Perspective: Who Should Control Obesity...You or the Government?

Perspective: Who Should Control Obesity… You or the Government?


Today, we are told poor diets lead to the increasing amount of obesity in this country. Moreover, being overweight, which affects about 50% of us and leads to obesity, is alleged to be a major cause for the rapidly increasing medical expense. Since more and more of medical expenses are being paid by the Government through Medicare and Obamacare, and that these programs will go bankrupt in a decade or so, something must be done about obesity. Consequently, it will only be a matter of time until the Government will decide that they must control what we can and cannot eat in order to prevent Medicare and Obamacare from going bankrupt.

The assumption that obesity is a major cause for the forecast financial catastrophe is somewhat dubious in my view for the simple reason that the life expectancy of obese persons is predicted to be shorter than the average healthy American. Financially this means they won’t collect as much Social Security and won’t live long enough to require knee and hip replacements and other expensive treatments for other maladies associated with old age.

But let’s set that aside to consider the question of who is to blame for this obesity problem? There are two new books that have just hit the market that virtually state that it is not our fault that we are obese. One book has the title of Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss It claims that it is the fault of those evil purveyors of processed food. The other entitled Obsessed, by Mika Brzezinski, says these awful processed foods are addicting, and we succumb to them. Since both authors are Progressives, it is not surprising that their answer to this problem is for the government to control what we eat, and Mike Bloomburg, the pseudo Republican Mayor of New York City, surely agrees.

Let’s examine the thesis of Moss’s book Salt, Sugar, Fat. He claims that the food processors aim at what is called the “bliss’ point in the taste and satisfaction of their food product. The actually conduct massive studies involving thousands of persons enrolled in controlled tests to determine just exactly where that bliss point is as measured in precise terms of the amount of salt, sugar and fat in the food. I don’t know about you, but I am astounded to learn this. I thought, naively, that Kraft and General Mills formulated foods to taste just awful!!

I will bet that no one has ever seen an American sitting at a dinner table, at home or a restaurant, reaching for the salt shaker, the butter dish or the sugar bowl to heighten the taste and satisfaction of the food served to them. Or how about this, you are at your grandmother’s house and she serves food that she prepared from scratch that is beyond belief in taste and satisfaction. How did she do this? My grandmother served this to me in the 1930’s. But guess what, she did not even have a cook book. She did it by feel with what magic ingredients? If you had checked her pantry you would have found that she stocked flour, sugar, salt and yes fat. Not butter mind you, but LARD. That’s right, LARD which came straight from the pig they slaughtered on the farm a few weeks ago. Oh, and did I mention that she lived to the ripe old age of 94?

Now, what about the addiction factor, claimed by Mika Brinszki? Well, what do you know, I was addicted to my grandmother’s cooking, and could not wait to visit her in her kitchen. If fact, I would visit her there now were she still able to cook such heavenly meals. And, oh by the way, I notice that we mostly select our favorite breakfast cereal to take home from the grocery store. I wonder why?

Typical of our polically correct society and our propensity to search for the culprit rather than look in the mirror, we have these two authors along with Mayor Bloomberg leading us astray. As Pogo the cartoon Possum would say, “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

So let’s examine us! Research conducted by psychologists at numerous universities reveals that most personal and social problems derive from the failure of self-control. Examples include: compulsive spending and borrowing, under achievement in school, procrastination, alcohol and drug abuse, unhealthy diet, chronic anxiety and explosive anger. Poor self-control correlates with just about every kind of personal trauma including: losing friends, being fired, getting divorced and winding up in prison.” There is no question that the development of self-control is critical in order to have reliable and responsible citizens. Self-control keeps one from being swayed from the right course by evil forces which can come from either outside or inside the person. These forces can include the evil food purveyors who want us to become addicted to their food.

Let’s spend a moment on what is the cause of obesity. This is a simple problem in physics. A person’s body requires a certain amount of nutrients to sustain itself. If the body’s intake of nutrients exceeds this amount, the body stores the nutrients for another day. This stored material is called FAT!!

IN A WORD, IT’S THE CALORIES, STUPID!!

Now, I have no doubt that programs designed to help persons to diet do cause weight loss. The problem is those same persons cannot seem to keep the weight from returning. That is because none of the programs deal with the root cause, namely we lack the WILL POWER to control how much we eat. Each of these programs provides crutches which lead us to believe that there is something magic about their program. But these crutches do nothing to help us develop our will power. So when we toss the crutches aside, we fall right back to where we were.

Reminds me of the preacher who admonished his parishioners to call on the Almighty to cure their aliments. A person at the back of the Church called out that he had just witnessed a miracle. It seemed that there was a cripple on two crutches, who upon hearing the inspiring message, tossed one crutch away and then tossed the other away, as well. The preacher exclaimed that he had to see this man, where is he? Another parishioner called out, he is back here flat on his ass!

