Skip to main content

On Deadlines

Do you remember your first high school term paper? Did you scramble at the end to get it done? Or in college? Pull an all-nighter?

Work on any big programming projects? Do those milestone dates and go-live dates keep the pressure on you to complete your work?

While the broadcast media has reporters standing in malls on the day after Thanksgiving to check the crowds, in fact for most retailers the weekend before Christmas is typically produces the biggest revenue.

The Post Office accomodates all those last minute tax filers by staying open until midnight April 15th. The public is sufficiently frightened of the IRS, fines, penalties, big brother, etc. that most all the returns are filed by that deadline. (Wesley Snipes notwithstanding).

What is the point of this you ask? It is time to change the debate from "Stay the Course" or "Cut and Run". It is time to set a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq. And one that will get attention. Sixty days or less. Enforce it by having the big military cargo plans start to line up on the runways.

If the Iraqis want to blow each other up in the market places, bomb each other in church, behead one another, well then, have at it. On the other hand, they've got sixty days to figure it out. No sissy two year plans, or one year plans. A year sounds like a long time off. Two months, or even six weeks would work for me, will focus your attention. In the U.S., W-2's, the key document most people need for their personal income tax, are issued by January 31st. Returns are due 75 days later.

Let's set a bold deadline and see if anyone rises to the occasion.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Stimulus Plan

Mr. President: The House stimulus bill is awful. Dangerous. Counter-productive. It has a very high probability of making things worse!. Your man Rahm Emanuel is supposed to be a tough guy: turn him loose on the House Dems - they are selling you down the river. Some simple tests: the spending will improve long-term productivity; the spending will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and the spending will happen fast; very, very fast. There may need to be some legislation to enable spending without years of environmental review. For example, spending on wind farms would improve long-run productivity and reduce dependence on foreign oil. But let's say the wind farm is a couple of miles offshore. You can't have environmental groups stopping the development to see if some fish will be harmed. This spending has to happen now. And, no tax cuts with the possible exception of AMT. People aren't going to spend any tax savings; they are going to pay their credit card bills or r...

Book Review: What Matters Now by Gary Hamel

Interview of Eric Schmidt by Gary Hamel at the MLab dinner tonight. Google's Marissa Mayer and Hal Varian also joined the open dialog about Google's culture and management style, from chaos to arrogance. The video just went up on YouTube. It's quite entertaining. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Cover of The Future of Management My list of must-read business writers continues to expand.   Gary Hamel , however, author of What Matters Now , with the very long subtitle of How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation , has been on the list for quite some time.   Continuing his thesis on the need for a new approach to management introduced in his prior book The Future of Management , Hamel calls for a complete rethinking of how enterprises are run. Fundamental to his recommendation is that the practice of management is ossified in a command and control system that is now generations old and needs to be replaced with somethi...

The Reasons We Think America is On the Wrong Course

I was listening to the Michael Medved show yesterday. He does a nice job at talk radio. But he was worked up because the CBS News Poll showed that 72% of Americans surveyed think the U.S. is on the wrong track. (When I went to CBS' site, it looks to me like the number is 69%, but that's an insignicant difference). Medved's view is that income for the poorest citizens are rising (recent government data), unemployment is low, stock market is high, no cold war, so why so pessimistic? Here are my answers: Several of our young men and women are being killed every day in a war that we are getting sick of. The deficit is some unimaginable, staggering number that my generation is imposing on my children. Social Security is bankrupt and both Congress and the Administration (both previous and current, and both Republican and Democratic) are unwilling to face the issue. There are virulent infectious agents in hospitals that are resistent to essentially all antibiotics, and the drug co...