Hard Truths

November 29, 2012 by 20 Comments

English: Adam Smith statue in Edinburgh's High...

English: Adam Smith statue in Edinburgh’s High Street with St. Giles High Kirk behind. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

Today, I’m not in the mood to mince words, so I’m going to give you a dose of unvarnished truth. I, more and more, have come to the conclusion that much of what we call PC is nothing other than an attempt to obfuscate the truth, so if you want PC, or the easy way out, well, I hate to say it but, you’ve come to the wrong place.

 

We’ve got problems in this country, serious problems, and if we don’t start figuring out what to do about them, the Great Republic will be gone. So buckle your seat belts because increasingly as we try to define the problems, the road is going to get rougher, and soon not everyone will like us.

 

And here’s the first piece of that truth, we are not going to fix it in 2014 or 2016 at the polls, our problems are systemic not electoral. Dan Miller in Panama wrote about them yesterday, I strongly suggest you read his article here.

 

In addition, Jessica’s co-author on her site wrote, shortly after our election an article that has resonated with me since, I believe he is completely correct. That article is here. In truth, I think he expected better of us, so did I.

 

Yesterday I ventured off into the culture wars. Because if we don’t win there, we are not going to win anyplace. My comment stream sums up part of the trouble on that front:

 

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the generations behind me not so much. I know engineers in their late twenties and thirties who want a video of how to do things rather than an instruction book.

Pure old-fogeyism.

Youtube videos are an invaluable educational resource and more clearly demonstrate certain technical concepts than any dense manual.

Adapt or die.

I’m glad you posted this at the beginning of the article, as I stopped reading right there.

 

I have no idea if he quit reading or not, and in a way it doesn’t matter. He made my point, if he had kept reading, he would have found that I agree with his comment. I was brought up in a world of ink on paper, 3 maybe 4 TV stations, Top 40 AM radio stations and that was about all of our culture. I suspect many of you reading this could say the same.

But, the generations behind me are different, in truth so are we, I’m on Facebook, Google +, Twitter, Linked In, here, and comment on other blogs as well. My co-writer lives in England, I live in Nebraska, and we can work on the same document at the same time, and video chat as well from our local McDonalds. Think about that for a while because it really is a different world.

I couldn’t have dreamed when I was growing up that I would be inspired daily by a British academic or an American lawyer living in Panama or any of the rest of what we take for granted today. The other thing about all of these things is, we have them because of American free market capitalism. We have them because people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and many others had a dream and part of that dream was getting rich.

And that is exactly what we are losing. When we are supporting half of our population and demonizing those that produce the  wealth and spend most of our time talking about how much of it the government can steal, sooner or later the producers are going to say the heck with it.

Something I’ve noticed in the reporting from Greece by the way, maybe you have too. Who is rioting in the streets? As near as I can tell, it’s the public employee unions. Well, I’ve also seen reports that as much as half (or more) of the Greek economy has gone underground. I’d bet that Greek grocers, plumbers and everybody else that produces something of value is doing OK, maybe not great, but OK.

What I think is happening is that they just aren’t cooperating with the government anymore, sort of a form of “going Galt”. All government employees from the President on down are in some ways parasites, they may do something for us better than we could ourselves, but we could do it ourselves, we’ve delegated the job to them.

Think that can’t happen here? You’re a fool, then. You think I couldn’t find a plumber that would replumb my house if I rewired his. They’re called 50¢ dollars. They’re called that because the government takes roughly half of every dollar I make. It happens. Churchill said it best when he said, “Destroy a free market and you’ll create a black market.” I know perfectly well who to call if I want to trade a couple of weeks of my time for a half a cow, butchered and dressed, so does every other tradesman out here. Finding him in New York, or Washington might be a bit more difficult.

What’s that fiscal cliff talk all about? This, it’s about the government and the big banks failing, I have enough skills, and most everyone around me does, that we’ll be fine, maybe not as good as now, but possibly, better. I also have, or friends have, enough equipment to defend ourselves against most threats. If you happen to be in government, think about that. You need us a lot more than we need you. It’s more convenient to have you (and money) around, to a point, but you’re in the final analysis, unnecessary. Are we unnecessary to you? A bit of Kipling might be in order here.

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.” 

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

I urge you to think carefully about this before you start raising tax rates very far, because if in our judgement we are not getting some semblance of value for what we spend on you, we have other options. Do You?