We used to believe that self-control was a vital component needed to set a child on the right course, and society spent a large amount of time and money developing moral compasses and self-control in children. This began at virtually the time the child arrived and continued until the child was an adult about eighteen years of age. Beginning in the 1960’s, however, the ideas of a moral conscience and self-control were weakened as society began to celebrate self indulgence. “If it feels good, just do it”. Concurrently, social scientists began to seek the causes for lack of consciences and self-control. They concluded that the causes were poverty, depreciation, failures of the economy, the environment or political influences. In short, the idea was that the individual was not responsible. In fact the individual was a victim. Moreover, we started to believe that we must be careful not to harm a child’s self-esteem, so we rewarded them for nearly anything and everything they did regardless of the quality of the child’s performance.

There is a better book than Moss’s or Brzezinski to help with obesity. It is actually called “Willpower”. This book is chock-a-block full of research data gathered from controlled experiments conducted over the past two or three decades. It breaks willpower into its physiological and psychological components and how to use it. The book combines clearly described scientific experiments, practical advice and a path forward from the morass we find our selves in. Based on their findings, there is hope for our society. It is a must read for parents who have the job of raising the next generation as well as anyone who would like to have more self-control. And it would doubtless help the person trying to control weight.

The government wants to be in every room in our lives, let’s not let them into our dinning room!
























































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Perspective: Why Can’t We Get It Straight?

If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck and if it looks like a duck what is it?

Obama would call it a catastrophe of nature! How about this? If it looks like an act of terror, it terrorizes you and you catch the terrorists in the act, what is it? Obviously to Obama, it is a bunch of Republican gun owning zealots who don’t want background checks.

Is our President too young to remember that in 1996 Bin Laden issued a fatwā entitled: "Declaration of War against the Americans”. This document was signed by five people, four of whom represented specific Islamic groups, and it was faxed to supporters across the world.

The first attack in this war occurred on August 7,1998 when two of our embassies were truck bombed by Islamic Jihadists killing hundreds of US employees. This was followed by the terrorist’s suicide bombing of the USS Cole which cost the lives of 17 fine American sailors and then on September 11, 2001 planes piloted by Muslim Jihadists destroyed the two Trade Center buildings, severely damaged the Pentagon and crash landed in a field in Pennsylvania, all in all killing over 3,000 persons. In addition, we lost about 5,000 of our finest military fighting wars against the Islamic Jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fortunately, we have managed to thwart the Shoe Bomber’s plan in 2001, the Time Square Bomber’s in 2010 and Underwear Bomber’s in 2012. But then in 2009, a Muslim shoots and kills his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood.

Now, it turns out that the Boston Marathon bombers look like Muslims, they came from a Muslim Country went to Muslim Madrassas and attend Muslim services in Mosques, and their tools for terrorizing mimic those of known Muslim terrorists. Do you notice a pattern? Wouldn’t your first thought be that they might be part of Bin Laden’s Muslim Jihad? Not so to our President who initially stated, it’s a catastrophe! Oh, and the Fort Hood massacre is just a workplace accident.

A student taking a course in Logic or earlier generations who still held sense in common would have nailed this in a minute. Unfortunately for problem solving we are inundated with Political Correctness where nearly every term had been changed, e.g. an act of terror is a “disaster or a castrophy”, or murdering a viable fetus is “choice”. By this reasoning the surviving bomber is not an Islamic Jihadist! He is just a US citizen who is a nice guy who had a bad night with a bad brother. They were in the business of making and transporting bombs, but two accidentally fell out of their knapsacks while they stopped to view the Boston Marathon, and the others were to be delivered to New York City. However, they were too poor to own a car, so they simply “borrowed” one to make that delivery.

Are we living in Alice’s PC Wonderland, or what?

It is a fundamental fact that if you cannot define a problem, you cannot solve it. And equally important to understand is that you must use clear and unequivocal terms. If you don’t employ these principles you don’t have a ghost of a chance of being able to understand the problem let alone to solve it. Another principle of problem solving is that among the entire list of possible theories that can be generated to explain the phenomena, the simplest has the highest probability of being correct.

With all the evidence of attacks on Americans following the Bin Laden Fatwa, why do we have so much trouble calling this what it is? It is war!! This is not just a bunch of unrelated April Fool Pranks! How often do we have to see this movie before we get it? The entire planet, including the United States, is the battlefield, and these Radical Islamists who carry out these acts of terror, are enemy combatants. In an ordinary war, if a country declares war on us, we try to capture or kill the enemy combatants on the battlefield. Now, what does it matter whether the enemy combatants are US citizens who have been “self-radicalized” or where the battlefield is? Those who are radicalized or are inclined to become so do not have to live in a tribe in the Middle East to become an Islamic Jihadist! We live in the digital world, and this can link every Islamic Jihadist in the world. Further, if we believe that these US citizens have joined the Radical Islamist group who are out to kill us, they have committed treason regardless, of age, or that they look like nice guys or where they reside, and they should be treated accordingly.

