Health care, Medicare, any care at all

We need a single payer system—The government should pay for everything. I don’t understand how the Republican party, who is so pro-business could be so anti-business when it comes to health care. Yeah, they’re afraid of government taking over the whole country sure but only when they are not in power. The Republican’s under the last administration oversaw the greatest expansion of government this country has ever seen but that’s another story. The rest of the industrialized world has a single payer system. Are we smarter than everyone else? I didn’t realize our educational system was that highly ranked, because it’s not.

Since I sell bindery equipment I have to compete against the Europeans and the Japanese. Guess what? Those companies don’t have to pay a penny for health care but I do. Is that fair? I build a machine and my expenses are higher because I have to pay for a portion of my employee’s health care while my competitors get a free ride. Perhaps the Republicans don’t care that I have to compete abroad or even here at home. Perhaps they don’t realize that I am one of the few dealers left that sell machinery built in the US. Maybe they’ll figure it out after I’m extinct.

Before GM went bankrupt they spent more on health care than steel. Yet the Republicans don’t care. All they care about is instilling fear in the populace towards their political ends. Case in point: During his campaign, John McCain proposed deep cuts in Medicaid. During the health care debate in December he complained that the bill would impose “draconian cuts” on Medicare, even though the proposed cuts were far less than he had proposed months earlier. The Republicans have been trying to cut the cost of Medicare for years!

Medicare is a perfectly good system. Everyone on it likes it. I propose expanding Medicare for those aged 60 and above immediately. In two years lower the eligibility to those aged 55. In another two years to those aged 50 and so on.

If you want to be afraid of something, be afraid that America won’t be able to build anything in the future short of credit default swaps.

Printers, Binderies, and Business

When asked, every man thinks he’s a good driver and good in bed. But there must be some that are better than others, right?

My father did a lot of business with a bindery owner who would buy a machine for a particular job and then sell it back to my Dad. Sometimes the same machine would change hands a few times. He didn’t care, the cost of the machine was built into the job and no matter how much he spent, sending out the job would have cost more.

One bindery owner I know is a very savvy businessman. You walk into his shop and you see fairly new equipment, well maintained and clean. Another bindery owner in the same area has a shop with, let’s say, less than optimum equipment. He has a Sickinger Twinserter wire binder that is about 15 years old. The problem is that it is a very slow wire binder. It produces about 200 books per hour. Almost every other wire binder on the market can double or triple this output, but let’s just say double. So if he averages 100,000 books per year, he could have saved over 200 man hours (assuming he uses two people including material handling) per year he would have saved at least 3,000 man hours in the past fifteen years. If he pays his people $10 per hour, he would have saved a minimum of $30,000. This doesn’t count insurance, workman’s comp, or overhead. So how much did he save by having a less than sterling wire binder in the long run?

I once told a bindery owner in California that if he made his own plastic coil he would save $100,000 per year and the machine at that time only cost $28,000. His reply to me was; “I’m not so much interested in saving money as making money.”

Even though times are tough right now I hear about companies outsourcing hundreds of thousands of dollars in binding services per year when they can bring the machinery in to do it in-house for less than $100,000.

Within the next few weeks we’ll delve into this more thoroughly.

Bush, Fascism, and the Gift That Keeps on Giving

Imagine a government that is so in league with corporations that it under regulates them to the point where it is disastrous to the corporations themselves. The auto industry, the banks, we've been there, done that. Now we have a Supreme Court, furnished by that corporate lackey George W. Bush, that takes it one step further.

Now, corporations can donate millions, or billions to the candidate they choose. Perhaps our senators can start wearing jackets with logos a la NASCAR. Yes, the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are as entitled to free speech, and donations, as private individuals. Goldman/Sachs can go to their petty cash box and donate a million dollars to each and every senator.

Has it dawned on anyone that now, foreign governments can sponsor our politicians? It doesn’t matter whether or not foreign corporations will be deemed ineligible for these donations. Where do multi-national corporations lie within this irresponsible ruling? Let’s say that Saudi Arabia wants to keep oil prices high or renewable energy a far flung dream. They can donate funds, through their own corporations, through multinationals such as Exxon, or through dummy corporations set up here in the US to any politician(s) that will ensure just such an outcome. If a Chinese bank donates money to a senator, it will be the Chinese government calling the shots.

In fact, now foreign governments can start grooming young politicians to run for federal office. China can groom a few, Yemen can groom a few, Russia can groom a few and when the time comes for these politicians to be sworn in, they will be given their marching orders. None will question who is buttering their bread.

So thank you Mr. Bush, thank you Supremes, now we lazy Americans can outsource the running of our government to people who really care about America— Corporations and foreign governments, be they friend or foe.

And some call Obama a fascist!

What did Harry Reid into the nation?

Harry Reid’s comment that Barak Obama had a good chance to be elected president because he was light skinned and had no African American accent is supposedly racism— Nonsense.

Do we think that Harry Reid would not vote for a dark skinned black man? I recall the original Saturday Night Live where Julian Bond(the State senator from Georgia and NAACP Chairman) told Garrett Morris that lighter skinned blacks were smarter than darker skin blacks. Is Julian Bond a racist? This was followed up in another show where Cicely Tyson was interviewed by Garrett Morris where she stated that black women were superior to black men and that black men were shiftless and lazy. Is Cicely Tyson a racist? When Obama was criticized for not being black enough, was that racism?

Race exists in politics in America. Recognizing this is not racism, it is pragmatism. All Harry Reid was doing was point out that some voters would be more comfortable voting for a lighter skinned black man with a mellifluous speaking voice than a darker skinned man with a heavy African American accent.

Who would deny this? We all need to take a deep breath and grow up.

Introduction

I don’t know if I am qualified to write a blog since I have never read one. What do you get from these blogs? The internet is an open sewer with anyone spouting off the first thing that comes into their head. So why not me?

I am a part owner in a company that sells graphic arts finishing equipment. The plain term is bindery equipment. My father, Norton Spiel, has always called the bindery industry the step child of the printing industry. Most of you out there feel that way. You all drool over your new digital presses and your sexy software. Walk into a shop and you will see that the pre-press department looks like the Starship Enterprise and the bindery department looks like the boiler room on the Titanic—twenty years ago!

I know bindery isn’t sexy but think about this: If you do not have call to bind books any longer you are going to have to find another job. Everything prior to the bindery can be done electronically. So if you have any love for paper or books, respect your bindery department! Besides, if you screw up a job during pre-press or on press, it can be caught and stopped. If you make your mistake in bindery, you just paid for the whole job yourself.

Rodney Dangerfield should have been a bindery equipment salesman. So the next time you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for pre-press or a million dollars for a press, save some crumbs for the bindery department or you may find yourself working in a paperless shop.