Unbridled Walk Home

Unbridled Walk Home

“These boots are made for walking. That’s just what they’ll do. One of these days these boots are going to walk all over you.”

-Nancy Sinatra

I wrote The Unbridled World of Ernie Fletcher. Although the book is somewhat critical of Kentucky’s governor, the last chapter says he will get re-elected.

I need to rewrite that chapter. He is not going to make it.

It is difficult to beat an incumbent Kentucky Governor. Due to the incumbent’s ability to raise money and command the media spotlight, it is seemingly impossible for him/her to lose.

Ernie Fletcher is proving me wrong.

In the past, I’ve stuck to my re-election prediction in numerous media appearances. In spite of his indictments, pardons, noodling, and having spent tax dollars on his dog, I’ve clung to the idea that Fletcher would walk into a second term.

Then I saw his television commercial.

If you have not seen it, you need to. The producers spent a lot of money but accomplish absolutely nothing.

Expect to make Fletcher a laughingstock.

It shows a child walking past playground bullies and then later growing up to become Governor Ernie Fletcher

Who is this commercial trying to appeal to? People who got beaten up by playground bullies?

I was beaten up by playground bullies in the second grade. How did I solve it? I had a growth spurt. In the third grade, I was the biggest guy in my class. No one wanted to mess with me then.

If Governor Fletcher had had an emotional growth spurt at any time during his administration, no one would have messed with him. He could have walked into re-election with nominal opposition.

Instead, seven or eight serious candidates are running against him.

When the hiring scandal came along, he needed to stop self-pitying and take responsibility. When problems arose within his administration, he needed to suck it up and show leadership.

When you are over 50 and have been a doctor, preacher, fighter pilot and governor, it is time to grow up and get over it. Criticism comes with the job.

Fletcher has never been able to get over that aspect of being in the public eye. He must be the most thinned-skinned person to ever hold office. I have never been crazy about his whining in the free media, but I am stunned that his campaign blew contributions on commercials that stroke Fletcher’s ego without even trying to pick up new voters.

People were anticipating the ad and expecting Fletcher to rise in the polls. It won’t happen. I’d be amazed to see any poll that shows that the advertisement worked. If it does, I am going to start crying in public and asking people to send me money.

Moreover, there are factual flaws in the commercial. It shows Fletcher walking from his office to the Governor’s mansion. In reality, Fletcher doesn’t walk: he takes a limo ride for the 500 FEET between the Governor’s office and the Governor’s mansion.

They don’t even have him walking from his actual office. They have him coming from the Supreme Court two floors above his. Being in the neighborhood was close enough.

The commercial shows Fletcher’s disconnection with reality. People in Kentucky have real problems and need real leadership. Fletcher has been in a position to provide it and has failed.

Harry Truman said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

He didn’t say wallow in self pity and make commercials about it.

I don’t know who will beat Governor Fletcher. Someone will. His opponents have yet to captivate the public’s attention, but Fletcher is so self-consumed that I can’t see how he would make it.

I have a vested interest in Ernie. He helped me sell a lot of books. He is my answer to Dan Quayle. It’s hard to find politicians who spend $5000 for a secret office door and

whose airplane caused panic in the nation’s capitol. You can’t make stuff like that up.

I planned on writing a Fletcher sequel, but I am now writing about lottery winners instead. I know they will be around next year.

Fletcher is obsessed with walking all over his critics. Unless things change quickly, he is going to take a long walk himself.

Ex-governors don’t get to ride in the limo.

Don McNay is the author of the Unbridled World of Ernie Fletcher. You can write to him at don@donmcnay.com or read what he has written at www.donmcnay.com. His award-winning column is syndicated on the CNHI News Service.

Credit Score Insanity

Credit Score Insanity

I hope that it's only amnesia

Believe me, I'm sick but not insane

Pousette-Dart Band

People often ask me personal finance questions. The most common is how to improve their credit history score.

If you need to improve your credit score, it means you have lousy credit. Before trying to fix the score, people need to ask themselves how their credit got so bad to begin with.

Some would be better off not having access to credit at all. They can’t handle it.

I’m not talking about people who got behind because of medical bills, life emergencies, or unemployment. Those are people with a good credit history who had something bad happen to them. They deserve a second chance.

Almost anyone who went through Hurricane Katrina has a lousy credit score. Many lost everything. Borrowing money could help them get their lives back together.

I’m focused on the other category: people who spend beyond their means or spend money on stupid stuff.

I don’t want those people to have access to credit; if they do, they will get in trouble again.

They need to figure out how they got in trouble the first time.

They need to look at themselves and understand some basic principles about finance.

I tell people to spend less, pay for things in cash, start budgeting and write down all of their expenditures.

Many need to learn the difference between needs and wants. People need food, clothing and shelter. They don't need the latest IPod or videogame.

Yet often times when it comes to those extravagancies, they never really want the item that badly in the first place. Rather, they feel as though they need it to keep up appearances.

People often get into trouble trying to keep up with friends and neighbors who also make stupid spending decisions.

Once that spirals starts, it rarely stops. Those who are caught up in it spend all of their lives trying to keep ahead of creditors.

And they think that getting more credit is their answer.

My advice rarely goes anywhere. Particularly with those out to impress their buddies.

It reminds me of a scene in the movie Saturday Night Fever where Tony’s boss tells him to think about the future. Tony says, “**** the future.” The boss responds, “if you say **** the future, the future will **** you.”

Few would draw philosophical insights from a film like Saturday Night Fever. Yet Tony’s remark is a good example of the kind of attitude people have when they come to me for credit score help. They blow their money every weekend and have no long-range plan.

