Matt, one week from today you're going to be in New York for the NFL Draft as player and I as media . Many people expect The Detroit Lions, holding the first pick in the player selection event, to make you the number one pick. I've got some advice for you:
Don't let 'em.
Matt Stafford (photo from Google Images)
Matt, the Detroit Lions are an organization of rich tradition, but a history of failure. The Lions have never reached the Super Bowl and playoff appearances have been few and far between. And the ownership has focused more on hiring personalities than building a winning organization. You won't win there.
Why?
Take a look at the NFL coaches who have won. All have one thing in common: they're known for systems.
Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers was known for one play, the Power Sweep, which the Packers ran to perfection winning Super Bowl's I and II.
Chuck Noll was the four-time Super Bowl winning coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers who's system consisted of a trap-based running game and aggressive pass-blocking on offense and on defense the "4-3 Stack Overset" alignment. That was the basis for the Tampa Defense that was created by Coach Tony Dungy, who was a Steelers assistant.
Coach Dungy took that Tampa Defense to the Indianapolis Colts where he was reunited with his old college coach and now offensive coordinator Tom Moore, who installed a unique spread offense, and that team set NFL records for wins and playoff appearances, and won a Super Bowl.
I could go on, and on. Tom Landry was the father of the 4-3 Defense and "zone" pass coverage with the New York Giants in the 50s, then refined the concept, creating the "Flex Defense" as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys where he won two Super Bowls.
Coach Bill Walsh is the father of the West Coast Offense and won three Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers (and indirectly two more, as his system was still used after he left), and for good measure A Pac 10-Championship at Stanford.
You getting the picture, Matt?
Jim Schwartz as Lions' head coach and Scott Linehan as its offensive coordinator are not known for a system that works. Name an NFL Quarterback that Linehan developed into a Super Bowl winner?
None.
While Linehan is known as a coach who's pass-patterns Urban Meyer used for his spread offenses at Utah and Florida, it's Meyer who won with a new total offense he created, and not Linehan.
Coach Linehan recently said they find the players and then make the plays for them, which means he's got no idea what he's going to do.
Don't go to Detroit, Matt. You won't win there.
So where should you go?
Denver, where Head Coach Josh McDaniels has a proven, modern offensive system. And New England, where Bill Belichick has the best situational offense in the NFL. You can learn of Tom Brady. But if you go to Detroit, don't say I didn't warn you. But if Linehan reveals his system as a result of this little attack of mine, maybe things will change.
Brian Solis wrote a TechCrunch blog post where he states ask "Can the Statusphere Save Journalism?" With all due respect to Brian, he missed the real problem with journalism: money.
On that day, someone one or a group of people cut a fiber-optic and landline network placed beneath a manhole cover in San Jose, California. No one knows who did it, but the act crippled operations in hospitals, stores, banks, and supermarkets. No one could make a call using a cell phone or regular phone, or get information from the Internet. The full extent of the impact of this act is as of this writing not known, but imagine not being able to call the police or the fire department or your loved one for any reason especially if they need your help. And forget using "Skype", the Internet phone service, because access to the Internet itself was down.
That's what happened yesterday.
To explain the importance of this, I go back in time in my own life, to 1988.
Then, I worked a temporary job at a firm called "The San Francisco Consulting Group" (SFCG) in of course San Francisco, California, and which still exists. (I must report I write this without contact with anyone at the firm. My friend who was a partner there and told the firm to work with me, Michael Taylor, passed away due to brain cancer in 2003 and who's survived by his wife and my friend Sandra Taylor.)
In an innocent conversation the human resources representative discovered that the person hired to help them with spreadsheets - me - was using a software program called "STELLA", knew the modeling paradigm "System Dynamics" or "SD" and as it happens "SD" was used by SFCG, so my value immediately increased dramatically. Michael and his staff wanted to use System Dynamics to make this "economic soft landing" computer simulation for a client.
What was changing is the provision of access by long distance companies to the cable fiber-optic lines owned by AT&T. With all of these companies now able to "poach" off lines owned by AT&T, the firm was certain to lose money, the question was "how much."
At the time, the Internet was not invented by Al Gore, but the fact was then and is now that national communications depend on the same fiber-optic and coaxial cables that are mostly owned by AT&T and were vandalized in San Jose.
In 2006, I pointed to the communications system that was established as vulnerable to attack by a hacker. I wrote in my Zennie62.com blog:
The Old Economy firms are threatened by the continuation of a process that started almost 20 years ago: the constant and inexorable decrease in market value that they have suffered since the mid-80s. A chain of events started when the Federal Government forced the then-powerful AT&T to share its cable lines with other long distance providers as part of the breakup of AT&T. Ever since that point in the early 70s, the "Baby Bells" have been trying to slow the rate of decrease in market share and in any way.
Now, the only proof I have of this is rather powerful. In 1988 I was to be hired as part of a consulting team led by The San Francisco Consulting Group. I was to constuct a System Dynamics model of the US long distance telephone industry. That team was to determine how the market for long distance service was changing and how the client -- GTE -- should respond to this change. In other words, how they should achieve "a soft landing" as their market share decreased. The schematic I created for the model was formed to have a pattern of numerical behavior such that each long distance company was losing market share as new players arrived on the scene.
