Stop the Deadly Retreads

Catherine was feeling safe and happy last Friday night, after a long day on the road. She was cruising down Interstate 95 doing a legal 70, looking forward to arriving home to her beloved husband (me). Suddenly a large truck tire retread appeared in the middle of her lane. Too late to swerve and too much close-following traffic to stab the brake, she hit it. Thank goodness she was OK! But, this is the SECOND time this has happened to us and damaged the plastic shield, air dam, spoiler, or whatever it’s called under our flimsy front bumper. Anyway, she pulled off an exit and into an Arby’s parking lot. She crawled around on the ground tying up the remaining pieces of plastic panels so they wouldn’t drag, and made it home safely.

Big dangerous retreads are all over the highways everywhere and I’m ##^&**#* sick and tired of them. I can only infer that there are no regulations forbidding retreads or shedding of them. If there is any regulation pertaining to this, enforcement must be meager with no significant fines levied. That is a travesty. In addition to the two above incidents we have had other close calls when we’ve witnessed a flying retread close to us or had some retread crumbs hit our windshield. Fortunately we’ve never been injured in any of these incidents but we have sustained several hundred dollars damage to our car. Of course you have to think twice about making a claim on your collision insurance for this. A couple of no-fault claims and your insurance company drops you like a hot potato or jacks your rates up.

There is something called the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. From it’s name, it sounds like it ought to regulate this. I don’t know why it’s not doing its job. My Republican friends will of course say it’s guvmint, therefore intrusive, incompetent, and inefficient, so it should have its budget cut or be eliminated. What a crock! I’d speculate that it’s either already underfunded to do what needs to be done, or more likely has been captured by the powerful motor freight industry lobby to do their own bidding.

Has anyone else had bad experiences with the forest of retreads that trucks liberally sprinkle on our highways? Do you know what laws and regulations exist for retreads and the shedding of them? If so, please comment below and tell your story.

Why did they uninvent the...

...energy absorbing car bumper. We had ‘em in the late 70’s and early 80’s by federal regulation until a sweet old president with dementia decided to excuse the car manufacturers from this requirement. I had great ones on my ’80 Civic. They were mounted on shock absorbers and covered with scratch resistant black rubber. The current car bumpers should be called the senile Republican bumper in honor of the president who allowed the manufacturers to make painted plastic bumpers that cost $500 to $1000 or more for repair or replacement after one’s wife has a 1 mph contact with a concrete post in a parking garage.

The South Carolina Light Bulb

Failing schools, genocide in Libya, budget deficits, drunk drivers killing 17,000 people per year nationally, earthquakes, tsunamis, scary unions wanting to bargain collectively. Just when we thought we had heard it all, we learn that the government wants to tell us what kind of light bulbs we can buy, starting in 2012. They want us to use those sissy energy saving “Curly Friggin’ Lightbulbs” (CFLs for short) Isn’t that the coup de gras for our personal freedom!

We in South Carolina don’t have to take this. Representative Bill Sandifer (Republican Oconee County) is going to attract a manufacturer here to build a factory to make old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs like Thomas Edison invented in the late 1800’s. Apparently if they are manufactured here, we can still sell them here. Heck; we should take this to the next level and make it a state constitutional amendment. We already have a “right to hunt” amendment. We could have a “right to buy horridly inefficient light bulbs” amendment. Yeah! And even a “right to eat junk food while praying in school” amendment. OK, I’m getting off topic. Just got a little excited about how SC could set the nation’s pace for freedom.

How will we get a manufacturing facility for obsolete light bulbs here? Easy! Give them giant tax breaks, and fund training programs for their workers. We did it with Boeing. We can do it for obsolete light bulbs. If need be we can even give them big subsidies. Everyone knows that if you give money to rich businessmen they will invest it in ways to create jobs and stimulate the economy.

Why should we support this effort to keep ourselves in the 19th century? There are lots of reasons. Everyone knows the 19th century was the best century. The old fashioned light bulbs are only 10% efficient so we can get 90% heat out of them in the winter at only three times the cost of heating with a heat pump. Two out of three women say the 19th century bulbs make their skin look better and warmer. In fact it really is warmer because they are so inefficient they give off tens times more heat than light. If you think that doesn’t make you look good, go to Light Your Face and have somebody look at your face. It lights up your face like a super inefficient 19th century light bulb. Oh! Don’t make video calls to movie stars with this; they’ll fall in love with you and start stalking you.

No Boeing in South Carolina Please

A new Boeing assembly plant may be coming to North Charleston, South Carolina. At least that's what everyone seems to expect and hope for. Not me. I grew up in South Carolina and was recruited to Boeing right out of Clemson University. I lived in Seattle and its surrounding communities for 38 years. I worked for Boeing for six of the early years. I shall list the ways Boeing was a bad employer and bad neighbor.

