WASHINGTON, July 23 (UPI) — The reported deaths of Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay at the hands of U.S. military forces will have little effect on President George W. Bush’s credibility particularly if attacks on U.S. military forces continue, political analysts told United Press International.

Bush emerged from the Oval Office Wednesday morning for the first time since Saddam’s sons were reported killed a day earlier by U.S. military forces after a 4-hour firefight in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The president, accompanied by presidential envoy L. Paul Bremer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, stood under cloudy skies in the White House Rose Garden and declared that the former regime was gone for good.

“Yesterday, in the city of Mosul, the careers of two of the regime’s chief henchmen came to an end. Saddam Hussein’s sons were responsible for torture, maiming and murder of countless Iraqis. Now more than ever, all Iraqis can know that the former regime is gone and will not be coming back,” Bush said.

Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s sons, were said to be ruthless and known to have personally carried out and ordered killings and mass executions of dissidents. But neither was believed to have been directing the attacks against U.S. forces since Bush declared the major combat operations over in May. The Husseins’ elusiveness gave hope to those who wanted them restored to power.

The deaths of the two men comes as the White House faces stinging criticism over discredited intelligence reports and the increasing attacks on U.S. forces that have killed almost 40 troops since Bush declared an end to hostilities in May.

In the hours following the firefight that claimed not just Uday and Qusay but possibly Qusay’s 14-year-old son and a bodyguard, at least one soldier from the 101st Airborne Division was killed in Mosul and seven others were injured by a roadside bomb. Another soldier from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was killed and a soldier and a contractor wounded by a bomb west of Baghdad. Also Tuesday, a Red Cross convoy was attacked on the road between Baghdad and relatively peaceful Basra.

Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, told UPI that the two fatalities will have little effect on Bush’s credibility when it comes to the Iraqi war.

“I don’t think it has a dramatic or direct bearing on credibility at this point,” Carpenter said. “I think what it may do is put to a test the administration’s argument that the armed resistance we’ve encountering in Iraq is almost entirely the product of die-hard elements of the old regime. If that is the case, then the deaths of Uday and Qusay will be a major blow to the morale of the insurgent forces and we should see a decline in the number and severity of the attacks in the next several weeks.”

Carpenter said that if the pace of attacks remains steady it may prove the resistance has a broader base than just the old regime.
He said that while it is desirable to find Saddam, it is not an overwhelmingly necessary goal for the administration to reach.
“Because as long as he’s out there, it’s almost the same as having Osama bin Laden out there. He is a symbol. But the reality is that Saddam’s sons were the ones in charge of logistical operations so there is little evidence of Saddam himself ever being an expert on that. So I think in operational terms, getting his sons was more important than getting him,” Carpenter said. “In symbolic terms getting him his more important.”

Peter W. Singer, a foreign policy studies fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that the deaths make it evident that the regime is not returning to power and proves that coalition forces have cracked the loyalists’ circles. He said it was unclear what effect it would have on the daily drumbeat of attacks against troops, particularly those in the so-called Sunni triangle — a 30-square-mile region inhabited by Sunni Muslims and Baath Party loyalists.

“At least from their location, they were more on the run than serving as any kind coordinating group for these operations,” said Singer of the Hussein brothers. “Being in Mosul is a little bit different from them being in the Sunni triangle where the attacks happened.”

Another challenge for the administration is proving to skeptics and the American people at large that the Iraqis killed in the Mosul raid were actually Uday and Qusay.

Carpenter said it would be profoundly embarrassing for the military commanders to fake the deaths. On Wednesday, the Bush administration was weighing whether to release photos of the dead men taken after the attack.

The deaths of the Husseins would mark a second turning point in the Iraqi military operation — the first being the toppling of Baghdad two months ago. It is also key for the Bush White House, which spent the last 10 days defending its handling of intelligence reports that claimed Saddam had attempted to buy uranium from Niger. Singer said the sons’ deaths will have “zero effect” on Bush’s credibility.

“There is no connection between the capture of the sons and statements made that played up and politicized intelligence before the war. The only thing that they’re related is that they’ve used this opportunity of media focus on one to try and shift attention on the other,” Singer said.

Those claims, which were included in the president’s State of the Union address, were later discredited. It drew a loud and angry outcry from Capitol Hill lawmakers who charged Bush had used disinformation to move the country into war. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose government had initially turned over those documents to the United States, traveled to Washington last week to help defend the president.

Blair told a joint session of Congress that history would eventually prove the two nations had made the right decision in forcibly disarming Saddam.

After more than a week of reporters asking who was responsible for the line making it into Bush’s speech, Steve Hadley, a deputy National Security Council adviser, came forward during a briefing with reporters on Tuesday afternoon. Hadley said he was the most senior official in the White House charged with vetting national security issues with the president’s speech.

