There are three contenders (or should we say pretenders) for the opening being left by Mr. Pawlenty. 

These are:

Mark Dayton (Democrat)

Tom Emmer (Republican)

Tom Horner (Independent)

The three are career politicians.  They tell the public what they want to hear which is:  If I get elected the economy in the state of Minnesota will improve.  More jobs will be created.  K-12 education will be the best in the country and the world by paying educators what they deserve.  Will also improve on higher education.  Will reduce taxes to the working class and will make the rich pay their fair dues OR will raise taxes just enough to greatly improve on the life of Minnesotans.  Will create well paying jobs that we are / were accustomed to.  Please note that this is just a summary of what all the career politicians are all saying.  The same absurd and ridiculous messages are being repeated over and over again in an attempt to lure as many Naïve Americans to vote for them in November 2010.

The educated and somewhat intelligent Naïve American might stop for a second and think how these three candidates are willing to spend considerably more money on their campaigns that what they are going to receive as compensation for being elected governor.  If you are seeking for a job that pays X dollars in an expected number of years (four in our case)  you would never, under any circumstance spend nearly X, X or 10 times X to get the job.  It does not make sense.  When something does not add up, one needs to see though the false promises the realities of life.  Whoever gets elected will have to pay back with interests all the moneys that special interests groups have given them to plaster the state with signs and saturate the media with negative adds regarding their opponents.

If Naïve Americans want a change and I do not mean from a Republican to a Democrat career politician, we need to make our government accountable.  Today most (not to say all) politicians make false promises.  There is no consequence to their false promises.  What The Naïve American proposes is to make accountable career politicians for their promises, which will have an impact on their actions if they want to be re elected or move on to become the next president of the United States.

I am a computer scientist / computer software developer.  I have worked for small, medium and large size companies.  I have owned several businesses so I have a rather clear and simple understanding of how things should and can be done.  In computer science there is something called software engineering.  Lets amuse us with some of the simplest engineering concepts and see how they can be applied to our career politicians.

When any software development project is considered, one must come up with the expected benefits(s) and associate how they are going to be evaluated.  This is completely out of the scope of costs.  Costing is of prime importance to businesses unless the government, providing billions of Dollars, so they do not bankrupt and close, can protect them.  In our country and in most parts of the world, when a business is not profitable they simply close.  This never happens with governments.  They just raise taxes and continue on the down spiral.  The only ones affected are in the case of the USA, Naïve Americans like you and me.

When politicians define a goal, they never provide ways to measure success or failure.  For example, president Obama reformed the healthcare system but so far less Naïve Americans have insurance and the cost of healthcare has gone up by around 20% when comparing statistics before and after the reform.  The USA does not need such type of failed healthcare reform.  Politicians love it because Democrats will claim they reformed the healthcare system and Republicans will claim that the reform was a complete failure.  It is left to Naïve Americans to figure out the outcome and most important to pay for it.  The USA is no longer in a financial position to pay for too many things.  Our national deficit is huge (China owns our country) and there is nothing in the near or long term horizon that provides the slightest indication of an economical recovery.

There are ONLY two (2) items that will help Minnesota and the USA as a whole.  These are:

1) Dramatic improvements in our economy achieved by production of desirable worldwide goods and services designed and produced in the USA by Naïve Americans which should be initiated by small businesses.

2) Dramatic improvements in our K-12 and higher education, which will lead to the creation of new small businesses with well-paid jobs.

Please note that gay rights, sport arenas, increases in welfare benefits, increases in social security benefits, benefits for illegal immigrants, etc, etc, etc will NEVER solve an issue, they will just create longer-term serious problems.  Temporarily increasing benefits to unemployed, stopping foreclosures, raising or lowering taxes for some brackets of our population are just the means to achieve the above two mentioned goals.  Once the goals are achieved we can freely discuss how to provide additional services to Naïve Americans and hopefully reduce taxes for all of us.  As a side note, The Naïve American firmly believes that the USA government should provide FREE BASE HEALTHCARE SERVICES to ALL LEGAL Naïve Americans (no buts, ifs, then, else).  If our government is not able to offer such simple benefit (and we all know the government does not) then it has miserably failed and we have the obligation as US citizens and legal residents to take action and induce a change.