Boeing was, and still is, a boom-bust corporation. There was little stable employment for locals. During booms they recruited worldwide, bringing in droves of outsiders with the special technical skills required. During busts they laid off workers drastically, often requiring the survivors to work as much as 16 hours per week overtime because the modest overtime premium was cheaper than paying benefits for a sufficient number of workers doing 40 hour weeks.

When Boeing expanded they never did so in the same place. They went where the land was cheapest. Plants sprawled along 54 miles of the I-5 corridor from Auburn, WA to Everett, WA. They frequently transferred people along that corridor and there was never compensation for moving expense. 54 miles was considered a reasonable commute even though the traffic was usually slowed to a crawl by the glut of Boeing workers commuting in opposite directions. During my tenure at Boeing I was transferred among four Puget Sound cities, Seattle, Everett, Renton, and Kent. I was laid off twice when business slumped.

Boeing finally abandoned Seattle, its place of origin, and moved its corporate headquarters to the Midwest. This left varying reactions of shock and abandonment among the sentimentalists, to expletives of good riddance to a bad neighbor from many others.

Now Boeing might put a new 787 assembly line in North Charleston because South Carolina is so very business friendly. Indeed South Carolina solicits big corporations to come here with almost a blind religious fervor. The October 28, 2009 Charleston Post and Courier (P&C) lists these proposed goodies for Boeing:
Sales-tax break for construction materials.
Unspecified goodies similar to what was offered to Google's data storage facility
Tax exemption for aviation fuel used in test flights and transporting airplane parts
We don't know exactly what all the goodies are. The P&C says the revenue impact study released by the state board of Economic advisors was short of details but "Lewis Gossett, president of the S. C. Manufacturers Alliance said the 'state will certainly come out ahead'". Yeah, right!

South Carolinians need to wake up and be wary of this corporate giant. Otherwise our leaders will give away the store in their giddy glee. Who do we think makes up the revenue when we give all the tax breaks to business? We ordinary tax payers make it up of course. We pay the tax and we enjoy the urban sprawl and traffic jams. In South Carolina we pay both a hefty sales tax and a state income tax, and still endure underfunded schools and other public services. In Washington State they have no state income tax. They don't need one because business pays more of its fair share. Schools are better funded. This is one of the most important factors to produce higher skilled and better educated citizens and to retain and attract businesses that provide employment for higher skilled and better educated employees.

ADDENDUM OF OCT 29, 2009: Well they did it. This morning's P&C says "North Charleston won the fiercely fought battle for the 787…" Won! Ha! "Bought" is a better word. Our lawmakers paid $450 million in incentives. Boeing has to create 3,800 jobs here. The other thing we "get" is Boeing has to invest $750 million here within 7 years. Hmm, lets see, we invest $450 million and we get $750 million in seven years. That's like investing the $450 million at 7.57% interest. Hey wait a minute! They don't have to pay back $750 million in seven years. They just have to locate $750 million of their own assets here. Is this a good deal for us? Apparently I'm not the only one not falling down and foaming at the mouth in ecstasy over this sweet deal. The P&C quotes economics professor, Calvin Blackwell, of the College of Charleston as saying, "Generally this is not a very good strategy for states to employ…It's a race to the bottom: who can provide the most goodies?" Blackwell is paraphrased as saying that companies play localities off one another and that another downside is that jobs created don't necessarily go to current state residents. But, state residents are the ones who shoulder the impact to the tax base. Just how many jobs will actually go to local residents? Apparently that detail wasn't in the deal. Tim Coyle, Boeing VP in Charleston said the labor force should include a "fair amount" of employees from Charleston and from other areas. Tim, please define "fair amount".

South Carolina is about as nuts for capitalism as Michael Moore is nuts against it. I'm cool with capitalism. However, the South Carolina concept of capitalism is sort of the Latin American model, i.e. we welcome the outsiders to come in and exploit us. We beg those with the capital to come here for our business tax breaks, lax rules, cheap labor and paucity of labor unions. For Boeing we really bent over, grabbed our ankles and said, "Kick me…or whatever."

Apologizing for Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Lately I have read about a group that wants to apologize to Japan for us dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This has been met by wide objections from Americans who protest, "Ha! They asked for it when they bombed Pearl Harbor first. They should be apologizing to us." Another objection centers on deterrent. "It wasn't nice, but we had to nuke 'em to save American lives." These may be persuasive arguments for why we should have done it in 1945, but they are not relevant to why we should not apologize in 2009. I am sympathetic to the apology supporters for reasons outlined below.

Reason 1: Japan's decision makers and those they commanded killed a bunch or our innocent people, but so did our retaliation. Even if necessary and justifiable, we killed a bunch of their innocent people in addition to (or instead of) their decision makers.