Gamblers have a term for people with that type of financial outlook: suckers. They call the money that these people spend “sucker money”.

There are a lot of suckers out there. Likewise, there are a lot of people who want to take advantage of them.

If you have a lousy credit rating, there are a host of the sub-prime lenders, high-interest credit card issuers, check cashing companies and payday lenders dying to get their hands on you. They will give you more debt and more bills to pay.

A cottage industry has developed among companies claiming they can improve people’s credit scores.

I’ve never seen these companies achieve any real success. They prey on suckers looking for quick and easy solutions. Since the companies charge a hefty fee for their services, they get debtors even further into debt.

There are two simple ways to improve your credit score. One is to pay your bills on time. The other is to not have as many debts. If you don’t have many creditors, it is easy to handle what debt you have.

I give that advice often. I then watch people’s eyes glaze over.

If I were to turn evil and offer them an easy credit fix or a payday loan, I’d become a billionaire.

It is not easy to get people to take a hard look at themselves. Addiction to credit is like addiction to anything else: people usually won’t get help until they bottom out.

When people with poor credit get themselves together, they often get amnesia about what got them in trouble. They make the same mistakes over and over.

That is not amnesia; that is insanity.

Don McNay is Chairman of McNay Settlement Group, where we help people make sane financial decisions. You can write to him don@donmcnay.com or read other things he has written at www.donmcnay.com. His award-winning column is syndicated on the CNHI News Service and via RRP International. He is on the Board of Directors for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

Don McNay on Comment on Kentucky

Guests scheduled for "Comment on Kentucky"

Four journalists will join host Al Smith on this week's "Comment on Kentucky," a public-affairs show on the Kentucky Educational Television network.

They are Courier-Journal political reporter Joe Gerth; Greg Stotelmyer, a reporter for Lexington's WTVQ-TV; John David Dyche, a columnist for The Courier-Journal; and Don McNay, a syndicated columnist from Richmond.

The show airs at 8 p.m. Friday EST.

Are we ready for a flat world?

“And I’ll be taking care of business, everyday.”

-Bachman Turner Overdrive

Many large companies take care of customer service by setting up call centers in places like India and Costa Rica.

Workers are cheap, and it boosts the company’s bottom line.

I wonder if the short-term profits are worth the long-term cost.

The trend is called “outsourcing” and is best described in Tom Freidman’s book, The World is Flat. Friedman is a Pulitzer prize-winning columnist for The New York Times.

Friedman argues that over time, the world is becoming increasingly interconnected and that jobs which used to be unique to one country can now be done in a number of places.

I’ve bought into Tom Friedman mania. I’ve own every book he has written and eagerly read his columns. I have his audio books. I also have my Tivo set to record his documentaries on the Discovery Channel.

Yet lately, I’ve started to wonder if the world is as flat as Tom thinks it is.

I recently saw a segment from one of Friedman’s documentaries where he traveled to India to film customer service employees training to speak with an American dialect.

When they teach those speech lessons, they might want to throw in a few geography classes too. It’s not easy for this Kentuckian to do business with Indian service centers.

Last month, I purchased a chair online from a well-known office supply store. I had a guy lined up to assemble it, and we waited for the chair to arrive.

And waited.

Finally, I called the 800 number for the company. It connected me to a man in India. It took several tries for the man to understand my name (Don McNay must be tough to translate), and once he got it, he proceeded to call me Mr. Don.

I’ve been called a lot of things but never Mr. Don.

I asked where the chair was. He said it was somewhere in Ken-tuck-kee (he pronounced the name of the state phonetically) and guaranteed that it would be at my house in 10 minutes.

He figured that any place in Ken-tuck-kee would be no more than 10 minutes from any other part of the state.

Since he had no tracking number, did not know was shipping service was delivering the chair and seemed shaky about where or what a Ken-tuck-kee was, I did not have confidence in the information I was receiving.

I asked if I could talk to a supervisor. He said he didn’t have one. I then asked if the company stockholders had named him Chairman of the Board. He hung up.

I then called the company’s local store. The store manager spoke perfect English, pronounced my name correctly and happened to be in Kentucky too. She confirmed that the chair was not here. They had sent it to Richmond, Virginia. Even though it was not her problem (online orders are a different department), the next day, I had a chair.

My company does thousands of dollars in annual business with that company. The local manager did not know that “Mr. Don” was ready to send that business elsewhere. She just knew I had a problem. The self-proclaimed Chairman of the Board in India didn’t really care.

To be fair, I’m sure that they pay the manager in Kentucky a lot more than the self-proclaimed Chairman. Yet in this case, it was worth it. I’ll keep doing business.

The chair incident was not an isolated event. The further any customer service center is from where I live, the less the likely I am to get actual service.

When a company relocates service centers to places that that lack any cultural bond with their clientele--where their representatives won’t be able to communicate or understand geographic references--what the company is really saying is that they don’t care about customer service. They want to sell their product and hope buyers leave them alone.

A bad long-term strategy.

If companies want to keep “taking care of business,” they need to remember that it is a lot easier to keep a current customer happy than to find a new one.

Even in a flat world.

Don McNay was proclaimed by actual stockholders to be the Chairman of the Board for McNay Settlement Group Inc. in Richmond, Kentucky (sometimes pronounced ‘Ken-tuck-kee’). You can write to him at don@donmcnay.com and read other things he has written at www.donmcany.com. He hopes that his award-winning syndicated column will win three Pulitzer prizes like Tom Freidman’s has.