On a related note, I hear a lot of conservatives whining about the 47% or whatever that makes up the dependent class. Why? They know their Adam Smith perfectly. If you were raised with no moral code, as they were because we took it away from them by paying them to have babies and paid them more if they didn’t have a father, if you were given just enough education to endorse and cash your welfare check, and earned less if you worked. If you were told, “vote for us and you’ll have a good life”, and you did, and do. So what’s our problem with them? They are acting in their rational self-interest, if we want them to act differently, we need to change the paradigm.

So there’s a start in defining some of our problems, add your thoughts.

 

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Thanksgiving

November 22, 2012 by 14 Comments

English: Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony

English: Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First of all I want to give thanks to Jessica, who is doing such a wonderful job of filling in for me, I hope she will keep on. I find that her viewpoint is unique and very useful.

I was digging around this afternoon and found one of our old toughbooks, it’s slow and ungainly but you can park your truck on it, and I managed to borrow a wireless connection from a friend so while, I’m here sort-of, I’m very limited, although not as much as my document reader.

But today is Thanksgiving and while things are not as good as they could be they could surely be worse. If you’re poor in America, it means that you only have one car, and can only afford McDonald’s. Poor in America is richer than probably 99% of the people who ever lived, so we all have things to be thankful for.

We are seeing a preview in the Middle east of what the world will be like after America, “Wars, wars, and lechery, nothing else holds fashion.” A reasonably peaceful world is one legacy that will not outlive America.

Thanksgiving is of course at it most basic a religious holiday, for the Massachusetts Bay colony that gave it to us was very much a theocracy, I’ve heard Puritanism described as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.” But those Puritans knew a good thing when they saw it, and America was a very good thing, and it just kept getting better.

So the basis of this day is that it is the day when Americans eat far too much, watch football (the real kind, Jess), :-) and give thanks to God above for the bounty that America has brought to the world.

My heritage is the German Evangelical and Reformed Church and now the Lutheran Church, in both churches, although not used as much now, many of us remember when the program read “Doxology” with no other information. In many of our families it is still used as table grace, I commend it to you.

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Dumbing Down of America

May 10, 2012 by 9 Comments

I stole the picture below from the Mad Jewess, the point she was making is the horrendous English in this sign. I quite agree but, there is more here.

Picture stolen from the http://themadjewess.com/

From her article this is from Chicago, which matters little. But really bothers me is that a franchisee of a major restaurant chain would employ a store manager so lacking in management skill as to run out of hamburger. Obviously, I don’t know the hourly sales of this store but given general knowledge I would suspect that it is in the thousands per day. A Burger King franchise is not cheap either, and they enforce their quality standards, although apparently not in speaking English and inventory management.

Personally, if I had a store whose sole purpose was to sell hamburgers and my job depended on it, I would be pretty darned careful not to run out of hamburger. So, if I was this franchisee I’d be looking for a new store manager (preferably one who can spell).

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America’s Place in the World, and Why It Is and Must Remain So.

February 18, 2012 by 2 Comments

The Colossus of Freedom

I write a lot about America, where we came from, who we are, where we are, and where we are going. I firmly believe that while we can’t be the cop walking every beat every where in the world, all the time; we must act to prevent the worst outrages and assure world peace.

As the Navy says, “A Force for Good“. Anybody who doesn’t believe that about America is an uneducated simpleton or has nefarious designs of their own. America has been “the indispensable nation” for a century now and the world has become a far safer place for it. And that doesn’t include the far better living standard, far lower disease rates, and far higher standards of personal liberty that America has wrought, worldwide.

If we pay attention to our knitting now, this happy state of affairs for the world population will continue for the foreseeable future.

Yesterday, Great Satan’s Girlfriend had quite a lot to say about this too, in her own inimitable style, of course.

“Living in Amerika – Coca Cola – Wunderbra”

Rammstein”s timeless delightful little ditty (j’ever note they look a lot like ancient dead 3rd Reich cats – it’s true der F himself along with a posse looking a lot like a younger healthier Reichsmarshall, Reichfuhrerand Org Todt”s Speer? Just saying)underscore the ancient fakebelieve Iraq War meme that Great Satan was single handedly jamming up the whole world beyond repair.

