Texas Ascendant

TBAR: A Philosophy of Banking

2011-12-23T21:02:00.000-08:00

An Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Christmas Trees and the Logic of Growth by Mark Spitznagel (Dec. 12, 2011) compared the containment of bank failures to the containment of forest fires.

Mr. Spitznagel explained how 100 years ago the U.S. Forest Service set a policy of suppressing all forest fires. Enough dead wood had accumulated over the years that in 1988 a massive wildfire destroyed an area 30 times larger than any previous forest fire. The previous policy of containment was reversed and a new policy that recognizes the need to allow some forest fires to burn to restore a natural balance.

Mr. Spitznagel then compared the outdated fire containment policy of the U.S. Forest Service to Alan Greenspan's bailout of the Continental Illinois bank in 1988. This was the largest bank failure in U.S. history until the failure of Washington Mutual in 2008. There is an informative article about the Continental Illinois failure in Wikipedia and a detailed article (a chapter in a book) at the FDIC. His point is that refusing to admit the losses on the books of many banks is perpetuating a climate of low growth. He said that central banks create a tinderbox when keeping alive bad investments.

Before our banking debacle in 2008 I remember reading articles in the Wall Street Journal that criticized Japanese banks for refusing to admit many of their assets were worthless. Carrying bad loans on their books was keeping their economy depressed. It is easy to see fault in others.

A set of guiding principals about banking might be said to be a philosophy if those principals are formed rationally. But a set of guiding principals about banking could be called an ideology or self-deception if it is based on desires or political considerations that fly in the face of reason.

We need banking in Texas to be managed rationally.

Robert

This article is part of the Texas Banking an Finance Project

Economics and Prosperity for Our Children

2010-06-20T20:31:00.000-07:00

Our Shrinking Economy

When I heard Warren Buffett say, "the pie is always growing," I thought to myself, "your pie is always growing." The middle-class economy has been shrinking for decades. The newspapers only tell us the Dow Jones Average or the S&P 500 or the GDP is increasing.

While running for the local school board in 2010 I ran across this included chart that shows the decline in average disposable income from 33% income to less than 2% over 40 years.

In my campaign I said we need to reduce the emphasis on teaching science and increase emphasis on teaching economics and finance.

Our children who are currently graduating from colleges and universities are having trouble finding jobs. We think it is just a temporary down-turn, but I believe there has also been a steady decline in jobs for the middle-class, a decline that has been going on for decades and has been hushed-up by the papers in the same way the local papers hush-up the decline in Plano schools.

Reliable and Useful Economic Data

The state of Texas needs to accumulate and analyze economic data so we are not dependent on the federal government for economic data and forecasting. After Greenspan let us down, we cannot rely on the Federal Reserve nor on the federal government for economic assessments.

We need data so we can understand what is happening and so we can spot opportunities. We need to be able to devise defensive financial strategies and to spot opportunities for growth.

Foreign Investment

We need data to help us plan investment opportunities for foreign capital to invest in Texas and in our neighboring states. We need data to help us plan capital investment into factories or into export businesses.

Our national economy is a wreck because Wall Street bankers could not or would not find capital investments in American factories for foreign capital. Instead, Wall Street bankers diverted foreign capital into Collateralized Debt Obligations.

If Wall Street bankers will not find good opportunities for foreign investors, then Texans must do so. For the sake of our children's future and the future of the world economy, Texans must do a better job creating good investment opportunities that lead to job creation in Texas.

If Texans fail to develop good investments, then eventually no one in international banking will want U.S. dollars, the dollar will plunge in value, and we will all be ruined. But if we succeed, then Texas will drive the American economy and our children, as well as the whole nation, will prosper.

Robert Canright

The Exploitation of Innovation

2010-03-13T13:20:00.000-08:00

We need more focus on the exploitation of innovation than upon innovation and creativity. That is why I am glad U.T. Dallas has an Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship. It is entrepreneurship that turns innovation into products, jobs, and profits. And you cannot have entrepreneurship without the financial resources to turn inventions into products. Again we find that U.T. Dallas has a pertinent resource, it's Center for Finance Strategy Innovation. I look forward to the day when U.T. Dallas is a Tier One university. This university is a great resource for our community and for the state of Texas.

The story of PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center of Xerox, is a perfect example of how innovation is not always exploited correctly. The PARC developed windowing, but gave Steve Jobs a tour without getting him to sign contracts to protect the intellectual property of PARC. So Apple Computer exploited the technology Steve Jobs saw on his tour of the PARC. Besides windowing, he got to see bitmap graphics, a computer mouse, a laser printer, the graphical user interface (GUI), and WYSIWYG text editing: everything that made the Macintosh computer a successful product. The PARC also invented Ethernet, but it was 3Com that got rich from it. Microsoft later copied the idea of windowing from Apple, and Apple could not sue because Apple copied the idea from the PARC. Copying good ideas is an important business principle and we should put more emphasis on exploitation than on innovation.

It is better to be an exploiter than an innovator. You know who Bill Gates is, but who is Tim Paterson? Tim Paterson wrote QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for Seattle Computer Products. Bill Gates at Microsoft knew I.B.M. needed a disk operating system for their new PC, so he bought QDOS from Seattle Computer Products for $50,000 and licensed it to I.B.M. as MS-DOS. Whose fortune would you rather have, Tim Paterson's or Bill Gates? This is a perfect example of why it is better to be an exploiter than an innovator.

Our children's future prosperity will depend more on their exploitation of innovations than upon their own innovations. It is perhaps better to not get distracted with innovation, but to focus on the exploitation of other people's innovations. The public schools place too much emphasis on creativity and give out children a distorted perspective on the place of creativity within our business culture.

Having worked at high tech companies I can say that most high tech companies have more innovations than they know what to do with. Their problem is not a lack of innovation. A tech company has trouble sorting the winners from the losers, and figuring out how to turn a winning innovation into a home run. Seattle Computer Products could not turn QDOS into a home run, but Microsoft could. The challenge is exploitation, not innovation.

Innovation does not have to be complicated. This is an important lesson our children need to know. When I was working on super computer technology at Convex Computer I read the obituary of Baron Marcel Bich, the inventor of the Bic pen, Bic lighter, and the Bic disposable razor. Three simple products and he became a billionaire, was made a French baron, and was set for life. It is much harder to develop a super computer than a disposable razor. Convex Computer no longer exists, but you can still buy Bic products.

Steve Jobs figured out that technology based products are ephemeral. He gave up computers and turned to Pixar, developing products with long lasting sales: movies for kids. Our children need to know there are hard ways to make money, and easier ways to make money.

Our children need the best education they can get from PISD. They need to hear lessons that will help them prosper.

Robert Canright

To read more about PARC, try Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First Personal Computer, by Douglas K. Smith

Texas Economic Forum

2010-01-31T15:08:00.000-08:00

Action Plan

I was asked by a reader for an action plan to achieve a Texas Economic Forum, a coming together of minds to find a way to save the American middle-class from extinction.

One step to finding a solution is to create an Economics Institute in Texas with a mission to save the American middle-class. Every economics institute is narrowly focused. U.T. Dallas has a Center for Urban Economics, which does not seem to take a national and global outlook. U.T. Dallas also has an Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, which can contribute contribute to growth but does not try to look at the big picture. U.N.T. has an Institute of Applied Economics that could examine national and global economic patterns, but does not, judging from recent publications. Texas Tech University has a Cotton Economics Research Institute. U.T. Austin, Texas A&M, and S.M.U. do not appear to have an economics institute associated with the university.

Working With Other States

If Texas can establish an economics institute either as a government agency or as a part of a university, then we can share our findings with neighboring states. If we can form a Heartland Union, then a broad coalition like that can put many minds together and martial resources that would exceed those of most nations.

Independent Economic Programs

With a Heartland Union and a coalition of economic institutes then we could formulate policies and apply broad resources to reverse the economic decline of the American middle-class. We cannot look to Washington for solutions because Washington is in the pocket of Wall Street financiers, and Wall Street is responsible for the decline of the middle-class.

Robert Canright

Texas and The American Economy

2010-01-30T15:03:00.000-08:00

Summary: There is no single American economy. The middle-class pie is shrinking while the Wall Street pie grows. Texas needs to think for itself about national and international economic conditions and trends. If we cannot find a way to restart the middle-class economy then the middle-class will disappear and our children will suffer. If anybody is going to fix the problems facing America, it's going to be us Texans.

The American Economy

I remember hearing Warren Buffet discussing the economy and saying that "the pie is always growing" and thinking, "Whose pie?" A couple of minutes earlier he explained the unfairness of American tax law by telling us that the lady who empties the trash in his office pays a larger percentage of her income than he does. So we could say that America has different economies distinguished by the taxes paid by each sector of the economy. There is no single American economy.

Instead of saying, "the pie is always growing," Warren Buffet should have said his pie is always growing.

The Shrinking Middle-Class

People at the bottom of the middle-class have been falling out of the middle-class as their jobs have disappeared. The middle-class can barely pay it's bills. Dr. Elizabeth Warren explains in the Huffington Post article, America Without a Middle-Class, that expenses have been increasing faster than wages. If you look at the article, the 2nd chart compares expenses in red against income. You will see that in the decade of the 2000's that average income went up only 1.6% and yearly average income exceeds household expenses by only $794. This means that one bad car accident, a broken furnace or air-conditioner and the average middle-class family has to borrow money for necessities. The middle-class pie is shrinking while the Wall Street pie grows.

A Texas Economic Forum

If we want our children to have a future, we better wise-up fast about economics. If the TV tells us the American economy -- the Wall Street economy -- is booming, while the economy we live in is dying, then we cannot trust what TV news tells us about the economy and we need to find a better source of news about the economy.

Since the federal government allowed Wall Street to crash the economy, we cannot trust federal agencies to inform us on the state of the economy. We need to think for ourselves. A this time the World Economic Forum is meeting at Davos, Switzerland. Since international banking drove the entire nation of Iceland into bankruptcy, there is no international source of economic wisdom, so Davos is worthless.

Texas needs to think for itself about national and international economic conditions and trends. We need a Texas Economic Forum that focuses on a true understanding of economic realities. We should invite neighboring states to share the experience of examining economic data and planning to survive.

If we do not get smarter, we will continue to get fleeced. If we cannot find a way to restart the middle-class economy then the middle-class will disappear and our children will suffer.

We have to think to ourselves, "If anybody is going to fix the problems facing America, it's going to be us Texans."

Robert Canright

PS: I was asked by a reader to write an action plan, which is in this separate post: the Texas Economic Forum

The Heartland Union, Part 2

2010-01-03T13:39:00.000-08:00

The Need for the Heartland Union

I mentioned in a previous post, The Heartland Union, that Texas needs to stand up for middle America because neither political party stands up for the middle class. America needs better leadership, and Texas needs to stand and deliver that leadership.

California, an Unexpected Ally

I had assumed that Texas needed to ally itself with states that share similar values. However, one of my readers pointed out that shared financial interests can substitute for shared values. My previous analysis of electoral college votes had no scenario where California would ally with us. However, both California and Texas have off-shore oil revenue that is siphoned off by the federal government.

The off-shore oil is off the coast lines of the states. The 10th amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives all rights to the states that have not delineated to the federal government. It is only by coercion that the feds take our money. But the mechanisms the feds use to take our money can be undone if we form a political alliance that gives us the power to undo these mechanisms.

California has 55 electoral votes, Texas has 34, and Florida has 27. That is 116 of the 270 needed for the Presidency. We all have off-shore oil and lots of votes.

Resource Issues

Oil is not the only resource issue. The federal government has meddled with mineral rights and access to resources in many states. It was also brought to my attention that the federal government shut down access to lumber in national forests, putting many people out of work, including Texans.

Leadership

With foresight and leadership, Texas can form an alliance with many states and wrestle power away from the crowd that is so badly mismanaged America that we should name the decade that just ended, from 2000 to 2009, the Decade of Failure.

America needs better leadership. Texas needs to stand and deliver that leadership, but we cannot do it alone. We need to create an alliance, a Heartland Union, to be the springboard for a better future.

Robert Canright

TLR: The Speech Writing Project, Part 2

2009-12-05T19:11:00.000-08:00

The next Texan in the White House Needs Great Speeches

When I mentioned the importance of good speech writing in our next effort to put at Texan in the White House, I mentioned that our universities could support this effort by promoting promoting presidential rhetoric and oratory.

Besides normal scholarly work, we could look at the example of Jeffrey Hart at Dartmouth University. Besides teaching English Literature, he worked as a speech writer on Ronald Reagan's 1968 run for the Republican nomination. He worked as a White House speech writer for Nixon. Then he returned to Dartmouth.

Jeffrey Hart worked as a book reviewer for Buckley's National Review. Hart helped start the Dartmouth Review.

A great leader needs great speeches to showcase great ideas and affirm great values. We need to develop great speech writers in Texas to help make Texas Ascendant!

Robert Canright

Related posts
TLR and the Speech Writing Project, December 3, 2008

TLR: The Heartland Union

2009-12-01T20:28:00.000-08:00

We Need Help

If Texas is going to be the engine that pulls America back on track, we cannot do it alone. When I first proposed the Democracy Project I suggested we ally ourselves with the states in the American heartland. We need a good name for this alliance and I now propose the Heartland Union for the name.

If the middle-class is going to survive, then middle-America must organize for self preservation. At some point we will need to win the Presidency. We need to think outside the box and put aside the conventional concept of political parties because neither of the two parties at the national level represents the welfare of the middle-class. I cannot predict whether there will be a new third party or a revolt within an existing party, but we need a change.

Whatever the vehicle to power, we need to borrow some of the thinking the parties use for Presidential elections. It so happens that most of the American heartland corresponds to the red states in an electoral map, as you might find at PoliticalMaps.org.

The States in the Heartland Union

What will the Heartland Union look like? It has to look like a winner, which means 270 electoral votes!