If you want to know how sick and stupid we have become just notice how we handled the interview of the surviving Boston Marathon Terrorist. We had just learned that he and his brother had plans to do similar damage in New York City and God only knows where else when our Government intervened and read him his Miranda Rights, thus preventing us from obtaining pertinent information he might possess. Had this terrorist been treated as an enemy combatant, we might have learned what other heinous plans they had, and most importantly what was his brother’s connection with Chechnya and the larger worldwide Islamist Jihad.

In summary, what we need to do to combat the Muslim terrorist is to just have the guts to call a duck a duck. Since Bin Laden declared war on us 17 years ago, one Muslim Jihadist after another from all over the world, which includes the US, decided to fight in Bin Laden’s war. Is it a stretch then, to conclude that any Muslim Jihadist caught in the act of terrorizing, regardless of Nationality or Geographic location is a Bin Laden soldier, and therefore is an “enemy combatant”? The entire world knows how to deal with enemy combatants, why don’t we?

One more thing! If the radical Jihadists represent only a fraction of the worldwide Muslim population, and more importantly, if their motives and terrorist activities are repugnant to the majority of the Muslims on the planet, then why does that group, who should be our allies, remain silent? Has anyone seen or heard a Muslim Imam come out to decry and disavow the attack on the Boston Marathon?

Perspective: How Do We Keep the Middle Class From Dropping Out?

As mentioned in an earlier blog, the Middle Class in the United States achieved an historic wage earning level after WWII because the US had the only manufacturing capability on the planet unscathed from the War. Today, about 20 million Americans, mostly in the Middle Class, are out of work or working part time. It is worse than these numbers show because most of these people have skills that no longer meet the current global and digital market needs.

This shows up in the numbers. The most recent jobs report states that last month about a half a million potential workers stopped looking for work, and as a consequence, the jobless rate dropped. Based on this math, one would assume that the answer is to have all who can’t find work to stop looking. This would drive the unemployed percent to zero. Then we could forget all about the problem!

Or could we? Those in the Middle Class that stop looking for work altogether will just end up in another group, namely those classified as disabled and are thus obtaining Social Security or those who are considered poor and are obtaining food stamps and all the rest of government handouts. Obama claims that these unemployed are being exploited. Nevertheless, he does nothing tangible about their plight except to preach that they can “pull themselves up by their boot straps, if only the rich will provide the boots”. Can we stand to have the Middle Class be dependent upon the government? Worse, can we afford to have them drop out? Of course not!

Those who have been reading my blogs know that I believe we have our priorities all wrong. Contrary to what the environmental enthusiasts tell us, our lifestyle will not cause the world to collapse within our lifetime, but I can assure you that if the problem of how to help our Middle Class is not seriously addressed and soon, the cost of supporting them and their children and their children’s children will permanently harm the lifestyle we have all come to love.

As an historic fact, jobs for the under skilled have been shrinking during the past 100 years. Farm labor, for example has dropped from 33% of the total labor force to less than 2 % today. By contrast professional and skilled labor has increased to 70 % of the total work force. Because of the digital revolution and the robotization it brings with it, we can expect the skilled class to increase to about 75 to 80% while non-skilled labor shrinks to about 20-25% of the total work force.

Interestingly, jobs that require high skills are increasing faster than we are graduating those with the skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) which are required for the jobs. The number of these jobs is expanding rapidly because the digital revolution is now upon us in full force. A new factor in this equation is that manufacturing jobs that moved overseas are beginning to return to the US. It turns out that manufacturing is most efficient when located in the same proximity as design, engineering and marketing. Also, the cost of overseas labor is rising, and the cost of shipping is also rising due to rising oil prices.

Another factor affecting high tech jobs is the extremely low cost of ethane. This is a component of natural gas and a major building block for chemicals and polymers. Consequently, major chemical manufacturers are lured to build plants in the US. The group includes Dow and Shell, major US companies, but it also includes BASF, a German company, which is the world’s largest chemical manufacturer. As an aside, let me mention that these plants will hire many chemical engineers at starting salaries above $100,000 per annum.

In a sentence, we have a dilemma: We have a shortage of jobs for the unskilled workers, and a shortage of workers for the skilled jobs. This has happened so swiftly that the economy and the Middle Class have been unable to adjust to it.

The fact is we are experiencing a paradigm shift in the type of skills required to meet the market needs as the chart graphically illustrates.

                                                                              PERCENT OF US LABOR MARKET.



