Well…I hope the latest profit numbers from Ford will blow up the repubs tired old arguments that everything that is wrong with American industry can be traced back to the supposed greed of the union represented workers that are the backbone of the auto industry. 3.1 billion dollars in profit…yep, that’s right…so far this year Ford has made 3.1 billion dollars on it’s North American car business…a completely unionized manufacturing company with fairly paid workers sharing in the success but also giving back when the company was in trouble. How did they do it? I know, the repubs will point to the pay and benefits of the unions as the reason that GM and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy…but let’s look at it closer..it was just bad management from the top down at those companies….and a failure to look farther into the future than the next quarterly statement. Plus, they just made cars and trucks that no one wanted and were of lower quality than their competitors.
Unlike their competitors, the Ford family recognized that things were changing in the industry a few years before the bottom fell out and and also recognized that a different kind of management was needed for the coming downturn. But, they also recognized that new, better products were needed as well and embarked on programs to make better cars that the public wanted. Personally, I think the right moves were made, to a large part, because the family’s name was still on the side of the building, and there was pride that all of the workers, salaried and union shared. It’s that dynamic that the repubs don’t care about…that there can be successful companies where both labor and ownership are successful; and the Ford family recognizes that without their skilled and dedicated union workers, their success would not be assured if the only labor plan was to bash the unions and take all they can with no regard for their workers. But, the repubs only know that labor is their mortal enemy, to be crushed at all costs….geez…
Well…a night of no booze or sleep aids and I can tell it was a good idea…even though I was up at 5, I still feel a hundred percent better than I did yesterday. Today looks kind of busy, at least for the morning…have to do the grocery shopping and then make my bean dip for G’s birthday bash later….and I am going to try some texas style ribs in the slow cooker. I am getting disappointed with what is going on in this country with the huge influx of foreign money as a result of the Citizen’s United decision by the Supreme Court. That is going to be a topic for later on today while the wings are cooking and I don’t have anything else to do. It is still nice to be able to go out on the bike in a t-shirt….more later…
Well…if your heart and the rest of America’s didn’t break a little when you heard of firefighters letting a couples house burn down because they didn’t pay a “firefighting fee”, then there is something seriously wrong with us and our society. But this is just the latest evidence of how the repubs vision for America will work for the little guy; how their “starve the beast”, tax cuts at all cost strategy impacts the real lives of citizens, from the homeowner in rural areas who has to pay extra for fire protection if they can get it at all, to the people of Detroit and other cities who see large areas abandoned by the police department because there is no way to raise the funds to hire officers to patrol. But, the rich still have the money to hire private police and, in some gated communities, their own fire departments who will, no doubt, sit and watch while houses outside their walls burn down because they have been successful in making sure there are no taxes available for these services for the rest of us.
What happened to the America where we felt and acted like we were all in this together? I think it’s a direct result of the repubs strategy to demonize our government and members of our society that are not like them. It’s easy to let someone’s house burn down or let them be robbed or murdered if they “haven’t taken care of themselves” or they don’t vote republican. As I said to T yesterday, “I’m glad I won’t be around much longer to see this wonderful country continue to decline” and I do believe the catch phrase that was first proposed in the comic strip Pogo from my youth: “I’ve see the enemy and he is us”…..geez….
Well..an interesting day yesterday but I didn’t have time to get the political post out and for that I’m sorry…the day just got away from me when G called and asked me to go over to wait for the cable guy to come…that stretched into HH with T, which was a lot of fun, sitting on the deck at Rose’s in EGR. By the time I got home, I really wasn’t in the mood to write anything and the time with T made me happy so there was no outrage to put down on paper…or on the screen. So, I’ll try to do better today but feeling as I do…kind of crappy….it will probably be a little later in the day. More later….
I guess this is later…not a lot to do today…I think I have the night off from everyone so I’m just going to take it easy all day…have to finish up a movie here in a couple of minutes so I can get it in the mail but I’m hitting the couch to do it…can’t wait to feel better…
Well…feel a little better after getting a ride in and just had to pass this along…was on the fastest downhill section of the trail this morning and a red-tailed hawk that was perched on the fence that runs along it took off and flew right down the trail in front of me for at least 50 yards with me just about 6 feet behind and to the right. I was so close I could count the feathers on his wingtips and tail…it was the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long while….
Oh, there is a dead mouse alert on for today…must have seen 20 of them on the trail….more later…I think about the corporate money that is being used to buy the repubs again…
Well…it was a fun night out in Ada…not really a night but an afternoon…won at pool and was successful at tamping down the anger..it was a little weird taking it easy in the car but it was nice to walk in the door here without even a little guilt for my behavior. But I was not good when I got home so I have another day of trying to get the toxins out and feel like crap. Oh, well…will probably have to go to the grocery store this morning and I am not looking forward to it when I feel like this…or I could do a fast food day…haven’t done one of those in a long time. As you can tell, I’m not too lucid this morning and there are no ideas in my head so I’ll end here for now…more later…
Well…don’t know if I will have any earth-shattering posts for you later today…I was thinking about Boehner and his band of miscreants as one but I’m just not sure that it has jelled enough to make sense. So, I may have to let that one percolate for another day or so…I’ve just had a lot of jumbled thoughts but one that has been bothering me is a little personal and a failing that I’ve been working on for some time now. You know the issue…letting my anger boil over in my personal life..I’ve been getting angry at everyone and everything again and I, again, need to do something about it. This whole thing was triggered by another person almost running me down in a crosswalk starting out on the ride this morning…it made me so mad that I almost allowed that person to ruin my ride on this glorious Michigan fall day. It took almost 5 miles before I stopped seething and there is something wrong with that…I’ve also noticed that my driving is creeping back to aggressive again and I’m bitching about people all the time.
