excerpt for Chapter 2 - election results

excerpt from Chapter 2 page 37

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Henderson West was elected with 55.1% of the popular vote and received the highest number of individual votes ever in the history of presidential elections in the USA. That 55.1% of the popular vote represented over eighty million American citizens. This represented a tremendous mandate and an over-whelming personal vote of confidence from the American electorate.

excerpt from Chapter 2 - STAND UP AMERICA election campaign

excerpt from Chapter 2 - page 33

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The circumstance that I chose to be positive throughout my communications with the American public touched a lot of positive nerves as well.  As mentioned previously, by 2012 many people had been hurt by the recession and were extremely disillusioned and lacking a bit of faith in the American system.  My goal was to restore faith and confidence not only in America but in themselves.  Hence my election platform became STAND UP AMERICA.

STAND UP AMERICA became a rallying cry through the latter part of 2012 as a spirit of renewal took hold.   We as individuals have all been down at one time or another and the measure of any person’s strength is the ability to get going again.  This is the same for a nation, especially one as great as the USA.  The spirit of “standing up” for one’s own situation and then being responsible for improving ones personal state of affairs fuelled a culture of success and hard work that lead to a much more positive attitude within our borders and lead to an almost immediate recovery.

One of the difficulties we have as Americans is the ability to admit that maybe we make mistakes or that we can occasionally let ourselves down.  I’ve mentioned numerous times that we were embracing a culture of blaming others for what has happened in our individual lives but for most Americans to admit that they were wrong is just ludicrous.  Well, what I recognized and shared was that we had created our own mess through a very out-dated governmental model that was no longer relevant in the twenty-first century, a business culture that celebrated profit as the only reason for being and a citizen base that had lost its collective American spirit.  

excerpt from Chapter 10 - foreign relations

Chapter 10 - pps. 230-231

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One of my key tenets of being an American is that we as Americans are the thought leaders for the modern world.  We can use this leadership to take the actions and create the strategy and platform to deliver a world in which everyone has the ability to exist in a peaceful manner and to pursue their own life objectives.  That is, if we choose to be tolerant of other systems.  Whether they be managing a farm for the state, creating the biggest company ever known to man or pursuing the word of Allah.  All to me are valuable contributions to society and should be acknowledged and respected.

In order to be a thoughtful leader for the world, however, you have to have respect for the views of others, rather than hold an overt contempt for how the rest of the world lives.  Think about it this way, how often in your life have you as an individual done something because someone forced you too?  Probably not too often, or if you did end up doing it you did it begrudgingly, the results were likely not as good as they could have been.  I always found that if you could get people to do things because they wanted to contribute and feel that they mattered, then the results will be substantially better and result in dramatic successes and exponential improvement for whatever area you are focusing on.  Once you have people motivated for success and working to the best of their abilities, then you can propose new thoughts and methodologies and philosophies to attain even higher goals.

Now, with all that being said, quite often it is advantageous for your counter-parts to know you are serious about your capabilities and your desires.  This does not mean strong-armed approaches to negotiations and conflict resolution, but rather that the inherent knowledge should be that your opponent is truly aware of your objectives.  This all sounds like threatening behavior but utilized correctly it is not.  Being number one gives you a distinct advantage.  No one ever said that everything had to have an equal result, rather just an amicable one, and one that everyone can walk away from with some level of positivity and know their role.

Following the financial collapse of Greece and the attempts by the EU to save it, Greece’s internal politics became a shambles and its people were crushed in spirit.  Greeks had been quite used to prosperity and what I will call a “relaxed work ethic” coupled with extremely generous social policies.  When the Greek government could no longer afford to keep up the social policies for the nation, there was nothing to fall back on, and the bottom fell out of the economy.  Even at the end, and with generous offers from Germany and the EU, sadly there was an unwillingness on the part of the Greek population to accept much in the way of austerity measures.  Therefore, Greece declared bankruptcy at the end of 2013.