Let's construct a map of the Heartland Union based on electoral votes. The following states have voted in similar fashion in Presidential elections. Below are the state initials and the number of electoral college votes.
ID 4
UT 5
AZ 10
MT 3
WY 3
ND 3
SD 3
NE 5
KS 6
OK 7
TX 34
MO 11
AR 6
LA 9
IN 11
KY 8
TN 11
MS 6
AL 9
WV 5
VA 13
NC 15
SC 8
GA 15
AK 3
The subtotal is 213 in 25 states, but we need 270 electoral votes so we are 57 short.

FL 27
OH 21
Which add up to 48, need 9 more.

Colorado has 9:
CO 9
At this point we have 28 of 50 states.
If we do not get Colorado, then we need 2 of these 3:
NM 5
NV 5
NH 4
If we got all of these states, they add up to 31 states.

I believe if we controlled 34 state legislatures we could force a new Constitutional Convention. This would be leverage. We would need 3 more states to join the Heartland Union, even if they are not contiguous with the rest of the states in this political alliance.

Small states might be easier to work with, so we need to develop good relations with the following small states, all of which have 3 or 4 electoral votes, to develop enough influence to threaten holding a constitutional convention:
DE, VT, RI, HI and ME

Strategies

My thought has been to form a Heartland Union based on shared values. It's also possible to create alliances with states having different values if there are mutual interests. I'll explore this approach later.

Key Concepts

We must recognize that Ohio, Florida, and Colorado are import to include in the Heartland Union, but they flip-flop between red and blue. New Mexico goes blue more often than you might expect. It may be that these states recognize the failings of the Republican Party at the national level and reject that leadership. Texas needs to be the alternative to the RNC (Republican National Committee). Texas needs to represent the interests of middle-America because no one else does.

Robert Canright

The Democracy Project, January 31, 2009

TBAR: Dallas Morning News and Texas Publishing

2009-10-27T19:58:00.000-07:00

What would the Dallas metroplex be like without the Dallas Morning News?

The DMN was founded in 1885 by Alfred Belo. The Dallas Morning News has been around for a long time and it would be sad to see it go. But it could shut down. 105 newspapers have closed in 2009. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer closed after 146 years in print. We cannot take for granted the survival of the DMN.

The Dallas Morning News ran an article on Sunday October 11, 2009: Morning News Tries Premium Value Strategy by Brendan Case. The DMN said it will fight for readership by increasing its news coverage: they are betting on providing quality to maintain readership. A significant number of people from the DMN attended a home owners meeting in Plano to explain their commitment to its readers.

Dallas cannot become a world-class city without a world-class newspaper, so I definitely would like to see a newspaper in Dallas. If the DMN closes, would another newspaper take its place? This is a difficult time for newspapers across America. There is a thought that has plagued me for over a month. I could not figure out how to express this thought, but then a friend put it into words for me.

I was telling a friend that one year ago people protested in front of every Federal Reserve Bank in America, the End the Fed movement, but there was no news coverage in Dallas at all. The Dallas Morning News and TV news were all silent. My friend said, "You know how worried people are about the newspapers closing? Maybe they deserve to close."

What a shocking thought! Then I remembered how terrible the news coverage was during the last presidential election. The reporting was so bad I had to read London newspapers and a German magazine to learn what was going on in America. Maybe newspapers are failing as businesses because they have been failing as newspapers.

If the DMN fails, it will leave void. But we already have a major void in Texas publishing.

Are Newspapers All We Need?

We need more than good newspapers. For Texas to rise to greatness, we need great ideas. I never cared for William F. Buckley or the National Review, but they did make a difference. The New Criterion had some influence as did First Things, Chronicles, and The Public Interest. The Cornell Review and the Dartmouth Review were started by students and have had some influence.

The book of James says the tongue is like a tiny rudder that turns a large ship. Ideas are like tiny rudders that turn society. We cannot have great leaders without great ideas, and we cannot raise Texas to greatness without great leaders. So great ideas can contribute to making Texas a great state.

There are universities in Texas that aspire to become Tier One universities. It really does take more than a research budget to get respect, it takes intellectual firepower. Texas needs magazines with intellectual content, and Texas universities are pools of talent that that can nurture influential magazines. My neighborhood bookstore sells the Yale Economic Review, a student journal. Why can't we have a Texas Economic Review put out by our university students? We have not set that kind of goal for ourselves, but it is time we did.

How can we contribute to the birth of great magazines of thoughtful discourse? We can look forward to them, read them when they are available, and discuss their ideas. An infrastructure of power that lacks ideas is a weak infrastructure.

Robert Canright

Related posts:
The Texas Journalism Project November 27, 2008
The Texas Publishing Project December 14, 2008
Publishing Business Novels February 12, 2009
Texas Tier One University Project, September 19, 2009

Texas Tier One University Project

2009-09-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

Texas needs more Tier One universities. We do not compare well against New York and California.

Texas is one of the most populous states in the Union. Here are the top three, compared by Electoral College votes.

California: 55 Electoral votes
Texas: 34 Electoral votes
New York: 31 Electoral votes

New York and California each have more Tier One Universities than Texas. Below is the count, from a report by David Daniel to the Texas State Senate.

California: 9 Tier One universities
Texas: 3 Tier One universities
New York: 7 Tier One universities

Using the electoral votes as a representation of population, I set up and solved these problems with my son: Based on the ratio of electoral votes, and comparing Texas to the number of Tier One universities in California and New York, how many Tier One universities should Texas have?

Compared to California: x/9 = 34/55, which is solved for 5.5 Tier One universities.
Compared to New York: x/7 = 34/31, which is solved for 7.7 Tier One universities.

Texas has 3 Tier One Universities, but we should have between 5 and 8. The DFW area definitely needs a Tier One university for economic and political development. When visiting campuses, I was very impressed with Texas Tech University and was surprised it was not a Tier One university. The State of Texas has recognized a need for more Tier One universities and has a plan to provide more money. There is an excellent article by Holly Hacker in the Dallas Morning News, Friday April 24, 2009: "7 Texas universities hoping to join 'tier one' face long battle." Here is another good article from Lubbock Online: "Tech's tier-one bill not killed by chubbing" by Enrique Rangel, Thursday, May 28, 2009.

But what is a Tier One university? The article by Holly Hacker discusses this, and here is a link to WikiAnswers on "What is a tier one university?" Money is part of the answer, but prestige and influence are the major factors. We should want more Tier One universities in order to generate more wealth and influence for the State of Texas.

I have been parochial in the past, focusing mostly on the need for a Tier One university in the DFW metroplex, but I recognize the importance of adding more than one Tier One school to the existing three. Texas needs to add between 2 and 5 more Tier One schools to lift the total to the range of 5 to 8. This defines a Texas Tier One University Project.

I am happy and encouraged to see the Texas State Legislature has already recognized the importance of having more Tier One Universities in Texas (a link to the legislation is provided in the references). We all need to be supportive of this effort.

From Holly Hacker's article, here is the list of 7 schools considered candidates for Tier One:

The University of North Texas in Denton
UT-Arlington
UT-Dallas
UT-El Paso
UT-San Antonio
The University of Houston
Texas Tech in Lubbock

There might not be enough resources for all 7 schools to become Tier One schools, so remember to support the schools of your choice.

Robert Canright

References

Related posts:
Texas, New York, and Universities Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Texas Needs More Tier 1 Universities Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Why UT Dallas Should Be Tier One Saturday, January 17, 2009

Here is a link to HR 51, session 81(R). The bill was written by RepresentativeDan Branch of Dallas, et al, and sponsored by State Senator Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo).

List of Projects

2009-09-19T10:11:00.000-07:00

The Texas Ascendancy Campaign has three major divisions: the Texas Business and Arts Renaissance (TBAR), the Texas Leadership Revolution (TLR), and Education. You can view a high level diagram of the Texas Ascendant Campaign.

Below is a list of the projects comprising the Texas Ascendant Campaign. You can go to the top of the Blogger page, paste in the name of the project, click on the "Search Blog" button, and see all the posts on that project.

A project might contribute to more than one aspect of the Texas Ascendancy Campaign. The Cicero Project, for example, both political and business interests. The Cicero Project can also be viewed as a part of the Education aspect of the Texas Ascendancy Campaign.

List of Projects
Leadership Project
History Project
Cicero Project
Texas Banking and Finance Project
Economics Project
Texas Accounting Project
Back Office Project
Industrialization Project
Billionaire Project
Trust Texas Project
Texas Journalism Project
Texas Publishing Project
Texas Diplomacy Project
Texas Democracy Project
Presidency Project
Speech Writing Project
DFW University Project
Texas Tier One University Project
Iconic City Project
Jefferson Project
Classics Project
Classics Animated Project

Industrialization in Texas: the Italian Model

2009-09-13T19:49:00.000-07:00

I first discussed the Texas Industrialization Project back in July. Industrialization is important for Texas because industry provides jobs. Texas needs to plan for economic growth, and if the State of Texas will not do it, then it is up to the cities to do it.

I do not picture Plano, Texas, becoming thick with heavy industry, but it could become part of a web of small scale industries that spans the communities of Frisco, McKinney, Richardson, and Lewisville.

Francis Fukuyama, in Chapter 10 of his book, Trust, describes how central Italy in the 1970's and 1980's exploded economically "with the emergence of networks of small businesses making everything textiles and designer clothes to machine tools and industrial robots." He goes on to say, "Some enthusiasts of small-scale industrialization have argued that the Italian model represents and entirely new paradigm of industrial production, one that can be exported to other countries."

If the Italians can do this, then we can do the same if we have the will-power to do so.

He says, "Italy is the world's third-largest producer of industrial robots, and yet a third of that industry's output is produced by enterprises with fewer than fifty employees." Smaller companies are easier to capitalize, meaning smaller start-up costs.

Smaller costs means the cities and counties could do this kind of industrial planning without waiting for leadership at the state level.

These small companies in Italy could compete internationally because they could respond to changes quickly. They could compete against the giants of world industry because, "they specialized in machine tools, ceramics, apparel, design, and other activities that do not reward large scale."

We have enough talent in North Texas that we can compete internationally. We need to think for ourselves and work for our prosperity if our children are to have a future.

We need an Industrialization Plan and the Italian model could be a part of it.

Robert Canright

Reference:
Trust, The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, by Francis Fukuyama, New York: The Free Press, 1995

Trust Texas: Taking a Stand Against Corruption

2009-08-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

Establishing a reputation for honesty would improve business opportunities in Texas. I mentioned this in an earlier post in this blog: the Trust Texas Project. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal brings corruption back to the headlines: New Jersey Corruption Bust Had Deep Roots by SUZANNE SATALINE (Aug. 28, 2009). What an embarrassment for New Jersey this event must be. I was happy the scandal was taking place outside of Texas.

Maintaining honesty in politicians has always been a problem. Plato said we would not be free of political corruption unless we were ruled by philosophers, unless we were ruled by people who loved wisdom instead of money. That is a difficult order to meet!

I have suggested in the past that we have our children recite daily the Pledge to Justice in our elementary schools:

The Pledge to Justice
We do not steal, we do not cheat, and we do not hurt other people.
We are people of integrity, competence, and compassion.

Our children's future depends upon a political and economic environment permeated by honesty. We all need to work towards this end for the sake of our children.

Robert Canright

Production and Prototyping

2009-07-28T20:08:00.000-07:00

We are told capitalism brought prosperity to the West. Actually, our prosperity is due to the introduction of mass production, the development of rational management, and funding by capitalism. Read The Wealth of Nations and you'll see Adam Smith explain the benefits of the division of labor for increasing productivity. Capitalism is only a part of the pattern.

If America quits producing goods, our prosperity will diminish. Productivity from the division of labor depends upon mass production to generate large profits. These large profits will disappear if mass production disappears from America.

If some investors want to use cheaper labor over seas, then we need investors who can find an economical reason to produce goods in America with higher labor costs. Let's consider reasons to manufacture in America.

First, consider the myth of cheap labor. When products fail and customers quit buying your product or sue for damages, then the cheap labor turns out not to be so cheap.

When an educated and disciplined work force is needed to produce sophisticated products with hi-tech machinery, then cheaper labor that cannot work the machinery properly. Poor quality labor results in poor quality products and profit loss after the customers discover the drop in quality. In this case, cheap labor is a mirage.

Factories that build the production tools for mass production factories are good candidates for Texas industries. Prototyping products and machine tools is another candidate for Texas industries. Here is an example of a prototyping business in Illinois: GPI Prototype and Manufacturing Services. Any new product developed in America could be produced here in Texas with the view of designing factories that can be built in Texas. If the these new businesses want to expand overseas, then the machine tools should be built in Texas factories.

We must not give up on investing in America. We need to invest in factories in Texas so our children can have a future.

Robert Canright

Industrialization Instead of Economic Development

2009-07-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

Texas can define and pursue an industrialization policy to create new jobs. Japan and Korea are both created and executed industrialization plans and both now have world class industries. Texas can do the same.

We must put aside the economic development policies that attempt to lure existing companies to relocate to Texas. Cities in Texas give tax breaks to companies, but do not get the jobs they are promised. Look at Austin. It was left with a partially built building when Intel changed its mind. Richardson still has an empty fab building that Texas Instruments never used. At its worst, economic development by tax incentives loses us money and provides us with empty or unfinished buildings.

At its best, economic development lures companies away from existing locals. No new jobs are created. Existing jobs are shuffled around like peas in a shell game. This kind of job shuffling had contributed to the economic decline of America. There is more focus on moving jobs around than in creating new jobs. Sadly, many jobs are being moved out of America.

Texas needs to study how Japan and Germany grew their industries after World War II. We need to study how Korea became an industrial power. We must study and emulate. Banks played an important part in the industrialization of Japan, Germany, and Korea. We must do the same. The Texas Banking and Finance Project will support the Texas Industrialization Project.

A strong and prosperous Texas must have jobs for its citizens.

