It’s About Making Babies!

It was a long day, and I hadn’t gotten to supper. So about 8:45 I headed to the Conoco ‘OnCue’ gas station/convenience store. As I was leaving, a young lady pulled up in a gorgeously detailed new Dodge pickup, fancy wheels and all. She was getting out, adjusting the spaghetti straps to her gown, a lovely black ankle length gown with and offset vertical blue panel, sparkely highlights. Tonight might be the junior/senior prom, maybe?

So there I am, in yesterday’s Bib overalls. “Nice outfit!” I told her.

She had a kind smile, that is what I remember. And the likelihood that the dress probably cost in the hundreds of dollars. For probably one or maybe two occasions.

And for some reason, the brouhaha today about how ‘evil’ Wal-Mart is for announcing instore health clinics came to mind. And all the other outraged and angry complaints about how evil Wal-Mart is, how many jobs they kill and businesses they cause to collapse.

All this anger doesn’t make sense to me. I can only see this much agitation if someone is deliberately buying propaganda channels and targeting susceptible audiences, such as the elderly and unemployed. And I still can’t see why someone would be angry with a store chain. The solution is the same as for bad TV — change the channel. Don’t go in. Shop somewhere else. Let your friends, family, and neighbors know about better choices that you enjoy.

To my mind, Wal-Mart and the other similar stores before them such as Target, K-mart, SS Kresge, Woolworths, and the early dime stores and their progeny Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Big Lots have redefined poverty and base level of living. By offering reasonable products and realistic prices, by use of innovative buying and other business practices, Wal-Mart and the other low-end chains establish the floor of the economy in the US. The competition challenges higher-end merchants. By covering the lowest-end buyers they create business niches at mid and higher levels, for custom work and for better quality products.

So how is it that our country has what I consider a plague of protesters over Wal-Mart, and we are still selling off our daughters at high-priced showings such as proms (promenade) and other ‘coming out’ galas?

But the smile was very lovely.

I watched a bit of Fox New network this morning. The financial show was going round table about what the impact would be if American car makers stopped building cars.

First, they failed to identify what they mean. Ford and GM have both, over the years, build Toyota brand cars as well as others. Ford built the pickup I owned a while back — built it in Canada. Chrysler is owner by German company Daimler-Benz. Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai all make cares in the US.

So what the heck does it mean to ‘buy American’, which I suppose means American Union Labor built, since the companies may or may not be building American cars in America, with all American components. Which you can do with Honda, Toyota, etc. But the bumper sticker crowd, the union organizers and sign wavers all act like Ford, GM, and Chrysler are all good American companies.

I understand Ford has a European reputation for building great quality, moderate priced, fuel efficient cars. None of which they will sell here in the US. Cars that meet European (and EPA) emission goals years in the future. But, rather than sell product lines that might compromise the big-ticket lines popular here … Buy American, indeed.

I recall in tooling up for WWII America had the production lines for cars and trucks that were converted to building jeeps, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and the other vehicles and weapons needed to defend America. We have dismantled the steel industry, and have been selling scrap iron at a stupendous rate to China. Now, let’s see, we can’t process ore into iron in a significant way any longer, we are sending what available masses of iron we have overseas, the production lines we have are more and more geared specifically to automobiles, or are being shut down, or are being run by foreign interests — how long can this continue and preserve the industrial resilience that let us weather the storm of war?

It takes years to start up an industry. To get the material flow going, to get the experienced engineers to build the plants and design the products, to get the experienced leaders that know how to manage the process and people involved in producing a product, and to develop the depth of skill and experience needed to adapt from one product to another. The more capable China becomes, the more alluring it will be to utilize their economic might to shape the world in a way that they find more pleasing. Like purchasing unrestricted, unmonitored access through their San Diego harbor purchase, where they can move material to and from the US as they will. Is the operation in San Diego primarily military, intelligence, economic? In what proportion? And China is starting to build cars in a big way.

The story is told that the parts of the body contended over who was the most important. The rectum simply clamped down and waited — eventually the bickering dies down as the body discomfort builds and disrupts organ after organ. And they concur that the rectum is most able to influence — to stop — the body. China is there, with a strangle hold on a building number of streams of components and products important to the US economy. Cell phones? iPods? Cars? Pens? Hand tools?

Tree huggers rejoice that Pittsburgh is so transformed from the days of the thriving steel industry that Pittsburgh is now counted one of the finer places to live in the US. I see this as a community advantage, but also proof of how completely the US has dismantled it’s heavy industry. As India, Malaysia, and China take over steel manufacture, what price to American security?

In one sense I see no threat to America if car manufacture moves over the border or overseas, or into foreign company’s hands. On the other hand, we lose another flexibility in our economy. We gain another vulnerability to our national security and our national economy by handing other nations control of processes and skills we no longer have direct access to.

The Fox program? My impression was that the talking heads got great photo opportunities, no conclusions were reached, and what I consider fundamental issues were ignored or unrecognized.