Political QRM

Way back in the day when I lived in the “Apartment Deluxe”, (where I lived for nearly ten years), I didn’t have a television. I didn’t feel like I needed one. At least not one that would have cost me thirty dollars a month for the cable hookup. Can’t honestly say that I missed much.

Upon meeting my wife, I discovered that she was a “TV Baby”. Every day, upon arriving home from work, she would sit and unwind with one or another “mindless sitcom”. No worries. Some folks come home to a martini or a glass of wine. Others to a gym. Still others to the daily chores of cooking and cleaning up. “Mindless Sitcom”? Hey…could be worse. But I’m leading up to something, here.

Mike Rowe is best known for his hosting of a Discovery Channel program called “Dirty Jobs” 1. Sure…you’ve heard his voice endorsing an auto maker and narrating other documentaries; you may have even heard him sing with the Baltimore Opera 2. His big “claim-to-fame”, though, is “Dirty Jobs” .
Mister Rowe is an oddity. Not for his amazingly quick wit or his “everyman” demeanor and sense of humor, but for the fact that he is a “Right-leaner” in an industry that is pointed solidly Left.

In the “Where Is He Now” section of this essay, we find him using his mental brawn grappling with an issue that has been eroding our nation’s foundation for more than a generation. The notion that you can only succeed if you spend at least four years in college. 3

From his website’s opening paragraph:

“A trillion dollars in student loans. Record high unemployment. Three million good jobs that no one seems to want. The goal of Profoundly Disconnected is to challenge the absurd belief that a four-year degree is the only path to success. The Skills Gap is here, and if we don’t close it, it’ll swallow us all.”

The message is clear. MILLIONS of high school kids, (detrimentally), being sold the idea of a college education. Millions of the earlier college-educated managers not only remembering that ethos, but buying in to it so heavily that they insisted on such an education for their employees – even to the point of preferring someone with a degree and no experience over a candidate with no degree and years of experience. In many of the skilled trades, as well – no A.S. equals no job. To the nigh catastrophic loss of American industry. Mr. Rowe rewrites the “typical” college-promoting poster from his youth…we’ve all seen one, (or one just like it), that has the platitude: “Work Smarter, Not Harder” to read: “Work Smarter AND Harder” 4 A fine sentiment, is it not? He gave a talk at a TED 5 conference extolling the virtues of good-old-fashioned hard work, as well as what he learned from people who do the hard work. I found that talk to be so spot-on that it raised the littlest hairs on the back of my neck… HE speaks from MY experience! I’ll go out on my own personal limb, here, and say that we may not have needed to outsource our jobs had we been able to fill them with home-grown labor. There are myriad other factors…so stipulated…but having people with skills and the genuine American Work Ethic we’re famous for could have forestalled this unwise movement significantly.

In these times we owe it to ourselves, our children and our grandchildren…nay…posterity in America, to learn the lessons Mike did, and learn them well. Put those lessons into practice. Today. They can save us, and believe me, we need saving. Visit www.mikeroweworks.com & www.profoundlydisconnected.com today. Read it. All of it. Watch the videos. Make a donation in time, effort, energy or good old American green-back dollars. The country you save may be your own.

1 http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/dirty-jobs/about-this-show/dirty-jobs-about.htm
2 http://mikerowe.com/about-mike/bio/
3 http://profoundlydisconnected.com/
4 http://profoundlydisconnected.com/poster/
5 http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html

Lou has several degrees and professional certifications “under his belt”. Or, more accurately, on his wall. As well as serving in the US Army and in law enforcement, he has worked as a wholesale and retail industrial salesman, a manager in a Harley-Davidson dealership, a DJ and a facilities engineer in several industrial settings.

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We had a small break from our last podcast, so we tried to touch on as many issues as we could in this session.

The Washington Navy Yard massacre perpetrated by a mentally ill person, another tragedy that could have been avoided if that person was off the streets.

We also discuss the changes pushed by the liberals since the 1950′s to allow mentally ill people out on the streets and the lack of facilities to keep them off the streets and safe.

Syria: Obama and his standoff with Putin resulted in Obama looking weaker than ever..Some American military even went so far as to be photographed in full-dress uniforms with signs over their faces in protest of intervention in Syria.

And 3 US troops were killed in Afghanistan by one of the ‘friendly’ Afghani troops.

A note: the Androscoggin County, Maine GOP is having a fundraiser featuring Madison Rising, October 19 at the Lewiston Armory. Info is here. Partial proceeds go to Wounded Warriors.

All this and more on this week’s Political QRM

This IS awfully brief and somewhat un-”polished”.  It’s more of a “stream-of-consciousness” piece.  It is, however, from the heart.  In light of the estimated 100-150 K turnout, (as opposed to the thousand or so islamists that showed up for THEIR “million”…)

You may or may not know that I worked in the motorcycle industry for many years.  Yes, of-by-for-around-and-about THAT motorcycle company.  They recently celebrated the one hundred tenth anniversary of “The Motor Company” in Milwaukee…if you’re a “local”, “M’wahkee”.