Hadley offered Bush his resignation, which the president reportedly refused. Singer said that if the president had accepted the resignation, it would have been admitting fault.

Singer called Hadley’s move into the forefront of the controversy a commonly used political ploy.

“It wasn’t just a coincidence that Hadley tried to now take the fall on the same day as this (the sons’ deaths),” Singer said.

“Whether Uday is alive or dead doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that inside the White House intelligence was politicized and manipulated,” Singer told UPI. “Those two things happened at different times. It wasn’t Uday who put the 16 words in. It wasn’t Uday who played up those connections. It’s not to play down the success of getting those two guys, but just make sure it doesn’t get politicized.”

”’With reporting from Pam Hess in Kuwait.”’

Copyright 2003 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

WASHINGTON, July 23 (UPI) — The reported deaths of Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay at the hands of U.S. military forces will have little effect on President George W. Bush’s credibility particularly if attacks on U.S. military forces continue, political analysts told United Press International.

Bush emerged from the Oval Office Wednesday morning for the first time since Saddam’s sons were reported killed a day earlier by U.S. military forces after a 4-hour firefight in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The president, accompanied by presidential envoy L. Paul Bremer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, stood under cloudy skies in the White House Rose Garden and declared that the former regime was gone for good.

“Yesterday, in the city of Mosul, the careers of two of the regime’s chief henchmen came to an end. Saddam Hussein’s sons were responsible for torture, maiming and murder of countless Iraqis. Now more than ever, all Iraqis can know that the former regime is gone and will not be coming back,” Bush said.

Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s sons, were said to be ruthless and known to have personally carried out and ordered killings and mass executions of dissidents. But neither was believed to have been directing the attacks against U.S. forces since Bush declared the major combat operations over in May. The Husseins’ elusiveness gave hope to those who wanted them restored to power.

The deaths of the two men comes as the White House faces stinging criticism over discredited intelligence reports and the increasing attacks on U.S. forces that have killed almost 40 troops since Bush declared an end to hostilities in May.

In the hours following the firefight that claimed not just Uday and Qusay but possibly Qusay’s 14-year-old son and a bodyguard, at least one soldier from the 101st Airborne Division was killed in Mosul and seven others were injured by a roadside bomb. Another soldier from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was killed and a soldier and a contractor wounded by a bomb west of Baghdad. Also Tuesday, a Red Cross convoy was attacked on the road between Baghdad and relatively peaceful Basra.

Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, told UPI that the two fatalities will have little effect on Bush’s credibility when it comes to the Iraqi war.

“I don’t think it has a dramatic or direct bearing on credibility at this point,” Carpenter said. “I think what it may do is put to a test the administration’s argument that the armed resistance we’ve encountering in Iraq is almost entirely the product of die-hard elements of the old regime. If that is the case, then the deaths of Uday and Qusay will be a major blow to the morale of the insurgent forces and we should see a decline in the number and severity of the attacks in the next several weeks.”

Carpenter said that if the pace of attacks remains steady it may prove the resistance has a broader base than just the old regime.
He said that while it is desirable to find Saddam, it is not an overwhelmingly necessary goal for the administration to reach.
“Because as long as he’s out there, it’s almost the same as having Osama bin Laden out there. He is a symbol. But the reality is that Saddam’s sons were the ones in charge of logistical operations so there is little evidence of Saddam himself ever being an expert on that. So I think in operational terms, getting his sons was more important than getting him,” Carpenter said. “In symbolic terms getting him his more important.”

Peter W. Singer, a foreign policy studies fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that the deaths make it evident that the regime is not returning to power and proves that coalition forces have cracked the loyalists’ circles. He said it was unclear what effect it would have on the daily drumbeat of attacks against troops, particularly those in the so-called Sunni triangle — a 30-square-mile region inhabited by Sunni Muslims and Baath Party loyalists.

“At least from their location, they were more on the run than serving as any kind coordinating group for these operations,” said Singer of the Hussein brothers. “Being in Mosul is a little bit different from them being in the Sunni triangle where the attacks happened.”

Another challenge for the administration is proving to skeptics and the American people at large that the Iraqis killed in the Mosul raid were actually Uday and Qusay.

Carpenter said it would be profoundly embarrassing for the military commanders to fake the deaths. On Wednesday, the Bush administration was weighing whether to release photos of the dead men taken after the attack.

The deaths of the Husseins would mark a second turning point in the Iraqi military operation — the first being the toppling of Baghdad two months ago. It is also key for the Bush White House, which spent the last 10 days defending its handling of intelligence reports that claimed Saddam had attempted to buy uranium from Niger. Singer said the sons’ deaths will have “zero effect” on Bush’s credibility.

