Archive for March, 2009
The Real Cost of CCC
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 | Economics | No Comments
On the news today was a report on plasterboard that was defective. The plasterboard had a high concentrate of strontium sulfide. Stronium sulfide is corrosive to copper. It can corrode copper coils in air conditioning and electric components in computers and if that isn’t enough, the boards smell like rotten eggs.
The only solution for this is to rip out the plasterboard and replace it with plasterboard that was produced with some good old American standards. The reason that this “sulfur board” producer could get away with producing this shoddy material is that it was produced in China.
If this was the only substandard Chinese material that was entering the United States we could maybe forgive the Chinese. After all, we did have the Tylenol scare(although the manufacturer did not tamper with the drug). It seems that every six months there is an announcement about another Chinese product that has problems.
Lead in toys, makeup, and even eye solutions are making me think that the Chinese are trying to defeat us through are biggest weakness: our greed. We have become the shopping drones for third world goods. We are like moths to a flame of shopping. The stores put out any cheap stuff they can get and we buy it.
There was a time in this country when foreign countries sent only the best. When the Lexus was introduced to America, according to a report by T. Boone Pickens, he had his engineers disassemble it and he found that there was no way it could be produced for what they were selling it for. They were actually selling it at a loss so they could get market share.
Then Walmart came in; though I understand that they originally sold many American products they realized that they could sell more Chinese goods for less and still make a large margin. To remain competitive all the other stores followed, so that now we buy almost everything from foreign producers.
It’s no wonder we can’t win the war on drugs, we can’t even conquer our addiction to shopping. Instead of our government demanding that China give human rights to the Chinese, it should be protecting us from CCC (Cheap Chinese Crap).
Cheney in Dementialand
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 | Politics | No Comments
Ex VP Cheney is at it again. He is trying, like some latter day Princess spinning gold from straw, to spin his crimes into patriotism.The ex-spinmaster is trying to make it seem like Obama is unpatriotic for his recent actions.
Cheney has suggested that Obama is putting the country at risk by ending the torture at Guantanamo Bay prison. The way I understand this is that it is going to be easier for Al Qaeda to recruit terrorists if we don’t act like them.I can hear it now. “Okay boys, those despicable Americans have decided to play hard ball. They are no longer torturing, which means that their prisons will be better than our luxury apartments. The seventy two virgins bit isn’t working too well anymore some of our members are asking if there is a reason that they are still virgins.”
Cheney contends that the water-boarding prevented another attack on our nation. This does not take into account that the last time the Twin Towers were attacked was in 1993 making it eight years between the 2001 attack and the 1993. Maybe it just takes eight years for the terrorists to attack.
Cheney seems to think that the new administration relies too much on diplomacy to settle our problems with the world. I guess he feels that we should be plowing head first into another disaster like Iraq.
He seems to be painting a picture of the Bush administration as the best. Could he actually be the only person in the world who believed that by putting up a sign it really was a “Mission Accomplished?” Thank God that we couldn’t have given them four more years. Although if we had they probably would have cured cancer.
The New Scarlet Letter
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 | Economics | No Comments
I think that there might be a reason to reinstate the old habit of making people wear a scarlet letter for their sins. I don’t mean for minor transgressions like adultery although the increased demand for red thread might lead us out of the recession.
The recent news about AIG has infuriated me, judging from the news I’m not the only one. In any world where there is justice, how is this fair?
I use to work on the line at General Motors and they had a bonus plan. The bonus was paid for the years that the company posted a profit. If the company didn’t make a profit we didn’t get a bonus.
Now GM is talking about going belly up and filing bankruptcy. I personally think that they are considering it because they would get out of the contracts with the UAW and they wouldn’t have to honor the healthcare provisions for the retirees. These healthcare provisions are supposedly the reason that GM can’t compete with the Japanese. ( Not the fact that they make crappy cars).
GM also had this policy that I guess AIG has never heard of, if you lost money for them, they would fire you. If you got fired you didn’t get your bonus.
I believe that in general anybody who works for someone does at least one thing during the work day that he could get fired for. Most of the rules are written to favor the boss. So I think that if the bonus people at AIG keep clamoring for their bonuses, we as majority shareholders should start looking at this firing idea. I mean if GM can screw their employees why can’t AIG?
If that doen’t work then I think that we should make them wear scarlet letters. In big letters they should spell out what AIG really stands for: “AIN”T I GREEDY?”
Suicide Jury
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 | US Judicial System | 2 Comments
One of my favorite films is Suicide Kings. If you are not familiar with the film go rent or buy it. One of the parts I love about it is when Christopher Walken talks about who knows the truth.
He talks about the fact that when it comes to the truth about what’s happening you never go wrong by listening to “the street”. Perhaps we should listen to “the street” when it comes to our jury system.
I am no big fan of the jury system since the infamous “Nanny Case” where Louise Woodward shook a baby to death, was convicted of murder and subsequently released for time served. Before that case I proudly served on juries and felt that it was my duty to do so. After these jurors listened to the case, deliberated, and found her guilty, the judge overturned their decision. Was it because the Jury wasn’t a peer group? Was it because of our kiss ass policy towards the British? (She is British.) Or was it because the Jury had not suffered enough separation from their family and jobs and life?.
Anyway I think we should have some cases like the Bernie Madoff case decided by the “street”. He is now going to plead guilty so he does not have to reveal where his money is. So the end result is he is going to jail for about 100 years ( with probably 99 off for good behavior) and when he gets out he has 50 billion waiting for him. This doesn’t seem like the true justice he should be receiving.What he should be getting is “Street Justice”.
In a Gray Area
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 | General | 1 Comment
We all have to make decisions about our appearance. For some, the big decision is whether to wear their hair up or down or long or short. Some at the other extreme get to choose between wrinkles or a botox stone face or in general, growing old gracefully or fighting it all the way.
A lot of our decisions are made between the “hey Sonny” to the “ Yes, Mister” period. Those of us who have experienced the later know that when people start calling you Mister or Mrs. you are starting down the slippery slope of age. For women this means that if a good looking man is helping you with your groceries he’s either after your daughter or trying to impress some girl who is watching him. For a man it means that the pretty checkout girl at the grocery store is smiling and being friendly because she hopes that you will bag your own food.
I’ve always believed that there is good and bad in any decision which is why I often suffer from “analysis paralysis”. I’ve recently been troubled by the fact that I look old. When I had my last child I used to say that both my wife and I had always looked so young that I was surprised that Matt didn’t come out looking like an embryo, but times change.
Nature had already insisted my hair follow a pattern of male baldness but I thought I had sidestepped that by following the Patrick Stewart pattern. I had thought about going with the “Yul Brynner “ look but my wife informed me I was “no Yul Brynner” . As long as my hair was brownish I deluded myself that people saw me as young. Father Time wasn’t done with humiliating me, cause now I remain clean shaven around Christmas for fear of having to fulfill some child‘s Christmas wish.
My hair has turned gray and I have recently thought about coloring my hair (or in my case, the remainder of it). I was in WalMart today and I was going to look at hair coloring but first I had to go to the electronics section. As I was walking to the back, I cut in front of a man in his twenties. Had I looked younger he might have said something that might have led to an altercation but I think he looked at me and realized he didn’t want to beat up someone who looked like his Grandpa. See, everything has advantages and disadvantages.