I have MANY friends that attended the festivities, in Wisconsin and elsewhere.  I did not.  Even had I been “able”, I would not have gone.  It’s not MY motor company anymore.  I have, many times, described myself by paraphrasing Shylock:  “If you cut me, do I not bleed Pre-Luxe?”.  Yes, I knelt before the altar of the V-Twin in The Church of The Bar & Shield for a good part of my life.  Since, I think, ’65 or ’66.  I began my life on the fringe, well, on the fringe.  Collecting railroad spikes from along the tracks and salvaged wrought iron fence from my “goombah’s” scrapyard.  Grinding, polishing and chrome plating them to make “custom” footpegs and “sissy” bars.  Even made a set of handlebars, once, from a chunk of power transmission cable I brazed solid and plated.  I went through many of the incarnations, intonations and inflections of a “motorcycle enthusiast”.  Even in those hyper-inflated ’80s years.  When all was beemers and rocket bikes.  When I was at a job where all of “the guys” were going to have a “bring your motorcycle to work day”, my co-workers jaws positively dropped when I showed up that morning with all that iron between my legs.  (A 1950 FL police model, and the only chrome I added to it was a distributor cap.  Then, only because it was the only one in stock at a dealer when I needed one.)  Ahh, the LOOKS I got!  The attitude changes I felt as I shut her off, put the stand down, leaned her over and walked toward the rest of “the guys”!  Funny…only a very few years later, they would all be buying one of their own.  Stickers, tee shirts and chain wallets became de riguerre.  I went from outcast to inside guy.  I knew my motorcycles.  Inside out.  From “pea-shooter” and “pocket valve”.  “J” model.  “K” model.  Servicar.  Knuckle-Pan-Shovel-Iron heads with flat sides.  Toppers and Aermacchis.  Rigids.  Girders.  Choppers, baggers and glides. I could go on and on.  For a long time.  Trust me.

At the end of that weekend I received an e-mail from a very dear friend.  A friend who was also, for many years, deeply involved in the day-to-day of The Motor Company. My last living connection to it all. I was surprised at the timing, considering the anniversary party.  I replied with a very breif “Are you home or on the road?”  I will excerpt her reply here…

“Ah Darlin’ I didn’t go.  Lots of reasons but my love affair [with the factory] is suffering contusions and abrasions of the heart.  I’ve seen too much rawness and depravity than from the day when I fell in love with it all….It’s too bad.  My heart will always beat a little faster when I hear those deep, growling pipes that play the sweetest music of any bike ever made.  I miss a lot.  But I don’t miss the way its corrupted itself…”

I had some hope, a while back, when it was rumored that Willie and Karen (Davidson) had approved the use of skulls at the factory level for paint jobs and accessories.  Only a brief while earlier, flames had been approved.  They flubbed it.  All of it.  They carried some of the simplest forms of “biker” or “hot rod” art and art-nouveau’d it to death.  Wait…I’m not referring to true “Art Nouveau”, I just mean that they took it off to some extreme level of “acceptable palatability”. The kind that bikers and hot rodders would not understand.

When the “OLP” program was fired up, in an effort to control every dollar in the accessory market, They flubbed it.  The truth was, it wasn’t all about the money.  It was image control.  Mind control and attitude control.  “Vee haff vays” of making you like our products.  We’ll just take everyone else’s off the shelves.  This wasn’t just straight-up capitalism.  Straight-up capitalism was the part that brought more than 50% of any motorcycle produced with foreign sourced parts.  You see, they lost more than their identity when they were taken over by American Metals and Foundries.  Enough so that they became more agressively capitalistic than even the company they broke away from.  NOT that I believe there’s anything wrong with capitalism…no no no!  But capitalists without souls go to the dustbin of history faster than those with poor quality products.  Or, at least, they used to.  (All chrome plating outsourced to the Orient.  Sure, it IS less expensive when you can dispose of all the toxic waste in the sea.)

You know…not long ago, whenever I would stop and talk to people in leather, the people on competitors’ motorcycles used to, (but no longer do), preface their descriptions with “it’s not a Harley, but…”  It’s getting harder and harder for Joe Iwannamotorcycle to find a discernable reason to spend an extra $5-10K.  And I can’t say as I blame them.  Especially since that extra five or ten large is the difference between fifteen to thirty grand.  No, we are not talking about a five thousand to ten thousand dollar import versus a twelve thousand to twenty thousand dollar pseudo-American machine anymore.  We’re talking about second mortgages either way.  I have always maintained that “it’s not about what you ride, it’s about whether you ride”.  True enough.  But we have been seeing an “adjustment”.  Now, it’s a question of “progress or die”…read that, “change, (for better or worse, but change, dammit!)”  It hurts, but not nearly as badly as the first time I saw a chrome plated radiator cap.