The last post on ‘Old pink meat product‘ produced a comments section identifying the electrocuting hot dog cooker as the Presto Hot Dogger. YouTube had a few home videos devoted to the Presto as retro cooking equipment. Unbreakable and manufactured, originally, as early as the Fifties in Eau Claire, WI, here’s one amusing video.
With a touch of extra amusement provided by the Carolina Chocolate Drops singing “Short Life of Trouble.”
I used the Hot Dogger in the late Eighties and early Nineties. It was a thing that, fundamentally, always worked. Unlike the current service-centered economy, as you know if you have standard Internet connectivity through AT&T, or have recently dumped cable because having no tv other than DVD replay is actually better.
Presto made home appliances. And you know what happened. It was all moved to China.
Here’s a piece from the BBC on US manufacturing, from 2002:
Maryjo Cohen is shutting two factories.
Cheap, high quality goods from China have eaten away profit margins at National Presto industries, a Wisconsin-based firm which makes pressure cookers and electric frying pans.
“That’s going on all over the US, our entire industry has moved to China,” says Ms Cohen, National Presto’s president.
She is reluctant to say how many jobs will go at National Presto’s plants in New Mexico and Mississippi but it will be a “substantial number for a company our size” – at least half the workforce.
National Presto has an agent in Hong Kong who subcontracts work to plants in China’s neighbouring Guangdong province.
How did National Presto diversify and expand after outsourcing its small cooking appliance manufacturing? You read this blog, you already have a hunch.
Once again, a perfect example of national decline.
National Presto went into arms manufacturing, the only protected business and preserved-at-all-costs labor in the United States.
The company makes over 600 million a year in ammo and ordnance production through a subsidiary.
National Presto Industries Inc. said Monday its ammunition products unit has received an $81 million defense contract option from the U.S. Army.
The Eau Claire-based company said AMTEC Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary, received the option award under AMTEC’s five-year contract to produce 40 mm systems for the Army. It is the first award AMTEC has received during the government’s 2012 fiscal year, which ends in September, and additional awards are anticipated, the company said.
The option award brings the cumulative amount awarded under an ongoing 40 mm contract to $364.7 million, the company said.
A business profile at Seeking Alpha comments, “National Presto Industries (NPK) is an oddly diversified producer of military arms, adult diapers, and small cooking appliances with a market capitalization of well under $1 billion.”
Up until a few years ago the received wisdom, also delivered by economists, was that it was fine to deindustrialize and ship most domestic non-military manufacturing to China and other periperal nations with cheap labor markets.
You didn’t have to make things in America anymore. You could be good at other stuff — like financial products and software programming.
Add arms manufacturing.
Life ain’t fair. But even the bromide, the preservation of arms manufacturing and the consequent decade of continuous war has been profoundly unfair to the 99 percent in this country.
If arms manufacturing had been exposed to the same pressure as all other forms of domestic manufacturing, we wouldn’t have war.
A black comedy could be written around a script in which a national leader decides to enact policies that would mandate absolute lowest bid contracts on arms manufacturing to a global marketplace. Yes, I know it could never happen.
But a story revolving around the fear, loathing and comeuppance in the military defense industry complex upon dislocation into the Chinese manufacturing sector is enjoyable to consider. I’d buy that novel. I’d anticipate it being optioned to Hollywood. I’d be first in line for the the movie adaptation, too.
I’d love the parts where the dispirited newly fired workers of Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin were taught how to apply for food stamps at severance meetings. And, how, with a lot of extra free time on their hands they fruitlessly strived to make a go of things by fashioning their own personal brands, uploading homemade white rap and comedy videos to YouTube. Or making small business website pages advertising new artisan coffee or dog walking businesses. Logging on to Zaarly everyday to find new opportunities as personal assistants or gofers for the more fortunate, locally.
Going back to school to learn how to be a chef at the Cordon Bleu school; taking two or three janitorial positions, any job that couldn’t be sent to hired hands overseas. Wait staff, not so favorable an outlook, because of something else, made by another in the army of pitiless trivial douchebags from the creative economic destruction industry, coincidentally called the Presto.
There would be growth in the cyberdefense subsidiary businesses of the big arms companies because, paradoxically, while all the manufacturing had been shipped to China, Chinese state-supported hackers were still penetrating US networks. However, growth would slow as even the Chinese began to realize there was little left to steal in the way of so-called intellectual property. And getting into the power grid just wasn’t important when you had that country’s
production completely by the balls.
