Listen to a great story, it’s worth your while..
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi
This is an excellent read, and a good study..
The NUMMI grounds, you might not have noted this is where that slick little Toyota Corolla S was built, and the Toyota Tacoma that sold quite well here in the NW.
Obama-Lands-at-NUMMI
What better landing place could President Obama have found to land nearest Solyndra than a huge EMPTY parking lot designed for a factory of 5000 workers! This picture was taken by a DIYer who was also a Mechanical Engineer employed here at the time of the well publicized Solyndra photo opp.
Yes, you know lots of people who could care less about Solyndra, but just trying to process what happened at NUMMI is enough to boggle the mind. You attempt to get your hands around GM, their gross mis-management that continues to this day, and a Government who interferes with bankruptcy laws that have been ironed out over hundreds of years to assure that investors and lenders alike have some chance of getting a portion of what is owed to them back through the courts.
This HUGE manufacturing plant was fully updated, a fortune spent to comply with EPA demands, and an ever-present force of Goons on site to write-up a non compliance matter in the most unfriendly and unhelpful way. Some say it was as if the EPA was working for a foreign entity that was attempting to force the closure of the plant.. so they could move the work out of California and add another 5000 people to the un-employment roles in the Bay Area?
If none of this means a thing to you, maybe a note that NUMMI spent 180 million in their paint shop alone, much of which was to comply with new EPA requirements, and then Tesla bought the entire property for $42 Million?
Toyota will hopefully have enough influence to build a car like the Prius here.. sure there’s plenty of people who say they want a Tesla, but there’s only so many people who can afford such a car.. especially the ones without jobs 🙂 It’s cars today, it may be bread tomorrow that they can’t afford. but that song plays on in California…..
Have a great weekend, and do give some thought as to where the jobs will be tomorrow. My bet is those who promise you the most free stuff will have the least jobs, and the highest rents and property taxes. It isn’t what you make that counts, it’s what it cost you to live.
GM deserved to die, but what we need to remember, no matter how bad it was, it ran better AND lost less money than our Government does today!
NUMMI was a Gem, I think about President Obama setting down there in his Helicopter, in my mind, it was like landing on a field of gold, so you could walk a short distance to visit a failing Hog Farm (Solyndra). How sad it is…
George B.
more reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI
Thanks for the writeup George. I just wanted to add that for every worker inside the plant there were 10 workers outside – vendors, suppliers, consultants, contractors, logistics, etc. A lot goes on in building a vehicle. So the impact was a big blow to the local economy and beyond. Cali is one of the most anti-mfg, anti-business states and lost most of its manufacturing base in but a few short years. It became a white-collar, service state. No real jobs here. Now I wonder what will happen when the service sector will move overseas as well, to countries like India and Pakistan. Just try calling a technical service line for one of your electronic devices and you see what I mean. We are shipping our steel to China and giving them our best technologies and then buying back their products. Of course the EPA is not concerned about all that bunker fuel being spent in the process, under-age kids sleeping under dangerous equipment on factory floors, let alone US jobs! I wonder how much longer this can be sustained.
Dan,
Perhaps it only has to go on long enough where there is no retreat? I just hope we can get the barbed wire up in time to keep them in the mess they created, I’m talking about the politicians of course. Imagine, in another 10 years, the better jobs may be in Mexico. The Children of Greece Believe in Magic, but the Children of California carry even more debt!
What’s so hypocritical about all these well adjusted racially harmonious equal rights cheerleaders for post industrial service society is that where some people have hateful ideas running in their head these people are experts in applied racism. They want their kids and yours to go to 16 years of public school and have their heads filled with liberal arts gibberish and then get some government office job until retirement at age 55. And yes they do act like government agencies from competing nations trying to stamp out any kind of blue collar activity. But then they fill up on foreign made factory work usually made by some kind of “others” and that’s just fine by them. They have their homes built by Mexicans and their food picked too. I wish I could cram it into their heads that as they spew nimby-ism on their quest toward a workless society and early retirement that they are practicing masters in a type a race servitude that has not been seen in a long time. And none of it has anything to do with a free market, which is what they blame as the fruits of their policies are revealed. It’s totally about the limitations of the flow of goods, services and people. And as their dream is exposed as the turd sandwich it is their answer is more limits on productive work.
Again, this comment is for DIYers..
For those who decided to read comments, I think reading this article below in the Huffington Post is very useful in helping you to make decisions as to where you’ll live.
