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accountability, blame, C.A. Morris Institute, held accountable, hold politicians accountable, Morris Institute, National Debt, polarized, politicians, poor performance, straight party ticket, The C.A. Morris Institute, two party system, unfunded liabilities
In business from time to time we see CEO’s or CFO’s held accountable for their performance. However, that doesn’t occur nearly enough. CEO’s and CFO’s are sometimes like politicians. They are more than happy to take the credit for simply riding the wave of a successful economy where most companies also show similar success. They are more than happy to take the raises and bonuses that shareholders or boards thow at them.
However, they run from accountability when things don’t go so well. They are quick to blame the economy or other conditions in an attempt to escape accountability for their company’s poor performance. In most cases they successfully avoid even a pay reduction, much less being fired for their poor management performance.
Where their board or their shareholders bought into the idea of the success of the CEO when things went well for the company, they also somehow, buy into placing the blame elswhere when the CEO says it belongs somewhere else.
We all have seen instances in business where individuals are not held accountable. Many times, contrary to being held accounable and facing a negative consequence, the individual is promoted or given a choice new assignment.
Politicians rarely are held accountable. In our two party system, we find many voters simply pull the handle for the straight party ticket, and then complain when things remain the same as before. In Washington we’ve recently faced the fiscal cliff and the dept ceiling is looming. If you look at our US National Debt, it is over $16 trillion dollars and we haven’t had a budget passed in three years.
The two party system is the root cause of this chaos. The two parties are hopelessly polarized and the leadership of the parties is posturing to get the most mileage for their party’s agenda. Please check out the US National Debt Clock (http://www.usdebtclock.org/) and many of the debts and unfunded liabilities. This is a real crisis, but yet the two party system leaders ignore the debt and unfunded liabilities and continue their posturing, manipulating and attacking the other party.
All this, and we just had an election where politicians could have been held accountable. Instead, we voted for more of the same. We put felons and corrupt politicians back in charge again.
We can change this. We can make a difference and WE can hold politicians accountable. The first step is STOP pulling the handle (or punching the chads or the pressing the buttons) for the straight party ticket. Please begin to be open minded about the choice of candidates. There won’t always be a candidate that supports reform but hopefully we can help alert the constiuency when there is. Please check back in here as our government reform planning develops.