Yes, there should be equalization and fair dinkum payback! And no, it won’t happen but that doesn’t mean you can’t savor the idea. China is getting into the aircraft carrier business, I hear. And certainly it has a military space program.
Think of all the money that could be saved on ammo and bombs.
If the Chinese can make electric guitars for Fender and Gibson, and all the digital underpinnings that go into the modern consumer electronics music industry, surely it can produce Joint Direct Attack Munitions and Predator drones through licensing agreements.
Shock! Horror!
It’s nice to dream about it all being gone. Like the Presto Hot Dogger.
Everyday, someone somewhere spreads rubbish in an effort to get you to think the reality in the robot novels and short stories of Isaac Asimov are just years away.
Often they come from the military. Along with the military robot research stories come emphases that projects are all for good Samaritan work — like wanting fire-fighters, this rather odd at a time when state governments have fired workers that do these essential jobs. Due to economic collapse.
From MSNBC:
Uncle Sam wants you to make a military robot capable of walking on two legs, handling power tools and even driving vehicles. Luckily, the U.S. military’s new robotics challenge aims to save lives rather than hunt down human warriors …
[Yeah, luckily.]
The $2 million challenge by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency appeared in an official online solicitation Tuesday. DARPA wants a humanoid robot to replace humans doing dangerous work in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, industrial accidents or natural disasters … the U.S. Navy already has plans to build its own robotic firefighter capable of doing humanoid tasks such as climbing ladders and throwing extinguisher grenades.
The Government anticipated receiving approximately $11.5M of FY04-07 funds for this program. The Government expected TO 1 costs would not exceed $500K, TO 2 costs would not exceed $3M, and TO 3 would not exceed $8M. It was anticipated that an IDIQ contract would be awarded with a maximum ceiling of $20M since it was impossible to accurately estimate all requirements during the five year period of performance. This funding profile was an estimate only and is not a promise of funding, as all funding is subject to changes/availability and Government discretion. It was desired that contract expenditures be managed and billed so as to maximize FY05 expenditure of FY04 and FY05 funding.
It weighs as much as the bell in Big Ben; it’s capable of plunging through 60 feet of reinforced concrete and has the most ridiculously sexual name imaginable for a deadly weapon – but the Massive Ordnance Penetrator is THE bomb, says the Pentagon.
Talk of beefing the bomb up with a hardened case and further advancements has been ongoing since the Air Force took delivery of it in September 2011. But Bloomberg reported that, in response to “an urgent request” from the Pentagon, immediate approval was given to shift $81.6 million to the so-called MOP program.
The urgency is not explained – but it can be speculated that the Pentagon does not want to mop up a potential mess if (or when) it goes to war with Iran. So they’re putting a rush on something that can easily destroy things like underground labs, or secret nuclear facilities.
Two million puts life-saving clean-up after terrorist attack robots as posh hobby/corporate welfare money for relatively small business and/or vanity projects.
So far this week Kroger and SafeWay, two of the nation’s biggest supermarket chains (I shop at Ralphs in Pasadena, a Kroger property), have forsworn Beef Products, Inc’s pink slime.
Supermarket chains Kroger Co. and Stop & Shop said Thursday they will join the growing list of store chains that will no longer sell beef that includes an additive with the unappetizing moniker “pink slime.”
The chains joined Safeway, Supervalu and Food Lion, among others, who have said they won’t sell beef with the filler.
“Our customers have expressed their concerns that the use of lean finely textured beef — while fully approved by the USDA for safety and quality — is something they do not want in their ground beef,” Kroger said in a statement. “As a result, Kroger will no longer purchase ground beef containing lean finely textured beef.”
As a result one would expect the company of Eldon Roth to shortly be in ruins. Unless it can maintain a niche selling pink slime into prison cafeterias, to pet manufacturers, or to the base kitchens serving US military men overseas.
There are others, like Wal-Mart, which have still not eschewed the purchase of pink slime. Corporate America, however, is not particularly ballsy when it comes to going against widespread consumer revulsion.
And the image of finely textured beef — pink slime — is now forever repugnant.
A longer story, from 2009, in the New York Times on the material shows what corporate American businesses believe to be innovative: making money from garbage.
From time to time DD blog has covered how this blows up in the faces of businesses, semi-regularly making for great outrage in the nation’s newspapers when people are sickened or killed.
Paradoxically, pink slime was “invented” as a cure-all for tainted beef after virulently toxic E. coli in Jack In the Box hamburgers slaughtered about ten people a decade or so ago.