With nowhere left to turn, the monarchy of Saudi Arabia arrived with the offer of billions in support.  In exchange, they asked for a prominent seat within the future government of Greece.  This in and of itself was not necessarily such a horrific thing on its own, but what was most troubling for people was that the Saudi’s were offering a direct cash payment and jobs to individual citizens if they converted to Islam.  

excerpt from Chapter 6 - flood example

Chapter 6 - page 102

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One excellent example of “Constructive Capitalism” came from Home Depot who shut all their stores in the Southwest US during the Austin, Texas floods in late 2013.  As part of their relief effort, the Home Depot shipped warehouses full of supplies and sent their staff to the flooded area to immediately start rebuilding the damaged communities.  The employees were paid in full their regular salary and all their travelling expenses.

Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (August 2005) was still a fresh memory in 2013, and no one wanted to see the same thing happening in the city of Austin, so Home Depot mobilized almost five thousand employees, delivered untold truck loads of supplies and utilized their management skills to deliver on-ground support to those affected by the floods.  Just to be clear, the Home Depot was not involved at all in the initial rescue or relief effort but rather the rebuilding efforts that followed.  Fortunately, the rescue and relief efforts were pretty well managed as opposed to Katrina, so the rebuilding process could start right away.  The Home Depot did not wait for insurance issues, local zoning discussions or the media.  They just started rebuilding and repairing people’s homes so the owners could move back in.

The effect was immediate and astounding for Home Depot.  Home Depot had forfeited a sizable portion of their marketing budget to fund this effort but certainly reaped the rewards from a business standpoint.  Their brand value sky-rocketed as did their stock price following the Austin floods.  By March of 2015, Home Depot’s stock price had almost tripled to just under $200.  When asked about their efforts at the time to make such a large commitment, the CEO said that he just could not sit back and watch people in trouble when he knew he had the resources at his finger tips to do something about it.  He pointed out that Home Depot was monstrously successful in the South Texas area and that he felt that they should contribute as much as possible.  Many share holders at the time questioned his decision as they felt that the Home Depot was going to potentially forego billions in sales as a result of the rebuilding effort and that the materials should not have been just “given-away”.  Home Depot at the time made it clear to the stock-holders, that as a part of the local business community, they had an obligation to be involved in the rebuilding of its communities whenever required.  It is not moral to profit from the suffering of its customers.  This was revolutionary corporate thinking.

Today, the Home Depot has a regular rebuilding program that goes to disaster areas all over the world and pitches in “on-ground” as required.  They are under no obligation to wait for governmental efforts other than not to interfere with rescue efforts.  

Excerpt from Chapter 4

Chapter 4 -- page 56

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One of the most horrific and misguided thoughts of the time that got embedded in the American psyche was that compassion was equal to socialism or communism.

By 2009, just the comment of a compassionate governmental policy made the speaker into, at a minimum a socialist, and in the worse case, a Hitleresque demagogue who was striving to undermine the entirety of the USA.  That may sound melodramatic, but phrases like that were actually used at the time by American citizens.  I can still remember with disgust back in 2010 when President Obama was trying to implement some type of universal health insurance program so that every American citizen would have access to health care.  The shocking thing to me is that a system, which cared about the general health of all citizens, was considered akin to Nazism by some people.  Even to this day that still strikes me as the most absurd type of rhetoric.  To me and many others, it was an unconscionable misuse of our American right to freedom of speech, and I argued at the time that it should be considered hate speech.  To utilize NAZI imagery in an American political debate is simply immoral on any level.

The Republican Party and the Tea Party Movement were mostly to blame for this rhetoric, and as early as 1980, there had come a point where political expediency was the paramount goal.  Rhetoric could be founded upon any truth or mistruth and could even be what many folks would consider slanderous.  The shocking thing about this situation is that so many American citizens actually accepted this rhetoric and supported it.  I can understand that there was disillusion in the US at the time due to the 2008 economic collapse but to sink to such lows should have been offensive to so many more people.  This is why I argued so strongly that a new definition of freedom needed to be established, as we as a nation, had sunk just too far in our willingness to allow anyone to do or say whatever they chose in the political arena.

