Neff zone column -- November 14, 2009

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Print Edition: November 14, 2009

BUGLES, VACCINE AND GUINNESS

Now that I’ve told you all about my 5,075 mile cross country road trip it’s time to delve into more important issues of the day.

I was stunned this week to learn in a USA Today article that there’s a shortage of qualified buglers to play taps for military funerals. The military employs only 500 buglers for the entire country, which is a pretty small number given that 656,000 veterans died in fiscal 2009.

To take up the slack volunteers are used, but even so at 71% of the services a "ceremonial" bugle was used (which looks like a real bugle but has a recording built in) and at 10% of the services a CD recording was used.

An organization called Bugles Across America has over 7,000 volunteer buglers who strive to honor our veterans at ceremonies, but they are always seeking to add to their ranks. Any musician interested in becoming a bugler (regardless of age) or any citizen who wants to help aid the project by giving a donation can get all the details at www.buglesacrossamerica.com.

Speaking of the military, I saw an interesting commentary in the New York Times (Nick Kristof, October 29): "Dispatching more troops to Afghanistan would be a monumental bet and probably a bad one, most likely a waste of lives and resources…one of the most compelling arguments against more troops rests on this stunning trade-off: For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there. The aid organization CARE has 295 schools educating 50,000 girls in Afghanistan, and not a single one has been closed or burned by the Taliban."

In a similar article in USA Today it was noted that once a village gets a school any attempt by the Taliban to shut that school down results in the whole village turning against the insurgents. This is a compelling observation because according to the USAID organization: "Afghanistan has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world. More than 11 million Afghans over the age of 15 cannot read or write. In rural areas, where three-fourths of all Afghans live, 90 percent of the women and over 60 percent of the men are illiterate."

The bottom line is that the Taliban can only be successful in Afghanistan if the people of that country remain uneducated and ignorant. Education may be a more powerful weapon than bombs and bullets.

Hey, have you gotten your flu shot yet? No? Gee, I wonder why the N1H1 vaccine supply is in such short supply. Could it be that since we don’t make things in the United States any more we’re at the mercy of foreign suppliers and we (as a country) have to get down on our hands and knees and beg for them to help us?

Did you know only five companies make flu vaccine for the United States: GlaxoSmithKline (United Kingdom), Novartis (Switzerland), CSL Ltd. (Australia), AstraZeneca Medimmune (Sweden) and Sanofi-Pasteur (France). Only Sanofi has a domestic plant here. According to the New York Times, "The drawback of relying on foreign plants was made clear recently when the Australian government pressured CSL to keep its vaccine at home instead of fulfilling its contract for 36 million doses of swine flu vaccine for the United States."

I have two questions: 1) How’s that outsourcing working for you now? 2) When an industry outsources an operation that is critical for this country to defend itself against a potential attack (be it military or biological), when does the "business" of outsourcing become treason?

Finally, if you want to read a really good article about how a business should be run go to http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/11/column-guinness-got-it-.html#more or get a copy of the book "The Search for God and Guinness" by Stephen Mansfield.

Yes, we’re talking about the guy who founded the Guinness Brewery and the inventor of Guinness Stout beer. According to Mansfield, "The values Arthur Guinness envisioned for his company were first honed in a life of devotion to God. As Guinness said, "You cannot make money from people unless you are willing for people to make money from you. The lesson is clear: Guinness strove to improve the lives of its (the company’s) employees with the same intensity as it strove to sell its beer. Yet there is another lesson for us today. We are tempted in our disgust with Wall Street greed and corporate misdealing to reject the economic engine that has made us great, to prefer the security of the state to the vicissitudes of free market exchange. What we learn from the Guinness story is that character is king, that markets without ethical boundaries make Madoffs but that corporations driven by a benevolent vision can do vast amounts of good. It is morals and ethics that we need, then, not a new economic system, and this, perhaps, is the most lasting legacy of the Guinness tale for us today."

Amen, brother. I’ll drink to that.

Jim Neff is a local columnist. Comments to neffzone@gmail.com. Read Neff Zone columns online at www.neffzone.com/cadillacnews.