as the New World Order. The Council on Foreign Relations has openly stated that its intentions are to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty of the national independence of the U.S. with the aim of creating a one world government. The Council, referred to as CFR, has influence in all vital areas of American life and around the world. Members have run or are running the major media outlets including NBC, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and many other publications.

CFR members dominate the political world. U.S. presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have been CFR members, with the exception of Ronald Reagan. CFR members also dominate the academic world, top corporations, unions and the military. They are on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve. Barack Obama and John McCain are CFR members, as well as the Bushes and the Clintons. There are many corporate members of the CFR. CFR plans are not subject to the scrutiny, debate, or vote of the people. Discussion of the plans has been conspicuously absent from the endless debating of the presidential candidates.

Learn more at:

((http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070501faessay86308/benn-steil/the-end-of-national-currency.html)

((http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070501faessay86308/benn-steil/the-end-of-national-currency.html)

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/023480.html

Iran Afghanistan Politics Celebrity Education Citizen Journalism Entertainment Sexy Liveleak Live Forum Groups Your Say Register | Login | Audio & Video Chat | Faq | Contact Us | Set As Homepage | Advanced Search Sections: All | News | Iraq | Afghanistan | Iran | Politics | Entertainment | Celebrity | Education | Citizen Journalism Search Keyword
Location
(City, State/Province or Country)
Category All Afghanistan Celebrity Citizen Journalism Education Entertainment Iran Iraq Liveleakers News Politics Sexy Your Say
User

The Amero: America's New Currency
An interview from CNBC in which the guest talks about the "Amero". The Amero will be America's new currency by 2009. It will replace the American dollar, the Mexican Peso, and the Canadian dollar.

The Denver Mint has already began its production of Amero coins.

The North American Union has arrived ??