Have We Lost Our Common Sense?

By Bob Terrell

We as a people of a proud and historic nation watched our economy become badly fractured from 2001 through 2009. The lust for big power and wealth has caused some leaders in government, business, and religion to demonstrate greater ambition in achieving their own personal success than the success and prosperity of the very people they are responsible for leading and protecting.

Our political system has lost the ability and desire to have bi-partisan teamwork in making the quality of life better for everyone, as well as future generations.

My goal is for us to seek and find solutions to problems, not just whine and gripe among ourselves for self-gain.

I am a small town boy from Kentucky who was fortunate enough to attend college on a basketball scholarship, and my college education might not have even been possible without athletics. Three years as a young Marine Corps Officer gave me an opportunity to see life from another vantage point. Forty years as an Executive in the Automotive Industry, an opportunity to live in eleven different states and one territory, and raising family of five gave me additional perspectives on life.

This book has been born from the memories and actual experiences I have enjoyed from relationships and friendships with many interesting personalities, from Baseball Great Roberto Clemente to former Governor George Nigh of Oklahoma, along with many top executives in industry. I have seen the Good, the Bad, and even the "Ugly" of life. Fortunately I have seen so many good and kind people that the bad and the ugly have been overcome.

I hope you enjoy reading "Have We Lost Our Common Sense?" as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452024974

Bob Terrell

It only took Bob Terrell seventy-seven years to write his first book. He plans to have his second book published before he reaches seventy-eight whether he lives that long or not. The book is already completed. Terrell is a former high school and college athlete who also played a year of professional baseball prior to serving as an officer in the US Marine Corps in the late 1950’s. He and his wife Phyllis met and married at Georgetown College in Kentucky fifty-six years ago, and the past twelve years have lived in his hometown of Corbin, Kentucky.   Authorhouse Publishing of Bloomington, Indiana is publishing Terrell’s first book which is titled, “Have We Lost Our Common Sense?” He is concerned the “common sense” approach leaders of government and industry used to take in dealing with life’s challenges has been replaced by greed, selfishness, and lack of concern for others. He offers his specific life experiences in addressing the ways we have thrown away our core values for the quick dollar and immediate gratification.   Bob has been inducted in the Athletic Hall of Fame of Corbin High School and Georgetown College. He also served as President of the Student Body at Georgetown College and for ten years on the Georgetown College Foundation Board. Terrell was an Executive of Ford Motor Company thirty years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. He later served ten years as President of Fred Jones Enterprises in Oklahoma.    As he says with a Kentucky smile,    “I have been around the horn. I understand what Clint Eastwood was experiencing in the “Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” I have just about seen it all. My wife, children, and their families have been the good and the pretty of my life.” Terrell had an experience in the bull ring in Spain at age 37 as he survived ten minutes weaving and dodging a Spanish Bull.   He just missed by inches getting shot in the face in his yard in Bloomfield Township, Michigan in the early 1980’s, and he helped Ford in the investigation and prosecution of a major counterfeit group in a Federal Suit in the 1975-1980 period.   He and the Chairman of AFG Industries, Raymond “Dee” Hubbard worked out an agreement written on the back of a napkin in the late 1980’s at dinner at the Airport Marriott that resulted in Hubbard’s company purchasing $75 million in glass over a two year period from Ford Motor Company. That meeting also initiated negotiations in which AFG purchased Ford’s Glass Plant in Scarborough, Canada for an estimated $125 million. He and Hubbard were both from small town America in Kentucky and Kansas, enjoyed to play basketball, tennis, and selling products and ideas. Terrell still calls Hubbard “one of the best “common sense” business leaders I have ever known.”     Terrell’s book includes some of his personal experiences with Hall of Fame football coaches Paul “Bear” Bryant, and his high school teammate and also Hall of Fame Football Coach Roy Kidd of Eastern Kentucky University. Terrell was a training officer at Parris Island Marine Corps Base and had the great Hall of Fame baseball star Roberto Clemente in one of his platoons. After their time in the Marine Corps they remained friends until Roberto’s tragic death December 31, 1972.   Bob Terrell’s first book at age seventy-seven is expected to be available for delivery……………………. may be ordered now for a price of at the following places.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

GOD BLESS AMERICA, LAND THAT I LOVE!