Robert Canright

Here are Economic Development websites for
Plano, Texas
Richardson, Texas
The State of Texas

Amherst Holdings and the Texas Banking Project

2009-07-25T16:18:00.000-07:00

The June 11, 2009 Wall Street Journal article "A Daring Trade has Wall Street Seething" by Gregory Zuckerman, Serena Ng, and Liz Rappaport reported how Amherst Holdings of Austin, Texas, made a big score against large banks like J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Texas needs a strong banking sector and the story of Amherst Holdings is an example showing Texas banking can compete. I mentioned in December 6, 2008 that this down-turn is a good time to start investment banks in Texas. In December 24, 2008 I mentioned that Texas is weak in banking and needs to become stronger. The Amherst Holdings deal is a good example of how Texas banking and finance can tackle the big boys in New York.

In February 15, 2009 I mentioned that Texas needs greater strength in accounting and law to support a growing banking industry. In June 9, 2009 I described how Huntsman Corp sued Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank and won over $600 Million. Huntsman is a good example of why we need great lawyers in Texas. Anytime you do business with the big boys in banking and finance you must be ready to go to court.

It is great to see businesses in Texas like Amherst Holdings and Huntsman playing on the big stage. It is important for the state of Texas that they compete and win.

Robert Canright

Here is a followup WSJ article, "Deconstructing That Daring Amherst Trade" and another article at Business Pundit.

TBAR: Texas, China, & a New Currency, Part 3

2009-07-07T19:43:00.000-07:00

The Chinese government is definitely putting an end to the US dollar's reign as the reserve currency for the world. After Bretton Woods, the dollar became the reserve currency for the world. Since all governments hold dollars in their exchange reserves, the dollar became indispensable and governments were stuck with it when the US would run it down. This made it easier to sell debt (US Treasury securities) around the world and run an unbalanced budget. These days are coming to an end.

The New York Times reports on Tuesday, July 7, 2008, in the article, "In Step to Enhance Currency, China Allows Its Use in Some Foreign Payments," by Brad Bradsher, that China is not waiting for a synthetic currency to replace the dollar. The Chinese government is starting to introduce their currency, the renminbi, for foreign trade.

The whole world is concerned that the Federal Reserve Bank is beginning the destruction of the U.S. dollar. To protect the wealth poured into China by American businessmen, the Chinese government must break the world's dependence on the dollar and transfer their wealth into other currencies. This has been discussed in Part 1 of this series of articles. I mentioned in Part 2 of this series of articles that Plano, Texas, should participate in the creation of a new synthetic currency to replace the dollar in international trade.

If Texas participates with China in creating and managing a new reserve currency for the world, Texas will become influential in world finance and increase prosperity in Texas.

Robert Canright

Cicero Project and Huntsman Corp

2009-06-28T18:34:00.000-07:00

In January 2009 I said, "Our lawyers here in Texas must be the best in the world in litigation." Now on Wednesday June 24, 2009, the Wall Street Journal reports, in "Huntsman, Banks Settle for $1.7 Billion" by Peter Lattman, that Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank settled the suit brought against them in a Texas state court. They agreed to pay Huntsman Corp., operating out of The Woodlands, $632 Million and extend a $1.1 Billion loan on favorable terms.

This is clear evidence that Texas lawyers must be prepared to litigate against the largest corporations on earth and win.

Texas must operate on the international stage. We cannot be just one more state in a crowd of 50 states. America needs a strong Texas, and for a strong Texas we must have the best lawyers on earth. That is a part of the Cicero Project within the Texas Ascendant Campaign: the best lawyers, but also lawyers with integrity and civic virtue.

Robert Canright

TBAR: North Texas Industrialization

2009-05-05T19:59:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking hard about how our children can proper in the difficult times ahead. If we Texans think of ourselves as an independent nation, a sovereign state, then we can think about industrial policy.

Consider the United States of America at its inception. It was largely an agricultural economy with some shipping and a little manufacturing. Alexander Hamilton thought America needed an industrial economy to build wealth and power. As Secretary of the Treasury, on December 5, 1791 he submitted to the House of Representatives an article, Report on the Subject of Manufactures, describing the benefits of industrialization and methods to promote it.

If America could consider launching and industrial economy in 1791, Texas can certainly do it in 2009.

The National System of Political Economy by Friedrich List has been studied by Japan and China when they planned to grow their industries. Maybe we Texas should study and apply it.

The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday May 5, 2009, ran an article, "Indian Steel Forges in U.S." by Robert Guy Matthews that describes how the an Indian Company, Wellspun-Gujarat Stahl Rohren opened a $150 Million steel plant in Little Rock Arkansas. Why is that in Little Rock instead of North Texas? Is Arkansas more on-the-ball than Texas? Well, this does show that industrialization is possible in the South.

Trust by Francis Fukuyama describes on pages 102 -104 how central Italy underwent a small scale industrial revolution in the 1970's. It is the American way to copy what works. If the Japanese, Chinese, and Italians have demonstrated how to grow a world class industrial economy, then we should be able to copy them in North Texas.

Developing an industrial economy will be better for Texas than waiting for Washington to fix the economy.

An ascendant Texas will be wealthy Texas.

Robert Canright

TBAR: Texas, China, & a New Currency, Part 2

2009-04-19T19:41:00.001-07:00

I mentioned earlier that Texas is weak in banking and we should build up our banking industry. More recently I mentioned the Chinese desire to have a synthetic currency to replace the dollar in international trade could benefit Texas.

I think the Chinese plan could benefit Plano. A synthetic currency for international trade could be an account containing a mixture of several currencies. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) created something called "special drawing rights," or SDRs, so there is a precedent.

We are talking about nothing more than special ledgers. It is just a way of counting money. It will be electronic and can be done anywhere in the world.

Plano, Texas, could be the world's custodian for this new synthetic currency. Remember, it is just bookkeeping. The advantage for the international community to select Plano for this banking service is that it would place it in the United States, but away from the clutches of the New York banks. Besides breaking with the dollar, you can bet they no longer trust New York bankers nor Washington politicians. America has the rule of law. We have a good computer infrastructure. Texas is centrally placed in the USA, with DFW a major hub.

I do not believe we need heavy weight economists to run the banking service for a new synthetic currency. I think a major selling point would be to provide the best computer hardware, software, and security in the world. We could do that right here in Plano.

This could lead to Plano becoming a world center for banking. Our children need jobs to have a future. Engineering jobs are being sent offshore by Texas Instruments. Money is the future. People used to believe Americans understood finance and economics. Now that New York bankers are discredited we can step forward and say there are Americans in Plano, Texas who know how to manage money.

One businessman told me there are probably laws on the books that would make this difficult to accomplish this international banking operation. I reminded him how Senator Phil Gramm eliminated the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 by passing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. If it is possible to remove good laws from the books, it is possible to remove laws that stand in our way.

Phil Dyer, a banker, is running for Mayor of Plano. I will forward this idea to him.

We need forward thinking. We need big ideas to give our children a leg up in this competitive world, and I believe Plano can establish a world class banking service with a new synthetic currency.

Plano ought to send a delegation to China soon to begin discussions.

Robert Canright

TBAR: Texas, China, and a New Currency, Part 1

2009-04-12T19:10:00.000-07:00

China has called for a new currency to replace the US Dollar in international trade. The proposal, made by central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan was reported in the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Zhou's idea is to expand the use of "special drawing rights," or SDRs -- a kind of synthetic currency created by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the 1960s. Its value is determined by a basket of major currencies.

The Chinese need to see this done. Clearly, the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury, and Wall Street are in the process of driving down the value of the US Dollar. Americans are stuck with the result, but the Chinese only need international agreement to change international arrangements that make the US Dollar an international reserve. They have to ditch the dollar to maintain their wealth.

This could work to the advantage of Texas.

A synthetic currency is just book keeping and I'll discuss later how Texas could profit by being the international banker for a new synthetic currency.

Robert Canright

The Texas Ascendant Campaign Overview

2009-03-15T18:07:00.000-07:00

The Texas Ascendancy Campaign is a vision for a greater Texas.

America is in a severe economic recession at this time because the leadership in Washington and Wall Street has failed.

America needs new leadership and Texas needs to develop that leadership and support that leadership.

Education is the foundation of civilization. By adjusting the education we provide the children of Texas we can develop the leaders America needs.

TBAR: the Texas Business and Arts Renaissance is a plan for the synergistic rise of the arts and business in Texas.

TLR: the Texas Leadership Revolution encourages advancements in leadership driven by a commitment to integrity and competence in all our endeavors. Education supports the development of better leaders by improving the content in the history curriculum, by increasing the number of Tier One universities in Texas, and by strengthening the Economics programs in our universities.

The following are lists of articles in this blog on the three major topics.
Articles on eduction
Articles on the Texas Business and Arts Renaissance (TBAR)
Articles on the Texas Leadership Revolution (TLR)
The articles mention projects within the Texas Ascendant Campaign. Here is a list of projects.

America needs better leaders for a better future and Texas should develop those leaders.

The whole world looks to America for leadership in finances. Everyone believed Americans understood money, but now the Premier of China, Wen Jiabao, has expressed concern in trusting America with money, as reported in the New York Times, Saturday March 14, 2008.

The entire world is crying out for better leadership. Texas must answer the call. The Texas Ascendant Campaign is a plan to provide the leadership the world needs.

Robert Canright

TBAR: Summary of Business Articles

2009-03-15T16:33:00.000-07:00

TBAR is the Texas Business and Arts Renaissance. Business and the arts are linked in the Texas Ascendant Campaign to emphasize the potential for profit from the arts.

The efforts Texas has put into improving education should bear fruit in business ventures and in artistic endeavors. We will not wait to see what might transpire, we will set goals and work towards creating a Texas renaissance in business and the arts.

Here is a summary of articles to date on business. The plan behind these articles is to do more than make money for Texans, the plan is to help Texas grow in power and influence.

The Texas Journalism Project, November 27, 2008
Texas, a New Financial Center, December 6, 2008
The Texas Publishing Project, December 14, 2008
The Texas Banking and Finance Project, December 24, 2008
"Atlas Shrugged" and Texas, January 9, 2009
Classics Animated, February 5, 2009 (shared interest with education)
The Billionaire Project and the Texas 4x4, February 7, 2009 (shared interest with education)
The Great City Project, February 9, 2009
Publishing Business Novels, February 12, 2009
Accounting and the Back Office, February 15, 2009
The Economics Project, Economic Warfare and the Texas 4x4, February 18, 2009
The Texas Economics Project, Part 2, February 21, 2009
The Trust Texas Project, February 22, 2009 (shared interest with TLR)
Texas, China, and a New Currency, Part 1 April 12, 2009
Texas, China, & a New Currency, Part 2 April 19, 2009
North Texas Industrialization May 5, 2009
Cicero Project and Huntsman Corp June 28, 2009
Texas, China, & a New Currency, Part 3 July 7, 2009
Amherst Holdings and the Texas Banking Project July 25, 2009
Industrialization Instead of Economic Development July 27, 2009
Production and Prototyping July 28, 2009
Industrialization in Texas: the Italian Model September 13, 2009
Dallas Morning News and Texas Publishing October 27, 2009
Texas and The American Economy January 30, 2010
The Texas Economic Forum January 31, 2010
The Exploitation of Innovation March 13, 2010
A Philosophy of Banking Friday, December 23, 2011

Remember, TLR = The Texas Leadership Revolution

Robert Canright

TLR: Summary of Leadership Articles

2009-03-14T21:48:00.000-07:00

Here is a summary of the articles posted to this blog on the topic of leadership. TLR stands for the Texas Leadership Revolution.

The Texas Democracy Project, December 1, 2008
The Presidency Project & The Speech Writing Project, December 3, 2008
More on the Texas Democracy Project, December 13, 2008
Integrity and Competence, the Cornerstone and Keystone, December 21, 2008
The Texas Diplomacy Project, December 26, 2008
The Cicero Project, January 1, 2009
Why UT Dallas Should Be Tier One, January 17, 2009
The Democracy Project, January 31, 2009
The Trust Texas Project, February 22, 2009
Reconsidering Leadership, February 24, 2009
Trust Texas: Taking a Stand Against Corruption August 27, 2009
The Heartland Union, December 1, 2009
The Speech Writing Project, Part 2, December 5, 2009
The Heartland Union, Part 2 January 3, 2010

Robert Canright

Re-Digging the Wells, Summary of Education Articles

2009-02-28T18:59:00.000-08:00

A premise of the Texas Ascendancy Campaign is that education will be the fountainhead of a Texas Renaissance, yet education in Texas being muddled by our state legislature. We citizens of Texas must be more involved. We parents must take the lead, politicians cannot direct education.

I have proposed some projects to rejuvenate education in the public schools and the universities. Here is a list of articles in this blog relating education to the goal of Texas Ascendant:
History and Leadership, the History Project October 25, 2008
Texas, New York, and Universities October 29, 2008
Texas Needs More Tier 1 Universities November 12, 2008
The Texas Journalism Project November 27, 2008
The Speech Writing Project December 3, 2008
The Cicero Project January 1, 2009
The Jefferson Project January 4, 2009
Why UT Dallas Should Be Tier One January 17, 2009
The Democracy Project January 31, 2009
Classics Animated February 5, 2009
The Billionaire Project and the Texas 4x4 February 7, 2009
The Classics Project February 8, 2009
The Economics Project, Economic Warfare and the Texas 4x4 February 18, 2009
The Texas Economics Project, Part 2 February 21, 2009
Trust Texas: Taking a Stand Against Corruption August 27, 2009
Texas Tier One University Project September 19, 2009
Dallas Morning News and Texas Publishing October 27, 2009
The Speech Writing Project, Part 2 December 5, 2009
The Exploitation of Innovation March 13, 2010

Here is a separate blog dealing with education in a more general sense:
Education for the 21st Century

The bureaucrats running the public schools are too slow to change. We cannot wait for them to take action. We must take action by working with our own children now. We can work to take back our schools from self-serving politicians and the entrenched bureaucracy, but that takes time and we cannot put our children's future on hold while we work to change the system.

We must immediately move toward educational excellence within our families while we struggle to improve our schools.

Robert Canright

TLR: Reconsidering Leadership

2009-02-24T20:59:00.000-08:00

America is in an economic crisis because of the decades long American Leadership Crisis. In mapping out how the Texas Leadership Revolution will lead us out of the American Leadership Crisis, we need to consider some weaknesses in American leadership.

