Posted on 10/20/2011 7:20:11 AM PDT by AngelesCrestHighway
Same boat.
Supporter of the Boy Scouts, local hospitals, education programs... A huge supporter of the military. They use to go out of their way to hire folks that were VETs...
He had his 50th wedding anniversary when I still worked there (Perot Systems) in like 2004 (I think it was then). One of his kids went USAF, the daughter worked at the VA.
He ran his business square and took care of his employees as much as possible. Unfortunately age essentially took this great American out of the picture and already by 2005 his involvement weaned even within his own Business. Others began to take over, the firm went public and as he left the stage they sold the firm to Dell. Jr. never cared much about Perot Systems and has a construction firm.
Few remember, but I think this tells all about who you're dealing with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Wings_of_Eagles (Sadly, most people don't even know about it anymore, and things like “global warming” dominate Wikipedia with pages devoted to that nonsense).
He's the real deal-
LOL!
You know things are pretty effed up when you start agreeing with the Teamsters. LOL!! I have to laugh so I don’t cry. Which of these venerable GOP candidates has stated that he would pull us out of NAFTA?
Cool! I joined the company (now Dell) just before his 80th birthday party. Very cool tribute that included countless video messages from military personel from around the world, Steve Jobs, Jay Leno, GW Bush, and many others ... even Dana Carvey (hilarious). Ebby Halliday even showed up and sang him a song while playing her ukulele.
The halls in that building are like a museum. Something to see around every corner.
Do YOU want to pay $20 for a diet coke?
He had the same problem Ron Paul has. Great ideas. To bad he’s a cook. Kook, I mean.
Ron Paul proposes “sound good” unrealistic popularist ideas that hit a cord among some but could NEVER work. Like Obama MOST of his sound good snippets would have to be reneged on or modified if he ever were to be elected (Iraq withdraw, no militarization of space, closing GITMO, free college...) Perot is a nationalist, a patriot, but not a fool nor did he lie to people, telling them crap he wouldn't be able to deliver.
Barack Obama did, but only to get your vote.
Yep ... all that stuff is still there. Was Bin Laden’s walking cane there when you worked there? That’s an interesting piece.
Outsourcing isn't a bad word. What specialization is to labor (plumber, electrician, mason), so is outsourcing to business. Even Perot Systems/EDS outsources services even though they are a recipient of IT outsourced services by others i.e. Iron Mountain, drug testing lab, Sodexo food services...
Outsourcing allows a business to manage risk better, it takes advantage of economy of scale (doing things in large volume) and increases efficiency, allows for a more constant flow of work vs on and off surges, it allows for a greater degree of specialization within an area and also for greater institutional knowledge to develop. A firm that does nothing but IT and has a dozen+ customers and 24,000 employees has the size to build a data-center, to buy equipment that if you do things in smaller scale would never be economically viable. Let car companies build cars, let a lawyer firms do what they do, but when car companies try to run an IT firm, you get what happened to Perot's old firm EDS after GM bought and ran them into the ground years past. Even the corporate cultures, the regulatory frame work etc. varies from one firm and industry to another.
Example: When National Alamo car rental outsourced their IT to Perot Systems years past, they gave that job to a large company that is specialized in that field. Truth is, experts even from other accounts can be called in for projects or emergencies and you have a IT firm with 24,000 employees that has experts ranging from programming to databases, networks, security, providing support and project management etc all at a fingertip vs a firm trying to do it in house and reinventing the wheel. A firm like Perot Systems has done hundreds of projects and when they take on a new task they have data to fall back on, pre existing channels with vendors, logistics, experts that have done dozens of projects and are PMP certified etc. They have an existing data center and in fact have several... At the end of the day, you get consistent high quality service, the risk goes down on big projects, if there are issues they can often isolate and fix it quickly and they usually can do this at a cost you can't match in house.
There is a difference between Outsourcing and Off-shoring.
But even off-shoring was inevitable after NAFTA, China joined the WTO etc.
There are multiple providers that offer the services which Perot Systems offer. Once NAFTA became a reality, once China joined the WTO (Something the US could have probably not even withheld them any longer- this was even larger than the US), once India came onto the world stage... the results were long term predictable. Perot the president would have fought against NAFTA, Perot the CEO wants to grow his business and survive and can't change international treaties and trade agreements, tax code, Visa policies, etc. In that sense, you have to separate the two roles, that of the CEO who is dealt a hand of cards and has to play them, and that of the policy maker that in this case can pick the cards from the stack they want to hand out to the players.
Perot the CEO founded EDS and later Perot Systems (Now Dell), creating thousands of jobs, millions in tax revenues, etc. How about they just go bankrupt and you have nothing? Would that make you happier? Would you then feel he's a more patriotic guy that holds to his word? Perot was against NAFTA and he was right, but once it became reality, he can't ignore or pretend it away.
When push comes to shove, the “others” are decoration, they work as long as everything is going fine and things are stable. When things fall apart, it's not the gay metro sexual urban type you see behind a 50cal in a HMMWV turret.
When we deployed for Iraq, we ended up having to keep statistics (The Army don't advertise that of course) on how many female soldiers we're losing because of pregnancy; easy out for them. You didn't get the gays screaming to lead the way, you also didn't see LaShaniqua volunteering...
In the end you have a group that can do the job and a whole bunch of moochers that are simply there to get their benefits and paycheck. Everyone knows what's going on, but no one is allowed to say anything. Doing so would be racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic, the ad hominem attacks that the logical and open minded people use to argue their case.
What the hell is made south of the border that they are bring in to the US....that I want to buy? Nuttin! Okay, maybe a banana from Central America, okay, no, not even that!
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