Tioga Herald

A Tale of Two Villages

A long time ago, there were two villages in upstate New York.  Both about the same size. Both with manufacturing and production. Both bedroom communities of IBM.  Both with one-time business sections of the village which were quite similar with the active business life in each village.

One village was actually closer to the IBM plants than the other, but both were still considered bedroom communities.  How much did IBM help these communities? Did they offset taxes? Not certain.  Did they pay employees? That they did.

The village closer to IBM plants had a ladder factory.  That ladder factory was purchased by a big American corporate conglomerate called Werner Ladder.  According to a Google search, Werner is today located in Illinois. 

What did Werner do?  Shut down the plant and laid off all the employees in the one village.  No longer a tax base for the community.  By way of hearsay, I learned that the AMERICAN corporation wanted to pay less to employees – cheapskate big fat pigs at the top of a company which, like so many others in America, are Leona Helmsley and Donald Trump types and don’t want to pay taxes because “those are for the little people.”  Is this hearsay correct?  I believe it is and there are plenty of other examples of AMERICAN run corporations which have shipped jobs overseas – a bunch of cheapskates who also cancelled pensions and amassed fortunes at the top with corrupt bonuses paid to such fat pigs at the top.  (See the book, Retirement Heist which identifies General Electric and other companies which did this and then put peer pressure on the others at the top to do the same).  Corrupt self-centered narcissists doing everything for themselves and no damn concern for the “common folk,” but lying and being hypocritical, mesmerizing too many of the common folk that their way is best. 

What about the other village? See if you can guess what it is. The first village is located in Tioga County, NY, one of many very impoverished counties today in upstate New York.  A county run by Republicans who side with these big corporate conglomerate assholes at the top and have achieved NOTHING for the “Common folk.”  This second village has, for many years, had a production facility for another company. Can you guess what it is?  They manufacture devices for the types of lifts, etc. which a Home Depot might purchase for use in their stores.  BTW.  Home depot also sells the Werner ladder, too.  What about this other company?  It is still in existence today, after about 100 years or so being there.  Guess who owns this company in the second village? An overseas concern, not big fat American culprits making money hand over foot.  It is owned by a company called Toyota. 

Fascinating story.  A production facility in upstate New York owned by the capitalist giant in a nation we defeated in World War II. 

There are more examples which are similar to the first village in other communities throughout the northeast.  Production shut down and work sent overseas.  The claim? Too high a labor cost in the USA.  To which I say, with the example of a Toyota owning another production facility:  such things by cheapskates of America is nothing but bullshit. 

If I am correct, the congressional district to which the other village is part of is that of Anthony Brindisi who, by way of fraud from the Republican opponent, Claudia Tenney, lost to Tenney by just a few hundred votes.  But to Republicans, the only ones who perform fraud are Democrats, don’t you know?  Anthony Brindisi BROUGHT industry back to that district and how is he repaid?  Removed from office, for doing a good thing.  Imagine that.  Brindisi.  A Democrat.  Unlike the liars I heard recently in Owego, NY, with the lies of a conspiracy theory that “Democrats do what the Chinese want,” Brindisi worked with the military to stop purchasing products from the Chinese and producing them in upstate New York.  And this is how Brindisi, a Democrat, is rewarded?  I once worked for Democrats in a corporation in Florida which made good money and was considered a “cash cow.” Ripe for the picking by lousy Republican business people when they came in, took over the company, laid most of us off, and scrapped the good fortunes of the company in order to knock the stock price so low it would be ripe for merger and acquisition.  It was. It is now part of a huge company in North Carolina, while the Florida part of it was scrapped.  Regarding this corporation, facts not fiction.  But hell, A Tale of Two Villages is supposed to be fiction, right?  The fiction is the assholes who repeat Fox commentary in Owego with lies and conspiracy theories.  Perhaps it is Sloppy Don and the Republifascists at fault for many of our problems?  That is what I can prove with facts, not conspiracy theories. 

The other day, in driving through the second village, I saw the village and its business district doing far better than the first village with the ladder factory.  Most of the business district in the ladder factory village has been burned to the ground and no one has the balls to build it back up.  Don’t tell me there are problems with finances because I know about villages which have had, at their disposal, grant money to help build the villages.  I don’t believe the damn pessimism I hear.  I refuse to believe it any more.  As the writer of A Tale of Two Cities, I am sick and tired of hearing the pessimism. My Scottish family has a motto:  “As I breathe, I hope.” 