When President George W. Bush recommended one of his lawyers to fill a Supreme Court opening, there was such an outcry over lack of appropriate experience for his candidate that he had to withdraw that candidate. He did not go to Washington with a strong, well rounded team.

When President Barack Obama tried to nominate a Commerce Secretary, he struck out with his first two candidates. He did not go to Washington with a strong, well rounded team.

Too many of our leaders simply do not know enough people who are smart and capable. Our politicians know mostly other politicians and people with money. This lack of knowledge is a weakness in our political leadership class. Moreover, we still cling to the myth of the leader as hero. We do not recognize the dependence modern leaders have upon the technical skills of professionals to formulate and execute policies.

Leadership teams are needed to oversee complex endeavors. Organizing, developing, and working within a leadership team environment is a process American corporations are struggling to master. Political leadership still relies on the antiquated myth of the heroic leader who makes all the decisions as though he were an absolute ruler ordained with special powers.

This is the first leadership issue: the leadership team approach is necessary for the complexities of today's problems, but it is poorly understood while the heroic leader is a lingering myth from the past that continues to fail us.

An unnecessary byproduct of our secular society is the loss of faith in higher truths. Even if someone does not believe in God, a belief in a higher order, a sense that there is something greater than oneself, a sense of a natural law that needs to be understood and followed, helps to suppress hubris and steadies the mind in making decisions. There is an old saying, "Off by an inch at the start, off by a mile at the end." Not believing in a higher truth is being off by at least an inch. This lack of a moral compass eventually leads our leaders to be off by miles.

With no moral compass, some believe in rational self-interest. But that has failed with our banks. Here is famous quote from Alan Greenspan: "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself especially, are in a state of shock and disbelief." If you have heard Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic, you know that rational self-interest boils down to "steal all you can carry."

This is the second leadership issue: leaders without a belief in a higher truth lose their bearing and run the ship of state into the rocks.

As we move forward through this new millennium, we must find ways to work past these two problems that hinder us in solving the American Leadership Crisis:
1.) The leadership team approach is necessary for the complexities of today's problems, but it is poorly understood while the heroic leader is a lingering myth from the past that continues to fail us.

2.) Leaders without a belief in a higher truth lose their bearing and run the ship of state into the rocks.

There are a number of ways to solve these problems, but we must first recognize these problems before we can solve them.

Robert Canright

TBAR/TLR: The Trust Texas Project

2009-02-22T17:50:00.000-08:00

The Trust Texas Project is a key element within the Texas Banking and Finance Project. Honesty can be a discriminator setting Texas banking apart from NY City banking. Since federal regulators have been derelict in their duties, if Texas banking and securities regulators were rigorous and reliable then we could make Texas a haven for people looking for honest banks and investment firms.

I do not believe Texans are considered any more honest than anyone else, but if we did launch a Trust Texas Project that included strong audits and regulation, then we could point to a Texas system that is more honest than the federal system of regulation. Having Texas impose regulation might be tricky, it might be difficult, it might be limited by existing laws giving preference to the federal government, but that is why have leadership, to address and solve these kind of problems. See [1] below for an example of voluntary self-regulation.

"... one of the most important lessons we can learn from an examination of economic life is that a nation's well-being, as well as its ability to compete, is conditioned by a single, pervasive cultural characteristic: the level of trust inherent in the society." [2]

Yet, we could and should still strive to increase the level of honesty within Texas. Elementary education is the time to stress honesty. If we developed a culture of honesty, then that could be a greater selling point than the culture of secrecy the Swiss bankers have developed.

Robert Canright

[1] The Wall Street Journal, Thursday February 26, 2009, ran an article, "Pair Lived Large on Fraud, U.S. Says," by Steve Stecklow, et al, which gives a good example of voluntary self-regulation. The National Futures Association on Feb. 12 suspended Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh, money managers running several financial companies, including WG Trading Investors Co., for failing to cooperate with the NFA and produce books and records for an audit. Shortly after their suspension by the NFA, several investors sued for an asset freeze, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission then filed civil charges. If you do not have the power to bring charges, you can at least put a spotlight on shady business practices with voluntary self-regulation.

[2] Trust by Francis Fukuyama, The Free Press, 1995, ISBN 0-02-910976-0, page 7.

See also:
Friday, January 30, 2009: Faithfulness and America's Economic Collapse

Remember
TBAR = The Texas Business and Arts Renaissance
TLR = The Texas Leadership Revolution

TBAR: The Texas Economics Project, Part 2

2009-02-21T08:59:00.000-08:00

I have said earlier that our children's survival depends upon Texas becoming a world power. Texas needs a Texas Economics Project to become a world power and give our children a chance for a good life.

Improving the quality and reputation of the Schools of Economics within Texas universities will be an important part of the Texas Economics Project.

Below are a few of the top schools in one ranking of Economics Schools. Notice the ranking of the Economics schools in Texas:
1.) Harvard
2.) U. of Chicago
4.) MIT
9.) Yale
10.) Columbia
16.) London School of Economics
18.) U. of Texas Austin (Texas)
40.) Texas A&M University (Texas)
84.) University of Houston (Texas)
106.) SMU (Texas)
123.) Rice University (Texas)

To be a world power we need to do better. New York City is a world class city and Columbia University, located in New York City, is in the top 10. We need the University of Texas, Austin to be ranked in the top 10. Texas A&M needs to be ranked in the top 20, along side the London School of Economics. The Ph.D. program in Economics at the University of Texas, Dallas, needs to break into the top 100.

Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics should some day include someone from a Texas university.

We must recognize the paradigm shift:
Economics is the new science. Finance is the new technology.

Robert Canright

TBAR: The Economics Project, Economic Warfare and the Texas 4x4

2009-02-18T19:25:00.000-08:00

Texas needs an Economics Project to help it become a world power. If Texas is going to be a world class power, we need our own Texas Council of Economic Advisers, after the fashion of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. The economists advising the office of the President of the United States are unreliable, look at what a mess the economy has become. If the federal government cannot protect the American people from economic warfare, then the individual states need to step into the breach and provide the protection the federal government cannot provide.

There is no doubt in my mind that we are in an economic war. Today people think war is always ideologically based, like the Jihadis and the Communists. Historically, massive theft is one of the root causes of war. The Romans would conquer a people for the spoils of war (see book 1 of The Early History of Rome by Livy). Loot has always been one of the benefits of war.

Americans have now suffered the most massive theft in world history. Walter Lippmann referred to the hidden swindles of business as the "invisible environment." We have been warred upon by an invisible enemy. Who paid Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, and Phil Gramm (the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) to change our laws so we could be robbed more effectively? Whoever was their Financial Puppet Master, pulling their strings, has waged war upon America and the entire world community.

The Financial Puppet Masters are out of control. In their unbridled avarice they have brought the world to the brink of financial collapse. The threat of collapse is serious enough that intelligence agencies are beginning to talk about it, as evidenced in the New York Times article, "Unemployment Surges Around the World, Threatening Stability" by Nelson D. Schwartz, page 1 of the Sunday February 15, 2009 edition:

"Just last week, the new United States director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told Congress that instability caused by the global economic crisis had become the biggest security threat facing the United States, outpacing terrorism."

Texas must focus on Economics and Finance to survive a difficult future. After the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, the U.S. government went nuts. We were then in a Space Race and science and technology became important for national defense. The federal government had funded electronics and computers since World War II and the U.S. economy benefited from these industries.

Now the American economy is crippled from our country's ignorance of Finance and Economics. I have seen one Congressman on C-Span say he did not understand economics, so he had to rely on Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson to tell him what to do. For a Congressman to admit unquestioning obedience to a political lackey like Paulson is heinous.

Economics and Finance will be crucial for our nation's survival in the 21st century, as Science was vital in the 20th century. Economics and Finance will replace Science and Technology in importance.

Economics is the new science. Finance is the new technology. The sooner Texas realizes the paradigm shift, the sooner our children will be on track to survival.

Economics is taught in the Social Science department in Plano Senior High School and it is an elective. The Texas 4x4 graduation requirements passed by the Texas State Legislature forces our children to take out-dated course work in Math and Science at the expense of the course work in Economics and Business that is needed for the future. Shooting ourselves in the foot like this is a perfect example of the Leadership Crisis facing all America.

Texas needs to repeal the disastrous 4x4 graduation requirements and allow our students to study Economics and Finance.

For our children's survival Texas needs to become a world power. Texas needs an Economics Project to become a world power and give our children a chance for a good life.

Robert Canright

Here are more articles related to the Texas Ascendant Economics Project:
The Texas Economics Project, Part 2 Saturday, February 21, 2009
See also
The Billionaire Project and the Texas 4x4 Saturday, February 7, 2009

TBAR: Accounting and the Back Office

2009-02-15T20:33:00.000-08:00

America needs better leaders for a better future, and those leaders should come from Texas.

Texas needs to acquire power and money, then become a positive influence in American and World affairs. But great leadership accomplishes little without money and power. I've said Texas needs to become a world financial center that Texas is weak in banking and needs to improve. I have said we need to educate our children so more of them can become billionaires, and we need to educate them about the "invisible environment" Walter Lippmann discussed.

After becoming wealthy, our children need good accounting and good back office support to maintain their wealth. But how can Texas companies trust big accounting companies headquartered in New York City or overseas? The Big Four audit companies are now: (1) Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu of New York City, (2) Ernst & Young of New York City, (3) KPMG of the Netherlands, and (4) PricewaterhouseCoopers of London (formerly Price Waterhouse).

The University of Texas, Austin, McComb School of Business has an accounting program ranked first in the nation. Many major corporations have their headquarters in Texas. It is time the Big Four is again the Big Five with the addition of a major accounting firm headquartered in Texas. The Big Five became the Big Four when Arthur Andersen was shut down for shredding its Enron audit records.

The Texas Accounting Project will develop a big auditing firm headquartered in Texas. As part of TBAR, the Texas Business and Arts Renaissance, the Texas Accounting Project will feature integrity as a key feature. Furthermore, the big firm created out of the Texas Accounting Project will be loyal to the interests and welfare of the people, the businesses, the State of Texas, and those states and businesses allied with the interests of Texas.

The back office is usually thought of as the business operations not seen by customers. This might not typically include the strategic services of financiers and economists, but I'll include them for now. Texas businesses need strategic and tactical services from accounting firms, financiers, lawyers, and economists to survive the economic war-zone. Corporations get bushwhacked, Lehman Brothers for example was stabbed in the back and killed off.

Here's one example of economic warfare. A hypothetical group of New York City investors targets Corporation XYZ, headquartered in Irving, Texas. Part of the group acquires a significant share of the company as another part of the group drives the stock price down. The business group interferes with success of the company by persuading customers to drop business with them. Corporation XYZ gets in a financial bind and another part of the business group offers to loan money to Corporation XYZ, but the contract for the loan is full of booby traps. XYZ accepts the loan, being advised by their New York City lawyers that the dangerous provisions of the contract probably won't happen.

Next, some group members owning shares in the corporation dump their shares. Other members of the group still holding shares sue Corporation XYZ, saying the sudden drop in share value must be due to undisclosed business weaknesses. While XYZ prepares their legal defense, the part of the group that leant money now invokes clauses in the loan contract related to sudden drops in share price and shareholder lawsuits and demands immediate and full payment. Corporation XYZ cannot make the payment and the corporation goes into bankruptcy, where the business group finishes carving up the corporation. This is economic warfare.

Our Texas based corporations need to defend themselves against this kind of scheming and it requires a host of experts. If the experts our corporations depend upon are headquartered in New York City, they might be in league with the New York City schemers and give bad advice.

I have not seen a good expose of this type of business manipulation. The key players have not broken ranks, but there are some books on business plotting I will list below.

In addition to strong accounting services, our corporations need strong back office support from lawyers, economists, bankers, and financiers. In this post I have introduced the Texas Accounting Project. In a previous post I introduced the Cicero Project to develop world class lawyers in Texas. The Back Office Project will be the development of strong back office support from economists and everyone else not covered in the other named projects.

We are in an economic war. We have suffered the sneak attack. It is time to plan our defenses.

We need better leaders for a better future, but we need the financial resources to empower our future leaders and we need to safeguard those financial resources.

Robert Canright

Books
"Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins
"A Game as Old as Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption" by Steven Hiatt (Editor)
"The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve" by G. Edward Griffin

Related Blog Posts
December 6, 2008, "Texas, a New Financial Center"
December 23, 2008, "The Texas Banking and Finance Project"
January 1, 2009, "The Cicero Project"
February 9, 2009, "The Billionaire Project and the Texas 4x4"

TBAR: Publishing Business Novels

2009-02-12T19:46:00.000-08:00

The February 8, 2008 Dallas Morning News, ran an excellent essay in the Points section, "We Need an Intellectual Stimulus Package," by Walton Muyumba. I am so glad Dr. Muyumba is in town and contributing to the intellectual milieu. Dr. Muyumba's essay referred to this article: "Going Boom, The economic collapse points up how little our literary world has to say about social inequality," By Walter Benn Michaels in the February/March 2009 print edition of Book Forum.

Dr. Muyumba's essay shows what a good critic can do: take something not particularly clear, like Michaels' article, and give it meaning. Dr. Muyumba pointed out a disconnection, a missing relationship, between American literature and the American market economy. Dr. Muyumba wrote, "we need our best artists, our most agile arts critics and our arts aficionados to initiate the reinvigoration of American imagination." He would like to see discussions on "how to invent alternative systems of commerce."

Yes! Bringing business into novels, especially with some of the heroes being businessmen, would be a new and positive development. There are certainly negative portrayals of businessmen in Michael Crichton novels like "Prey", "Timeline," and "Airframe," to name only a few.

Positive novels about business still show an unpleasant side to business. The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt starts with a creepy corporate vice-president insulting a plant manager. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is the ultimate business novel, having business executives like Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart as heroes and business executives like James Taggart and Orren Boyle as villains. Any realistic novel about business has to have businessmen villains, but we have a shortage of novels that include businessmen heroes. In a previous post, "Atlas Shrugged" and Texas, I had suggested that Texas writers and publishers might do well by embracing and promoting a business-hero genre.