“There is no connection between the capture of the sons and statements made that played up and politicized intelligence before the war. The only thing that they’re related is that they’ve used this opportunity of media focus on one to try and shift attention on the other,” Singer said.

Those claims, which were included in the president’s State of the Union address, were later discredited. It drew a loud and angry outcry from Capitol Hill lawmakers who charged Bush had used disinformation to move the country into war. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose government had initially turned over those documents to the United States, traveled to Washington last week to help defend the president.

Blair told a joint session of Congress that history would eventually prove the two nations had made the right decision in forcibly disarming Saddam.

After more than a week of reporters asking who was responsible for the line making it into Bush’s speech, Steve Hadley, a deputy National Security Council adviser, came forward during a briefing with reporters on Tuesday afternoon. Hadley said he was the most senior official in the White House charged with vetting national security issues with the president’s speech.

Hadley offered Bush his resignation, which the president reportedly refused. Singer said that if the president had accepted the resignation, it would have been admitting fault.

Singer called Hadley’s move into the forefront of the controversy a commonly used political ploy.

“It wasn’t just a coincidence that Hadley tried to now take the fall on the same day as this (the sons’ deaths),” Singer said.

“Whether Uday is alive or dead doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that inside the White House intelligence was politicized and manipulated,” Singer told UPI. “Those two things happened at different times. It wasn’t Uday who put the 16 words in. It wasn’t Uday who played up those connections. It’s not to play down the success of getting those two guys, but just make sure it doesn’t get politicized.”

”’With reporting from Pam Hess in Kuwait.”’

Copyright 2003 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

LOS ANGELES (UPI) — The long-running saga of the “culture” of the Los Angeles Police Department may have reached a turning point this week with the appointment of a panel of lawyers and academics with strong civil rights backgrounds to take another look into the aftermath of the Rampart scandal.

The Blue Ribbon Rampart Review Panel will spend an anticipated nine months reviewing the skullduggery that occurred in the Rampart Division more than two years ago and could be the most effective exercise yet in terms of finding the right moves to make to ensure that effective reforms actually take place.

“This is not about individuals; it’s about systems,” said Connie Rice, the chairwoman of the 10-member panel and an attorney who has represented a number of clients with beefs against the department. “It’s about making sure the culture is getting recalibrated so this kind of widespread, widely known corruption doesn’t get buried or covered up or allowed to fester again.”

Rampart has been examined closely before by official boards, the media and by the LAPD itself. The stated purpose of the panel sworn in by the Police Commission Tuesday is, according to an LAPD statement, to “build upon the work done by other panels.”

“Essentially, the Panel will ascertain the extent to which the department and city have identified and implemented the most important lessons of the Rampart corruption scandal,” the statement continued. “The panel will produce a public document that assesses past Rampart reviews, identifies obstacles to be avoided in the future and determines if sufficient remedies are in place or in progress to prevent the likelihood of a similar event occurring in the future.”

The culture of the LAPD has been the target of criticism before. The 1991 Christopher Commission report urged a major overhaul in the wake of the Rodney King beating, finding that LAPD policies on the use of force were ignored by a number of problem officers and that supervisors weren’t keeping a close enough watch on their troops.

The wide-ranging reforms were largely stalled, however, as the investigators went back to their lives while leaving the implementation of reforms largely up to the LAPD itself.

The Blue Ribbon group is a bit different from the Christopher Commission and earlier Rampart panels in that it has a sizable representation of the other side — the lawyers who have come to learn the ins and outs of how the LAPD operates and where safeguards are needed to remove the temptation for officers to cut corners and violate regulations.

It is safe to assume that any pattern of continuing abuse on the part of the police will come to the attention of Rice and other attorneys who represent the alleged victims.

Also, their report will land on the desk of a willing audience. Mayor James Hahn and Police Chief William Bratton were not tainted by Rampart and will be able to use the document to make the kinds of procedural changes that can outflank the so-called blue wall, an alleged code of silence in the ranks that many critics say allows bad habits to flourish.

The wrongdoing in Rampart apparently percolated for years under the noses of department brass as a few — but still more than enough — individual members of the elite CRASH anti-gang unit used perjured testimony, planted evidence and falsified reports to railroad gang members and anyone else who happened to get in their way.

The machinations came to light only after rogue cop Rafael Perez was busted for pinching cocaine from the station’s evidence locker and offered to sing about his activities and those of his cohorts in exchange for a lighter sentence.

“Rampart CRASH officers developed an independent subculture that embodied a ‘war on gangs’ mentality where the ends justified the means, and they resisted supervision and control and ignored LAPD’s procedure and policies,” said the report from the city’s first Rampart commission in 2000.