                                                                                         1910                            2010

Unskilled, or Low Skilled

Farm Labor                                                                         33                                 2

Other Labor                                                                        15                                  8

Operators, Foremen, Craftsmen                                          25                                 20

Sub-Total                                                                           73                                 30



Professional, Managerial, Clerical, Marketing                      27                                  70



Source: Occupational changes during the twentieth century

Ian D. Wyatt and Daniel E. Hecker



Looking at these data tells us that we have been moving from a society that functioned very well with low skilled labor to one where modern technology and even robots require highly skilled workers. In the early part of the 20th century, a one-room school six or eight grade education was all that was needed to get a decent job. But in the 21st century, a High School education may not be enough. A Trade School, Junior College and in many cases, even a College degree is required to obtain a job of “American Dream” quality..

You do not have to be an Einstein to know what is in the immediate future. Just look in your child’s hand and you will find a device that seems to be affixed to as though from birth. This amazing device reminds us old folks of the radio wrist watch of Dick Tracy days. In a way the Smart Phone is in fact a kind of two-way radio. But it is infinitely more than that! It permits the owner, even a child, to access the entire world’s knowledge on any subject in a matter of seconds. Contrast this to what the the kid had access to in the one-room school with one teacher teaching 8 grades. But the wonderment of it is that it is predicted that these so-called “phones, a mere five years old, will be in the hands of five billion earth dwellers within the next ten years. What else do we need to know to realize where this is heading at mach speed?

So, what in the face of this dramatic change in the workplace can be done to help the Middle Class to get back to work right now? Fortuitously, we have the opportunity and the need for a large amount of such under-skilled labor because of the discovery of the huge quantities of natural gas and oil right here in our back yard. To get this low cost product to market requires massive amounts of infrastructure that does not exist.. This includes piping the products to users such as the chemical and electricity producers and to export markets. Piping is also needed to get the gas to locations where it can be used for automotive fuel. This fuel, called compressed natural gas CNG, is already being used in trucks and busses, but the shortage of infrastructure to create the CNG and get the refueling facilities in place is slowing the adoption of this low-cost, environmentally friendly automotive fuel. And as the March 23rd article in the Olean Times explains, the shortage of infrastructure is showing up right here.

“The biggest drawback to the use of compressed natural gas (CNG) is that while there is an estimated 10,000 vehicles in the State of New York capable of using CNG -10% of the vehicles in the Nation- there are only about 100 CNG refueling stations in the State, and one-third of those are public”

The work to build this infrastructure does not require a college degree. Mostly it requires know-how that the jobless already have. Therefore this group of workers could begin work at once.

To increase the number of persons who are skilled in STEM is another matter. Two actions are required.

• Find a way to convince females who represent half of college graduates to take and graduate with        majors in STEM. Currently, the percentage is only about 5%

• Change the immigration policy so that foreign students who major in STEM can stay and work in the United States.

As stated at the beginning of this blog, our priorities are out of whack. The idea that our infrastructure of roads and schools must be fixed as a priority is silly. We have had one major bridge collapse in the last ten years with minimal damage to human life. And we do not see traffic backed up because the roads are crumbling and therefore impassable. Another silly idea is that we have to spend billions on new pre-school programs. We know from Head Start that the kids who are not in that program reach equality with those who are in about 1-3 years. We have always known what to do to improve our schools and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s study has confirmed it! The schools need two things, namely, a good teacher and a good parent. The way the Foundation determined who was a good teacher was to ask the students. As a former student, I am shocked, shocked to just now learn that students know which teachers are good and which were not!

Now, you would think that the US Government would leap at this once in a lifetime opportunity to do something special to help the Middle Class. Unfortunately however, based on the way our governmental leaders talk and act and the low priority they have given this problem, one has to assume that they have no clue what is going on and what has to be done about it. Maybe we should give them Dick Tracy watches.

Perspective: Easter Bunny Banned in District Schools

News Item:

"The Indian River School District’s concern over issues of religious expression in the schools — a matter discussed and debated for the past three years — reached new heights this week when officials mandated on Tuesday that no school in the district can host or celebrate the Easter holiday with egg hunts, candy or the Easter Bunny, etc.The recommendation was made at the suggestion of the district’s administrative superintendent, Susan Bunting, on strong advice from attorney Jason Gosselin. It follows a recent partial legal settlement, announced at last month’s school board meeting, that was an attempt to bring the district’s policy on religion “more in line with the U.S. Constitution” after two Jewish families filed suit claiming the district had pursued pro-Christian policies."

Exactly what does the Constitution say about this?

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.

Wow! That is a new one!! Celebrating a religion is equal to Establishing a religion! Letting the Bunny into the school is tantamount to the government establishing a religion? How scaring can it get? But hey, if the Jews are so upset, why not give their “Jewish Bunny” equal time? Oh, by the way, did you know that Easter is not even mentioned in the Bible?

This would be hilarious and just the stuff for Saturday Night Live, if it were not so serious. But the Controllers and kill-joys just can’t leave us alone. As Ronald Regan would say, “There they go again”!