God bless America, land that I love, stand beside her, and guide her, through the night with a light from above. From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam, God bless America, my home sweet home, God bless America, my home sweet home.

Chills run up and down my spine when I hear the music and words of God Bless America. This long time favorite song of the American people was first written in 1918 and revised twenty years later in 1938 as the thunder and lightning of war were beginning the violent storm over the people of Europe and parts of Asia. Kate Smith, a well known name in music, was the vocalist. As we think about the memorable and inspiring moments of our history, it is interesting that many times these experiences included people who came to this melting pot of humanity from other places in the world. America, one of our most beloved songs, was written by Irving Berlin, who came to America from Siberia in 1893 as a five year old boy. Kate Smith was born in Washington, DC in 1907.

From the days of 1775 in the Revolutionary War until now in Iraq and Afghanistan men and women have died and their bodies have been torn and maimed as they sacrificed everything for our nation. God Bless America rings the bells of liberty in our hearts today just as it has since it was revised by Berlin in the last century as the world faced war in 1938.

Since our miraculous Revolutionary War which started over 230 years ago we have built a remarkable nation. We are a nation that over the course of its history has often faced giant problems and painful times but has been able to recover and continue to enjoy the pursuit of happiness and achievement. It has been a land that has created opportunities for those willing to give their time and energies to pursue the dreams of life and reach out to succeed and raise their families. America since its beginning has attracted people from across the world to come to our land and become part of this magnificent experience. In recent years, however, we seem to have lost our sense of direction.

WE SENT OUR PRECIOUS TROOPS TO WAR IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN AND CUT THE TAXES OF OUR WEALTHIEST CITIZENS!

It was disheartening to see that as we sent our brave men and women to fight valiantly in a war on foreign soil our congress cut the taxes for the wealthiest people in our nation as they remained in the comfort of home and were blessed with more spending money. Never in our history have we cut taxes when we sent our troops to war. This was a time for all of us to be willing to scrimp and scrounge at home, but instead some of our wealthiest citizens continued to live life on the fast track. Our troops and their families have been paying a painful sacrifice, and yet for most of us life just goes on. Some corporations fattened their wallets from a war in which a segment of our population and their loved ones made daily sacrifices. That was a perfect example of losing our common sense.

I don’t accept any excuses given for the action to cut the taxes of our wealthy when our troops have been in harm’s way. I heard it was done to stimulate the economy with some of that voodoo economic trickle down hogwash. When we make the serious decision to go to war, we should throw everything we have into winning it, and getting it over. This is one of the actions, in my opinion, that started us in the wrong direction. When a nation makes the tough decision to go to war, we must rally all the people together to sacrifice and work together just like we did in World War II.

Halliburton and other defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies and Wall Street firms enjoy the privilege of the rich life while average hard working Americans pay higher prices for gasoline, medicine, and food. Many Americans including many children have not had health care insurance. Halliburton’s no-bid contracts defied common sense, and were blatantly deceptive. We provided our troops with equipment that could not protect them from Improvised Explosive Devices. (IED) Some of our troops in Iraq took it upon themselves to add materials to Humvees to provide limited protection. It took a couple of years for the military to formally start placing protective armor on the Humvees. IED’s were deadly to our personnel. We should have been outraged at these fraudulent practices. Where were the Tea Parties when this was happening?

I thought we were making a mistake by going into Iraq but when the decision was made, I believed along with many military leaders and other Americans that we should have sent in more troops and have conducted more bombings to weaken our enemy’s forces and will to fight. The leadership from high levels of the defense department was ineffective until Robert Gates became our Secretary of Defense. He has done an outstanding job, and we owe him our highest respect.

NEITHER POLITICAL PARTY IS PERFECT

The recent health care legislation may not be perfect, but it is a step forward. Greed and corruption became blatant in the high levels of our nation. It did not surprise me when our nation ran off the road. Congressional members and their families carry their Government Platinum Health Care cards and cry out, we have a great health care program, while many children have no coverage. Is that a position of common sense that people in our nation can understand and respect? It is a position of arrogance!