“The misconduct of CRASH officers went undetected because the department’s managers ignored warning signs and failed to provide the leadership oversight and supervision necessary to control this specialized unit.”

The results were appalling. CRASH was dissolved citywide and more than 100 criminal cases had to be dismissed because the evidence submitted by the police had to be considered tainted and pretty much worthless. Rampart also set the stage for the eventual departure of Police Chief Bernard Parks.

While Parks was considered a strict disciplinarian, he was also a career LAPD officer who came under criticism for allegedly downplaying Rampart and clashing with the district attorney’s office over his alleged foot-dragging.

Bratton and Hahn took office in the wake of Rampart and don’t have to worry about the heavy lifting of rooting out individual troublemakers or finding themselves in the role of scapegoat. They can now turn their attention to snuffing out the last embers of the Rampart scandal through operational changes that will be recommended by those who have had plenty of experience with the dark side of the LAPD’s “culture.”

Copyright 2003 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

LOS ANGELES (UPI) — The long-running saga of the “culture” of the Los Angeles Police Department may have reached a turning point this week with the appointment of a panel of lawyers and academics with strong civil rights backgrounds to take another look into the aftermath of the Rampart scandal.

The Blue Ribbon Rampart Review Panel will spend an anticipated nine months reviewing the skullduggery that occurred in the Rampart Division more than two years ago and could be the most effective exercise yet in terms of finding the right moves to make to ensure that effective reforms actually take place.

“This is not about individuals; it’s about systems,” said Connie Rice, the chairwoman of the 10-member panel and an attorney who has represented a number of clients with beefs against the department. “It’s about making sure the culture is getting recalibrated so this kind of widespread, widely known corruption doesn’t get buried or covered up or allowed to fester again.”

Rampart has been examined closely before by official boards, the media and by the LAPD itself. The stated purpose of the panel sworn in by the Police Commission Tuesday is, according to an LAPD statement, to “build upon the work done by other panels.”

“Essentially, the Panel will ascertain the extent to which the department and city have identified and implemented the most important lessons of the Rampart corruption scandal,” the statement continued. “The panel will produce a public document that assesses past Rampart reviews, identifies obstacles to be avoided in the future and determines if sufficient remedies are in place or in progress to prevent the likelihood of a similar event occurring in the future.”

The culture of the LAPD has been the target of criticism before. The 1991 Christopher Commission report urged a major overhaul in the wake of the Rodney King beating, finding that LAPD policies on the use of force were ignored by a number of problem officers and that supervisors weren’t keeping a close enough watch on their troops.

The wide-ranging reforms were largely stalled, however, as the investigators went back to their lives while leaving the implementation of reforms largely up to the LAPD itself.

The Blue Ribbon group is a bit different from the Christopher Commission and earlier Rampart panels in that it has a sizable representation of the other side — the lawyers who have come to learn the ins and outs of how the LAPD operates and where safeguards are needed to remove the temptation for officers to cut corners and violate regulations.

It is safe to assume that any pattern of continuing abuse on the part of the police will come to the attention of Rice and other attorneys who represent the alleged victims.

Also, their report will land on the desk of a willing audience. Mayor James Hahn and Police Chief William Bratton were not tainted by Rampart and will be able to use the document to make the kinds of procedural changes that can outflank the so-called blue wall, an alleged code of silence in the ranks that many critics say allows bad habits to flourish.

The wrongdoing in Rampart apparently percolated for years under the noses of department brass as a few — but still more than enough — individual members of the elite CRASH anti-gang unit used perjured testimony, planted evidence and falsified reports to railroad gang members and anyone else who happened to get in their way.

The machinations came to light only after rogue cop Rafael Perez was busted for pinching cocaine from the station’s evidence locker and offered to sing about his activities and those of his cohorts in exchange for a lighter sentence.

“Rampart CRASH officers developed an independent subculture that embodied a ‘war on gangs’ mentality where the ends justified the means, and they resisted supervision and control and ignored LAPD’s procedure and policies,” said the report from the city’s first Rampart commission in 2000.

“The misconduct of CRASH officers went undetected because the department’s managers ignored warning signs and failed to provide the leadership oversight and supervision necessary to control this specialized unit.”

The results were appalling. CRASH was dissolved citywide and more than 100 criminal cases had to be dismissed because the evidence submitted by the police had to be considered tainted and pretty much worthless. Rampart also set the stage for the eventual departure of Police Chief Bernard Parks.

While Parks was considered a strict disciplinarian, he was also a career LAPD officer who came under criticism for allegedly downplaying Rampart and clashing with the district attorney’s office over his alleged foot-dragging.