So, I think my path here is quite clear…I need to start thinking about what I’m doing again; I’m going to try to not say one bad thing about anyone for the rest of the day….I’m going to smile more than I scowl, and I’m going to try to shift into laid back mode in the car when I head out to Ada today…I know I feel better about myself when I do these things but it is harder than it looks…these behaviors have to be turned into habits just like the anger and meanness….I hope I don’t get too relaxed that I can’t work up outrage for my posts…I wonder where the balance is?
Well…out with G last night and had some fun…but was not a good boy after I got home so I feel a little crappy today…but that’s okay…don’t have a lot to do today and with the weather changing, I can’t get out on the bike until later in the day…I do have pool out in Ada with Tom later and it is nice to not stack lunch with T on top of it…don’t really need to get a head start. Decided to make my bean dip for G’s birthday party on Friday so my contribution is taken care of…along with the bottle of Hot Damn that is getting to be tradition sitting around her outdoor fireplace. Not much else to say right now so I’ll stop and head for the couch for a while…as I said, I do feel a little crappy today…more later…
Well…I forgot to pass on the dual grasshopper and caterpillar alert for the trails today…the wooly bears were swarming along with a huge cadre of grasshoppers that met the generally accepted alert rate of 20 per 100 feet…so, be careful out there…I decided to ride my route in reverse yesterday and neglected to pass that on…it was so weird to not know where I was on the trail and to have to think to know what gear to be in….the terrain looked so alien going clockwise with the shadows and sun making a completely different view from the bike….places that looked like large hills turned into flats or downhills going backward and the last climb along M-6 was just a killer with dead legs after 10 miles…but it was still fun and I think I may do both weekend days that way…it may work the legs a little more and challenge the muscle memory I’ve built up over time. One last thing, I’m only 26 miles from hitting 1700…2000 still looks doable before the weather goes away….no more later….well…who, knows…I may have another topic…I really did have one but I forgot what it was…might have to go back through the newspapers to refresh my memory…
Oh…do have the normal night out with G I think…then Tom tomorrow, then out with T for HH Wed…maybe even K for HH Thurs…geez… a lot to do this week…
Well…have to clear a few things up this morning…you may have gotten the wrong idea from some of my previous posts that I’m just a run of the mill tax and spend liberal type…but that is not correct. I do believe that government has a role as referee between the people and the overwhelming force of the rich and business, but I don’t believe that the government is always right and always does the right thing. There have been many examples of pork on the right and left where politicians have used tax revenues as their own personal piggy bank and to reward the people and businesses in their districts. If these outlays are for the common good, then I can see where they are necessary but projects like the “bridge to nowhere” and increasing spending on the military industrial complex in the face of this deep recession is not something that should continue.
With that said, I need to get to the tax cut nonsense that is still being pushed by the right, in the face of all credible economic analysis telling us that these cuts did nothing to stimulate the economy in the years they were in place but cost us 700 billion dollars a year in revenue. One thing that the right will not tell you, or doesn’t want to emphasize in their attacks on the stimulus package is that a third of it was tax cuts…that’s over 250 billion dollars of tax cuts in the 860 billion package. In one breath they tell us that the stimulus failed and in the next they say that the only way to save jobs and grow the economy is more tax cuts that they just said don’t work. Is anyone else’s head about to explode with this blatant and cynical attempt to have if both ways? I know, I’ve talked about this before, but my ire was aroused by the new ads here in Michigan that keep repeating “the failed stimulus package” in attacks on the Dems here…while it is hard to prove prevention of the loss of jobs by the stimulus, it is not hard to look at the data and know that the rosiest projection of jobs created by tax cuts was under 1 million…over 8 years…compare that to the 22 million created when there was a sensible tax policy during the Clinton years.
Another tactic from the right that I want to deal with today is their method of calculating the cost of each job saved for the dollar outlay from the stimulus package; with those costs being estimated at wildly differing rates of 2 to 20 million dollars per job; but we know how bad the right is at math…they don’t believe in science so why should they believe in math? Well…that’s not quite fair, but lets look at the 3.7 trillion dollar total cost of the Bush tax cuts and compare it to the optimistic estimates of 1 million jobs added while the tax cuts were in force. Then, let’s compare that to the the 860 billion dollar cost and the generally agreed on number that there were 2.5 million jobs saved by the spending of the stimulus…don’t even have to be good at math to see that the tax cuts are a far more expensive way to create jobs…so, let’s end this nonsense once and for all…geez…