Let me ask you to imagine that you knew nothing about Easter and then were told that every child believed that they if they put fancy baskets in the right place on a designated night in Spring then a bunny rabbit could lay decorated eggs in them and put candy in, as well. You are correct! You would surely want to ban such a practice straight away to prevent the child from growing up a complete loony. And what if they wanted to bring that filled basket to school to show their friends? Oh, my God!!!

If Easter is not found in the Bible, then where did it come from? Now, wouldn’t this be a perfect question for school children to ask? Is it too much to ask that a school board president, a superintendent, a principal and a teacher know that we live in an age when we have all the knowledge the entire world has ever known right in the palm of our hand where in a matter of minutes we can learn the truth about any subject? And would not this be the perfect time to have the kids use the I-phone they have glued to their hands and get them to stop texting with it long enough to look up the origin of Easter?

When I heard about the controversy over the celebration of Easter, I immediately grabbed our I-Pad to look up the origin of Easter, and in about three minutes found the following, which I quote verbatim:

“Spring is in the air! Flowers and bunnies decorate the home. Father helps the children paint beautiful designs on eggs dyed in various colors. These eggs, which will later be hidden and searched for, are placed into lovely, seasonal baskets. The wonderful aroma of the hot cross buns mother is baking in the oven waft through the house. Forty days of abstaining from special foods will finally end the next day. The whole family picks out their Sunday best to wear to the next morning’s sunrise worship service to celebrate the savior’s resurrection and the renewal of life. Everyone looks forward to a succulent ham with all the trimmings. It will be a thrilling day. After all, it is one of the most important religious holidays of the year.” Easter, right?

“Wrong This is a description of an ancient Babylonian family—2,000 years before Christ—honoring the resurrection of their god, Tammuz, who was brought back from the underworld by his mother/wife, Ishtar (after whom the festival was named). As Ishtar was actually pronounced “Easter” in most Semitic dialects, it could be said that the event portrayed here is, in a sense, Easter.”

“Of course, the occasion could easily have been a Phrygian family honoring Attis and Cybele, or perhaps a Phoenician family worshipping Adonis and Astarte. Also fitting the description well would be an Israelite family honoring the Canaanite Baal and Ashtoreth. Or this depiction could just as easily represent any number of other fertility celebrations of death and resurrection—including the modern Easter celebration as it has come to us through the Anglo-Saxon fertility rites of the goddess Eostre or Ostara. These are all the same festivals, separated only by time and culture.”

In other words, this yearly event has been celebrated for thousands of years by nearly every group on the globe as a fun time. The timing connects with the ending of Winter and the beginning of new life at Spring. So why not celebrate with all the humans on the planet who have done so for millennia?

The problem is worse in the first six grades. First the schools dropped recess and found that the boys had to be given Ritalin. Then the Christmas tree was tossed out of the school, and now the Easter Bunny must go. How boring do we want our elementary schools to be? If the kill-joys are permitted to go on like this, children will have no fun in school at all! Hasn’t anyone noticed that our kids spend more time texting than having fun with other kids doing silly things such as playing tag, decorating Christmas trees and showing off their Easter baskets? And you wonder why the drop out rate is high? As Sherlock Holmes would say: “It’s elementary (school) dear Watson.

How about this for an answer for the school board president? If these controllers won’t let your school teach religion, maybe they will permit you to teach history? If our schools are truly interested in educating our children (versus indoctrinating them) but cannot teach anything about religion, why not let them teach that mankind has been celebrating the spring equinox for as far back as history has been recorded? Moreover, is it too much to ask that our teachers, administrators and school boards have enough courage and be creative enough to get around these “controllers”? Now, here’s an idea!! Replace the word Easter with it’s ancient (i.e. historic) predecessor, Ishtar and go right on with the Ishtar bunnies, Ishtar eggs, Ishtar baskets and Ishtar egg hunts!

PERSPECTIVE: MANUFACTURING AND THE MIDDLE CLASS

President Obama constantly tells us that the “Middle Class” is in terrible shape and the people who qualify as middle class must be helped in every way possible with US government financial support. His idea is that the middle class is in such bad shape that we must take money away from those who could invest capital to make jobs for the middle class and instead just give that money to the so-called Middle Class.

Now, if Obama were really serious about helping the middle class, he might have noticed the Marcellus Shell development which will provide us with an abundant supply of the lowest cost most environmentally friendly energy on the planet. This combined with the development of new manufacturing technology is causing manufacturing to return from off shore. Both could be accelerated if Obama would get his government out of the way by eliminating unnecessary regulations and taxes on both the developers of our huge reserves of natural gas and the investors in the new manufacturing opportunities. This is what really would help the Middle Class!

The reasons why manufacturing is actually returning to the United States after a three decade hiatus are:

• The United States leads the world in digital technology which reduces the speed from product design to manufacture.



• We are learning that when manufacturing is separated from design and engineering, which are evolving with the needs of the market, manufacturing cannot stay apace.