Bratton and Hahn took office in the wake of Rampart and don’t have to worry about the heavy lifting of rooting out individual troublemakers or finding themselves in the role of scapegoat. They can now turn their attention to snuffing out the last embers of the Rampart scandal through operational changes that will be recommended by those who have had plenty of experience with the dark side of the LAPD’s “culture.”

Copyright 2003 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

During the past few weeks I’ve spoken with a number of people who whine, mope and complain because business is down.

*Tom’s unhappy because his business is off from last year.

*Carol’s complaining because it’s summertime, and business is always slow.

*Jim’s stopped working because ‘everybody’ he calls is on vacation, so as he says, “It’s a waste of time to make phone calls.”

When I was speaking with Tom, Carol and Jim, I asked them how much time they spend looking for new customers.

Collectively, they said, “Not enough.”

“How many new people have you called in the past week?
People you’ve never spoken to before?” I asked.

“Not enough.”

“What are you doing to grow your business?” I asked.

A non-answer was given.

“What are you going to do to solve your problem?”

“I don’t know.” was the collective reply.

Tom, Carol and Jim have an ”’attitude”’ problem.

If you think business stinks, guess what? It does!

It becomes self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you’re not looking for customers — and business – every day it’s almost certain you won’t find any.

Hockey great Wayne Gretzky said, “You’ll always miss 100 percent of the shots you do not take.”

But if you’re not looking for new business, what are you doing everyday?

*Pushing papers back and forth on the desktop?

*Creating proposals for people who aren’t going to buy?

*Calling on the same people you’ve called on for the past year who aren’t available and don’t return your phone calls?

*Going to meetings that don’t accomplish anything?

*Telling everybody how busy you are?

For many years I’ve wondered why bright, successful and talented people’s careers level off and reach a plateau.

This is my conclusion:

*They stop prospecting.

*They stop looking for new customers.

* They do everything they can so they don’t have to pick up the phone and call someone.

Tom, Carol and Jim don’t have any goals. They don’t have any magnificent obsessions. They complain that business is tough, but don’t do anything about it. They’ve given up. They’ve quit.

Ben Curtis

As I was thinking about Tom, Carol and Jim, I picked up the morning newspaper and read about Ben Curtis.

You know Ben Curtis. He’s the one who

*Won a tournament in Myrtle Beach on the Hooters Tour in 2000.

*Won the Ohio Amateur two times.

*Was a semifinalist in the 1999 US Amateur Championship.

Oh that Ben Curtis!

Ben had never won on the PGA tour. Never managed a top-10 finish. Was ranked 396th in the world. A few weeks ago he finished 13th in the Western Open.

So what!

But that 13th place finish enabled him to qualify for the British Open.

And what did Ben do?

He stared down Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, and Davis Love III.

He outlasted Thomas Bjorn, who turned a three-stroke lead with four holes to play into a one-stroke loss, by making two bogeys and a double-bogey.

Ben won the 132nd British Open, holds the title of “Champion Golfer of the Year,” and earned a check for $1,112,720.

Sunday afternoon Ben’s name was engraved on the silver claret jug trophy, whose previous winners include Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead, and Tiger Woods.

Ben had a dream. Ben had a passion. Ben saw an opportunity, grabbed it and never let go.

I don’t know what will happen to Ben in the future, but for one glorious weekend, he was the best golfer in the world.

Lance Armstrong

Then there’s Lance Armstrong and the Tour de France. He’s won the three-week bicycle race the last four years and is the favorite to win it this year. But the competition’s been tough.

On Monday the unthinkable happened. On the final climb of the Tour’s 15th Stage, the right brake lever on his handle bar caught a young fan’s souvenir bag causing him to crash.

*He could have laid there, complaining about how unfair things are.

*He could have felt sorry for himself.

*He could have licked his wounds and said, “Wait till next year.”

But that’s not Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong got back on his bicycle, joined the leaders and won the stage, surging to a bigger lead over his #1 challenger, Jan Ullrich of Germany.

This is one of my favorite poems;

The Man Who Knows He Can

If you think you are beaten, you are,

If you think you dare not, you don’t.

If you like to win, but you think you can’t,

It is almost certain you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost,

For out in the world you’ll find,

Success begins with a fellow’s will

It’s all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are,

You’ve got to think high to rise,

You’ve got to be sure of yourself before

You can ever win the Prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go

To the stronger or faster man,

But soon or later the man who wins

Is the man Who Knows He Can!

– Anonymous

Have ”’Attitude”’

You can go through life with an attitude problem, like Tom, Carol and Jim. Or you can go through life like Ben Curtis and Lance Armstrong — ”’with attitude!”’