Reason 2: It has been 65 years and we have been friends and growing together as allies in world leadership all that time. Today there are adults living in both countries whose grandparents weren't even born when these horrific acts of war took place. Japan is not a current adversary with whom we have to talk tough for our national security.

Reason 3: What the heck is the harm in it for us? What if we apologize before they do? That only makes us look magnanimous in their eyes and the eyes of the global community.

I just looked up "apology" in www.dictionary.com. It is defined as "a written or spoken expression of one's regret, remorse, or sorrow for having insulted, failed, injured, or wronged another". I noted that there are two ORs and no ANDs in that definition. Surely most of us feel at least sorrow for the injury caused to at least the innocent children killed and maimed when we dropped the big ones. That strikes me as justification enough to offer the apology. I also note that nothing in the definition says those who offer the apology must feel or believe themselves to be the greater transgressors than the party to whom the apology is offered.

My wife gets home today from a 5 day visit with her parents. I didn't complete all the chores I promised I'd complete. I shall apologize for not meeting my goal. I shall not say "I'm sorry I didn't get all my stuff done but YOU left the car lights on and killed the battery TWICE last week." I'll just tell her I'm sorry I didn't get all my stuff done and how great it is to see her. She knows she killed the battery twice. This is the way you need to act with those important to you to keep the relationship strong and healthy.

My conversation with a Nazi prisoner of war

Who let Dr. Strangelove back onto the set? I'm speaking of Dick Cheney of course. (Yes I know. I promised a Nazi and I'm talking about a different brutish thug. I'll get to the actual Nazi a little further down.) So anyway I was watching TV the other night and up rolls Dick in front of the cameras, raving on about how much danger we're in. This supposed danger is because we might move Guantanamo detainees onto the US mainland, release some for repatriation, and stop torturing the others. Gad! We voted this guy's party and their failed policies out of office. Why doesn't he just shut up, get with his cronies and play golf or, better yet, go on a hunting trip.

OK, now for the Nazi story. I'll get back to Dr. Strangelove's ideas again later. Long ago, 23 years after WW II to be precise, I was hitching from Newcastle, England to London. I was picked up by a lorry (British English for a big truck). The driver right away heard my southern accent and asked if I was from the United States, Australia, or some other English speaking country. I told him the United States and he said, "Oh, I've only been to the United States once and that was only to Columbia, South Carolina." I said, "You're kidding; that's my home town. How did you end up there and only there?" He told me he was a German soldier in WW II. He was captured and ended up being held at Fort Jackson.

This led me to a thousand questions for Heinz (not his real name, which I long ago forgot) about his capture and detention at Fort Jackson. He said one of the first things that happened after his capture by the US military was that a kind American soldier came along giving each detainee an apple for a snack. As he relaxed and started relating his experiences it sounded more like a comedy romp than anything else. It reminded me of the TV series "Hogan's Heros" except with the roles reversed.

I asked him if he ever tried to escape. He said, "Yes, I escaped twice." I asked him how far he got. He said he only went as far as Columbia for a night on the town then sneaked back into the fort. Once he even asked a Columbia policeman for directions. The policeman inquired about his accent and he told him he was a Polish refugee. The policeman wished him well and sent him on his way with directions.

After the war he was released. By then he thought America was great and he didn't want to go back to Germany. He wasn't allowed to remain in America, but he managed to settle in England and build his life there.

I have since learned that German prisoners of war were also sent out to assist my wife's relatives on farms in Wisconsin and probably elsewhere too.

My purpose in relating this story is that sooner or later we have to release prisoners of war. Oh yes, I know that some Americans would like to just shoot them all. It ain't gonna happen, thankfully. There are many Americans who would like to at least keep them in high security incarceration forever in Guantanamo (No wait; we're closing that) or in Charleston's Navy brig (What? The locals are afraid to house them there?) Well, maybe in the federal penitentiary in Kansas (Oh? The locals don't want them there either?) Golly, where? Wherever we stash them it will cost a lot of money every year they are held but American taxpayers just love to pay taxes for the government to do stuff, don't they? Of course they don't!

My point is this. It seems like we always end up having to release prisoners of war sooner or later. When we release them we would like them to be sufficiently mollified that they don't resume or begin a life committed by rage to killing us. For an inside look at how we're actually doing it, read Chaplain James Yee's book For God and Country. I didn't find reference to waterboarding and dogs as we heard of in Abu Ghraib but the relentless sensory deprivation, humiliating harassment, and endless insults to their religion and values seem unlikely to change their hearts toward loving the USA. Would you feel safe releasing prisoners who had been abused repeatedly, had their sacred religious text mocked and vandalized, been shackled and taunted for hours (sometimes daily for extended periods) in interrogations seemingly aimed more at revenge than information recovery. Or, would your rather be releasing people whom our military had treated humanely like Heinz, provided with facilities for worshiping according to their faith, and even shown random acts of kindness.