The world turned against Great Satan. Anti-American sentiments have swept the globe. Foreign leaders, pundits, and ordinary ppl decry Great Satan, at best proclaiming their heartbreak that the American values they once admired have vanished, and at worst condemning America as a criminal state beyond redemption

Regime changing Iraq (defeating the largest Arab army in history in 20 days!) on a guess no less, blowing off Kyoto, the spread of American movies, American music, KFC and Mickey D’s unto the ends of the earth. Incarcerating especial creeps at Club Gitmo in those ’4ever Detentions” – not to mention the barbaric practise of executing killers, often after years of incarceration.

Alla that unbound Great Satan Hating piled up faster on a girl than uncles at a Thanksgiving game of touch football and tend to create

“… a feeling that Great Satan, once a force for good in the world, is
abusing its position as the world’s sole superpower. “

The meme has changed a bit into all that decline chiz – yet it is nigh imposs to LOL decline as anything other than a choice. Albeit a woefully weak minded, 2 dimensional choice, either deliberately deceitful or uninformed choice. (Not a cut – yours truly has made tonnes of suck choices – often while critical thinking  was dismissed in the uh, heat, of , uh, combat). 

Most cats in Great Satan never got the memo that decline is inevitable. In fact an amazing 70% of Americans today desire and enjoy globestomping, kicking assets and being the world’s hyperpuissant hottie – unique – the only one of her kind!

Why cause?

Because!

1st off – most Americans – for whatever reasons – are alot like those wickedly delish uberselfish hotties – “Yeah. Guys have feelings too, but like, who cares!”

Americans simply do not care what all foreign haters, goobs, creeps, control freaks and girl haters think of Great Satan – and by extension – all her hot fun and free choice allies and little sisters like Taiwan, Nippon or SoKo etctoo.

Plus -

“It is premature for us to conclude, after ten thousand years of war, that a few decades and some technological innovations would change the nature of man and the nature of international relations.”

See, Great Satan is as hot as she ever was – and let us speak plainly here – gon get even hotter!   

One-third of all the R&D in the world happens in Great Satan, one-quarter of the world’s economy is America (with 6 percent of world population) and is increasing. Add the fact that the Great Satan”s military power is way more powerful than the next 12 largest militaries combined and hello Batman!  It magically creates what that French foreign minister cat nom d”guerr”d “l”hyperpuissant”

Read it all, and think about it, this election year.

So there you have it. America’s place in the sun, otherwise known as “The City on the Hill“, why it’s good for the (especially common) people everywhere and why we need to continue on our uniquely American Journey.

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Capitalism: The Only Choice for a Moral Person

February 17, 2012 by 1 Comment

"Capitalism Works for Me!" by Steve ...

"Capitalism Works for Me!" by Steve Lambert (Photo credit: SPACES Gallery)

I’ve written about this several times before but it bears repeating. Capitalism is the only moral economic system in existence. Does the phrase “If a man shall not work, neither shall he eat” ring a bell? It should it’s from Thessalonians 3:10. Nowhere in my Bible does it say: “give to Caesar that he may feed a few of the hungry after he enriches himself”. At least, I couldn’t find it.

Along the same line Audrey Pietrucha writing at Green Mountain Scribes has posted a piece that provides an excellent defense of capitalism:

For some time now capitalism has served as the world’s favorite piñata. The blame is misplaced since most of our economic troubles are not the result of laissez-faire economics but the antithesis: market intervention and manipulation. In reality, capitalism and free markets are responsible for and supportive of much of what we value in our lives, our relationships and our society. For those who love freedom, capitalism is the highest moral ground on which they can stand.

The most obvious evidence of capitalism’s constructive influence is the cooperation free markets produce among participants. When people engage in commerce there is an inclination to get along. Both parties want something from the other and both believe that exchange will somehow improve their lives. When I visit the Crazy Russian Girls bakery and buy a scone, I give them a couple of dollars because that scone is more valuable to me than the money. They accept my money because it is more valuable to them than the scone. We have both freely given to each other and the interaction has added value to our lives.

That peaceful exchange, like millions that are engaged in by people throughout the world every day, was prescribed by Thomas Jefferson as a good on the international level as well. “An exchange of surpluses and wants between neighbor nations is both a right and a duty under the moral law,” he said. He often linked peace and free commerce between nations, recognizing trading partners seldom declare war on one another.

