Monday, March 7, 2016

new world (dis)-order?

There's a story up at Cleveland.com that tells about the 112,500 jobs lost in Ohio, just in 2015, to the other players in the "TransPacificPartnership" crowd.
That's a pretty large number.  That's 112,500 fellow human beings who either lost an existing job, or who now have fewer opportunities.  That's a lot of un-taken vacations, a lot of birthday parties skipped for lack of funds, a lot of stresses, a lot of closed businesses.
It's not a theoretical far-off thing for me. Have been there.  Several times.  The operation that had more business than it could comfortably handle in 1982, closed in 1984.  The division of GM with some 15,000 employees in 1984, down to a few hundred today and dwindling, most of its sites closed.  The operation I was at from 1990-1992 which has undergone a continuous path of downsizing and buyouts and near-closures (the satellite operations in Texas and in Florida have closed).  The operation I was at 1992-1999 which was bought out and gutted, with satellite operations in places like Kansas closed, and much of the remainder consisting of repackaging Chinese- and Mexican-made product for sale.  The operation I was at 1999-2004 closed as part of it's major customer's relocation to Mexico, affecting not only my operation, but nearly a dozen others in the area, all now empty buildings.  The operation I was at 2004-2005 that shut down both my operations in that town, but did so in the middle of my relocation there!  Or the one that I moved to in 2005 that shut down most of its national operations, relocating to "my' place, displacing us and abandoning long-operating facilities in several other states.
I've been there.
The next person who tells me "it's for the best", I may do an injury to.

Lots of blame to go around.  Avaricious bureaucrats.  Avaricious unions.  The worthless bums of the EPA, state and federal.  The acolytes and priests of the "New World Order".  The "citizen of the world" louts.  Creepy tort-feasing lawyers.  And much else.

But that's a lot of cases where someone had to come home and tell the family The Bad News.  I've done it, done it more than most.

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