The New York Times story on the nature of pink slime shows its inventor, Eldon Roth of a company named Beef Products, engaged in magical thinking, believing at one point that mixing his ammonia-treated product with any ground meat cleansed the entire batch, perhaps like a disinfectant. (Ammonia gas, NH3, is added to the meat slurry in pipes. I presume that when it hits the moisture in the product, it is solubilized to ammonium hydroxide, a base. This raises the alkalinity of the material, killing bacteria. The problem posed is that to get the alkalinity high enough to absolutely kill everything, the material begins to reek — ammonia having an odor that is generally recognized as repugnant to everyone.)
“This was based on Mr. Roth’s initial prediction that his treated beef could kill E. coli in any meat it was mixed with,” wrote the Times in 2009. “The company acknowledges that its subsequent study found no evidence to back that up …”
An excerpt:
As suppliers of national restaurant chains and government-financed programs were buying Beef Product meat to use in ground beef, complaints about its pungent odor began to emerge.
In early 2003, officials in Georgia returned nearly 7,000 pounds to Beef Products after cooks who were making meatloaf for state prisoners detected a “very strong odor of ammonia” in 60-pound blocks of the trimmings, state records show.
“It was frozen, but you could still smell ammonia,” said Dr. Charles Tant, a Georgia agriculture department official. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Unaware that the meat was treated with ammonia — since it was not on the label — Georgia officials assumed it was accidentally contaminated and alerted the agriculture department. In their complaint, the officials noted that the level of ammonia in the beef was similar to levels found in contamination incidents involving chicken and milk that had sickened schoolchildren.
The material seems to be marketed primarily to places serving institutional populations — prisons and schools. McDonald’s, noticeably, has dropped use of it.
The New York Times 2009 piece says use of it as a ground meat extender shaves 3 cents off the price of a pound of hamburger in school lunch programs.
The economic crash and reduced state government spending presumably extends to school lunch programs.
Vulture capitalism until so much bad publicity accrues the company causing it is forced into collapse.
Will pink slime’s growing reputation as, well, pink slime, ever finish Beef Products in the US? Hard to say.
A more pro-active consumer protection stance by the government would be needed.
Unless you’re working for an arms manufacturer, some disruptive digital revolution company stuffed with annoying tech nerds working to destroy the livelihoods of others, or in financial services, you’re permanently on the downward slope of employability.
DD’s going out on a pretty strong limb here to assert the US economy will never revive substantial employment for the middle class. Retail, food service and jobs as hospitality workers for the tourism business won’t refloat the American dream.
So the country will continue its slide into not making anything anyone really wants in the wider physical world except weapons and some cars.
How do I know?
An incessant barrage of news articles on how to make money on the side.
There is an unintentional black humor to these pieces since they literally involve squeezing blood from stones.
What’s the number one way to quick money in this story?
Sell blood! Maybe you’ll make an extra $25 to $35 a month!
The next recommendation? Be a guinea pig. Sign up for clinical trials of unapproved drugs.
This is like being a prostitute, only it pays less, is somewhat more hazardous and lacks the small satisfactions that might come from knowing you’re attractive and effective enough to be a streetwalker and can kick the john out when you’ve collected the cash money and done the service. In fact, it’s a good argument for the legalization of the world’s oldest profession.
As a boost to employment opportunities, of course.
Also on the list — liquidation. After being put out of work by corporate America, you can sell of all your things at next to nothing prices on two of the boom-boom revolutionary companies in US net tech, eBay or Amazon, and make a few extra bob.
And remember the bit at the top of the piece on disruptive technology service firms and how good it is to work for them? Building their business models on technology that enables the haves to use the network to wipe their feet on the have-nots, you can join the global slave labor pool through them, doing anything someone can think of for a few pebbles and a handful of dirt:
“Still, you can use the Internet to make extra cash. You can provide product research on sites like SurveySavvy.com for anywhere from $1 to $15 per survey, or perform quick menial tasks like tagging images for a few cents each on Mechanical Turk. You can also use the Internet to find offline jobs in your area (like bartending or short-term work as a personal assistant) at Zaarly, where some gigs are worth $100 or more.”
EBay transformed the way people sold vintage trinkets online. Craigslist changed the way people bought new sofas and hunted for apartments in their towns. A new start-up called Zaarly hopes to alter the way people outsource simple errands and tasks …
Bo Fishback, the chief executive and founder of the company, said the most exciting piece of the news was that the company was also gaining Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard and the former chief executive of eBay, as a board member …
The site works by letting people post requests for an item or service, and then lets other people, businesses and companies bid to fulfill those needs. Once an agreement is met, Zaarly connects the two parties so they can complete the deal. People can either pay in cash, or through Zaarly’s payment system.