That was before the emergence of the Internet, which didn't become a major factor in how we communicate until 1995. But after that year, the number of Internet-equipped computers increased dramatically, as did the number of Internet-based services and companies. In 10 years, we've went from dial up to DSL to Broadband, and the one constant in this process has been the use of phone lines used by companies like AT&T.
Ever hungry for new forms of revenue generation, the firms that provide Broadband service -- and standard telephone service -- saw a way to cut off competition from the "Vonages" of the World: force them to pay for faster Internet speeds.
In this, they found the perfect driver to increase revenues and at the same time hamper the growth of the Global Economy. It's easier now than even before in our history for a small business to have a global reach using the World Wide Web. The cost barrier to entry for many is close to zero if one knows how to find the free services needed.
But from the perspective of thee AT&T's of the World, their revenue gain would be unescapable; absent a way of hacking the system, billions of users would have to pay them for faster access, thus introducing a new barrier to entry for small companies in the Global market.
To put it simply and to repeat my message folks, the fiber-optic cable lines that AT&T created in the late 40s and up to the 80s and then had to share with new firms in the 90s and beyond, that sunk infrastructure of lines that carry the information that makes up what we call the World Wide Web, and the cell phone and telephone communications industry is still largely concentrated in the same system that was the victim of vandals in Silicon Valley on Thursday. But when the matter of security has been discussed in the past, it was always from the perspective of stealing information from the network, not destroying it as was the case on April 9th.
All the vandals did yesterday was open a manhole cover, go down below ground to the space under the streets that holds our fiber-optic system, find the lines, and cut them, then escape the scene of the crime just by climbing our and running away from the scene of the crime. Again, no suspects were captured as of this writing. No security camera was in place to "see" the crime. No locks on the manhole covers. Nothing. A group of people went in and then got out and crippled much of Silicon Valley's economy and lifestyle in the process. But it could have caused the loss of life just be not being able to contact and help someone in need.
And to add insult to injury, the talks about fiber-optic security that are available online only concern someone tapping the lines to get information, not destroying them altogether. The assumption is others will want to maintain the lines, but that's a terrible guess to make. This act of vandalism proves that there are people who want to cripple our economy and may have stumbled on something. We have to stop them.
How do we know this wasn't a dry run for some larger act of vandalism? Sorry to be a conspriracy theorist, but hey, I've got reasonable evidence to back my concern. I now state that a well-financed anti-USA terrorist effort could successfully cripple much of America's Internet and communications infrastructure in much the same way that vandals damaged fiber-optic cables on Thursday. Prove me wrong. Where's your counter-evidence?
This is such an important issue that the Federal Government, and specifically the Federal Communications Commission should work with the Department of Homeland Security to first eliminate the development of an Internet access system that's in the control of a few large corporations because of the problem of having such an important system concentrated in the hands of a few. It's not that they're bad; it's a matter of protection.
Municipalities should call for an end to Comcasts' exclusive control of cable access in cities like Oakland. The overall objective must be decentralization and redundancy (in other words having more than one of the same lines) of Internet-related access and control. We have to lay new lines of cable to act as a replacement and redundancy system for what's there now and make sure that those lines are secure from vandalism -- right now, given the events of Thursday April 9th, I write with great concern that our national system of fiber-optic cables is not secure and subject to attack.
I welcome anyone out there to prove I'm wrong. I already have my example of why I'm right in San Jose -- where's your proof?
On March 24th, I wrote a short post on Economist and NY Times Columnist Paul Krugman and created this video below.
Today, in the wake of Newsweeks' rather unfortunate April Fools Day article on the Princeton Professor (which presented him as a kind of edgy intellectual but lacked real substance in the discussion of why Krugman is wrong about Obama), I decided to offer this expanded blog post. The problem is that Krugman is really angry that the Obama administration is and has ignored him and this emotion has driven a sloppy intellectual approach, paced by the fact that he's not presented a plan for our troubled banks, all the while taking an aim at the President's plan that has the effectiveness of a drunken sailor at an arcade shooting gallery.
Who is Paul Krugman?
Professor Krugman is a decorated International Economist, who recently - in 2008 - won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his solid theory on two-country trade. Here Krugman attacked the standard idea of two-country trade by explaining with some heft that a country like the United States that makes a Cadillac sports sedan will see that car purchased to some degree in Germany, which just happens to produce the competitor BMW 5-series. In other words, rich countries trade like goods more often than poor country to rich country or vie versa. This idea was path-breaking in that the economies of scale were not included in traditional models of trade, so pretty much any country could trade with another one in this immmaginary World. Krugman's theory explained the real World.
Now, why do I have an interest in this? Because my background is in urban economics and I focused on it at both Texas-Arlingron and Cal-Berkeley, but fell in love with a kind of way of modeling relationships called System Dynamics which causes one to see the World as a set of feedback and control connections. And that's where I break with Krugman. As a traditional economist, he does not see beyond a set "straw-person example" and into the more complex World around him -- the political aspect of economics (the political economy as its called) is lost on him, which is why the Obama Administration does not embrace him.