In The Texas Publishing Project I suggested publishing will be an important industry for Texas.

Dr. Muyumba is absolutely correct in emphasizing the importance of social criticism and a need for writers to include economics and market forces in their novels.

I look forward to further contributions from Dr. Muyumba and also from Dr. Troy Camplin at the Emerson Institute for Freedom and Culture. The intellectual life in DFW is beginning to percolate!

Robert Canright

See:
December 14, 2008: The Texas Publishing Project
January 9, 2009: "Atlas Shrugged" and Texas

TBAR: the Great City Project

2009-02-09T19:11:00.000-08:00

The most important cities are called Global Cities or Alpha Cities. The Wikipedia article on Global Cities lists these American cities as being in the top 30 Global Cities: New York (#1), Los Angeles (#6), Chicago (#8), Washington (#11), San Francisco (#15), and Boston (#29). Notice Dallas is not on the list. Dallas does rank 9th in the world for the number of billionaires. Yet Dallas is not considered an important city.

There is something wrong when Dallas has so much money and has so little influence in the world.

We need to gather our wits and be somebody. We need to think big and plan big things.

What should we do to become a great city? We have already written about projects that can uplift Dallas. There is the Texas Banking and Finance Project. There is the Texas Journalism Project. There is the Texas Publishing Project. There is the Cicero Project to develop world class lawyers. There is the DFW University Project to create a Tier One university in DFW, or perhaps becoming a World Class university is a better goal than becoming a Tier One university.

To this I can add the Iconic City Project. Consider how many movies are filmed in New York City (NYC) and think about all the buildings, bridges, and statues that are instantly recognized as belonging to New York City. NYC is indelibly imprinted on the minds of people around the world through iconic images like the Flatiron Building, the Statue of Liberty, the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, and the statue of Prometheus at Rockefeller Center, to name just a few.

It is surprisingly easy to develop ugly statues. The Denver airport has an ugly horse statue that has drawn thousands of complaints, as described in the Wall Street Journal article, "A Horse of a Different Color Divides Denver" by Stephanie Simon, page one on Saturday February 7, 2009.

The Dallas skyline is distinctive, but there are no inspiring statues in the city. Statues of cattle or horses might be nostalgic, but they are not inspiring. Dallas needs inspiring iconic images. Even the city of Plano could have an iconic image. For example, if Plano took a stance that it aspires to become a great city after the fashion of ancient Athens, then an attractive and impressive statue of Athena could become an iconic image associated with Plano's ambition. This statue of Athena could look something like the statue of Brittania in the National Armada Memorial in Plymouth, England, but the Athena statue would hold a spear instead of a trident. Statues based on the classics are most likely to succeed in being inspirational. Angels are popular for statues. The City of Westminster, England, has the Anteros statue, also called Eros in the Piccadilly Circus. The city of Plano, Texas, tried to give millions of dollars to a land developer for a plain water fountain on private property (taxpayers objected). What great cities do is build an inspiriational statue, an iconic image, on public property.

Texas cannot be a great state without great cities. The DFW metroplex is the fourth largest in America (after New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago), but is considered an unimportant city with no influence. This is intolerable.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is time to put on our thinking cap and plan for greatness. It is time to roll up our sleeves and make DFW a great urban center with world wide influence.

Robert Canright

Education: the Classics Project

2009-02-08T16:14:00.000-08:00

Why were America's Founding Fathers brilliant and two hundred years later our leaders are duds? How can it be that farmers in the days of horse drawn plows, candle light, and sailing ships were smarter than the best educated Americans in today's world of jet planes, nuclear power, and computers?

The difference must lie within the education our leaders receive and the impact upon decision making due to the educational differences. We must also surmise that some of the advances made in the theory of education that have contributed to our decline must not be real advances, but unrecognized mistakes.

We can see the positive influences on the Founding Fathers by looking at their own words. Federalist papers were signed "Publius", after the Roman Consul Publius Valerius Publicola. So I've started reading Plutarch's depiction of Publicola's life. Anti-Federalist papers were signed "Cato" and "Brutus." Patrick Henry is famous for shouting, "Give me liberty or give me death," but that was a line from the play, "The Cato."

The Founding Fathers were well versed in Roman history. Abraham Lincoln was one of our most capable Presidents. His Gettysberg Address shows he was familiar with the Funeral Oration of Pericles, meaning he had read Thucydides'masterpiece, History of the Peloponnesian War.

So it seems we should study the classics if we want capable leadership. But, why does reading about dead white men help us today? These books lay out the successes and failures of great civilizations. In Plutarch you can learn about greatness by studying Alexander the Great. Livy's History of Early Rome describes the treachery, the murders, of the ruling class of Rome. Cicero, in the last part of On Duties, lays out a catalog of the frauds and swindles the Roman ruling class perpetrated. Even Plato warns how oligarchs use bad loans to swindle people out of their property and their liberty, which is very pertinent to the sub-prime mortgage swindles in contemporary American finance.

If we are going to make Texas Ascendant, I propose a Classics Project to bring the classics back into public education. To rear up great leaders and restore America to greatness, we need to study the greatest leaders and the greatest civilizations in history, we need to study the classics.

Robert Canright

PS: Remember I have degrees in mathematics and engineering. I am not a history grad. I have used my analytical skills from mathematics and engineering to deduce a solution to our leadership problem.

Education/TBAR: the Billionaire Project and the Texas 4x4

2009-02-07T15:47:00.000-08:00

Texas needs more billionaires. Money is power, and the children of Texas must acquire power, influence, and a plan to set their own destiny so their future is not destroyed by the politicians in Washington.

The children of Texas need an elective course in high school on starting and growing a business. But we need to think big. We need to provide growth paths for different size businesses. They need to understand what it takes to grow a business to become comfortably wealthy, to become a millionaire, and to become a billionaire. These are different paths.

There is so much our children need to know about business. They need to learn about sole proprietor businesses and the different types of corporations. They need to hear about contracts, lawyers and accountants, bank loans, business plans, venture capital, going public versus staying privately held, and they need to hear about common pitfalls and swindles. There are plenty of billionaires in Texas history who lost their wealth.

(You might enjoy the book review in the Wall Street Journal, Wednesday February 4, 2009, "Piles of Green from Black Gold" by J. Lynn Lunsford, a review of "The Big Rich" by Bryan Burrough. This book is about Texas oil men.)

Our children need to be warned about what Walter Lippmann called "the invisible environment" of business. Our children need to be warned about the corruption that can accompany great wealth, and they must have sufficient moral and historical education to survive the perils to the soul from great wealth. The Texas business community needs to think of the big picture: the future of Texas will be in the hands of our children, so we must educate them for success and provide them with a Texan "invisible environment" to aid their success.

A high school course cannot teach everything one needs to succeed in business, but it can give road maps to different paths in business and point the way for further investigation.

Making money is a talent like making music. Some people have a gift for making money, but everyone can be taught the basics. If more of our children are exposed to the ways of business, those with the talent to make money but not born into a family that teaches the ways of business will have a better opportunity to make use of their talents.

This intersection of education and business is a good way for the Texas business community to contribute practical knowledge to help the schools prepare an elective course on Entrepreneurial Business. This Billionaire Project can contribute to a Texas Business Renaissance.

Now our children's electives are being squeezed out of existence by the Texas State Legislature. Here is a link to a short presentation on the Texas 4x4 program, here is a link to a longer presentation, and here is a link to an Op-Ed piece by Cara Mendelsohn of Plano. Go to the website for the Texas State Legislature, find out who represents you and email or write them to abolish the Texas 4x4. Our state legislators are trying to educate our children for a world that no longer exits. They are like obsolete generals trying to fight the last war instead of today's war.

Our children need a better education than they receive now if they will succeed in the difficult future facing them. Our children must have a better understanding of economics, finance, and business because that is the battlefield of today. We must educate them to win the battle.

Robert Canright

Education/TBAR: Classics Animated

2009-02-05T20:19:00.000-08:00

I remember fondly the Classics Illustrated comic books I read as a child. I think a Classics Animated Project would be a fabulous project tying together education, technology, and business. I had previously mentioned a 3-D programming software tool, Alice, that is free from Carnegie Mellon University. So many classic works of literature are in the public domain, public school students could create animated versions of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Shakespeare's plays. The schools could sell the resulting works to the public and make them available for free to the school students. The students would gain worthwhile job skills, and would contribute to developing an entrepreneurial animation industry. Rooster Teeth in Austin has already gotten national attention.

Creative links between education, the arts, and business will lead to a Texas Business and Arts Renaissance (TBAR) and contribute to making Texas Ascendant.

Robert Canright

PS: There is also a "Story Telling Alice" free software package intended for middle school children.

Education/TLR: the Democracy Project

2009-01-31T20:24:00.000-08:00

The Texas Ascendancy Campaign will increase the power and influence of Texas so it can be a positive force in our country, leading America back to prosperity, preserving and strengthening our American Republic.

The Democracy Project, which I describe now, will be an important part of this effort. Maintaining our representative democracy has three aspects: (1) foundational, (2) strategic, and (3) tactical.

The foundational aspect of the Democracy Project is knowledge of the foundations of our republic, which means knowing and understanding the constitutions of Athens, Sparta, and Rome. A core group of Texans must understand how these governments rose, flourished, and failed. Some of us must understand well, like our Founding Fathers understood, the histories of these great civilizations. Some of the writers of the Federalist papers signed themselves Publius, after Publius Valerius Publicola, drawing on their knowledge of Roman history.

The Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers are an important debate on the strengths and weaknesses of the American Constitution and some of us must be conversant with the arguments on both sides in order to maintain our American constitutional government. We will lose what we do not understand.

We must understand criticisms of democracy, like that expressed by Walter Lippmann in his book, "The Phantom Public." We can better protect our republic if we understand its weaknesses.

The Texas Diplomacy Project is an example of the strategic aspect of the Democracy Project. Strategic thinking is the long term plan for gaining political power for Texas and its allies within the American political system.

The tactical aspect of the Democracy Project would include detailed short term plans to gain and exercise political power. For example, Texas members in the US Senate and House of Representatives could start forming a new political caucus, an American Heartland Caucus, that looks out for the interests of middle-American families and the states in the American Heartland, which I think of as the states that are not West Coast and not East Coast states. (The name "Heartland Alliance" is already taken, so we need to be careful in the name we use.)

Texans need to be leaders, not followers. We cannot follow politicians from either the East or the West Coast, and we cannot allow either the Republican National Committee or the Democratic National Committee to set direction for America's Heartland because that job should belong to Texas.

Education is a vital part of the Democracy Project. Our public schools need to introduce our children to Constitutional issues so they understand some of the arguments and concerns on both sides of the debate over ratification. Our universities must make available paths of study that allow some students to become well versed on Constitutional issues. If Texas is going to be a dominant player on the national stage, we need to develop first class Constitutional lawyers.

There is a big overlap between education, law, and leadership (TLR, the Texas Leadership Revolution) in the Democracy Project. The Texas Ascendancy Campaign has many pieces, some of which overlap.

Put together all the pieces of the Texas Ascendancy Campaign and we have a road map to greatness.

Robert Canright

TLR: Why UT Dallas Should Be Tier One

2009-01-17T09:53:00.000-08:00

When Barack Obama moved to Chicago he was supported by the University of Chicago. He received more than money. He was provided credentials (a fellowship), an office, connections, and intellectual stimulation. This support for future leaders is the real benefit of having a Tier One university in a power center, usually a large city. The Texas Leadership Revolution (TLR) is a plan to develop better leaders in Texas to lead Texas and America to a brighter future. Having another Tier 1 university in Texas is important for developing and supporting our future leaders in the way the University of Chicago supported Barack Obama.

What is a Tier 1 university? Usually the Tier 1 ranking refers to the university research budget. Planning to become a Tier 1 university usually entails financial commitments from the state legislature. There is a nice article in the Saturday January 17, 2009 Dallas Morning News, "Dewhurst Says Lawmakers Can Begin Work to Add New Flagship Universities," by Terrence Stutz. The article said there is competition between the University of Texas Dallas, the University of Texas Arlington, Texas Tech, and the University of Houston for money from the state.

It takes more than money to be a great university. Let's rank these universities by SAT scores, throwing in the flagship school UT Austin for comparison:

1.) Reading 550 - 670 & Math 590 - 700 at the University of Texas Dallas
2.) Reading 540 - 660 & Math 570 - 690 at the University of Texas Austin
3.) Reading 480 - 580 & Math 500 - 610 at Texas Tech University
4.) Reading 460 - 570 & Math 490 - 600 at the University of Houston
5.) Reading 450 - 560 & Math 480 - 590 at the University of Texas Arlington

These are numbers fresh from the College Board. UT Dallas already has the intellectual firepower in its students to gain respect on the national and international stages. Yes, UT Dallas students do have higher SAT scores than UT Austin students.

The America Dream is the freedom to be all we can be. No American needs permission to strive for greatness. The University of Texas Dallas can choose to become a world class university without permission from the Texas state legislature. UT Dallas can become a world class university without a Tier One budget. It would help to define what we mean by World Class University, and money is nothing to sneeze at, but the will power and commitment to excel are the prime ingredients.

We do need a clear goal for education. Walter Lippmann, an honest elitist, said, "... men are not good, but good for something ... men cannot be educated, but only educated for something...." [1]. This is the education our children receive today in the public schools and public universities: education for a professional trade.

Here's a better description: "The goal of education is to drag every man as far out of the cave as possible," referring to the Cave Allegory in Plato's Republic. Our young men and women need to lead on the national and international stage because America needs better leaders. It's our civic duty to educate our children for greatness.

Now that UT Dallas students are academically superior to UT Austin students, we need to raise the bar. We need to stop comparing UT Dallas to UT Austin and start comparing ourselves to the University of Chicago and Columbia University. (Yes, Barack Obama graduated from Columbia University.) Forget their research budgets, look at their intellectual influence. Texas politics will keep UT Dallas smaller than UT Austin, and that is fine. Our goal is greatness, not size.

