(Video) Newt discussing Strong America Now in Ames

(Just as a note on Tuesday night's debate: It's on Bloomberg TV, so if you are like most (including me) who do not get that channel, you can stream it live on bloomberg.com at 8 PM ET.)

Link. (It runs 2 minutes, 58 seconds, so take a quick look please.)

Newt sent an open letter to CBO Director on federal government waste

Read the full letter on Newt.org here.

From the letter:

As someone who led an effort which reformed government and led to four consecutive balanced budgets - paying off over $400 billion in federal debt - I was astounded by the news reports of your testimony.

According to the reports you suggested that efforts to eliminate waste and fraud would produce "a negligible impact."

...

Your statement is the management equivalent of ruling out air travel in calculating how long it takes to go from New York to California.

There are three expert estimates of potential waste and fraud savings in the federal government that propose "$100 billion a year", "$70 to $120 billion a year" and "$500 billion a year" as reasonable estimates of potential waste and fraud savings in the federal government.

...

How can you dismiss this widespread, independent analysis that suggests between $625 billion and $2.5 trillion in savings over five years is possible through profound management reforms?

In every one of these areas there are private sector examples of real life success.

What is the CBO explanation for rejecting the real world in favor of defending existing Washington inefficiency, incompetence, waste, and fraud?

Newt's newsletter: "The Super Committee Disaster"

From this week's newsletter:

Nothing illustrates the gap between Washington and America better than the difference in reaction to the "Super Committee" that the debt ceiling deal set up to cut spending.

In Washington, a 12-member group with tremendous power to dictate the details of debt reduction is seen as a great idea.

Outside Washington, people applaud every time I condemn the process.

The rest of America sees a plan to skip 523 members of Congress while focusing power on a select 12 as a dangerous centralization of authority.

People instinctively understand that their Senators and Congressman will be on the outside lobbying the "powerful 12."

Ninety-seven percent of the American people have now lost representation in critical decisions about the size and scope of their government.

The rest of America also intuitively understands the absurdity of reducing the 217 committees and subcommittees that normally contribute to policy decisions in the House and Senate to one "super" committee for the whole Congress.

The group Strong America Now estimates that Congress could save $500 billion per year simply by modernizing the federal government's management system. They argue that the Lean Six Sigma technique for dramatic cost reductions could identify billions in savings with a careful examination of processes and expenditures across the government.

If that sounds implausible, consider that the Defense Department has already used Lean Six Sigma to save more than $22 billion, increasing productivity 1,000 percent in some facilities.

The Strong America Now estimate is more than three times the goal of the Super Committee. You can learn more about anti-waste budgeting and Lean Six Sigma in my newsletter here and at StrongAmericaNow.com.

For a full overview of my case against the Super Committee and an alternative method to balance the budget in a publicly accountable way, you should watch the speech I gave last Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation.

I think you will agree that targeted savings with full representation for all Americans is a better solution than unaccountability and concentrated power.

Let me know: Would you prefer the 12-member Super Committee or the involvement of all 535 members of Congress?

Click here to vote.

Newt discussing Strong America Now on Hannity's radio show

Here is the audio of Newt discussing Strong America Now on Sean Hannity's radio show last week.

Audio of Newt on Strong America Teleforum back on July 19

I wrote about the teleforum here the night it happened, and here is the audio link.

Newt's portion starts at the 22:25 mark.

Here is the video I linked to earlier this week:

Video of Newt talking about Lean Six Sigma

Link.

Newt's campaigning in Iowa getting attention.

Newt's campaigning in Iowa -- being there 16 of 45 days -- is getting attention in the Iowa press. Jennifer Jacobs of Des Moines-Register wrote a column today highlighting Newt's recent appearances in the Hawkeye State as well as his upcoming ones.

Newt will be back in the state with the first Presidential contest next Tuesday in "in Decorah and the surrounding area."

Jacobs:

On Aug. 4, Gingrich will be the highlight of a lawn party in Des Moines’s Waterbury neighborhood. Organizers of a five-county fundraiser say he will be at their event in Tiffin on Aug. 5. And he will be at the Iowa State Fair, his spokesman said this morning.

...

Since then, he was in Des Moines for the Strong America Now debt-reduction summit on June 18 and in Indianola on a tea party bus tour stop June 25.

On Fourth of July, he marched in the parade in Clear Lake and visited with political activists in that area.

Last week, Gingrich did speeches as part of a Family Leader lecture series in Pella and Iowa City. On the same day, July 11, he met with the Iowa Conservative Union in Cedar Rapids.