Krugman took up the business media’s yen for comparing how things work in some part of Paphlagonia, and then loudly proclaiming that the place with the insignificant population means something as compared to where large majorities of Americans live.
So Krugman takes on a piece in the Wall Street Journal, one claiming North Dakota could be a lesson for California because of an alleged soaring economy.
This is all about the minor oil boom in the Bakken Shale, one which continually spawns stories about how that’s where all Americans can go to get high-paying jobs. These stories always center around Williston, which because of the oil boom, has expanded from 15,000 to 30,000.
Williston, even expanded, is still only a fifth the size of Pasadena.
“Workers are making $120,000 a year in Williston,” reads this representative piece. This is made to seem remarkable. For a small town, it is. But in comparison with a place like Pasadena, there are more people here earning more that what is earned in Williston, no boom, and it has been so for a very a long time.
Nevertheless, insists one of the new denizens of Williston: “The world has changed, you just can’t make it with a normal job anymore.”
The subtext, of course, is if we all migrate to Paphlagonia to mine oil shale, our problems are solved.
“Williston sits atop the Bakken Shale, which will later this year be producing more oil than any other site in the country, surpassing even Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, the longtime leader in domestic output,” reads the Wall Street Journal piece ridiculed by Krugman. “This once-sleepy town is what the Gold Rush might have looked like had it happened in the time of McDonald’s …”
Krugman notes North Dakota is, essentially, a speck of fly shit compared to California.
[Following] a link to Allan Meltzer led to to a report that’s bad even by current WSJ standards: Stephen Moore telling us to compare California with North Dakota to see what works economically. Because a resource boom in a state whose total population is basically that of one neighborhood in LA, as compared with a slump caused by the mother of all housing bubbles and its aftermath, totally shows that free markets rool.
Incidentally, California’s job gain since the bottom in 2009 is, if I’m not mistaken, bigger than the entire adult population of North Dakota.
The Congressional Research Service recently published a report entitled “Financial Performance of the Five Major Oil Companies, 2007-2011.”
Such reports are requested by Congress, usually as ammo for hearings or background for some other type of activity in which various members of Congress pontificate and, perhaps, even legislate. However, CRS reports do not tell which members ordered them. And Congress does not make them available to the public.
The incentive of higher and rising oil prices in 2007-2008 and 2010-2011 did not result in observably higher production of the five oil companies. Similarly, the disincentive of lower or falling oil prices did not result in observably lower production by the companies … The five major oil companies seemingly have not behaved in accord with market economic theory with respect to output adjustments in relation to changing prices. That theory depends on the responsiveness of firms to price signals to expand output in times of higher and or rising prices and to provide reductions to output during lower and or falling prices. In this way price volatility in the market is reduced while keeping supply matched to demand.
The report observes that oil companies do not obey market economics and that the “oil market … is difficult to fit into the model of free market adjustments.”
Perhaps the five largest oil companies could be viewed as a power unto themselves. Like a cartel.
The CRS report does not furnish material useful in blaming the president for precipitously rising gas prices. It gives no obvious opening to those who might think of appealing to oil companies for help in the matter, like increasing production. And, in view of its statistics, it furnishes no obvious information elucidating why oil companies receive tax breaks and constant government energy policy subsidies.
“Bringing new oil supplies on the market can be a double-edged sword for oil producers,” continues the report.
“While the oil companies need to expand their reserve bases to replace losses due to production they … may find it not in their best interest to expand available supply too much, too quickly. When oil supplies flood the market and excess capacity rises to excessive levels, the price of crude oil can tumble. A sharp decline is not in the interest of oil company profits … ”
The illogic, then, of allowing “excess capacity rising to excessive levels”
seems indisputable. If somewhat vexing and evil.
“The capital expenditures of the [oil companies] have not succeeded in increasing their production of oil and natural gas,” concludes “Financial Performance of the Five Major Oil Companies, 2007-2011.”
“They have been successful in providing returns to their shareholders.”
A great comic at DailyKos by Jen Sorensen who’s also picked up the rubbish pundit meme that American workers are obsolete in the world, incompetent for all the new work in the global economy. Like making Fender Telecasters, toilet seats, and the fancy goods furnished by the army of hexane swabbers for the Holy Steve Jobs Empire.
“These workers need retraining to compete in the 21st century!”
I gotta get a guitar … Call me Rock Pud! … Siri: From now on, I’ll call you Rock Pud, OK? I found 9 million websites and 12 magazine stores that sell pictures of puds for you!