The DFW metroplex needs a World Class University to become a world class city. We citizens of the DFW metroplex need to look to UT Dallas as our cities' flag ship campus, recognizing that UT Arlington and the University of North Texas also serve our citizens.

As the nations' economies around the world are shuddering from the failed policies of East Coast elitists, we must become resolute in replacing the failures in Washington and Wall Street with the best leaders Texas can provide.

The whole world needs Texas ascendant!

Robert Canright

[1] "The Phantom Public" by Walter Lippmann, 1927, ISBN 1-56000-677-3, page 140.

Related Posts:
Texas, New York, and Universities (October 29, 2008)
Texas Needs More Tier 1 Universities (November 12, 2008)

TBAR: "Atlas Shrugged" and Texas

2009-01-09T21:06:00.000-08:00

Because times are bad, I was drawn to a book I had not read in a long time: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. As I read it, I thought, "wow, this is all happening now, the collapse of the American economy because corrupt, incompetent business men threw in their lot with corrupt politicians."

Then the Friday 1/9/09 Wall Street Journal runs this great essay:
"'Atlas Shrugged': from Fiction to Fact in 52 Years" by Stephen Moore.

Here is a quote from the essay:
"Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957..."

I think it is important for Texans to read and discuss Atlas Shrugged if Texas is to lead America back to prosperity.

There is already a connection between Texas and Ayn Rand. The University of Texas at Austin has a Chair for the Study of Objectivism and an Anthem Foundation Fellowship, both held by Professor Tara Smith in the Philosophy Department. And if Texas is to wrestle control away from the New York power brokers and restore the American republic, the citizens of Texas need to understand how dangerous corrupt businessmen can be to our nation.

Texans need to understand the important issues depicted in Atlas Shrugged, recognizing the philosophical errors in Ayn Rand's book. Yes, her thinking is flawed. She paints an accurate picture, then misinterprets the underlying causes of the problems she depicts. The issues in the book are too important neglect this work just because she is imperfect. I believe a healthy discussion on the book's strengths and weaknesses would help Texas chart our path to greatness.

I also see a connection between Atlas Shrugged and the Texas Publishing Project. I envision a business-hero genre. Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart are heroic business people. Businessmen are almost always portrayed as villains. A few successful books from Texas publishers depicting heroic Texas businessmen could create a vibrant publishing industry. The approach might be as simple as "translating" a cowboy novel plot into the corporate world. A more sophisticated approach might fictionalize a struggle between virtuous, God fearing Texas business persons and a corrupt cabal of New York businesses and their corrupt New York bankers and Wall Street financiers. That's easy, read today's newspapers to see what the bad guys look like. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Google "Bernie Madoff" as a starting point. If you don't know what I mean when I say "business cabal", read The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin.

When you read Atlas Shrugged, you get pulled into the story and start cheering for Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart. We could be cheering stories of successful Texas business persons. When our children think of business as exciting and heroic, then we might bring America back to vigorous economic prosperity.

Robert Canright

Disclaimer: I am not endorsing Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism. I am recommending we examine her vision of business corruption and the heroic business person. Following are links related to "Atlas Shrugged"

Here is a link to "Le Monde Diplomatique Discovers Ayn Rand" By Judith Apter Klinghoffer in the History News Network.

Ayn Rand: "Atlas felt a sense of déjà vu" from The Economist print edition, Feb 26th 2009

TLR / Education: the Jefferson Project

2009-01-04T15:54:00.000-08:00

"Where's our Jefferson?" someone I know asked recently. Good question. Thomas Jefferson wrote our Declaration of Independence in 1774, and 233 years later we still have not seen his equal.

Why?

America became a world power in the twentieth century. Our best universities are now considered among the best in the world, but they have not produced a new Jefferson. Perhaps the greatness within a person takes root before college.

Perhaps a person with the seed of greatness needs a particular type of education to bring that greatness to fruition. Our country has not seen great leaders since the days of the Founding Fathers. Examining the education of the Founding Fathers we see they studied the classics.

I found this quote on the internet:

"Thomas Jefferson wrote to his nephew that there were three books every gentleman had to have familiarity with; Plutarch's "Lives", Livy's "History of Rome" and Virgil's Aeneid. In fact, all the founding fathers of note had read Livy and learned much from his history of Rome."

If you are thinking I over looked Abraham Lincoln as a great person, allow me to point out he was home schooled, not a Harvard graduate, and he had studied the classics. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was based on the Funeral Oration of Pericles.

Thomas Jefferson was home schooled, with a tutor, from ages 5 through 9 (kindergarten through 4th grade). Then Jefferson went to private schools until he was 17. His studies included the Latin and Greek classics. At 17 Jefferson went to the College of William and Mary, where his studies include classical literature.

Perhaps the age of great leaders is past, but let us not give up so easily.

We should educate all our children, from kindergarten through high school, as though each one will become President of the USA. Every child needs an education for greatness, an education that includes a study of classics like Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans.

Perhaps America will again be blessed with great leaders if we educate for greatness.

TLR: The Texas Leadership Revolution

I propose a Jefferson Project to educate our children for greatness. The public schools could take a step in this direction by incorporating lessons from Plutarch's Lives various parts of the curriculum: History, selected readings within English Language Arts, and selected readings within Social Studies.

Parents do not have to wait for the public schools. Innovation happens best outside bureaucracies. Parents who home school can adopt a classical approach. Charter schools can incorporate a classical approach into their curriculum. Parents with children in the public schools can read and discuss Plutarch with their children. Parents can educate their children for greatness with or without the public schools.

Plano for the Presidency is a blog post I made when I ran for the school board in 2008 that says we should educate our children as though each one might some day become President. The Timeless Way Foundation web site has a page, The 12th Man Writ Large, giving another perspective on the same thought.

Attitude is Everything

Great achievement requires great aspiration. Let us fix our sights on developing in Texas the best leaders America has ever seen.

Robert Canright

Afterward:

If you wish to give this more thought, here are a couple of books that might be worth examining.

"A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-first Century" by Oliver Van DeMille. If you check this out at Amazon, be sure to read the book review that gave the book only one star because the reviewer raises good points. I have looked at this book and I do not think it has the answers we need. Mr. DeMille is well intended, but his analysis is flawed and his conclusions unsound.

"The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home" by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise

You might wish to examine the website for the Great Books Academy for home schooling.

TLR / TBAR: The Cicero Project, Lawyers and Integrity

2009-01-01T11:27:00.000-08:00

Wednesday December 31, 2008, the Wall Street Journal ran a book review of "The Race for a New Game Machine" by David Shippy and Mickie Phipps. The review was on page A7, entitled "Playing the Fool" and was written by Jonathan V. Last. It was an excellent review and I talked with my son about the story it revealed.

The subtitle to the review is, "How Sony inadvertently helped a competitor and lost position in the videogame market." The subtitle could have read, "How IBM stabbed a business partner in the back." Sony signed a contract with IBM to develop the cell microprocessor, but IBM gave the best parts of the design to Microsoft, a competitor to Sony. IBM helped Microsoft improve upon the cell chip and worked to give Microsoft a competitive advantage over Sony, their business partner. The author of the book, Shippy, wrote he felt "contaminated" as he sat down with Microsoft engineers and betrayed the trust of Sony.

I have often told my son that the greatest thefts and swindles are done with contracts. We talked about this article in the Wall Street Journal. We talked about how trust cannot exist without integrity, that there is a lack of integrity in business, and you cannot trust business partners. I reminded him it can be dangerous to sign a contract written by someone who cannot be trusted. Obviously, IBM cannot be trusted, but then who can be in American business?

I've previously said that integrity is the cornerstone of the Texas Leadership Revolution (TLR). Integrity is also the cornerstone of lasting wealth. Integrity is important in business. There is a cost in protecting yourself against being cheated. Contracts have to be very carefully crafted or very carefully reviewed to avoid swindles.

I propose a Cicero Project to develop in Texas the most capable lawyers in the world. Our lawyers here in Texas must be the best in the world in litigation, contract law, constitutional law, integrity, and civic virtue. The interests in litigation and contract law would contribute to the Texas Business and Arts Renaissance (TBAR). The interests in constitutional law, integrity, and civic virtue would contribute to the Texas Leadership Revolution (TLR).

Why name this the Cicero Project? I thought about who might be considered the greatest lawyer in history. Cicero was a lawyer who gave his life protesting tyranny. He was a lawyer who believed in integrity. The last part of his book, "On Duties," (De Officiis) discussed fraud in great detail, the first part of his book was about virtue. Cicero also wrote "The Republic" (De Re Publica) and "On the Laws" (De Legibus). If Cicero is not the greatest lawyer in world history, he is certainly on the short list.

If you look at the high level diagram for the Texas Ascendancy Campaign, you will see that education is the foundation for all of it. The Cicero Project can extend down to the high school level. Our brightest students should be exposed to the ideas of Cicero. Those young people who aspire to greatness should embrace the spirit of duty and integrity spelled out by Cicero.

All of us can contribute to raising up the star of Texas, to restoring prosperity to America, and to bringing integrity back into American business and politics. Lawyers have a special role in this endeavor, and the Cicero Project can be rallying point for this great work.

Robert Canright

TLR: Texas Diplomacy Project

2008-12-26T21:57:00.000-08:00

The next time a Texan walks into the White House, he or she should not have to depend on the services of staff whose loyalty lies elsewhere. Staff of questionable loyalty and competence is what you get when you don't know your staff, what you get when you accept the staff of a previous President.

The next Texan in the White House should not depend upon minions of the New York City oligarchy for advice. The New York City bankers have ruined the American economy, heck, they've damaged the world economy. The Council on Foreign Relations, which is run by the New York bankers, has helped run American prestige into the ground. The next Texan to enter the Oval Office should not depend upon the Council on Foreign Relations for staff or advice. The next Texan in the White House should not have to depend on Harvard economists on the Council of Economic Advisers, he or she should have competent economists educated in Texas. It is Harvard educated economists who helped ruin the world economy.

We need a Texas Diplomacy Project to provide the next Texan entering the White House with trustworthy and competent advisers. In all human endeavors there is a strategic facet and a tactical facet. Underlying strategy is intent. I say our intent should be greatness.

Consider England. Queen Elizabeth I reigned from 1533 to 1603. At Elizabeth’s death in 1603 the population of England would reach 5 million. The DFW metroplex has a population of 6.1 million, making us the number 4 metroplex in America. England was a nation, playing on the international stage, defending itself against the Spanish Armada. Shakespeare wrote during Elizabeth's reign. DFW has a population equalling all of England during Elizabeth's time, but we actually have more resources today than they had back then. DFW alone could be another England.

Now consider Queen Victoria who reigned from 1798 to 1901. In 1851 the population of England was 21 million, but Queen Victoria as head of the British Empire ruled over 410 million people, one quarter of the world's population. The population of Texas today is estimated at 24 million, more than England under Queen Victoria.

Dallas-Fort Worth can and should be a player on the world stage for the sake of America's prosperity. Texas can and should be a player on the international stage for the sake of America's liberty. But we should not do it all by ourselves. We need to ally ourselves with all the states in the American heartland. Texas and DFW need to practice diplomacy at the regional, national, and international levels.

Our intent will be greatness for the good of all Americans. Our strategy will be to practice diplomacy to the legal limits of our State government. Our tactics will include developing think tanks on Economics and Foreign Affairs. Our tactics will be to develop relations with people, institutions, city, state and national governments throughout the heartland of America and around the world. This will be the Texas Diplomacy Project.

Texans will not bow to the will of the money lords of the East and West Coast. Texans will stand tall and bow to no one.

Robert Canright

Remember TLR = the Texas Leadership Revolution

TBAR: The Texas Banking and Finance Project

2008-12-24T11:04:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in an earlier post, "Texas, a New Financial Center," that Texas needs to become a world center for banking and finance. An article in the Tuesday, December 23, 2008 Wall Street Journal, "Two Cities Lose 'Hometown Banks' Today," by Dan Fitzpatrick, describes how towns lose major banks when those banks are purchased by another bank and the headquarters are moved.

Two important lessons from this article:

(1) If we are going to develop a world class bank in Texas, then we need to structure the ownership carefully so our bank is not hijacked by another bank through a hostile takeover.

(2) There is not a city in Texas on the top 10 list. Clearly, this is unacceptable. DFW is the number 5 metroplex in America and we do not have banks to rival Birmingham, Alabama.

Here are the top ten cities for banking in America:
1. New York
2. Charlotte, N.C.
3. San Fransisco
4. Pittsburgh
5. Boston
6. Minneapolis
7. Atlanta
8. McLean, Va.
9. Birmingham, Ala.
10. Winston-Salem, N.C.

We are obviously on the wrong track when it comes to banking. The Texas Banking and Finance Project will make Texas a powerhouse in banking and bring prosperity to Texas.

Robert Canright

Here are other articles that are part of the Texas Banking and Finance Project
Texas, a New Financial Center Saturday, December 6, 2008
Texas, China, and a New Currency, Part 1 Sunday, April 12, 2009
Texas, China, & a New Currency, Part 2 Sunday, April 19, 2009
Texas, China, & a New Currency, Part 3 Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Amherst Holdings and the Texas Banking Projec t Saturday, July 25, 2009
A Philosophy of Banking Friday, December 23, 2011

TLR: Integrity and Competence, the Cornerstone and Keystone

2008-12-21T18:48:00.000-08:00

Integrity and competence will the the cornerstone and keystone of the Texas Leadership Revolution (TLR). I mentioned this concept back on December 6th and on October 5th.

Integrity is the cornerstone of a good life, a good person, a good society. A cornerstone is a reference point for the rest of the building and sometimes conveys symbolism for the intent of the building. If you misplace the cornerstone, the entire structure is misaligned. If you do not build an organization upon a foundation of integrity, that organization will never be right and cannot do any good. This is why so many Wall Street organizations today are failing, because they lack integrity.