• The natural gas windfall in the US reduces the cost of energy for manufacturing and also produces raw materials for the chemical industry.



• US labor productivity continues to grow, thus becoming an ever smaller part of manufacturing cost



• There is a better relationship between management and hourly workers who play a larger role in product and engineering design



• The cost of labor is rising in China and other low labor cost countries



• The price of oil is rising, thus increasing the cost to ship product from China and other off-shore manufacturers to the US

Much of the information that will be provided in this blog about the return of manufacturing comes from an article in the December, 2012 issue of the Atlantic written by Charles Fishman. The article states that as recently as five years ago the conventional wisdom held that there was little short of a hamburger that could be manufactured competitively in the United States. But there is a major flaw in the idea of off shoring. It has been thought for several decades that engineering and design could be done in the US and the actual assembling of the product could be done anywhere. It turns out that when you separate assembling from engineering and design to chase low labor costs, you lose the evolving development of manufacturing itself. This occurs slowly at first but the gap grows and you never get back. What is dawning on smart American Companies, according to the author, is that when you outsource the making of a product the whole business goes with it.

The article highlights GE’s decision to bring back their GeoSpring water heater from China to Appliance Park.”. Only a few years ago GE was trying to sell Appliance Park, but now, after years of offshore production, General Electric decided to move much of its far-flung appliance manufacturing operations back home. Fishman states that GE hasn’t just changed course, they have “pirouetted”.

A problem became apparent from the start. GE had forgotten how to make the GeoSping heater. So, a new style team was assembled and assigned to develop and manufacture the product. The team consisted of design engineers, manufacturing engineers, line workers and staffs from marketing and sales. Management was deliberately absent. The team realized immediately that the manufacturing design was all wrong. So they went to work to redesign how the product should be made. The final result was that they cut the cost of materials by 25% and cut the work hours to assemble the product from10 hours in China to two at Appliance Park. Consequently, GE could set the retail price 20% bellow the China-made retail price.

The article reports that there are other factors favoring producing a product in the US beyond just costs. Historically the design of a product would last seven years or more. Today, that time has shrunk to about two to three years. It turns out that factories have a learning curve also. It takes a while to settle into a new product or design. This means that a factory is just getting the hang of a new product just as a new product or design is being introduced. What the companies are finding is that this is virtually impossible to manage that problem if the assembly is off shore.

There is another factor that enters into the equation of where to manufacture a product. That is the need to shorten the time from a product’s inception to when it hits the market. Three dimensional printing is a new technology of computerized molding to produce a prototype on the basis of designs on a computer screen. With this technology a prototype can be produced in a matter of minutes, and variations can be tried to eliminate flaws. Consequently, factory management can determine the cost the next day.

Another major difference between the situation today and that of 15-20 years ago is the relationship of management and labor. The atmosphere is different. Management is aware of the problems of offshore production and therefore tries to create a better workplace environment. Importantly also, hourly workers play a larger role in the decision making.

There is an example from the article that epitomizes how the new team approach improves manufacturing, and it is worth mentioning. GE wanted to try to make a dishwasher more competitively. So they assigned a team at Appliance Park to see if they could develop a better lower cost dishwasher. Hourly workers were included in the team. As originally designed, the door had four visible screws. The marketing people wanted the door to have no screws. The workers liked the idea. Four screws takes a lot of assembly time.The engineers came up with a design with one hidden screw and a rod. The whole thing was sleeker, and cheaper. It would not have been possible, however, without the team members all located in the same place.

It turns out that GE is not the only company that is moving the manufacture of many of its products back to America. In-sourcing solves a number of problems. It simplifies transportation; it gives people confidence in the security of their ideas; it is easier to manage costs; and it is easier to get the right product to the right customer.

Last October, my nephew, Barron Smith gave me a chance to visit four machine shops in the Dallas area where he also operates such a facility. During this tour I was able to see first hand the latest cutting and shaping technology for manufacturing parts. This is something everyone should see, because all of the opportunities and problems that American manufacture has to deal with are on display. The new technologies for forming, shaping and cutting a piece of material to meet some specification are just amazing. And these shops are not just working with ordinary iron or steel anymore. The materials include complex and constantly changing alloys and even plastics. The sophisticated use of the computer in managing some of the complex machinery is inspiring, and one gets the feeling that we “ain’t seen nothin’ yet”. As a consequence of this, the workers must be skilled, and more than that, they have to be able to adapt to new methods of working with newer materials such as alloys and plastics as well as the addition of computerization in the operation of the machine itself.

Which leads to a problem that the shop owners have, namely, how to get and keep workers who are capable of doing more and more sophisticated tasks? Each manager in the plants lamented the fact that he cannot see where the new employees will come from considering the state of our K-12 system and the under supported Vo-tech schools. One of the owners has become so discouraged about his that he has set up his own Vo-Tech school right on his plant site with a professional educator to head it up!