I regularly run into people who rant against the government, vote Republican, who’s lives are utterly dependent upon various aspect of the social safety net.
The working class’ earning power has been so squeezed by corporate America it has fallen to the government to keep many from abject poverty.
Yet large numbers of the people dependent on government programs watch nothing but Fox News, detest the current President and argue vehemently to destroy all the things that make their lives survivable.
The New York Times has done a long story on them. It is a must read.
Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.
“I don’t demand that the government does this for me. I don’t feel like I need the government,” said KI GULBRANSON, who counts on an earned-income tax credit and has signed up his children for free meals at school.
He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman.
Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.
[Dean P. Lacy], a professor of political science at Dartmouth College, has identified a twist on that theme in American politics over the last generation. Support for Republican candidates, who generally promise to cut government spending, has increased since 1980 in states where the federal government spends more than it collects. The greater the dependence, the greater the support for Republican candidates.
And, here, the man who resent others who spend “his” money, doled out by entitlement check, in the same boat:
Brian Qualley, 49, has a sister who survived a brain tumor but was disabled by its removal. The government pays for her care at an assisted-living facility. Their mother scrapes by on Social Security.
Mr. Qualley said that the government should provide for those who need help, but that too much money was being wasted. Mr. Qualley, who owns a tattoo parlor in Harris, north of North Branch, said some of his customers paid with money from government disability checks.
“They’re getting $300 or $400 tattoos, and they’re wearing nice new Nike shoes that I can’t afford,”
Having played in a biker rock band for many years I’m intimately familiar with the tattoo parlor crowd. The logical mind is not one of its defining characteristics. You find no gentleness, expansive spirit or progressive value in tattoo parlors and this can hardly be news. Momentarily, I wondered why the Times even saw fit to interview someone who ran one. (The paper also uncovered a bigot — the resentment over “nice Nike shoes” being the giveaway. The reporter and editors certainly know it.)
However, scapegoating is a common characteristic of societies enduring hard times. And Paul Fussell noted in Class that the afflicted kick down at those of their own circumstance.
There’s a very thin line between disdain or contempt and outright hate between the divisions which make up our various middle-class tribes. And often there are no lines at all. Needle someone hard enough in a tribe different from yours and see it erupt.
It is easy to understand the great anger in the Tea Party, or anywhere in the hinterlands. The urge to give a presumed tormentor a good punch in the face when you get the opportunity to swing is strong and human. The presumed tormentor is usually someone within arms reach.
Here I often marvel at the many folk music videos the opposition puts on YouTube, all with more enthusiastic fans than anything from my side.
The music may be bad, the lyrics awful, the sentiment horribly misguided. It’s easy to laugh at material by people who couldn’t pass an introductory college economics course singing about Ron Paul’s love of “sound money” and returning to the gold standard.
However, one thing it doesn’t lack is gutsiness; the willingness to be taken for a fool in letting the raw shout of hurt out.
A predatory economy has set into stone conditions in which Americans now always find themselves moving down. So they’re always going to be bitter. How many people on food stamps vote for pols who want to destroy the food stamp program?
A lot more than you think, I imagine.
“There used to be room at the top,” Paul Fussell wrote in Class.
It’s a familiar term. It’s what happens when an article you’ve written gets linked to by Matt Drudge.
An onslaught by tens of thousands occurs in the space of a few hours, with almost everyone in it bearing the triple handicap of being nuts, stupid and extremely right wing.
The server may topple from the weight. The e-mail box overflows with slurs and calumnies upon your house. The comments section will be flooded.
A train full of crazy people has arrived, ejected its passengers, now all ranting, cursing and waving nonsensical digital placards. They pay no attention to what you’ve actually published, chew the carpet for a few hours and then depart, never to return.
Tomorrow Drudge will loose his army of fools and cretins on some other person or random net posting. And the entire process will repeat.
In the meantime you’ll be deleting all the comments and mail espousing violence and bigotry.
What happens when a nation forgets their God and makes football of greater importance on Sundays. And worships the work of their own hands above God. This is what they deserve. But in the end, ” Those who lead into captivity shall go into captivity”. This system that all these elites are devising to control the masses will become their own prison and it will be just the opposite. It will be used upon their own heads. Our only hope is for a massive solar storm to destroy all the satellites and GPS and Comm of all these totalitarians. The PEOPLE are safe without them and their CONTROL. We have GUNS. So there is another reason these Marxists phags are doing this. To assume total control. Got news for ya. Our GOD is going to take your power and destroy you. Patience of the Saints.
May a solar storm destroy you Marxist totalitarian phags.