Now I know what my conservative Republican friends are thinking. (Yes I do have some; I live in South Carolina after all.) They're thinking, "That naïve lilly-livered liberal has really lost it now. Sure, just give them some fresh cut flowers in a vase with orange juice and toast and hummus at breakfast and they'll be singing the Star Spangled Banner. Yeah, right…NOT!" No, I realize that we have already done irreparable damage with abuse of many existing detainees. Moreover not all the new ones we capture will completely forget their raging determination to do us ill, even with the most humane treatment. Anyone released must be evaluated by an intelligent process and cleared of criminal charges of war crimes by an open system of justice consistent with our own laws and the agreements that we have within the international community. I simply believe we will end up with a heck of a lot more detainees that we can eventually safely release and repatriate if we incarcerate them legally and humanely rather than listening to Dr. Strangelove who (incredibly) is still telling us to torture them.

Postscript on safety: Why are we so terrified of transferring the Guantanamo detainees to the mainland? We already intentionally release into this country unrepentant murderers and rapists every day when their sentences are up. Most of us even have lovable friends who (whether we know it or not) have DUI convictions. These drunk friends and fellow Americans slaughter 17,000 Americans per year, far more than the sum of American deaths in the twin towers destruction and the entire Iraq war.

Charles Krauthammer you've got your head up - uhh- in the sand!

An opinion piece by Washington Post columnist Dr. Charles Krauthammer appeared in The (Charleston, SC) Post and Courier titled "We owe Muslims no apology". That is quite an incendiary title. I infer that "we" means all Americans. The title and article offend me for several reasons.

According to the US State department, two to three million of "we" Americans are Muslims, making it the third largest religious affiliation in America after Christianity and Judaism. I have worked with Muslims. My best friend when I was a young man was an Egyptian Muslim. He saw me through a lengthy slump when I was unemployed and dumped by my girlfriend. He and his wife eventually introduced me to the fabulous woman to whom I have been married for thirty two years. I attended his funeral and burial in a large Islamic section of an old Seattle cemetery. We non-Muslims were welcomed there with kindness and appreciation by the Muslim community. All my direct experiences with Muslims strongly support former President Bush's often repeated assertion that "Islam is a Peaceful Religion."

So what about Dr. Krauthammer's claim that we don't owe Muslims an apology? We have been sticking our American nose into Middle Eastern countries and insinuating ourselves into their political conflicts and civil wars for a long time. Our noble humanitarian mission usually synchronizes better with American economic interests and majority religious beliefs than with neutral peacekeeping. Many Muslim civilians have been killed by Americans and other Middle Eastern groups armed and funded by Americans.

I know first hand of one Muslim who deserves a gigantic apology. I had the privilege of meeting Chaplain James Yee's Palestinian wife when Chaplain Yee was a prisoner in the Charleston Navy Brig. He was there on trumped up charges stemming from his kindness to Guantanamo detainees to whom he ministered as a US Army Islamic Chaplain. I learned first hand of the FBI's terrifying intrusion into Mrs. Yee's home and their refusal to tell her where he was or of what he was accused. Chaplain Yee was cleared of all charges.

Dr. Krauthammer argues that we not only have not harmed Muslims, we have done them a long list of big favors. One example he cites was the military campaign for the liberation of Iraq. Give me a break! This liberation began with a vicious shock and awe bombing assault, precipitated a civil war, destroyed priceless antiquities, and has taken the lives of well over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians. Surveys of Iraqi citizens reveal that virtually all of them feel less secure now than before we liberated them.

The audacity that Dr. Krauthammer shows in his commentary is beyond belief. How would we respond to a title claiming "we" owe Jews or Christians no apology? All of the big three religions have at various times and places defamed the others, spilled innocent blood, violated their rights, or seized their land. The sooner we all quit keeping score and start apologizing the better off we will be.

Here is an afterword for those readers who can't see past the fact that Osama Bin Laden is a Muslim. Yes of course he is and he is arguably the most evil man of the twenty first century. Several Popes of the fifteenth and sixteenth century were notorious war-mongering fornicating torturers. They were Christians. You shouldn't tarnish a whole religion by the excesses of their most notorious intolerant leaders.

He talks pretty but can he lead?

"He talks pretty but can he lead?" We sure hear that a lot from people who prefer someone other than Obama to be the next president. We're supposed to get real nervous lest he be all fluff and no stuff. Well Hrmph! At the chief executive level it's all about talking pretty. If your own heart is in the right place, you've got your facts down, and you are eloquent, you can win the hearts and minds of others at home and abroad. Add to that the ability to select the right staff to analyze, strategize and implement and you pretty much have the makings of a good president. Senator Obama seems quite capable of hiring the right staff to make his campaign successful.