In designing software one always needs to come up with a set of measurable goals.  Goals such as good, best, fastest do not cut it.  They are not measurable.  We need measurable goals (e.g., these N operations should run 50% faster on the same processor as they do in the current version, the program should use 50% less memory that the current version, etc).  Requirements are then tied to the goals and the goals are then measured.  If measurements fail then the goals have not been achieved.  This is one of the many software engineering concepts that can and should be applied to our political system because they are easy to define and check.

What Minnesotan Naïve Americans need to do is ask the candidates first and then wait for the results at the end of their terms.  Each candidate should promise an increase in non-government sustainable and well paid jobs.

For example, I (replace with the proper career politician name Mark Dayton, Tom Emmer and Tom Horner) promise Naïve American Minnesotans to increase from the current yyy percentage of small business that produce worldwide desirable goods and services to zzz percent (zzz being larger in absolute value than yyy).

Another promise would be, I (replace with the proper career politician name Mark Dayton, Tom Emmer and Tom Horner) promise Naïve American Minnesotans to reduce the employment from the current 10.5% down to 6.5% with sustainable and well paid (non-government jobs paid with taxes) working for small, medium and large companies that produce desirable worldwide products and services.

Just one more example, I (replace with the proper career politician name Mark Dayton, Tom Emmer and Tom Horner) promise Naïve American Minnesotans to increase the percentage of youth finishing high school, being admitted to accredited mathematics, science and engineering schools and receiving degrees by at least 10% during my tenure as governor of the State of Minnesota.

All of the above examples are simple to define and easy to verify their outcome.  All three career politicians may use similar or better sets of numbers, but when their office ends the promises should be measured and results should be published so the next time any of these career politicians attempts to run for office their records will show they are just empty and false.  The burden then falls on Naïve American voters to make sure no one will ever cast a single vote for any politician that fails.  If we do, then all what is happening today with Minnesota and in general with the USA should be blamed not only on career politicians but also on Naïve Americans that compromise our future in order to get something for themselves.  For example, I will vote for such candidate because my labor union has financed a candidate who in return will raise our salaries at the cost of higher taxes while the many Minnesotans go homeless and have little to eat.

The Naïve American is sending this blog to the three gubernatorial candidates and to the main TV station networks in the Twin Cities (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) area in order to see if there is any reaction to the simple ideas proposed in this blog.

Will let you know if any candidate or any TV station embraces the ideas here presented and actually attempts to improve the well being of Naïve Americans in Minnesota and in the USA.

The Naïve American

There were some points that called my attention and want to bring them up on this blog.

Apparently Mr. Pawlenty wants to cut some budgets, which will force to layoff some government workers.  The logic behind this is that if there are not enough funds to go around, individuals, companies and the government need to do the same.  People would stop buying some items and companies would layoff workers.  There are politicians (mostly Democrats) and affected government workers (as expected) that do not want this to happen.  What is so special about government workers and elected officials?  The answer is nothing.  If regular Naive Americans are being laid off then any individual with some basic common sense should understand that government worker and politicians should also follow suit if the economy requires it.  My strong support for the Governor of Minnesota!

Apparently the proposed budget cuts are not going to affect benefits received by US Veterans.  I am 50-50 on this idea.  The reason is that we in the USA do not have a mandatory military draft.  If a Naive American wishes to join the armed forces so be it.  Joining the military for a few years or as a career is a personal choice which one way or another will have an impact in the lives of the individuals and their families.  The same is true for any individual that enrolls in an accredited university and completes a bachelor, master or PhD.  Educated people have better chances of success in life.  If a member of the military is injured it is just a result of their (poor or good) own choice.  I am OK with the decision of Mr. Pawlenty.

The last point that called my attention was the fact that the budget for our illustrious child daycare better known to us, as K-12 would not be affected.  Everyone knows that the K-12 education system in the USA ranks fourteenth (14^th) in the world.  Ask a teacher if he or she can recite fourteen (14) countries and their capitals that have better education than in the USA.  Yet the teachers union lobby and advertise threatening politicians that they are 70,000 strong.  In other words our poor end incompetent K-12 group of teachers will continue to get raises and will not be laid off.  If it were up to me I would fire all teachers and will start fresh without unions.  Perhaps because of natural selection and free economic process our K-12 system might regain its position of decades ago.  Completely disagree with the choice of Mr. Pawlenty!