Read her article here. She covers the subject very well.

In a related (sort of a bastard, unwanted relation, but there you go) we have Corporatism. This is pretty close to what we often refer to as Crony-Capitalism. When you get to this point it’s not so much doing whatever you do well, it’s more about who you know you will get you permission or money to do something. For examples, see Solyndra, bank bailouts, Government Motors and such.

To understand this better Before It’s News put an article up last week entitled: Corporatism Is Not Capitalism: 7 Things About The Monolithic Predator Corporations That Dominate Our Economy That Every American Should Know. I’ll tell you the seven things and then send you over there for the reasoning.

#1 Corporations not only completely dominate the U.S. economy, they also completely dominate the global economy as well.  A newly released University of Zurich study examined more than 43,000 major multinational corporations.  The study discovered a vast web of interlocking ownerships that is controlled by a “core” of 1,318 giant corporations.

#2 This dominance of the global economy by corporations has allowed global wealth to become concentrated to a very frightening degree.

#3 Since wealth has become concentrated in very few hands, that means that there are a whole lot of poor people out there.

#4 Giant corporations have become so dominant that it has become very hard for small businesses to compete and survive in the United States.

#5 Big corporations completely dominate the media.  Almost all of the news that you get and almost all of the entertainment that you enjoy is fed to you by giant corporations.

#6 Big corporations completely dominate our financial system.  Yes, there are hundreds of choices in the financial world, but just a handful control the vast majority of the assets.

#7 Big corporations completely dominate our political system.  Because they have so much wealth and power, corporations can exert an overwhelming amount of influence over our elections.  Studies have shown that in federal elections the candidate that raises the most money wins about 90 percent of the time.

Read the article, they do a pretty good job of documenting their assertions.

What have I had to say about this? Here are some excepts and linkage:

We’ve been hearing quite a bit about how a lot of the jobs created in Texas under Gov. Perry have been the low-end, McDonald’s burger flipping type jobs. I haven’t checked to see if it’s true or not and for my purposes here it doesn’t matter anyway.

What do these job entail. First we all know they pay something around minimum wage, don’t have a lot of future growth and are often in normal times (remember them?) held by teenagers. In fact they are often the very first real job a person has. By definition then, they are entry level jobs.

Some of those who profess themselves our betters tend to denigrate them particularly because, well, I don’t know.

Sure they aren’t prestigious, like being professor of (insert BS studies program) at a swanky Ivy League college, so what. They provide more real value to society than that professorship ever will.

Don’t believe me, if you’re hungry, go ask that professor for a burger. What’ll you get? Probably a lecture about how bad for you meat is. You’re still hungry.

Go to McDonald’s and what will you get? A meal that our ancestors would have had to work days for, if it was even possible. Remember that up until the industrial revolution people starved almost every year.

McDonald’s itself is an incredible accomplishment when you think about it. Top quality beef  (never available before the twentieth century); cheese, which was always a luxury food; lettuce, tomato, and onion, never available out of season; wheat bread, a holiday only luxury in 19th century Europe; Potatoes, remember in the late 1840′s, when, the potato crop failed, Ireland starved; and a Coke, that miracle beverage of modern America, or fresh milk, another unavailable luxury 150 years ago.

All of that for what? $5 or so, the equivalent of a few minutes of your time. Is it the best food available? No, certainly not. But it is amazingly better than what was available to our ancestors. If anything was.

OK, there’s that. McDonald’s doesn’t need me to defend them. (I prefer Wendy’s, anyway, think about all the choices we have, too.) Back to those jobs, yeah those demeaning entry level jobs. Say you are that high school student who just got that first job, what are you going to learn.

First, you’re going to learn to get to work on time, I know you should have learned that at home or in school but, you had best learn it somewhere and here you get paid to show up.

Then you are going to be part of a team, working towards a common goal.

You are going to learn how to handle food without contaminating it.

You might even learn how to make change.

You will learn how to deal with people, even the difficult ones. And be pleasant while doing so.

These are all life lessons, and there are others,that you will need throughout your life in our society. And you will probably learn to live within a budget, cause you surely aren’t going to get rich on this job.

Link Here.

We hear the free market damned everyday, lately. Problem is those damning the free market don’t have a clue what the free market is. America’s problem since 1890 or so has been that we haven’t had a free market.