The choice is yours.

”’Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey Mayer’s SucceedingInBusiness.com Newsletter. (Copyright, 2003, Jeffrey J. Mayer, SucceedingInBusiness.com. To subscribe to Jeff’s free newsletter, visit:”’ https://www.SucceedingInBusiness.com

During the past few weeks I’ve spoken with a number of people who whine, mope and complain because business is down.

*Tom’s unhappy because his business is off from last year.

*Carol’s complaining because it’s summertime, and business is always slow.

*Jim’s stopped working because ‘everybody’ he calls is on vacation, so as he says, “It’s a waste of time to make phone calls.”

When I was speaking with Tom, Carol and Jim, I asked them how much time they spend looking for new customers.

Collectively, they said, “Not enough.”

“How many new people have you called in the past week?
People you’ve never spoken to before?” I asked.

“Not enough.”

“What are you doing to grow your business?” I asked.

A non-answer was given.

“What are you going to do to solve your problem?”

“I don’t know.” was the collective reply.

Tom, Carol and Jim have an ”’attitude”’ problem.

If you think business stinks, guess what? It does!

It becomes self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you’re not looking for customers — and business – every day it’s almost certain you won’t find any.

Hockey great Wayne Gretzky said, “You’ll always miss 100 percent of the shots you do not take.”

But if you’re not looking for new business, what are you doing everyday?

*Pushing papers back and forth on the desktop?

*Creating proposals for people who aren’t going to buy?

*Calling on the same people you’ve called on for the past year who aren’t available and don’t return your phone calls?

*Going to meetings that don’t accomplish anything?

*Telling everybody how busy you are?

For many years I’ve wondered why bright, successful and talented people’s careers level off and reach a plateau.

This is my conclusion:

*They stop prospecting.

*They stop looking for new customers.

* They do everything they can so they don’t have to pick up the phone and call someone.

Tom, Carol and Jim don’t have any goals. They don’t have any magnificent obsessions. They complain that business is tough, but don’t do anything about it. They’ve given up. They’ve quit.

Ben Curtis

As I was thinking about Tom, Carol and Jim, I picked up the morning newspaper and read about Ben Curtis.

You know Ben Curtis. He’s the one who

*Won a tournament in Myrtle Beach on the Hooters Tour in 2000.

*Won the Ohio Amateur two times.

*Was a semifinalist in the 1999 US Amateur Championship.

Oh that Ben Curtis!

Ben had never won on the PGA tour. Never managed a top-10 finish. Was ranked 396th in the world. A few weeks ago he finished 13th in the Western Open.

So what!

But that 13th place finish enabled him to qualify for the British Open.

And what did Ben do?

He stared down Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, and Davis Love III.

He outlasted Thomas Bjorn, who turned a three-stroke lead with four holes to play into a one-stroke loss, by making two bogeys and a double-bogey.

Ben won the 132nd British Open, holds the title of “Champion Golfer of the Year,” and earned a check for $1,112,720.

Sunday afternoon Ben’s name was engraved on the silver claret jug trophy, whose previous winners include Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead, and Tiger Woods.

Ben had a dream. Ben had a passion. Ben saw an opportunity, grabbed it and never let go.

I don’t know what will happen to Ben in the future, but for one glorious weekend, he was the best golfer in the world.

Lance Armstrong

Then there’s Lance Armstrong and the Tour de France. He’s won the three-week bicycle race the last four years and is the favorite to win it this year. But the competition’s been tough.

On Monday the unthinkable happened. On the final climb of the Tour’s 15th Stage, the right brake lever on his handle bar caught a young fan’s souvenir bag causing him to crash.

*He could have laid there, complaining about how unfair things are.

*He could have felt sorry for himself.

*He could have licked his wounds and said, “Wait till next year.”

But that’s not Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong got back on his bicycle, joined the leaders and won the stage, surging to a bigger lead over his #1 challenger, Jan Ullrich of Germany.

This is one of my favorite poems;

The Man Who Knows He Can

If you think you are beaten, you are,

If you think you dare not, you don’t.

If you like to win, but you think you can’t,

It is almost certain you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost,

For out in the world you’ll find,

Success begins with a fellow’s will

It’s all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are,

You’ve got to think high to rise,

You’ve got to be sure of yourself before

You can ever win the Prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go

To the stronger or faster man,

But soon or later the man who wins

Is the man Who Knows He Can!

– Anonymous

Have ”’Attitude”’

You can go through life with an attitude problem, like Tom, Carol and Jim. Or you can go through life like Ben Curtis and Lance Armstrong — ”’with attitude!”’

The choice is yours.

