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Great Football memories

In honor the superbowl, we are doing our annual look back at great football moments. My buddy Louie mentioned to me that the Carolina game a few weeks ago in the playoffs was the best football game he'd ever seen. That game sucked, and only went into double OT because of three missed field goals. Good tension, but bad football. The greatest game ever played before my eyes was when the Buffalo Bills played a game that involved the greatest comeback in NFL history. This was probably about 15 years ago. I don't even remember the team they were playing (editor: it was the Oilers), but the Bills were down 35-3 at halftime. Their starter, Jim Kelly, was out injured (as seemed often the case). So they bring in their second string QB Frank Reich. Somehow he came back in the second half and won the game, it was insane. Remember this to impress your friends, the greatest comeback in the history of the NFL was engineered by a back up QB! The biggest regret I have about that game is that I was watching it alone. When a game like that happens, it is important to have your friends next to you so you can say "Are you seeing this? Is this happening? The announcer just said this is the greatest comeback in the history of the NFL". Worst football memory? It would have be one of the very many Buffalo Superbowl losses. Especially the one involving Scott Norwood. Also known to Buffalo fans as Scott Norwide, and Scott Norwouldn't. Watching football alone sucks, but you guys are still my friends, right? Cool, I'll be over Sunday.

Friday Fives

You have just won one million dollars: 1. Who do you call first? my wife 2. What is the first thing you buy for yourself? new tires for my truck 3. What is the first thing you buy for someone else? everyone gets a new car 4. Do you give any away? If yes, to whom? I'd give some to Amnesty International & the Red Cross 5. Do you invest any? If so, how? Well of course. I hear this 'internet' is really going to be something. That Al Gore really put something great together. via Friday Fives.

Offshoring, lay-offs, and outsourcing

Today we are going to talk about something I have touched on earlier... but now it has a name. It is called Offshoring . Offshoring is an expression talking about high tech, white collar jobs moving out of the country. What we are beginning to see here in the business culture is companies outsourcing jobs (most commonly, call centers) to other countries. The jobs go anywhere labor is cheaper, ie - everywhere. Specifically though, we are seeing call centers going to India. HP, IBM, and even the Republican party often farm out various call center jobs like order processing, customer service, technical support to call centers in India where the education level is terrific and the wages are considerably cheaper. Another term for this is 'brain drain'. Ironically, the expression stems from India's greatest minds all emigrating to the United States for luxurious corporate jobs that pay far more than the economy could in India. This is indeed ironic because jobs like mine and yours are emigrating to India now. It is important you see this not in political terms at all. This has nothing to do with left or right or even politicians necessarily. The issue is simple economics, people in other countries will work longer and harder for less. As a result, the US economy is losing precious great jobs. Amy Dean is some kind of labor genius, and she had a great quote about this in this article: "If we had one-quarter of the same rights for human beings as we do for compact discs, we'd see a huge breakthrough in trade policy". Now, we can't simply tell companies not to move jobs overseas. That would be stupid, and fascist. So what can we do to keep and lure jobs here? Well, I think we can begin by offering incentives to American companies to keep jobs here in America. As well, we can start pulling out the freebies and crazy tax incentives that big companies are getting who aren't keeping their jobs here. Do you know where your Ford was made? Mexico. Do you know where my Toyota was made? Indiana. Also what we can do is patronize companies who support American labor. This may be tough though, because the recording won't say "please hold, while I transfer you to India". Another cool and interesting step - today's Rocky Mountain News did a piece on legislators wanting to withhold state contracts with companies who move their labor overseas. I think this is a creative and positive way to reward employers for not moving everything overseas, or up to Canada (where my second to last job went. My last job went to El Paso). What we are looking at is possibly a HUGE campaign issue for the presidency. Why? Well, it is an issue that we can all agree on. Besides, with the current president absolutely destroying the deficit and racking up debt for future generations and slowly chipping away at Social Security... we are going to need good jobs to pay off 400 Billion deficit our president has left us with. Yeah, the deficit is completely insano - 500 Billion (keep in mind that Clinton left office with a 236 Billion surplus). Gee, how the hell did we go from a 236 Billion surplus to a 500 Million deficit? We'll discuss that later, I promise.