What we have had is a semi free market distorted by whatever advantage could be bought from the Congress. (By the way, one of my favorite jokes is: If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?) Let’s look at a one industry example.

We had the most magnificent transportation system the world had ever seen for both passenger and freight (and mail). What did we do? We came very, very near to regulating it death. The remnants of this system are still the backbone that allows all our other systems of commerce, particularly steel and electricity to function. What am I talking about here? The American Railroad network.

During the First World War the government actually took over the railroads and ran them into the ground (and only paid for a fraction of the damage they did.) World War Two was a little better but not by much. Especially after the looting of the ’30s.

Link Here.

And one more:

In truth capitalists are just about everybody you know, the guy that owns the grocery store, your plumber, the florist, the butcher, the baker and even the candlestick maker. Some of them have big businesses like, GE, or Apple, or Exxon/Mobil (or a share of them; checked your 401K 201K lately). If you have one of those go look in the mirror, you are a capitalist, too. In truth, if you sell your time to somebody who doesn’t want to sweep their own floor you are engaging in capitalism.

In its basics that is what capitalism is: the original win-win system. You know how to do whatever it is you do, I know how to wire your house. It makes more sense for you to do what you do and trade some of what you get paid for it to me to get your house wired correctly so it won’t burn down. Usually we use money to keep score, but it’s not required. In the depression, doctors often were paid in eggs.

That’s the whole theory and practice of capitalism right there. We make an agreement that I will wire your house for what we both think is a fair price. We both win.

If I work in my own  interest, and you work in your own interest, and everybody else works in their own interest, we all get what we deserve. If we work hard (and smart), we get rich. If we screw off, we don’t; seems fair to me. The only problem is (if you consider it a problem, I think it is a feature) is that is if you deserve nothing, you get nothing. What’s the problem. You remember, of course, that the opposite of justice is mercy, right.

Where this elegant theory gets into trouble is when outside agencies try to regulate it. For instance, say the government says I have to give it 50% of what I make. Now I have to double my income for the same lifestyle I had before, so do you, so does everybody. So we all have to work twice as hard (or smart) to stay even. We are working half of the time for the government. That makes it harder for all of us to make a living. That’s one example.

Here’s another way the process gets corrupted. Say I wire houses for a living and I like working alone so I never try to be the big electrical contractor with all the problems of dozens of employees can cause. Shouldn’t be a problem right? My choice, my life.

Now let’s say Joe across town who also wires houses has decided that he wants to be the big contractor with the shiny new trucks and employees and all that. That’s cool, right? Sure is with me.

But what happens when people find out that I can do them a better job for less money, (within my capabilities) and they complain to Joe that he is too expensive. And he gets tired of hearing about it so he goes to the city council and gets an ordinance passed that you must have 5 employees to wire a house in the city limits.

Now, is that fair, either to me or to the people who want to wire their houses for the least amount of money for the same quality job? Nope, I sure don’t think so either. That is called crony capitalism and the problem is that it uses force (in other words people with guns and the right to use them) to distort the market. Obviously, this example is oversimplified but, this is a lot of what is wrong with our system these days.

Link Here.

And here is The Gipper on Capitalism and Socialism:

I’ll end here with a quote from Audrey Pietrucha that ended her article:

Just as Winston Churchill said of democracy, capitalism is the worst economic system – except for all the rest.

 

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The Jungle

January 28, 2012 by 11 Comments

English: John Morrell meat packing plant in Si...

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t know how many of you have read Upton Sinclair‘s The Jungle; it was an expose of the meatpacking industry circa 1905. Sinclair stated that he wrote it to stimulate sympathy for immigrants, instead it started the demand for food safety that lead to the Pure Food and Drug Act. There should be better way to obtain this result but, we haven’t found it, instead we’ve trusted our government with poor results. Has anything changed? Yes, food is at least somewhat safer now. Interestingly, one of the drivers in the packing industry for better quality control has been, wait for it: McDonald’s and Wendy’s, they won’t accept mediocre quality or contaminated hamburger.

This afternoon I came across a report from Human Rights Watch entitled Blood, Sweat, and Fear. And yes I know, most of us consider Human Rights Watch a leftist organization, which it is. But when you are right, you’re right. In this case they’re right.

