July 21, 2007
Gingrich: "A Crisis Of Competency"
National Review Online: Former House Speaker Calls For Greater Government Efficiency
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Play CBS Video Video Gingrich Not Running Yet Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., tells Bob Schieffer what the Republican presidential candidates have to worry about and whether he will run himself.
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Video Focus On Republican Candidates The Republicans may see an addition to their pool of candidates, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Randall Pinkston reports he could be a strong contender.
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Video Gingrich Calls For D.C. Reform Bob Schieffer had a conversation about political reform with Former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich. Among other things, Gingrich wants to outlaw all political fundraising in Washington.
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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks to the graduating class of Liberty University on Saturday, May 19, 2007, at Williams Stadium in Lynchburg, Va. (AP)
"We don’t have problems, just solutions."
This was the motto of Rear Admiral Eugene Fluckey, the man responsible for destroying more tonnage of Japanese shipping than any other submarine commander during World War II. I can’t think of a phrase that better explains the can-do spirit of America, the attitude that propelled our country to be the powerful and wealthy country in history.
Americans still clearly possess this same can-do spirit. More small businesses and scientific breakthroughs are produced in America than anywhere else in the world. However, there is a growing gap between the world that works - the innovation and efficiency that (with some notable exceptions) we see in the private sector - and the world that fails — the exponentially expanding parade of waste and incompetence with which we suffer from our government bureaucracies.
This massive gap in performance didn’t always exist and it need not exist to such an absurd degree.
The transcontinental railroad was completed in six years. Today, it takes twenty-three years to add a runway to the Atlanta airport.
Chicago, San Francisco, and Galveston were rapidly rebuilt largely with private money after turn of the century disasters devastated the cities. Today, much of New Orleans looks not altogether different than it did immediately after the flood waters receded despite billions of taxpayer dollars spent.
The 1.1. mile Zion-Mt. Carmel Tunnel in Zion National Park was completed in less than three years. The so-called “Big Dig” in Boston took so long that soon after it was completed, it already needed repairs.
The Manhattan Project took two years, eleven months and three days. Neil Armstrong took the first steps onto the lunar surface a mere six years, ten months, and eight days after President Kennedy vowed to put a man on the moon. There is currently no comparable effort to achieve energy independence and NASA has just announced a thirty year plan to get to Mars.
More disturbingly, it took America less than five years after Pearl Harbor to mobilize, build the largest Navy the world have ever seen, and then fight and defeat our enemies. We are now approaching the six year anniversary of 9/11 and still struggling as a nation not only to define a strategy for victory, but to define who it is we are fighting.
It is clear that the machinery of government is broken. It’s been so corroded by red tape and the bureaucratic self-preservation of members of permanent government that we are reaching a crisis of competency in our government’s capacity to execute its core functions.
This is a serious threat to America’s position as the most powerful country in the world. As a conservative, I am dubious of government’s attempts to do what should be left to the private sector. However, I am adamant that in the areas government is involved, we should insist on the same performance standard we expect in everyday life.
This standard is simple: more choices of higher quality at lower cost with greater convenience.
We must bring the principles that have built America and made it great — hard work, entrepreneurialism, innovation, and optimism — to our greatest national challenges: a national security system that doesn’t fail our fighting men and women; an immigration system that enforces the law now; a “green conservative” energy security policy; schools that prepare children for success, not prison; and a healthcare system focused on patients, not process.
On Monday, July 23, at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., I will outline a core set of principles and metrics to begin the migration of government from the world that fails to the world that works. The presentation will be webcast live on www.americansolutions.com starting at noon, ET. In keeping with Admiral Eugene Fluckey’s quintessentially American motto, I hope you’ll join me so that we may together develop American solutions to problems facing America.
By Newt Gingrich
Reprinted with permission from National Review Online.
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The secrets of tennis legend 
Don't be fooled by the smoke and mirrors...
Newt & his crew consider themselves masters of marketing to Baby Boomers and are keenly aware that as a group boomers have a distrust of government which they exploit with issues that sound like they are responsive to this theme but equate with bib brother and the corporate state...
No thanks, Newt. I still remember your Contract with America. You should be hiding under an assumed name, rather than telling us how to "fix" the country (again).
It shows how bad Bu$h has damaged the federal government.
But outsourcing government work (such as US Passports being processed in the private sector, IRS collections in the private sector) is NOT the answer.
And look where the dumbofucko is speaking--at Holy Roller U., where the question on every final exam is "WWJD"? Must be training some more interns for the Department of Justice.
Courses at Liberty U:
Creation Biology 1: Discuss Adam, Eve, and the Apple. The Origin of the Serpent is considered. Fossils are explained away.
Creation Chemistry 1: The four elements are discussed, as well as phlogiston and the philosopher's stone. Lab involves turning lead into gold with Jesus help.
Creation Astronomy 1: The orbit of the Sun around the Earth is calculated, and Galileo's heresy is recounted. Lab involves standing Sun still in sky.
Creation Medicine 1: The cause of leprosy in relation to the Evil One is considered.
Creation Political Science 1: The role of Satan's angels, known as Secular Humanists, in hurring the Rapture and the Breaking of the Seventh Seal is considered. Lab involves cross-burnings on lawns of Catholics and Mormons.
Nothing more need be said. Fortunately he is out of the government. May it ever be so. The man is as thick as a stump. And good only for the same purpose--putting your A$$ on.
Sounds like someone has been buying krap from china at walmart.
Newt Gingrich has been married three times. He married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher, when he was 19 years old (she was seven years his senior at 26 years old). Was this to avoid the DRAFT?? After an alleged affair with Ann Manning in 1977, Gingrich sought a divorce from Battley. In 1981, Gingrich wed Marianne Ginther, to whom he remained married until 1999, the same year Gingrich had an affair with a then 33-year-old Congressional staffer, Callista Bisek. He and Bisek were married in 2000 and currently reside in Virginia. Gingrich has two daughters, Kathy and Jackie from his marriage to Jackie Battley, two sons-in-law and two grandchildren.
All the language used by Newt rings false and hypocritical... these platitudes and slogans are cryptic language for tearing down our most worthwhile governmental agencies and laws set in place to protect the American people from corporate greed.
- by wogerwabbit July 21, 2007 2:40 PM EDT
- Jeeze, I almost found myself agreeing with Newt until he got to the part about the private sector. This administration has outsourced everything they can to the private sector with little or no oversight and as a result, corporate criminals are plundering our treasury and we're getting nothing but screwed in return.
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