The Obama plan for bank troubled assets, using Troubled Asset Relief Program money to finance non-recourse loans to encourage investors to buy the "junk" is one example (called the "Public-Private Investment Program for Legacy Assets"). Krugman attacks this plan around the idea that we're giving taxpayer money away to create this market, then sets the idea that it will not work without emprically showing why it will not do so in detail or offering an alternative plan.
What Krugman missed is a read of the political landscape such that Obama's TARP plan is not only one the market asked for, and for months, but was needed to take the bad debts off the banks books. And that's what Krugman misses. He rants on about the plan's possible failure from within its own system, but says nothing -- zip -- about getting the assets off the banks books, which is the real success. Then Paul makes a real intellectual error by writing that the Obama administration sees the bank financial system as sound, which it does not, otherwise this plan would not exist.
He then writes as if the plan uses all of the TARP money, rather than the truth, which is that it uses a small portion of it, thus leaving enough left over for other plans.
As I have stated again and again, the plan lacks a payment to American taxpayers under $100,000 of $3,500 each -- or about $380 Billion -- to essentially help banks and to a degree stimulate spending. Why? The vast majority of Americans don't have massive debt problems asmany don't carry credit card debt and for those who do the average level of credit card debt is about $10,000, so this plan helps reduce that by one-third. But people aren't going to leave the money under a matress, they will put it in banks, thus helping both Wall Street and Main Street. Remember the unemployment program, designed for those who were laid off from large companies in the past, does not help the apprentice plumber who has a decade-long resume of customers that suddenly dried up.
See, my idea is a supplement that I introduced a while back in a talk with CNN's Ali Velshi, who agreed it could help. But it fits within the economic and political reality of what we need to do to fix America's economy in a way that Krugman's plan does not do.
Oh. I forgot. He doesn't have a plan.
In closing, I do not embrace crits of this post that are based on the "You're not an economist" view or juvenile name-calling, which is common online but not allowed here in my space, but I do like a good debate on rigor and detail. Bring it.
I created this video at the specific request of Tyson Chandler at CNN's iReport. The idea is to give viewers a look at the secret places in your town, so I made this one for Oakland:
This phase of work, work, work is not done (and this is part of it) but not yet taking its toll. To make sure that doens't happen, I did two things: 1) I went to the gym and 2), I went out to just relax. The first thing, the gym, I do every day, or try too. I'm working to keep by weight below 200 pounds. I find I feel best at less than 196. Yesterday I was at 198.
The second act was just plain going out. I wound up, as they say, at Luka's and ran into my neighbors and their friend who can dance up a storm. So, for the first time in a a while, I danced to some combination of "house" and reggae. Then, once enough sweat was produced to make think of my desire not to sweat a lot, I stopped, and fortunately so did they, and left. That was fun. It's also a blast to do it with people from your hood.
Then I wound up at another place called Mua and ran into a couple I generally see at Cafe Ven Kleef. They had a friend in West Oakland who had a story tip for me so they brought me over to her and we talked for a long time. To give the short version, it seems there's this company that specializes in cleaning up after a homicide. Now, according to my new friend, that firm, called "Crime Scene Cleanup", reportedly has been telling West Oakand residents that they "own the neighborhood" and plan to buy distressed property. For what reason, I do not know.
But the company has been -- according to my new friend -- active around West Oakland. Now remember they clean up after, say, a murder. And that, from what I've read today, is not a pretty thing. It's mostly maggots, and other disgusting stuff.
My friend then sent this message:
What we do know: they are moving into a property that touches a restaurant, is surrounded by residential properties and a half a block away from a school.
When my neighbors went over there in good faith - in fact excited to meet these guys because they had heard about them and thought that their van was really cool - they were instantly met with hostility and intimidation.
The questions we in the neighborhood have are:
- why hasn't this business notified residents that they are moving in, as they are supposed to do?
- what is their waste disposal procedure? Their safety measures must be excellent, since they were approved to operate right next door to so many families with children.
- how will this affect our neighborhood activities, such as our planned community garden, National Night Out block parties, etc?
- why is the business hostile to the community it plans to join?
- and finally, as a matter of curiosity, what kind of homework did they do that led them to choose a property right next door to two large loft developments (some of the oldest ones in West Oakland), a school, and lots of residential?
The main question is, are the employees of Crime Scene Cleanup doing any illegal waste dumping and with a sense of entitlement, which would explain the exchange I reported above? I understand Councilmember Nancy Nadel's aware of this so I'm going to do some digging. More soon.
At any rate, it was fun and even though I was the only person not "coupled" -- hey I could have gone to a fundraiser with a woman friend of mine but I had too much work to do (she' pissed at me now) and the woman I've been dating recently has a job that keeps her on a plane, overseas for months at a time. So you can imagine what I'm thinking.
So, perhaps taking pity on me, the women teased me mercilessly while their boy friends laughed in approval. Life is so fun, especially when your surrounded by great pairs of legs. There was a "film at 11" but to protect the identity of my source, it will not see the whites of your eyes.