Excerpt from Chapter 6 -- Constructive Capitalism

Chapter 6  --  page 100

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One of my guiding business principles is what I referred to as “Constructive Capitalism."  Let’s face it, I got rich simply by making the world a better place.  That was always my goal from a young age.  I’ll be honest and admit that I also went into business for recognition, wealth and challenge.  However, I always operated with the philosophy that I would like to build a legacy that would be respected.  When my company developed the efficient food product known as “NutrisHouse” Bars which delivered a person’s complete nutritional daily requirements, then that really was the fulfillment of my dreams.  I ultimately have far surpassed any and all of my hopes.

Upon my company’s ultimate success in the USA and Europe, we then started developing the same food products for poorer countries.  The products for these regions cost about a third of the more consumer-oriented products that were being sold and marketed in the western areas.  Of course, everyone knows that the flavor was not as good and the packaging was not as elaborate, but the nutrition value was the same.  Every single country in the world that imported NutrisHouse Bars saw improved health almost immediately.  Even where there were still dictators and civil wars at the time, the health of the citizens improved.

 “Constructive Capitalism” evolved as a concept that in essence requires a company in order to be successful to do doing something tangibly beneficial to improve the state of the world.  This was not necessarily a unique concept that I developed, rather a progression of the changing consumer-mindset and some companies realizing that it was in their best interest to go this route in order to maximize profitability.  “Constructive Capitalism” was also not just about financial contribution either.  Just writing a check to a charitable organization seemed unsettling to most people after the success of NutrisHouse Bars where genuinely positive results were being realized.  Consumers would not accept anymore that if a company does business they just cannot hand over a payment to make them feel or in the worst case scenario, look good.  The contribution of the company must be genuine, involve the resources of the company and be done with the spirit of improving the conditions in the surrounding areas.  Even in the US, the spirit of corporate contribution became more about first-hand infrastructure development rather than continuing to do “fun runs, bake sales and raffles”, as Bill Gates put it in 2007.

Excerpt from Chapter 1 - changing perspective towards wealth

Chapter 1 -  Pages 8 & 9

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Historically, where the personal valuation had gone awry, however, was in terms of the origin of one's individual wealth.  The mere possession of money had come to supersede the means of accumulating it.  In the early twenty-first century, any individual could accumulate wealth with no regard to the impact one made on other individuals or society. The worst aspect of that system, however, is that one could accumulate wealth at the expense of others.  This was a flawed model, as the most aggressive people and organizations, that seemingly prioritized wealth and power, ended up accumulating a disproportionate amount of both and subsequently started persecuting and taking an authoritative position in relation to those who had less.  This ultimately led to the “Occupy Movement” in 2011 and 2012.

America fortunately came to realize that accumulation of wealth at the expense of others is not wealth that should be judged as valuable or honorable. Through the “New Freedom Initiative” (NFI), wealth that was accumulated without adding value to individuals or society, started to become less respected or desired, and per my initial point regarding human judgment, “unsavory money” actually became judged as negative by a great majority of Americans.  Just as an easy example, banks in America came to refuse drug money out right by 2015.

The effect of this unsavory label was to encourage individual and corporate wealth-building as a result of benefiting a wider group of society.  It would also serve to keep those who had amassed their fortunes in a less than honorable manner from having personal influence or access to broader political, business or social institutions.  No one ever argued that any individual could not make money in America any way they liked.  What came to pass, however, was that the holding of that money did not automatically include power and influence along with it.

By the mid-2030s, ethics have since returned and are now a key component to wealth-building such that the amount of money that one accumulates is reasonably proportionate to the contribution one makes throughout that process.

In today’s world, those individuals that provide the greatest benefit to society receive the greatest return in terms of money, property, power and authority.  As a result, most people can claim a higher level of happiness and stability in 2043 than they ever could in 2013.  This claim to happiness extends well beyond American borders into parts of the world where in 2013 even having a claim on clean water was rare.  The world genuinely has improved significantly as a result of changed attitudes toward money.