Competence is the keystone of a good life, a good person, a good society. A keystone is considered a crucial element of a structure, whose removal would cause the structure to collapse. Certainly a keystone is the apex of an arch. If we remove competence from a society, that society descends into chaos and despair. On December 20, 2008, CNN reports some residents of New Hampshire have been without power for 8 days in freezing weather. The people have become desperate, pounding at the doors of the power company, running power company trucks off the road in order to try and force workers to restore power to their homes. This is the kind of staggering incompetence we used to see only behind the Iron Curtain, in South America, and in Africa. This means parts of America are slipping into the 3rd world, where government cannot provide the basic necessities of life.

We need to restore America to greatness and prosperity. We need to start here in Texas, we need to start now, and we need to start upon a foundation of integrity. Then we need to rise to the apex of competence, accumulating wealth, power and influence along the way.

As the lights go out in the Northeast, we need to be a shining light of hope for the rest of the country. We need to restore prosperity to America, and the sooner we start the sooner we can stop this slide into the 3rd world and restore America as a great country.

Robert Canright

TBAR: The Texas Publishing Project

2008-12-14T19:25:00.000-08:00

The publishing industry shapes public opinion. If Texas is going to provide a counterweight to power of New York City, then publishing has to be a part of the Texas Ascendancy Project. It fits within the Texas Business and Arts Renaissance (TBAR).

It is important to all the people of America, it is important to all the people of the world that America has some force that can counteract the inept bundling of the power brokers of New York City and the Northeast. Their bungling has rocked banks around the world and badly damaged the American economy.

As I have mentioned earlier in talking about Timberwolf Press, it is important that Texans support Texas publishers. That has not been happening.

Now is a good time to focus on publishing. The publishing industry is reeling from the new economy and wondering how to survive, as described in the following three (3) paragraphs.

(1) In the Sunday July 30, 2008 Dallas Morning News, in the Points section, a pertinent article appeared: "Age of the Disposable Book" by Jonathan Karp. The same article appears in the online edition of the DMN as "The Problem with the Publishing Industry" with a Tuesday July 22 date. He likens meeting sales goals to a game of blackjack. He says industry sales projections are fundamentally based on blind hope.

(2) In the Sunday November 30, 2008 New York Times, James Gleick's Op-Ed piece, "How to Publish Without Perishing," discusses the pressure writers and publishers feel from electronic publishing.

(3) The Sunday December 14, 2008 New York Times Book Review printed "Bail Out the Writers," an essay by Paul Greenberg where he expressed despair at the increased competition in getting published.

The New York publishing industry is feeling its power slipping away. We need to make a grab for it. Everything that is driving New York publishers nuts, we need to embrace. They are trying to figure out how to survive and flourish as technology changes the publishing industry. That means it is up for grabs.

Both James Gleick and Jonathan Karp believe quality writing will be a part of winning plan. I am a believer in quality products, so I think Texas needs to embrace quality writing. We can support a Texas publishing industry by buying quality products and spending time reading.

Teaching good writing needs to be a priority in the education of our children. We need to care about our children's writing skills. We parents put a lot of effort and tutoring time into math, but not, I think, into writing. Furthermore, good scores on TAKS and SAT writing tests are not a convincing indication of good writing skills. Frankly, most adults have poor writing skills, so it is difficult for most parents to help their children improve their writing. I believe Texas needs a cottage industry for tutoring writing skills, and adults should partake of opportunities to improve their writing skills.

The internet can be an important part of the Texas Publishing Project. Internet publishing can minimize publishing costs. It can permit small online magazines to flourish, but they cannot flourish if they are not read. A couple of examples here in Texas are the Emerson Institute for Freedom and Culture and the blogs for Interdisciplinary World and the Emerson Institute. If you know of other good websites and blogs done by Texas, let share them in a comment.

Let us all keep alert to opportunities to support good writing in Texas and the growth of a Texas Publishing industry.

Robert Canright

If you have not read an earlier post, TBAR and the Texas Journalism Project, check it out!

Response to Comment by Dr. Troy Camplin:
Dr. Camplin, I think the Emerson Institute for Freedom and Culture looks like a good fit for a literary journal in which citizens could enter into free public discussion in the manner discussed by the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas in his work, "Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Investigation of a Category of Bourgeois Society." Corporate mass media has destroyed rational discourse in America. Non-profits will have to bring back public discourse so we can resume the great dialog that is democracy.

TLR: More on the Texas Democracy Project

2008-12-13T20:56:00.000-08:00

The Texas Democracy Project can organize voters at the grass roots level to discuss issues, meet like-minded people, and to get out and vote. We have political parties, but we have small voter turn-out when we are not voting for President.

Independent political clubs, focused on voter education instead of voter manipulation, and focused on getting as much voter participation as possible, will strengthen our democracy.

American newspapers are misrepresenting political events in America. Only by blogging, emailing, and making personal contact can voters learn what is really happening in America. Our American newspapers and TV news are like the Communist's Pravda. The Russian people found ways to communicate news amongst themselves, and so can we.

Independent political clubs can become important hubs for sharing information. Some of the Ron Paul groups are like this in their sharing of information. If we are going to continue as a free people, we need to organize for our self-preservation. It is great that some people participate in Republican clubs or Democratic clubs, but independent voters do not organize and they should.

Everybody in America needs to care about our Republic, or our Republic and our liberties will disappear.

Robert Canright

TLR = the Texas Leadership Revolution

TBAR: What Can I Do?

2008-12-07T14:35:00.000-08:00

I've been asked by email what we can do with the Texas Ascendancy Project. Let's think long term. Let's start with the Texas Banking and Finance Project. You and I are not billionaires or millionaires, so it will have to be our children who make this happen. The keys are education and expectation. Our children need to expect to accomplish great things and we need to educate them towards this end.

Here's an example of how I work with my son. After I blogged about the Texas Banking and Finance Project, I showed my 5th grade boy some info about the Rothschild banking family. I pointed out that the founder of the banking empire was born in a ghetto, became a successful banker, and reared his boys to become successful bankers, teaching them a formula for long term success for their banks. I pointed out to my son that for hundreds of years, Canrights have been teachers, preachers, missionaries, doctors, scientists, mathematicians, and engineers, but some were businessmen and at least one was a banker. Now he understands families have long lasting traditions. Next, I showed him that the author Mary Higgins Clark has brought her daughter Carol Higgins Clark into the writing business. We can start a business and teach it to our children.

Next, I talked to my son about "back of the envelope" calculations.

The Saturday December 6, 2008 issue of the Wall Street Journal had, on the first page of section B, Personal Finance, a photo of an envelope with simple calculations. Here's what the back-of-the-envelope calculations showed:

Citigroup , June 5, 2008
price per share = $20.60
tangible book value per share = $9.36
ratio of price/tangible book value = 2.20
on December 5, 2008
price per share = $7.71
tangible book value per share = $8.05
ratio of price/tangible book value = 0.96

Then I explained to him that the ratio being less than one meant the entire bank was priced at less than value of its pieces, so you could buy the bank, split it into pieces, sell all the pieces, and make a profit. Or keep it and know the bank can be fixed to make it worth ten times its purchase price.

I explained to my son that he has many options in life, that I will do the best I can to educate him to take advantage of his options. His choices are his to make, but he should not be afraid to aim high.

We have to educate our children, so let's educate them for greatness. We can use the Texas Ascendancy Project as an aid, a road map, in educating our children and explaining their options.

I can hear someone already saying, "Why bother, nothing you do makes a difference." Well, you and I might not make a big difference now, but even a small change in direction now can make a big difference further down the road.

There is a great line spoken by Gandolf in "The Two Towers." When Merry and Pippin show up with the Ents, Gandolf says, "The coming of Merry and Pippin is like the dropping of small stones that start an avalanche." Be patient and take heart. The steady application of a good plan will make a difference over time.

Robert Canright

The WSJ article mentioned was, "Heebner the Contrarian" by Diya Guillapalli.

TBAR: Texas, a New Financial Center

2008-12-06T20:50:00.000-08:00

In October 2008 America has gotten a taste of the financial damage New York financiers have inflicted upon other countries. America needs another financial center to rival New York city and provide a counter-balance to its reckless market manipulation.

The Medici family controlled Florence using the power of the Medici Bank. The Medici's were too corrupt and incompetent to maintain their power. For 200 years the Rothschild's have been successful bankers. I have not seen reports that the Rothschild bank has been burned with Credit Default Swaps or Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs). To the contrary, reports say the Rothschild banks are doing very well now. The founder of the family fortune, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, is famous for saying, "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws." This could be interpreted a couple of different ways, but nevertheless shows bankers do think about lawmakers.

The incompetence of New York bankers has threatened the world economy. For the good of the nation and the world, Texas needs to develop a financial center to rival New York. But we need to be careful about misusing that power to meddle in politics like the Medicis. We need to study the Rothschilds and learn from them how to establish a lasting banking and financial empire.

This is a perfect time to start investment banks in Texas, now that the investment banks in New York are reeling from their failures. We will call the plan to turn Texas into a world center of banking and finance the "Texas Banking and Finance Project".

Integrity and competence need to be the watch-words of the Texas banking industry. Integrity is a key ingredient for lasting success.

Robert Canright

TBAR = the Texas Business and Arts Renaissance

TLR and the Speech Writing Project

2008-12-03T20:03:00.000-08:00

The Presidency Project, Part of the Texas Leadership Revolution (TLR)

We need to prepare our children as though any one of them might become President of the USA. The challenges facing America are increasingly difficult. Texans have occupied the White House in the past and faced great challenges: Vietnam, the 1st Gulf War, then the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The next Texan in the White House might face unimaginably difficult problems, so this Texan should be a person of integrity and vision, a person well grounded in history, economics, and finance. The next Texan in the White House might make fateful decisions that will make or break America. We need to send our best to the White House.

We also need to prepare our children to support a Texan running for the White House. There are many components to that web of support. One component is speech writing.

The Speech Writing Project

Presidential candidates rely on a number of highly qualified speech writers. Every important aspect of a presidential campaign must be prepared and nurtured. The rhetoric and oration of a U.S. President are vital to shaping the public vision and will. Publius Cornelius Tacitus (56 – 117 A.D.) was a Roman Senator, Consul, Governor, and historian. He wrote “A Dialogue Concerning Oratory,” emphasizing the importance of eloquent oratory to stir the public. Presidential oratory can be studied, as evidenced by the following books:

1. Woodrow Wilson and the Lost World of the Oratorical Statesman by Robert Kraig
2. The Rhetorical Presidency by Jeffrey Tulis
3. On Deaf Ears by George C. Edwards III
4. The Sound of Leadership by Roderick P. Hart
5. The Moral Rhetoric of American Presidents by Colleen J. Shogan

The universities and the public schools can promote presidential rhetoric and oratory. The public schools could include study of presidential speeches in speech, debate, and English composition. English Language Arts in Texas public schools needs to move from TAKS tests to competent teaching of rhetoric. The books by Robert Kraig and Colleen Shogan listed above were published by Texas A&M Press and Roderick Hart is with the University of Texas, Austin. These are good examples of how our universities can support the Speech Writing Project.

America needs Texas to provide a counter-weight to the power and influence of Wall Street. America needs Texas to provide competent, honorable leadership to restore our prosperity and preserve our liberty. All Texans need to consider where in the Texas Ascendancy Campaign they can best contribute. There will be many projects; there will be many opportunities where Texans can contribute to the Ascendancy of Texas.

Robert Canright

TLR and the Texas Democracy Project

2008-12-01T19:34:00.000-08:00

The Texas Leadership Revolution (TLR) needs to be grounded in democracy. For the state of Texas to advance on the world stage, we need broad participation in order to make the best use of all the talent in Texas.

Small towns in Texas, like Plano, are run by oligarchies and are functionally undemocratic because the vast amount of its citizens do not vote. When the citizens do not vote, they signal they do not care what happens. The State Legislature is butchering education in Texas because the citizens of Texas do not vote. The welfare of Texas depends upon the health of the democratic process in Texas.

The Texas Democracy Project, a part of the Texas Leadership Revolution, will seek greater voter turnout and promote better information for the electorate. The major media has shown itself to be manipulative and dishonest, which undermines the democratic process. Hence, there is a connection between the Texas Journalism Project and the Texas Democracy Project.

We need a grass roots movement to restore democracy to Texas.

Robert Canright

TBAR and the Texas Journalism Project

2008-11-27T21:45:00.000-08:00

Texas needs world class journalism. Eventually we need a news outlet rivaling the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. It is possible to begin this project without spending billions of dollars. Using the internet for publishing will minimize cost. People are having trouble making money presenting news on the internet. Perhaps the key is to run a non-profit news organization, like ProPublica (http://www.propublica.org/). A profitable new organization will have to be privately held to maintain integrity. When a news organization is publicly traded, it will be purchased and silenced. So if it becomes influential, the corrupting influences in America will buy the publicly traded news organization and turn it into a propaganda organ.

Keep an eye on ProPublica. It started slowly, but it is maturing and improving. You can recommend an alternative media outlet in a comment. I am looking at Break the Matrix (http://www.breakthematrix.com/), but I have not yet formed an opinion on it.

Another thought to consider for creating a new journalistic enterprise is to model it after the Open Source Software movement: highly skilled, trained, and motivated individuals contributing their efforts for free. With a sufficiently educated population, it will be possible to have many competent, informed, amateur journalists contributing work. Some organization is needed to pull together the content, but this is possible.

The Texas Journalism Project could be a topic of study and experimentation at journalism schools in Texas. We have strong journalism programs in Texas. The Mayborn Graduate School of Journalism at the University of North Texas, in Denton, is very active. They have a student produced magazine, Cover, they have a separate Mayborn magazine, and an excellent annual conference, The Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference of the Southwest. The DFW metroplex is lucky to have a program like the Mayborn.

American democracy needs good journalism, but good journalism is disappearing as big business buys the media, silences investigative reporting, and promotes corporate propaganda. For Texas to achieve greatness, it needs great journalism.