We the people of our nation have stood by and watched members of our political parties fight among themselves, and they don’t seem to have any workable solutions or any inclination to be creative and proactive in resolving our most important problems. I want to be clear with you that while I am a Democrat, I acknowledge my own party is not perfect by a long shot. The Republican Party proclaims to be the party of limited government while a Republican Administration created a larger and more expensive bureaucracy during the 2001-2009 period. They oppose programs for the poor and powerless. President Obama has tried hard to open the door for effective communications and bipartisan teamwork, but Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell won’t even attempt to work with the opposition party. The political parties are polarized and a wide chasm separates them. I will always admire those examples of bi-partisan leadership of present and past members of our government. There are very few examples of bipartisan leadership at the present time. I yearn for us to have leaders such as former Republican Senators John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee, and Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska as well as some other members of both parties. Democratic Senator Burch Byah of Indiana will not run for reelection, and we are going to miss him very much. I will discuss examples of effective bipartisan cooperation in a later chapter.

If we truly love America we should want our nation to excel. None of us will ever get everything in life exactly the way we want it. We have to work out our differences and move the football of life toward the goal line. Today we are not moving ahead with a bounce in our stride and optimism and enthusiasm written on our faces. Our generation will leave a legacy to our loved ones of today and the future of monumental debt and a broken spirit. The Republicans ruled this nation from 2001 until 2009. As mentioned earlier, even though many of us believed our nation’s leaders made a mistake to send our precious men and women into a ground war in Iraq, most of us supported President Bush, our nation’s leader, and for the first several years of the war we didn’t criticize him. Most of us were strongly in support of going after those terrorist murderers in Afghanistan who were responsible for 9/11.

After 9/11 the GW Bush administration had the nation and the world on America’s side in the war on terror. It wasn’t long until the world was against us.

THE ELECTION OF OUR FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT, BARACK OBAMA

The Inauguration of America’s first black President, Barack Obama, was an historic day for our nation. There had been a time in our history when black citizens were slaves. There had been a time in our history blacks could not vote. The day President Obama entered the White House the Republicans started blaming him for the deficit. They blamed him for the Wall Street bailout legislation which was actually signed by President Bush and had the support of Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain. I often watch Senator McConnell make his comments on TV and wonder which world he was in from 2001 until January, 2009. The Republicans have done and said everything they possibly can to make people believe President Obama was responsible for the Wall Street Bailout Program and the nation’s huge deficit.

While I support President Obama, I don’t fully believe his strategy and actions for getting our nation moving forward have been as effective as we have needed. I don’t believe every problem can be solved quickly. Some people don’t want to give him any time to get things back to normal from conditions which existed when he entered office. The nation was in a dilemma when President Obama came into office. We have so many problems and they all have some connections. I believe his mandate for change was taken as a responsibility to improve everything quickly and that just isn’t possible when you apply common sense. First things come first. Get people back to work first. I respect the President for the sincerity of his effort and we should all remember him in our prayers. Praying for a black President is very difficult for many Americans.

OUR ELECTIONS COST TOO MUCH AND LAST TOO LONG! MONEY WINS!

This is a subject we kick around a great amount of time, but nobody has the will or the commitment to do anything about it.

Common sense should tell us election campaigns primarily determined by how much money is raised from mostly special interest groups can’t be the right way to conduct our election process. How can that work and maintain integrity and fairness? Are we all blind? A successful candidate in these times must be able to attract the big money. The campaigns seem to last forever. An elected official wins in November and starts raising money immediately to win in the next election. Candidates become indebted to so many special interest groups and fat cats you wonder how they can possibly give any attention to the needs of the common persons they serve. When congress looks at ways to use common sense rules on election spending and ethics reform they water it down so much the new so called improvements are impossible for anyone to understand and reforms become tepid and impotent. Legislatures talk about doing something about the problems, but are frozen in their tracks and cannot take appropriate action. When the big stud chicken hawks are guarding the hen house, the hens are in big trouble. Who is protecting the people of our nation?