”’Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey Mayer’s SucceedingInBusiness.com Newsletter. (Copyright, 2003, Jeffrey J. Mayer, SucceedingInBusiness.com. To subscribe to Jeff’s free newsletter, visit:”’ https://www.SucceedingInBusiness.com

“Dick Rowland Image”

”Shoots (News, Views and Quotes)”

– Britain’s Unstable Nanny State

A recent news report revealed that Great Britain’s National Health Service spends millions of pounds each year to treat foreigners and illegal aliens not legally entitled to free health care. If this policy sounds odious from the standpoint of taxpayers, at least it is a happy outcome for the recipients of the “free” services, who are not required to give the health clinics a social security number.

But can the U.K.’s welfare state remain “benevolent” indefinitely?

Not if it is to remain generous. Eventually it will have to reduce access to free services (or reduce quality), or it will have to become far more intrusive, according to Pierre Lemieux, research fellow at the Independent Institute.

“You can’t both have the Welfare State and avoid totalitarian controls forever,” writes Lemieux in a recent piece.

“The Welfare State cannot, in any meaningful way, assume responsibility for the welfare of the population without knowing much about its subjects, without imposing ID numbers and papers, without systems to detect need and abuse, and without secondary laws meant to protect its wards from imposing costs on the system (like people who don’t wear seat belts, who drink, who are obese, and so on and so forth).”

Lemieux quotes British observers well-placed to see that the nanny state’s policy of generous — and relatively unobtrusive — health care handouts is unsustainable.

But there is one beneficiary who clearly will benefit even if the welfare state becomes more obtrusive — the state and its functionaries, which will have more control over people too vulnerable or complacent to rebel against it.

Concludes Lemieux: “My hypothesis is that the state likes docile citizens. And who is going to be more docile that this Sudanese woman who came to the U.K. with her husband and two children, all HIV positive, and who says, ‘In Sudan, I would be dead. My children would be dead or orphans. Now, we have a happy life.’ The worst revolution this woman could ever participate in would be one aimed at increasing state power. Such subjects are no threat for the state apparatchiks. Only with more administrative tyranny can the Welfare State prevent itself from being screwed. The Welfare State and the Totalitarian State are the two faces of the same Leviathan Janus.”

Above article is quoted from The Independent Institute, The Lighthouse Volume 5, Issue 4 https://www.independent.org

– Sanders Attacks

Vermont Rep. Bernie Sanders is at war with the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. The company found that Canadian distributors were buying GSK’s products at Canadian price-controlled prices, then shipping them back into the U.S. to undercut the U.S. price (a practice which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says is illegal.) So GSK quite logically stopped supplying their products to the Canadian distributors. (This was predicted in an EAI commentary published in July 2000).

Bernie is lead sponsor of a bill that would — get this — stop a U.S. company from declining to export its products to foreign companies for reimportation into the U.S. (Free Press, 5/6/03). In other words, Bernie wants to force pharmaceutical companies to import Canadian price controls, something that would destroy the U.S. industry; which of course is the point of Sanders socialism.

– Slovakia’s Tax Reform

Slovakia’s proposed flat tax could be a model for other European countries. To simplify the tax code and create a better economic climate, the government has proposed to scrap the current “progressive” system and replace it with a 20 percent flat-rate income tax for both households and companies (the corporate income tax rate currently is 25 percent, while personal income tax rates range from 10 percent to 38 percent). A simplified 20 percent value-added tax will be levied on all goods and services, eliminating preferences that currently exist for favored items. Capital gains will also be subject to a 20 percent tax, as well as taxes on dividends and transfers of property.

“The new tax framework should become effective as of January 2004, and it is part of an overall fiscal framework that will cut the budget deficit to 3.4 percent of GDP. We expect the flat tax will improve the business environment, mainly by increasing incentives to work and simplifying the tax system. The change should also attract more foreign direct investment, help create new jobs, and eliminate tax evasion. Our expectations are based on real world evidence. Similar changes to the tax system, including flat-rate income taxes, were adopted by Estonia (one of the 10 countries set to join the EU next year) beginning in 1995. Even though Estonia’s per capita GDP was 30 percent lower than Slovakia’s at that time, the flat tax has generated so much growth that Estonia’s economy leapfrogged ours in 2001.” — Ivan Miklos, Slovak finance minister (Wall Street Journal, 5/8/03.)

– The Key to Health Care Policy (as we have long been preaching) is getting people to take personal responsibility for their own lifestyles, not charging society for the costs of repairing the damage. A recent report from the Rand Corporation (RB 4549 2002) makes the point again. It found that the single biggest contributor to chronic health conditions and expenditures is not smoking, heavy drinking, or poverty, but obesity. Normal weight daily smokers were 25 percent more likely to have chronic health conditions than non-smokers. Normal weight heavy drinkers were 12 percent more likely to have chronic health conditions than light- or non-drinkers. But obese people were 67 percent more likely to have chronic health conditions than normal weight people. Obese people spend 36 percent more on health services, and 77 percent more on medications. Statistically (because so many people do it), overeating is far more of a health threat than smoking or boozing.