Later in the week, he spoke to a conservative breakfast club in Des Moines, threw the first pitch at an Iowa Cubs game (the ball did make it to the catcher, but Gingrich was in front of the mound, not on it), and spoke at a tea party event in Lamoni.

Before his Iowa visit next week, Gingrich is scheduled to be on the East Coast, campaigning in the early-voting state of New Hampshire before traveling to Georgia for several stops, including a meeting with phone bank volunteers at the Newt 2012 headquarters who call voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Newt on Strong America Now Teleforum

The Strong America Now conference call just ended. The group has about 50,000 members in Iowa, and that is where the call was based from tonight. (Its' presence in New Hampshire is also quite big.)

Newt called on those in the state with the first Presidential contest who support Lean Six Sigma (LSS) to "help make history" by pulling aside reporters and explaining it to them.

Newt, as he has been saying, believes LSS would make the FDA "dramatically" faster at getting breakthroughs to patients, lengthening lives and improving lives.

He mentioned the Boeing plant in Charleston as what can be produced with the newest technology and the focus being on efficiently delivering to consumers what they want and need.

Tim Pawlenty had a staffer call in. Herman Cain called in. No other Presidential candidate participated.

What is Lean Six Sigma? Why is Newt the only candidate to focus on it?

Six Sigma was first used at Motorola in the middle 1980s. It attempts to increase effectivenss and reduce cost -- essentially become more efficient -- by finding the causes of defects (often using statistical analysis) and trying to make sure that when the correct process is identified that it is replicated every time. The name, in fact, is a rating of the manufacturing process. To be "Six Sigma" means 99.99966% of the output is to be free of defects.

Lean Six Sigma combines the ideas of Six Sigma with those of lean manufacturing, which when boiled down basically attempts to eliminate any use of resources that in the end will not provide value to the customer.

Businesses have long used it to great effectiveness. But starting in 2000, when Fort Wayne, Indiana, adopted it, it has been shown to be the best way of making government more efficient. (Efficiency is the goal as it means effective and low cost; effectiveness on a huge budget is not the ideal.)

The military has used to trim waste while producing greater results for the troops and the country as a whole.

Here are some of the case studies as compiled by Strong America Now.

Strong America Now, headed by Michael George, is a grassroots organization -- with 50,000 members in Iowa alone -- whose main focus is on getting candidates for office to pledge to implement Lean Six Sigma. They believe that the federal government's budget could be trimmed by 25% just by using the practices entailed in it.

Newt was the first candidate for President to sign the group's pledge. (Which I wrote about here when he did so.) And he is the only one running for the White House who is making it a central part of their campaign.

(To anyone who is a supporter of Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, or Gary Johnson: Yes, I know all three have also signed the pledge, but that does not mean they are focusing on it. All it means is that they did the political equivalent of a New Year's Resolution -- and then forgot about it January 3rd.)

What is one reason I can say that with some confidence? Newt is the only 2012 candidate confirmed to be a part of the group's Teleforum tonight. (Update: Pawlenty had a staffer call and Cain himself called in.)

Here is the page to register so you can hear it. (Registration closes at 6:00 PM Central.)

I will be posting a recap of it later tonight.

(Update: Here is the post I wrote after the teleforum.)

(Second update: Here is the audio of the event. Newt's portion starts at 22:25.)

Newt will sign deficit reduction pledge tomorrow; Tea Party bus tour in Iowa later this month

-- Tomorrow, in New Hampshire, Gingrich will sign the Strong America Now deficit reduction pledge. The group -- "which claims 50,000 supporters in first caucus state Iowa, is promoting cutting the deficit by employing lean business practices known as the Lean Six Sigma strategy, which targets inefficiencies."

Tomorrow night, Newt and his wife, Callista, will be screening Nine Days that Changed the World, a film about Pope John Paul II's trip to Poland in 1979, in Plaistow. You can RSVP here.

-- It was announced today that Newt will be one of the Presidential candidates who will be riding on the Iowa Tea Party Bus Tour, which will run from June 13 through July 2.

"The purpose of the tour is to train grassroots activists in the state of Iowa to get them as prepared as they’re going on and best advocate for the candidate of their choice," ABC quotes Ryan Rhodes, the tour organizer, as saying.

Rhodes says only one candidate will be on tour at a time and they will not be releasing when the candidates will be appearing.

Here is the group's page on Newt. Once you register, you can vote for him in their straw poll.

-- I have changed the videos page of this site. Before, in order to allow the page to load faster, I simply posted links to various videos. Now, I have embedded a number of the videos at the top of the page. (I have shrunk the size of the video, which allows the page to load quite fast.)

If you have any comments -- about the change to the video page, any other proposed changes, or just any topic in general -- feel free to e-mail me at joshgosser1776@gmail.com.