Iowa and New Hampshire voters sit in the catbird’s seat as they get national attention with the Presidential primary elections held every four years in early January, while many of us don’t get to have our primary elections until the winners have been determined. After the January primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, states like Kentucky had its primary May 20, and the Republican primary in Nebraska was not held until June 28, 2008. The first two primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire begin the process of eliminating some candidates while those of us in other states watch from the clouds afar. It’s such a long and drawn out process that it has become a generator and spender of big money when it is supposed to be a wise and prudent way for voters to pick the best persons to lead the country we love. Do you really think our Founding Fathers wanted us to have the start of our election process to pick our nominees for President to be filtered by early big media elections in Iowa and New Hampshire? What a way to run a railroad!

I feel sympathy for the candidates who have to put themselves and their families through such a pressure cooker in which each and every incident in the past years of their lives becomes public knowledge and gossip. God forgives us sinners, but we don’t forgive each other. Some of the gossip stories may be true and some are false or distorted. By the time the media gets it all hyped up the voters don’t know what to believe. The attack ads are sickening. The political consultants and advisors are like a bunch of pit bulls. Money fuels the fire of politics in America. Special interest groups rule the roost. Common Sense cries out that this won’t work for the good of our nation and people. We just don’t listen and we just keep procrastinating.

WE NEED TO USE COMMON SENSE IN THE OVERSIGHT OF WALL STREET

Financial and Wall Street problems have shown we need more oversight in our system. Small town banks across America didn’t cause the financial collapse. Small and medium sized banks are beginning to be deluged with an administrative burden that will make it impossible to still provide good service to their customers, good career opportunities for their employees, and a reasonable return to their investors. The excessive mistakes of a few major banking operations are bringing pain and chaos to small banking businesses.

Small banks didn’t sell derivatives. Small banks didn’t offer reverse mortgages. Small banks did not sell customers stocks they hoped would fail in order that other stocks they owned would profit from this failure. Small banks didn’t finance auto loans that were above the credit worthiness of the borrower.

I fear experts putting these controls together are going to turn it into a nightmare that will ultimately make banking in small town America almost impossible. This could cause the big banks that got us into this mess along with Wall Street to gain even more control over our finance system. I believe banking is best done when the people servicing the customers know them and live with them in the community and market area. I urge the Obama administration and congress to seek suggestions and ideas from those who do not have powerful lobby groups working to buy influence to shape the structure of the legislation for their own benefit. Change is important but it must be common sense change. Solutions so complicated that only a few people understand them won’t work.

You don’t win a Super Bowl with a game plan your players don’t understand. Execution comes from practice and knowledge of what you are trying to accomplish. You don’t send troops to battle with a plan your men and women who are in the fight of their lives don’t understand. Execution of a plan is of highest importance. Understanding what we are doing and where we are going is essential in getting to our destination. Don’t let a group of Harvard attorneys make every decision and write complex and confusing instructions for a nation of common people. Let’s understand what we are doing by using Common Sense. Let’s be reasonable with oversight of our small banks and businesses.

My current concern on failure to use "common sense’ solutions is now related to the Financial Regulatory Reform Legislation, (S. 3217), recently approved by the congress after a bitter fight. We all want to prevent a recurrence of the practices of Goldman Sachs and other financial companies and brokerage firms. We do want to see it done right. Small town banks don’t have expensive lobby firms watching out for their interests. The Big fish in Banking and Wall Street have big money trying to protect them. A predominate number of the financial mistakes leading to our financial crisis were not made by small hometown banks but these new regulations may hammer them more than anyone else. One example small town bankers are concerned about is the Collins Amendment that would exclude capital instruments such as trust preferred securities from the consolidated Tier 1 capital of the bank holding companies. It is my understanding when this amendment was introduced it was not intended for the amendment to affect small bank holding companies as provided under the Federal Reserve’s Small Bank Holding Company Policy Statement. I am sure Senator Collins has a purpose to protect small banks, but this legislation is so complicated that if it is not carefully reviewed by people with small banking experience an action intended to improve a situation can make the problem even worse.

Why can’t we create a bipartisan immigration policy?