Bob Samuels >IS< so typical of the all knowing all caring liberal who knows there's a very simple answer for any problem.. no matter how complex. Don’t we know that Bob would dismiss any similarity between Greece and California, and there will never be a reason to re-access the wages and benefits the California ruling class votes in for themselves, or the Social Programs they run to assure they retain the power. Can’t we all predict what will happen next??? Just like Greece, it will be impossible for California to sustain the high wages and pensions paid by the tax payers, and the ruling class there will either mitigate the transfer of wealth or watch more jobs and taxpayers move out of State. Do note that our boy Bob thinks that the California Market is a pot of gold. His Simple fix is more taxes, too bad the taxes weren’t jacked up some more before NUMMI closed, it might have helped right? What will happen next? States like California will demand that all States need help tender their debt, it will be the fault of other States for not being as punitive in acessing taxes! They’ll beg the Federal Government to assure that all States follow California's example as they are the dispensers of truth, wisdom, and understanding. Our boy Bob knows all he needs is a little more authority over others who are not as smart as he is, and every gear in every machine will turn smoothly. It is at the heart of liberalism…. the solution will always be to give those who rule over you more authority to fix the problem. Just exactly like Greece. But.. just exactly like Greece, sooner or later you run out of money. What Bob thinks doesn’t matter that much, the fact that the President of the United States has zero understanding of the Machine, and agrees with Bob should scare us all.. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-samuels/why-california-is-broke-a_b_846143.html
Where should you move? Well, unlike Bob, I don’t have a simple answer, it depends on your skills, and what you want out of life. If you want to work like a dog to pay your taxes, if you want a new car every two years, the place you want to live will be different than the man who could care less about a new anything.
One of the Mantras of a useful idiot “open your eyes.” Liberalisim allows the useful idiot to find very simple answers to the most complex problems man will ever ponder, and all of the solutions involve you giving more authority to them who want to solve the problem for you. Was it a little too warm today? maybe a little too cold? Don’t worry, I can fix that for you 🙂
G
we haven’t had a president since at least bush jr. you can’t blame obama till you have blamed bush, and both of those arguements/sentiments are very, very moot.
Bill said it correctly when he used the word servitude, and thats what the real point is.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/norgaard_page_cached.png
Here is a google cache of the university of oregon’s faculty web page for one the the big thinkers behind the new green world order. Google cache was necessary because after her book interview recently where she said climate change skepticism was an illness to be treated there was a storm of critisim led by Alex jones and someone took her data offline. Note all of her areas of expertise that qualify her as a climate expert.
Come on Bill! You’re trying to scam me.. the Date is April 1st on this page, and it has EVERY right to be written on that date.
Norgaard is a rather stunning example of a mind that likely couldn’t find the main spring in a pocket watch, but from the pulpit and her minor position, she “Professes” to know how the universe works.
Ok, this is an added note… and an apology to Bill.. I guess this is real.. I read a few of the endorsements of her book “Living with Denial.” I was moved by this one..
“Drawing on the way Norwegians deal with the reality of global warming, Kari Norgaard provides an incisive account of the way individuals’ avoidance patterns reflect social norms of feeling, attending, and discourse. As such, this book is an important step in the development of our sociological understanding of denial.”
I can’t help but think about the way Norwegians hand out Nobel Prizes, but having traveled outside the classroom, I fully understand that not all Norwegians think exactly alike and therefore they don’t all deserve the ridicule….. nor are all Norwegians so homely as this poor girl, so we should not make the same mistake and type cast them all.
Actually, that picture was the most flattering one of her I’ve seen.
OK Bill, you got me interested enough in Norgaard to read some.. the wired magazine article was good. We older people know that the number one mission of wired is to sell magazines! I sensed a big shift in that magazine’s coverage and tone WHEN they were forced to confront that reality. It’s clearly more about selling magazines now, it’s what Capitialists do 🙂
In the Norgaard interview, she says this: “Another factor is that we no longer have a sense of permanence. Another psychologist, Robert Lifton, wrote about what the existence of atomic bombs did to our psyche. There was a sense that the world could end at any moment.”
Norgaard is like a child who has not yet discovered that she can harbor her own thoughts! She is so focused on the sinister deeds of man, that she doesn’t seem to note that the planet could >again< muster in the extinction of animals at the top of the food chain. Thanks to gravity maps, we know the probable cause, and it wasn't man's doing! But even more alarming is her own denial of who and waht she is! This is no special girl, yes she is young, but most of us at her age understood that any sense of 'permanence' is usually held by the less mature or defective mind. We are here for but an instant!
Yeah, with that dorky face it did kind of look like an April fools joke and her list of accomplishments reads like parody too clever for any skeptic to write But she was all over the place on bbc and NPR and MIT press does sell her book.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T37f5yl4uas&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Here Monkton and Alex jones have a discussion of her work and in general the idea that people with no qualifications are going to sling around accusations of mental illness to discredit non-believers and subvert democracy. They add a letter she published three years ago to Obama telling him there was no time to wait for consensus of the public and that actions such as shutting down coal plants must be taken immediately.
I wonder if she would take the time to do a study on what happens when work and productivity becomes abstract due to living in the ruling class and having all your material needs met without exchanging anything that resembles work. Does the mind start to wander? Maybe it even finds fault with all the economic and social activities that it has not needed for success in its circles.
I can’t put words in her mouth but I will say that I once heard someone with skills similar to hers dismiss engineering, physics and chemistry in comparison to sociology by calling thr former “penis sciences”.
Curse you Bill, I’ve invested a half day researching her, you motivated me to make a page on Her… I focus on her ‘God Like’ opinion of herself!
Understandable. She is a perfect storm. Poster girl.
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