If you haven’t noticed I live in a town that is dominated by a Tyson Meat plant and I have many friends and neighbors that work or have worked there. That includes me, by the way. This town is also a Hispanic majority town, with Thais, and Somalians represented. I’ll tell you why as we go along. Incidentally, these studies are not new, I just happened to run across them. In my opinion, things have gotten worse.

What I’m going to do is take a piece of the report’s summary and add to it with anecdotes that I’m pretty sure are truthful, although I may not be able to document them.

Workers in American beef, pork, and poultry slaughtering and processing plants perform dangerous jobs in difficult conditions. Dispatching the nonstop tide of animals and birds arriving on plant kill floors and live hang areas is itself hazardous and exhausting labor. [1] After slaughter, the carcasses hurl along evisceration and disassembly lines as workers hurriedly saw and cut them at unprecedented volume and pace.

What once were hundreds of head processed per day are now thousands; what were thousands are now tens of thousands per day. One worker described the reality of the line in her foreman’s order: “Speed, Ruth, work for speed! One cut! One cut! One cut for the skin; one cut for the meat. Get those pieces through!” Said another: “People can’t take it, always harder, harder, harder! [mas duro, mas duro, mas duro!].”

Constant fear and risk is another feature of meat and poultry labor. Meatpacking work has extraordinarily high rates of injury. Workers injured on the job may then face dismissal. Workers risk losing their jobs when they exercise their rights to organize and bargain collectively in an attempt to improve working conditions. And immigrant workers-an increasing percentage of the workforce in the industry-are particularly at risk. Language difficulties often prevent them from being aware of their rights under the law and of specific hazards in their work. Immigrant workers who are undocumented, as many are, risk deportation if they seek to organize and to improve conditions.

Dangerous, hard work, sure it is. To a point that can’t be helped when you are running a plant that takes a 2000 lb animal in one end and ships boxes of hamburger out the other.

When I worked in the plant it ran at about 200 head per hour, at that point it was owned by Iowa Beef Processors (IBP) and was their safest plant. Since it was purchased by Tyson Foods, Inc. it now runs 420 head per hour, this is the speed required by management and the only reason it doesn’t run faster is that the disassembly line chain won’t run faster. And it maybe does because shell games can be played with US distribution, EU distribution, and Central American distribution. Many, many of the machines are running over capacity. It should be noted that IBP was a very low cost producer, to the point that meat production ran at best, at cost, the profit from the plant came from rendering, which is by products used in dog food, cattle feed, makeup, and similar applications.

PBS has also talked about the injury rate in meat packing which is excessive:

Though pro-industry organizations such as the American Meat Institute (AMI) point out that the number of staff injuries in meat processing facilities have been declining over recent years, meat packing remains one of the most dangerous factory jobs in America. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there was an average of 12.6 injuries or illnesses per 100 full-time meat packing plant employees in 2005, a number twice as high as the average for all U.S. manufacturing jobs. Some experts maintain that this number is actually too low as many workers’ injuries go unreported due to employee misinformation or intimidation.

Link here

“Some experts” are right. Get hurt, get fired. Another point that I haven’t seen mentioned is that these plants often control the towns they are located in even in ways you wouldn’t expect. If you get hurt in this plant and go to the Doctor, you had best understand that the Doctor’s living depends on getting workers from the plant. Is he going to do his best for you, or guarantee his living. And you thought ‘Death Panels’ were only coming with Obamacare.

An example, a friend of mine has had at least 3 hernia surgeries, all of which are causing him problems, Ripped his bicep half off (which was then repaired incorrectly) damaged it again and had surgery on it again (because he was suing the company), Now he has a permanent limit of lifting 25 pounds occasionally) with his strong arm, is permanently on pain killers, ended up settling his suit (after 8 years) for less than $30,000 (less the attorneys cut) and in my judgement is unemployable for several reasons:

  1. He’s an electrician but he can’t do the job.
  2. He has a workers’ compensation record, why would an employer bother, and.
  3. He can’t pass a drug test.

Oh, by the way during the year that Tyson wasn’t paying workers compensation they were claiming he was an employee, so he could get neither Unemployment Compensation nor a job, his wife divorced him. But of course, according to the State of Nebraska, he’s not disabled.

Here’s another, another friend, a supervisor, who normally shouldn’t be doing labor himself anyway, hid a work related injury for several months because he needed his job. When he finally had to report it, yup, he got fired. His wife divorced him, too.