First, immigration problems first started when many business leaders wanted cheap labor. We were glad to see immigrant workers come across the border and take difficult jobs Americans did not want to do. These immigrant workers would work for low wages. Many businesses became dependent on immigrant workers. I have been told by some Dairy Farm Owners, If it weren’t for immigrant workers, we would not be able to operate. American workers don’t want to milk cows on Christmas, New Year’s Day, Saturdays, Sundays, and other holidays and cows must be milked every day!

We also have moved many jobs to Mexico to once again obtain low wage workers. Many of these plants were placed on the Mexican Border right next to US communities. It was convenient for a Mexican worker to learn the skills of manufacturing and go on across the border to where the wages were much higher. In 1989 I visited a number of US affiliated companies in Mexico, and the employee turnover rates were in some cases as much as 50% a year. There had been a misconception by many in America that Mexican workers could not make good quality products. These workers showed that with good training, equipment, and leadership Mexican workers can make excellent quality products.

The huge migration from Mexico to the US has now become a political football. Hispanic citizens are becoming a strong voting bloc and this issue keeps being kicked in a circle with no solution in sight. There were suggestions sometime ago by some ultra conservatives that we should round up the ten million plus illegal immigrants and ship them back to Mexico. That sounds good to the anti immigration hard liners on this subject, but this would be a world nightmare in logistics and in violating human rights.

This is now a showdown. The tough right wing group wants to pander to their base who believes we should solve our problems with a two by four or a loaded gun. The left wing group believes our borders should be like a sieve and anyone who wants to come and go should be free to do so. Middle America is caught in the quagmire that is the result of procrastination and partisan fighting. Middle America wants action. I can’t fault the Governor of Arizona for doing something even if it is not the best solution. We must protect our borders from criminals. We must have a system for bringing in good citizens from our neighboring country, and if they live by the immigration laws gain US citizenship. We must not turn this into a fight for the Hispanic vote as some Democrats seem to be focusing on accomplishing. The Republicans must not let their militia and evangelical white supremacy extremist groups pressure them to throw the immigrants under the bus. We need people who can make reasonable, just, and pragmatic solutions to complex problems. Middle American is trapped between extremists on the right and the left.

MY GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT GRANDFATHER ELIAS MACKEY

My great-great-great-great-great grandfather Elias Mackey, from Ireland, fought in the Revolutionary War for the colonies after having reached these shores only three years earlier in 1772. One of his son’s was killed in the War of 1812 and another was wounded and taken prisoner in that war. He was unable to return home for three years after the end of the war. Elias was buried in the family cemetery in Knox County, Kentucky in 1816 beside his wife.

My family has not been one of power and entitlement. We came from poor, hard working farmers whose spouses were daughters of other poor and hard working farmers. Some worked in the coal mines, and some got jobs on the railroad. Several of their offspring became doctors and many became school teachers. Our family like millions of others has enjoyed this land of the free and home of the brave. Some gave their lives in war and many others served in our wars of the past. My ancestors were mostly Scotch-Irish-English. While we may be proud of the land where our ancestors began life, now we are Americans. I am not an Irish American or Scottish American, or English American but just an American. I am a small town American boy. It is now time for all of us who are citizens of this nation and who now carry the responsibility as being American citizens to decide we are Americans. I have not seen any great rush for people to sneak across the borders to move to Iraq, Iran, or many other nations in the world. We have our problems and can always continue to improve, but we can also be proud of our history and be proud to say, I am an American!"

Is our America worth saving? I believe strongly that it is worth saving! But we the citizens are going to have to make it happen. We can’t always expect the government to do everything for us.

I want to live the rest of my life believing resolutely the people of future America will have the same opportunities and rights I have enjoyed in my lifetime. I want the dream, vision, and sacrifice provided by many wonderful men and women, as they shaped this wilderness into a land of opportunity, to live on and on.

Let’s bring back a common sense approach to our way of life. Let’s keep America strong.

CHAPTER 2

WE MUST KEEP AMERICA STRONG!

We will never keep America strong by trying to solve all the problems of the world!

The early members of our colonies stuck together to build a nation that would provide opportunity and self government. There were many problems in the world, but their primary focus was on their own survival.

America’s historical Revolution against the Royalty of King George III and his