Above articles are quoted from The Ethan Allen Institute, The Ethan Allen Letter June 2003 https://www.ethanallen.org

”Roots (Food for Thought)”

– Bush is Right on Welfare Reform

By David Hogberg

In late February the Des Moines Register Editorial Board continued its assault on President Bush’s proposed welfare reform. The editorial bemoaned the fact that Bush’s welfare reform would increase the number of hours a week a welfare recipient must work from 20 to 26: it’s the work requirements that really stand to hurt people. It may not sound like a big deal to require welfare mothers to work more, but it is.

If the [Bush] legislation is imposed, [an] Iowa woman might need to work 24 hours in a job before her schooling could count for her “work requirement.” (It’s worth noting jobs are in short supply in the current economy.) That could result in her having to go to school part-time instead of full-time. If she makes even a little too much money at her job, both her child-care subsidy and tuition aid could be at risk.

That’s what stricter work requirements mean in the real world.

The Editorial Board appears to be ignorant of the research on the effect of work requirements on the decline of welfare caseloads. A July 2001 study by June O’Neill and M. Anne Hill found that the 1996 welfare reform law accounted for more than 60 percent of the increase in work participation. This strongly suggests that the work requirements in the 1996 welfare reform law had the intended effect. Furthermore, studies by both Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute found individual states that enforced work requirements with very strict sanctions (immediate loss of benefits) for noncompliance had larger declines in the welfare rolls than did states with less severe sanctions.

In what may be the most heartening news, these work requirements are beneficial to the income of single-parent families. A recent University of Michigan Study by Rebecca M. Blank and Robert F. Schoeni found that single-parent families in states with strict or moderate penalties for not working had higher gains in income than those in states with lenient penalties. The researchers stated:

This is perhaps surprising, since many have predicted that strong penalties would lead to greater impoverishment among those who lose their eligibility for welfare but are unable to replace benefits with earnings. Instead, it is the more lenient states with softer penalties where children’s income seems to have grown the least.

Given that strict work requirements have led to lower rates of welfare dependency and increases in income for former recipients, the Bush Administration is on the right track in making work requirements slightly more strict.

The Editorial Board further disparaged the proposed marriage counseling initiative in Bush’s plan:

The marriage initiatives are simply wrong. They don’t work. They only further stigmatize single motherhood and scapegoat single parents as the reason for poverty.

Much of our society does not stigmatize single motherhood but rather tolerates or even celebrates it-witness television shows like Murphy Brown and Friends. Given the well-demonstrated connection between single motherhood and poverty, a bit more stigma would seem to be in order.

What is most curious about the above quote is the claim that marriage initiatives “don’t work.” In this case, the Editorial Board is not ignoring the evidence, but rather misinterpreting it. The editorial is referring to two studies released last year that showed that welfare recipients in Connecticut and Iowa who had entered the workforce were less likely to get married than recipients who did not enter the workforce. Neither study showed that marriage counseling didn’t work because in neither case was marriage counseling part of the welfare program. There is no evidence that the proposed marriage counseling initiatives don’t work, because such programs do not yet exist.

President Bush’s welfare plan moves welfare in the right direction. It builds on a successful reform by strengthening the proven policy of work requirements, and introducing an experimental marriage counseling program. These reforms will further decrease dependence and enable more people to move out of poverty.

David Hogberg is a Research Analyst with Public Interest Institute.

Above article is quoted from Public Interest Institute at Iowa Wesleyan College, Institute Brief May 2003 https://www.limitedgovernment.org

”Evergreen (Today’s Quote)”

“A Rapidly Progressive Disease. Since my ordeal began in 1999, I can see that other professions, such as accounting, are also being saddled with government rules that will stifle or strangle them. What some other physicians and I are now experiencing will become more and more common, as Roberts and Stratton point out in The Tyranny of Good Intentions, until 1984 and Brave New World come to complete fruition. Then it will collapse and begin again from a Remnant. The cycle continues as a new Tower of Babel is always constructed.” — Don Kreutzer, M.D., Clarksville, MO

”’Edited by Richard O. Rowland, president of Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, 1314 S. King Street, Suite 1163, Honolulu, HI 96814. Phone/fax is 808-591-9193, cell phone is 808-864-1776. Send him an email at:”’ mailto:grassroot@hawaii.rr.com ”’See the Web site at:”’ https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/