Robert Canright

remember: TBAR is the Texas Business and Arts Renaissance

Texas Needs More Tier 1 Universities

2008-11-12T18:36:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before that New York City has several Tier One Universities. Let's compare universities:

Just New York City:
Columbia University: Reading SAT 660-760 Math SAT 670-780
Barnard College: Reading SAT 640-740 Math SAT 620-700
Cooper Union: Reading SAT 610-700 Math SAT 640-770

The whole state of Texas:
Texas A&M: Reading SAT 520-630 Math SAT 560-670
University of Texas, Austin: Reading SAT 540-670 Math SAT 570-700
Rice University: Reading SAT 640-750 Math SAT 670-780

So it takes the entire state of Texas to match just New York City for universities. This article from the Star-Telegram, "Public universities in North Texas should work together on Tier 1 status," by Mike Norman, says New York State has 7 Tier One universities and California has 9 Tier One universities to our 3 Tier One Universities.

US Census numbers (2006) say New York State had (2006) 19,306,183 people, California had 36,457,549 and Texas had 23,507,783, an number between California and New York State. So Texas should have 8 Tier One universities, not just 3.

Dallas / Fort Worth

We need a Tier One university in the DFW Metroplex, probably two or three. The DFW University Project plans to make this happen.

If our children are to have a future, we must wrestle control of America away from the incompetents in New York City and Wall Street. Developing our universities must be a part of the program.

U.T. Dallas: Reading SAT 540-670 Math SAT 580-690
U.T. Dallas compares well with U.T. Austin
U.T. Arlington and the University of North Texas do not compare as well to U.T. Austin.
The DFW metroplex needs to improve the quality of its schools for U.T. Arlington and U.N.T. to improve their SAT scores.

Eventually, it would be nice if all 3 became Tier One universities.
They should all move in that direction. It appears as though U.T.D. is moving in that direction.

Tier One Universities & Parents

When you listen to the university presidents speak about becoming a tier one university, you will hear them discuss research and budgets. But if you ask parents to discuss a First Tier university, they will pull out their copy of America's Best Colleges, published by U.S. News and World Report.

There you will find Columbia ranked 6th in the nation, U.T. Austin ranked 47th, and Texas A&M ranked 64th in the nation. The list lumps the top 130 universities into one list that represents 1st tier and 2nd tier universities, without drawing the line between them. Next come buckets called 3rd tier and 4th tier. U.T. Dallas and Texas Tech are both in the 3rd tier bucket even though the SAT scores of U.T. Dallas are much higher than at Texas Tech.

We can say then that U.T. Dallas has a student body comparable to 1st tier schools in Texas, but the 1st tier public universities in Texas still lag the 1st tier private universities in New York City.

Tier One Universities & Culture

A university's ranking in the U.S. News and World Report college lists is influenced by the reputation of the university. The historic and cultural contributions of a university and its graduates affect the reputation of the university.

The students at U.T. Dallas are just as accomplished as the students at U.T. Austin, so why does U.T. Austin have a better reputation? How can U.T. Dallas improve its reputation? If we doubled the budget at U.T. Dallas overnight, it's reputation would not double overnight, so what will it take to improve the reputation of U.T. Dallas? That will have to be the topic of another blog entry.

Robert Canright

PS: Here is what the President of UTD has to say about Tier One Universities.
Here is a podcast on Tier One Universities, it is the Think Program on KERA radio, hosted by Krys Boyd (October 29, 2008).

Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture & the NYT OpEd Page

2008-11-02T17:04:00.000-08:00

If we started today it would be difficult to match the culture in New York City within fifty years. It is, beyond doubt, the premier city in America, yet the incompetence and corruption of its oligarchs are a threat to the liberty of all Americans and the prosperity of the entire world. The economic tremors from Wall Street during September 2008 have rocked financial markets around the world, and the subsequent looting of the U.S. Treasury by Wall Street will burden our children and grandchildren.

Intellectual insight is one area we can begin competing in now. The Op-Ed pages of the New York Times (NYT) and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) are zombies, the living dead. Unfortunately, the Op-Ed pages of the Dallas Morning News (DMN) are stone dead. We need an independent magazine providing intelligent, thoughtful commentary and cultural analysis in contrast to the mindless, repetitive, and blatant propaganda crowding the Op-Ed pages of the NYT, WSJ, and DMN.

A cultural magazine published in Texas could be done online to save money. The Mayborn is an example of an online magazine produced in Texas. The Mayborn publishes narrative non-fiction as its mission, not social analysis, not cultural critique. No one in Texas does. Google "Texas" with combinations of "social/cultural" and "commentary/critique", for example: Texas social commentary. Try these searches and you will find nothing. And when we do get a source of cultural critique in Texas, it needs to have an online presence that turns up in a Google search. The Emerson Institute for Freedom and Culture has an online magazine and it might eventually include social commentary. It is worth watching.

Seeing the need for cultural commentary in Texas, I was pleased and excited to discover the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture was sponsoring a Festival of Ideas. Then I was disappointed to learn David Brooks and Nicholas Kristof, Op-Ed writers from the NYT were featured speakers. I had hoped the sponsors of the Festival of Ideas were presenting thinking people from Texas. Brooks and Kristof are trite. Their bios sound impressive, Brooks is articulate and Kristof probably is too, but their work is worthless. They are minions of the oligarchs, paid to promote the corporate program.

Texans cannot be kowtowing to New York Times Op-Ed writers. This is exactly how to fail in developing culture in Dallas. The first step to compete against New York City is to free ourselves from this servile grovelling before employees of the New York Times.

It is great that the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture exits and that it is sponsoring a Festival of Ideas. I hope they have better luck next year in promoting culture in Texas, instead of fawning over New Yorkers.

Robert Canright

Texas, New York, and Universities

2008-10-29T21:16:00.000-07:00

Compare the financial devastation Wall Street has visited upon America in September, 2008, and the entire world for that matter, to the financial damage Al-Qaeda visited upon America on 9/11/01. There is no comparison: New York has hurt America's finances far more than Al-Qaeda.

If Texas is to free America from the New York City oligarchy, we need a city in Texas that can compete with New York City. We do not have one, so we need to start working on this.

The DFW Metroplex is a good candidate to compete with New York City. Universities are an important part of a city's culture and intellectual infrastructure. New York City has Columbia University, the New School (formerly the New School for Social Research), City College of New York, Barnard College, Cooper Union, and others. There is also the Julliard School.

We have some good colleges in DFW, but even the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M fail to compare with Columbia University.

The University of Chicago (founded 1891) is higher ranked than UT Austin (founded 1883). DFW needs a university on par with Columbia University and the University of Chicago. UT is older than the University of Chicago, so we could have developed UT into a better university, but we failed to do so.

Texas needs to lift the standards for UT Austin, Texas A&M, and develop a first tier university in DFW. U.T. Dallas is probably the best candidate to become a DFW tier one university and the effort to uplift U.T. Dallas could be called the DFW University Project.

The oligarchy in New York City is out of control; it is a threat to the liberty and prosperity of all Americans. Texas must wrestle political and financial power away from the New York oligarchy for the good of the nation. Improving our universities is an important part of this effort, and developing a first tier university in DFW has to be a part of the plan.

Robert Canright

TLR: History and Leadership, the History Project

2008-10-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

The DVD set for the John Adams mini-series contained a story about the author, David McCullough: "Painting with Words."

At one point he said he has often been asked what event in history he wished he could have witnessed personally. McCullough said that when Ralph Waldo Emerson graduated from Harvard, he visited President John Adams in the last year of his life, 1825.

Emerson recorded President John Adams saying this:
"I would to God there were more ambition in the country. By that I mean ambition of the laudable kind, to excel."

I believe this describes the ambition expressed in the Texas Ascendancy Campaign, the ambition expressed when I urge Plano so send one of its own to the White House, the ambition to strive for greatness for the sake of America and the sake of all Americans.

The History Project

In his farewell address to the nation, Ronald Reagan said, "... freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs protection. So, we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important..."

The history of our American Revolution, the history of great nations and great men, and the history of freedom must warm the blood and light the way for the ambitious leadership that will carry us to prosperity in this next century.

We must do a better job of teaching history in our schools, history based not on what's in fashion, but what's important.

Robert Canright

Remember, TLR = the Texas Leadership Revolution

America Needs Texas Ascendant

2008-10-05T18:23:00.000-07:00

The government bailout of Wall Street on October 4, 2008, shows that Wall Street rules America. That Wall Street needed a bailout and numerous New York investment banks failed proves Wall Street is an incompetent master. (Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley reorganized as bank holding companies.)

America needs Texas ascendant. For the good of the nation, Texas must take control of America away from Wall Street.

Since the founding of our American republic, when Alexander Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury and also the founder of the Bank of New York, New York bankers have had a dangerous amount of power. Alexander Hamilton also founded the New York Post newspaper, establishing the money men as the controllers of America's news from the first days of our republic.

New York money men have ruled, or tried to rule, America since its inception. Today they clearly run Washington even though a Texan sits in the Oval Office (this is October 2008).

It is time for a true Texan to be President. The next Texan to go to the White House cannot be a servant of New York money.

If money rules America, then we in Texas must replace New York as the financial center of America. Now that investment banks in New York are failing, it is an excellent time to start investment banks in Texas. There is a lot of unemployed expertise waiting to be picked up.

How can Texas do better in banking than New York? Honor, that is how. Cicero said that nothing dishonorable can be beneficial. The New York bankers spun a web of deception that has rocked the financial world. We in Texas must put honesty and honor first. We must lift high the standards of business in Texas so the entire world expects Texas businessmen to be the most trustworthy and reliable bankers on earth.

Competency and honor will lead to lasting success. Look at how dishonesty in New York destroyed very old financial firms. Lehman Brothers was over 100 years old when it went bankrupt. There is a natural law in politics that our founding fathers believed in. There is also a natural law in economics. Wall Street has proven that a day of retribution will eventually come to those who violate the natural laws of economics.

There are many good church people in Texas. There are many good people in Texas who are not Christians. But the good people of Texas must no longer accept Machiavellians like Lee Atwater because evil deeds always come back. Texas cannot have honest business and at the same time corrupt politics. If we want to set standards for honesty in business, we must also set standards for decency and honesty in our politics.

America needs Texas leadership, but America needs the best we have to offer. To be our best we must be honorable.

Robert Canright

TLR and the Arts

2008-09-13T13:23:00.001-07:00

If you view this diagram of the Texas Ascendancy Project you will see a connection between the Texas Leadership Revolution (TLR) and the Arts. The arts do reflect the feelings of a society and leadership needs to take seriously the messages from the artists.

Rod Dreher echoed this thought in his Sunday August 31, 2008 column, "GOP Slouches Toward St. Paul". He quoted Dr. Claes Ryn saying:

"The problem [for conservatives], simply put, was lack of sophistication – an inability to understand what most deeply shapes the outlook and conduct of human beings. Persons move according to their innermost beliefs, hopes and fears. These are affected much less by politicians than by philosophers, novelists, religious visionaries, moviemakers, playwrights, composers, painters and the like...."

Here's another quote: "'Conservatives really don't understand that culture trumps politics,' screenwriter and novelist Andrew Klavan told me recently."

Rod Dreher makes good points when he says later:

"...the chief task before conservatives is not to fight the Democratic Party or prop up the Republican Party. It's nothing less than to recover what it means to be fully human in a postmodern world that denies human nature and the transcendent order underlying our affairs. We must lift our eyes higher than the horizons of the next election and build the institutions and customs that will create an enduring culture based on truth and beauty and virtue...."

I question the fairness of Rod Dreher giving post-modernism a gratuitous slap in the face.

But Dreher is right when he says we need to embrace culture and the virtues of truth and beauty. This is exactly why I wrote my book, developed the Winding Spring Process of Education, and started the Texas Ascendancy Project.

The Texas Ascendancy Campaign believes the connection between leadership and the arts is important. I'm happy to see Rod Dreher also seeing this connection.

Dreher wrote about recovering, "what it means to be fully human," and we can do that by studying the classics.

Robert Canright

TBAR and the Brinker International Forum

2008-08-31T21:43:00.000-07:00

TBAR, the Texas Business and Arts Renaissance, shows synergy between business and the arts. The Brinker International Forum is a good example of interaction between business and the arts.

Notice that the link I gave in this blog was not to a website dedicated to the Forum. Nor was the link to an article in the New York Times.

The Brinker International Forum seems to be a local effort to raise money for the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, but it could be so much more. With the right mind-set, the same effort to raise money for the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts could pay a larger dividend.

If we choose to lift DFW to greater heights in the arts, making it competative with the East Coast or the West Coast, then we could view the Brinker International Forum as a way to inform the rest of the nation that we take culture seriously in DFW and that we intend to become more influential in the arts.

We need to aim higher. We need to tell the rest of the country to watch out because DFW is on its way.

Robert

Introduction to Texas Ascendant

2008-08-23T19:21:00.000-07:00

The Texas Ascendancy Campaign is a vision for a greater Texas. Improvements to education in Texas are leading to improvements in business and the arts. The Texas Ascendancy Campaign is described in the Texas Ascendant web page, which includes a link to a diagram describing the parts of the project.

TBAR: the Texas Business and Arts Renaissance

The Texas Business and Arts Renaissance (TBAR) Project highlights the synergistic interaction between business and the arts. TBAR was a topic in the Education for the 21st Century blog, but this topic is so important that it has moved to this new Texas Ascendant blog.

Previous blog entries dealing with TBAR are:
May 24, 2008: TBAR: the Texas Business and Arts Renaissance
June 2, 2008, TBAR and Summer Festivals
June 14, 2008, TBAR, Virtual Reality, the Arts, and the Public Schools
July 3, 2008, TBAR, Venture Capital and Economic Growth
July 9, 2008, TBAR, Rooster Teeth in Austin

TLR: the Texas Leadership Revolution

The Texas Leadership Revolution Project encourages advancements in leadership driven by improvements in moral education and improved content in teaching history. The 12th Man Writ Large project is an example of a TLR project.

A previous blog entry dealing with TLR is:
August 8, 2008, TLR: the Texas Leadership Revolution

The Greatest State

Please continue reading here for ideas on how we can work to make Texas the greatest state in the union, undisputed. Please leave comments!

Robert Canright