I don’t know if my first name comes from General Douglas MacArthur or not.  My dad served in the Pacific and told me about working some of the time with the occupation forces there in the hotel in Tokyo where MacArthur was headquartered in Japan.  When I asked my parents whether my name came from Douglas MacArthur, the answer was usually a smart ass one, “its for you to find out.”  Never mentioned.  But I was born in the early years of the Gen. Eisenhower administration in Washington.  It was just a few years after Harry S. Truman fired MacArthur for wanting to invade China from the Korean peninsula.  There still remain questions as to whether MacArthur, who had the ear of FDR, was correct in trying to convince FDR NOT to drop the a-bomb.  Cannot speak to that, except to report on the William Manchester biography of MacArthur, which is where I obtained some of this knowledge.  I am not going to debate the question of a-bomb or not because no one knows what the future could have held should we have done something different.  I repeat. NO one is knowledgeable enough to make and assumption of a “what if the bomb were not dropped on Japan.”  No one can predict the future of anything with a certainty. But we can try to find best practices which exist today, learn from history, and move forward.  The preponderance of pessimism for the future makes me ill and nauseous.  There is no certainty, either whether my first name comes from General MacArthur.  Just a bunch of circumstantial evidence which MIGHT point to this fact. 

With all of this being said, I now lead into a bit of information about Gen. MacArthur who was appointed by Truman to be the Supreme Commander over Japan, following VJ Day.  MacArthur was swift in putting down the communist movement in Japan.  Because it was raging after World War ii.  At the same time, Douglas ended the fascist dictatorial means created by a leader who claimed to be divine like a god and to be worshiped.  He squelched that, as well.  He squelched the type of Medieval supply side economics which was similar to Western Europe and pushed by Hitler and Mussolini.  MacArthur was the one responsible for putting Japan back on its feet, even if it took a couple of decades for the results to be noticed. 

Thus, for the one village with manufacturing facilities owned by Toyota today, it demonstrates that the Japanese have developed a mentality to hire American labor and not be cheapskates about providing living wages and benefits. 

I have no objections to those claiming the unions were at fault.  Perhaps they were? But in comparison to the Reagan supply-side economics and Trump cronyism for corporate welfare (and DeSantis and Scott of Florida), a good leadership SHOULD  have been able to mange by checks and balances.  Sure. Perhaps the UAW pushed the envelope too far. But did Lee Iacocca, a Democrat, have difficulty in dealing with the union, from a leadership position?  (See the Iacocca book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?  —- bet you will just snipe at me rather than read what I suggest here). 

Ass for the village with the company bought out by Toyota, it lives happily ever after? That is a statement of fiction, in case someone reading this does not have the intelligence to differentiate fact from fiction. If you grasp and put your arms around what Fox Commentary says, you demonstrate you are not able to differentiate fact from fiction. 

What can I say about the other village which once had a ladder factory for years?  Pessimism rules and is a preponderance over what it could be.  But the big problem are the fat pig robber barons at the top.

As I breathe, I hope.  With these words, I have to wonder whether the Scottish family of Gen. MacArthur used the same motto? 

For both villages to live happily ever after, there needs to be a change in attitude and stop being like a bunch of spoiled brats with pessimistic beliefs for the future.  How does that happen?  I know the answers, but do readers know the answers?  If we put our heads together with the goal of finding the best practices as our solutions, not some dimwitted answers from people like Trump, DeSantis, Scott or others, we can do it – together.  Best practices are not always those on the right OR the left.  Best practices are not always those identified with conservative or liberal.  Best practices are solutions which work and have been identified as working, as well as identification of consequences and the strength of those consequences where good overrides bad.  I am sick and tired of the ideology. I am sick and tired of the political parties.  I am also sick and tired of too many Americans who cannot see that whether ultra right wing or ultra left wing, the results are the same:  dictatorship and the destruction of democracy and a democracy which CAN work effectively, even if it can be slow at times.  A dictator rules with an iron fist, but that rule is usually only good for a few people, not all.  Peace and justice does not exist under such circumstances. In the case of national dictators, genocide is performed for “cleansing” the population of opposition to the dictators.  That might create a peace, but not justice.  Only cowards want to achieve such peace in this manner by extinguishing the opposition.  Such iron fists at a local level would only provide justice by literally banning the opposition from living there.  I saw this happen under a local iron-fisted dictator at the local level.  I saw it happen by studying the history of my ancestors who were banished by puritanical shitheads from Boston in the late 1600s.  In those cases, people had a place to escape.  Today, where can the opposition escape to, should such things happen at the national level?  They can only escape by means of death? Only cowards would want such a thing because it makes their lives easier.  Lazy bums.  Both villages now have solutions for the future.  What are those solutions?  Solutions so as to live “happily ever after and do so with solutions which does not make for a hell on earth for many and a paradise of money loving bastards on the other side?”