In summary, American manufacturing is making a come back, and it could become bigger than ever before. We are witnessing a virtual revolution in the creation of and manufacture of products which will lead to more good jobs in America than ever thought possible only a few years ago We still have innovative persons at all levels in the process as the GE example shows, and such innovation is not exclusively held by the big companies such as GE. I observed the same thing in our machine shops in Dallas. What is new is that the jobs will be more sophisticated than ever before as more and more the workers become an integral part of the designing of the product. This means that these will be well paying jobs for those with the skills, and who are willing to work.

Finally, it would help if the main stream media and our legislators would take the time to catch up with this exciting and vitally important development. For example, if our legislators understood these principles, they could help by removing barriers that thwart the development and expansion of US energy development and manufacturing. Tax and regulatory barriers that make American manufacture less competitive globally should be removed. It would also help if our school system placed more focus on VoTech and less on college where only half of the graduates can find work commensurate with their training. Research that helps expand manufacturing efficiency should be supported and even subsidized where appropriate. Such cooperation between industry and government would do more to expand the middle class than anything else President Obama has in mind. Moreover, with the development of low cost energy and if manufacturing comes back, our economy will start to grow with the attendant rise in revenue which will help ameliorate our debt problem.

PERSPECTIVE: ON ABORTION

Since we are acknowledging the fortieth anniversary of Row V. Wade, it seems appropriate to reflect on   what we have gained, if anything, from this ruling.

First let’s see what has happened to language in our country. Old words and old definitions do not meet today’s politically correct sensibilities. As an example, consider the re-definition of the word “acts of terror”. These heinous acts are planned to destroy other humans. Today, acts of terror are now defined as “man made disasters”. There is no question that an act of terror is a “man made disaster”
Abortion is such a word. We now call it “choice”. Abortion, plain and simple is the deliberate destruction of an incipient human. The aborted fetus was on the way to becoming a human being, and the natural process was cut short by the decision of a human being who “choose” to terminate it. Should these acts be called “man-made disasters”?

Since 1973 when the Supreme Court decided that the Constitution permitted a pregnant woman to decide to have her viable fetus killed by a health provider, over 40 million potential Americans have been killed or about one million per year. For comparison cancer, our worst killer causes about 550,000 deaths per year. And there are about 15,000 murders per year of which about 9,000 are from firearms. Can you imagine the outrage and demand for action if there were one million murders per year related to firearms? The demand for repeal of the Second Amendment would be ear shattering.

These statistics should give us pause. How can abortions be two times the rate of cancer deaths and 100 times the rate of murders in our country with nary a comment by the media, the church or any other so-called responsible group? This is nothing less than an outrage, and it should cause all to scream out loud.

Part of the question about what is abortion stems from the question of when does life begin. Abortion advocates believe that life only begins when the fetus is born and leaves the womb, unless the abortionist fails to terminate the fetus, and it is born still alive, then it is within the right of the abortion provider to kill the now human baby.

Well, as any fool knows, life begins at conception, period. We have always known this. If we did not know it right away, the woman whose menses stopped had a very strong clue. Then when the fetus was large enough to stir around in her womb, the woman knew it and usually asked her husband or boy friend to place his hand on her stomach and she would say, “Did you feel it kick”. Whereupon, he would reply, “Yes, and I wonder if it is a girl or boy!”. Today, there is no guess work. We can tell within days that conception has taken place, and then with sonograms, can watch the progress, and long before the birth date, can tell if it will be a boy or girl.

It may surprise you to learn who does choose abortions. Here are the facts:

• 93% of all abortions are because the child is unwanted or inconvenient

• 6% of abortions relate to physical health problems regarding mother or child

• 1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest

Of all the information given above, the most important and disgusting is the child is unwanted or inconvenient. This should shock us and frighten us to a point where we should want to do something about it. Choosing to abort a fetus should not be a unilateral decision because there are others who have a stake in this incipient human life; namely, the father, the relatives of the potential child. Society also has a stake because it needs new lives to replace those who are leaving life so that society and our culture can be sustained. It is an interesting and frightening statistic that Western Civilization is not replacing itself. As a result it is predicted that Europe will become Muslim within the current century. That is scary because the technological developments we have come to rely upon and enjoy have been created principally by members of the Western Civilization. If the supply of humans in what we call western culture continues to diminish, the outcome and result can be predicted. The picture is not pretty.

Consider this. If a person tires of a pet and drops it into the street, it is considered “cruelty to animals” for which one can be arrested. Because we are concerned about this horrible act society has formed an organization called the Society for Prevention to the Cruelty of Animals (SPCA). SPCA facilities exist in nearly every neighborhood in America.