These example are both from maintenance. Why was a supervisor doing work instead of supervising? Because any competent tradesman will only work there to avoid starvation. I’ve heard of mechanics being told to change a motor weighing a hundred pounds at waist level by themselves without adequate (or any) lifting devices. That means you have to hold a hundred pounds one-handed while you insert the bolts that hold it with the other. if you refuse, you’ll be fired. So now they’ve gotten themselves in a coffin corner: They can’t hire competent maintenance people because of their reputation and they can’t fix their reputation because competent tradespeople won’t work for them. oops!

These examples are both white males, which is somewhat less of an anomaly in maintenance. How much worse would it be for a Somalian essentially imported by Tyson? Think they might be intimidated?

How about this, a few years ago, I was living next door to a Hispanic that had his air conditioning shut off in August, as did mine. This was in a trailer park in a neighboring town, he asked me what the problem was and I investigated it: A fuse had blown in a municipally owned power company box, I didn’t have a phone so I told him to call the city, a few hours later, I asked him if he had, he said no and gave the impression he was afraid of the government, which I already knew, so I called and had it fixed in 30 minutes. This was a legal immigrant who had been here for years already and a job paying about $10 an hour. They will not talk to anybody from the government for any reason.

You might also hear claims that they don’t hire illegal immigrants, technically they don’t. But their wholly owned subsidiaries, who are contractors to them, do. Nobody ever checks them.

I can’t speak for any other plant but, in this one, in production you are taught one position, you make that one cut for whatever your shift length is that day, forever. I have another friend, a black man imported by Tyson from Chicago, who just went back to work, on production. He’s only had two unsuccessful surgeries to correct Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, so far.

From the Human Rights Watch report again:

Any single meatpacking or poultry processing company which by itself sought to respect the rights of its workers-and hence incurred additional costs-would face undercutting price competition from other businesses that did not. What is required are large scale changes to health and safety and workers’ compensation regulations and practices and greater protection of workers’ right to organize, in particular that of immigrant workers, throughout the meat and poultry industry.

That’s true, and one thing I noticed is that when Tyson bought out IBP, safety rules that were sacrosanct in the beef industry went out the window bringing the beef statistic in line with the chicken industry. Beef packing has always been the leader in taking care of their workers because it takes more skill (and equipment) to disassemble a cow than a chicken.

Again I write from a maintenance viewpoint and I know that this plant is going to go down with a serious malfunction some day soon, there will be casualties, probably deaths.

The main chain is operating over capacity, that is where the carcasses hang during disassembly. That’s one. Want another?

Ammonia is used in the plant to supply the refrigeration necessary, it’s pretty much the only choice, but the ammonia system is not being maintained properly because maintenance no longer has time because the line is breaking down to running at overcapacity and lack of skilled maintenance people. if an ammonia leak is not handled promptly and safely, depending on the wind, it could easily be a mass casualty situation. Want still another?

Several years ago, according to reports I’ve heard the Nebraska Department of Water Quality was getting ready to cite the plant for illegal contaminated discharges until they were told that if they issued the citation the company would close the plant. Where’s the plant drain to: the Platte River, by the way, we are also above the Ogallala Aquifer.

Again from Human Rights Watch:

Unfortunately, as this report shows, the United States is failing on all these counts. Health and safety laws and regulations fail to address critical hazards in the meat and poultry industry. Laws and agencies that are supposed to protect workers’ freedom of association are instead manipulated by employers to frustrate worker organizing. Federal laws and policies on immigrant workers are a mass of contradictions and incentives to violate their rights. In sum, the United States is failing to meet its obligations under international human rights standards to protect the human rights of meat and poultry industry workers.

Truthfully, they are not even treating them as human beings.

And you know the really interesting thing? The ranchers and feedlot operators that sell to them like them as little as their own workers do.

I don’t have solutions to these problems, mostly because the owners of the packing plants are very closely allied to the politicians in both parties, and are always willing to use their influence to make a buck.

Sources:

Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Human Rights Watch, 2005 Link Here, pdf here.

Meatpacking in the U.S.: Still a “Jungle” Out There?: pbs.org, 2006 Link Here

May 2010 National Industry-Specific Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates

NAICS 311600 – Animal Slaughtering and Processing, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011, BLS Link Here

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