If we have no compunction about providing funds for the sheltering of unwanted animals vis a vis the SPCA, what would be so terrible about providing a comparable organization for the handling of these unwanted potential citizens? If the word Orphanage is too repugnant to use in our politically correct environment, surely we can find a euphemistic and politically correct term to define what such a facility might be called. Might I be so bold to suggest the “Society for the Prevention of the Abortion of Unwanted Fetuses (SPAUF)?

PERSPECTIVE: WHY THE NEW ENERGY SUPPY IS IMPORTANT!

This Blog will pick up where the last one left off.



At last the Media has caught on to the idea that the United States is up to its eyeballs with natural gas and oil supplies due to deep well drilling technology that has recently been demonstrated to be viable and environmentally safe. It has also suddenly become known that the cost of compressed natural gas (CNG) is significantly less than gasoline and diesel fuels and that it is being adopted by trucks and buses everywhere. And soon the public will learn that when we abandon the foolish idea of using corn and soy beans for automotive fuels, the price of foods will come down. Once the public becomes better informed, perhaps they will start to lean on their representatives to get off such senseless ideas as windmills, solar panels and using foods to substitute for transportation fuels, and instead get on with the use of our own low cost environmentally friendly natural gas to get our economy moving again. This “windfall” will not only result in low cost energy and lower food prices but it will strengthen the dollar and create a multitude of new high paying jobs. And if that is not enough, getting off foreign oil means that the United States could reap multibillion dollar cost savings by withdrawing its military commitment to the Middle East and let the Russians and the Chinese deal with the radical Muslims and their Arab Spring. What’s not to like?

In addition to methane, the main energy source, natural gas contains other hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane and butane which are attractive feed stocks for chemical plants. Shell Oil and Dow Chemical Company have just recently announced multi-billion dollar plants based on natural gas products. Normally, these chemical companies would obtain their feed stocks and energy sources from oil, and, in all probability, without this new low cost supply, these chemical and polymer producers would locate their new plants overseas. And there is another development which needs be noted. This new low cost energy source coupled with our innovative and rapidly developing digital technology is attracting manufacturing back into the United States. More on that subject will be in a future blog.

Now, you would think that the environmentalists would be wild about natural gas, because it produces about 50% less carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels. It also practically eliminates the production of toxic gases from the combustion of gasoline and diesel fuel. Finally, natural gas does not require a petrochemical refinery. Actually, environmentalists have been trying to kill refineries for years, and for the most part they have been successful. With the exception of two new refineries under construction out west, we haven’t built a new refinery in the United States in 35 years because of expensive environmental regulations and the NIMBY syndrome (Not In My back Yard).

Nevertheless, we can expect the “spoil sport” environmental activists to do everything they can to thwart the development and exploitation of this new drilling technology. However, it will be difficult for them because these new supplies of energy are being procured from privately held land. Drilling on public land, wildlife refuges or off-shore is not needed at this time. Nevertheless, we can expect the Obama Admistration to do everything within its power to regulate natural gas development claiming that fossil fuels are the cause of climate change, citing such examples as Sandy, Katrina and the large number of tornados.

Fortunately for us this energy windfall is being spear headed and financed by the big oil companies; consequently, this exciting development does not require new entrepreneurs who have to learn how to run businesses, raise capital and develop the US and export markets. Most importantly, it does not require the Federal Government to provide capital and subsidies to make it competitive as do wind, solar and bio energy sources.

The biggest advantage of this enormous new source of energy is that it will doubtless cause the GNP of the United States to grow at a huge rate. This, in turn, will produce large increases in Federal revenue, which in all probability, will cover the cost of the Medicar , Social Security and other entitlements that the voters will not permit their representatives to reduce or even touch.

This new source of energy will last more than 100 years, and if we believe that it will create a huge economic boom, then we should stop worrying about the problem with entitlements. Actually that problem will end in about thirty years anyway.

Here is why. The 80 million “boomers” are retiring at the rate of 10,000 per day and are in the final two or three decades of their lives, and the next generation is only half the size of the boomers. Therefore, it is clear that the entitlement problem will take care of itself without the government or anyone else doing anything about it.

What this tells us is that we should stop wasting time fretting about whether the Congress and our current President are hopelessly gridlocked. Instead, we should hope that they remain gridlocked so the private energy entrepreneurs can get the infrastructure in place to provide and transport the new low cost energy to us the consumers as fast as possible so that we can realize the large increase in GNP. All our representatives have to do is get out of the way.

The voters are not stupid; they consume energy and food, and most of them seek work, so we can expect them to support this development even while the Obama Administration tries to convince them that that this opportunity should be regulated so as to promote wind, solar, bio and other so-called clean energy ideas. Consequently, sooner or later they will be screaming for their representatives to get on board with this energy windfall.

Finally, the mantra of the Conservative Party should be this: Waste no time worrying about entitlements, do everything we can to capitalize on this “energy windfall” and speed us on a sensible path that will keep the United States the greatest country on the planet for the next one hundred years.