It is my hope and prayer that many will heed this, take it to heart, and make a serious personal decision about living not for this world; because there is life after death, and judgment by a Holy and just God. Vic Bitar

This was received in an email from a friend:

Gregg, May I have your permission to circulate your letter? Love you, Mom
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I can't believe the feedback I have gotten on it - I have customers asking if they can send it to everyone they know - I really just meant it to be a 2 line response, but found my spleen just flowing. Please do spread the word. Gregg
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Gregory J Knox, President
Knox Machinery, Inc., Franklin, Ohio 45005
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Abridged letter from Troy Clarke, President of General Motors - followed by a response from our son, Gregory Knox:

Dear Employee,
Next week, Congress and the current Administration will determine whether to provide immediate support to the domestic auto industry to help it through one of the most difficult economic times in our nation's history.

Your elected officials must hear from all of us now on why this support is critical to our continuing the progress we began prior to the global financial crisis...................... As an employee, you have a lot at stake and continue to be one of our most effective and passionate voices.

I know GM can count on you to have your voice heard.

Thank you for your urgent action and ongoing support.

Troy Clarke
President
General Motors North America

In response to your request to call legislators and ask for a bailout for the United States automakers please consider the following, and please also pass this onto Troy Clark, the president of General Motors North America for me.

You are both infected with the same entitlement mentality that has bred like cancerous germs in UAW halls for the last countless decades, and whose plague is now sweeping the nation, awaiting our new "messiah" to wave his magical wand and make all our problems go away, while at the same time allowing our once great nation to keep "living the dream".

The dream is over!

The dream that we can ignore the consumer for years while management myopically focuses on its personal rewards packages at the same time that our factories have been filled with the worlds most overpaid, arrogant, ignorant and laziest entitlement minded "laborers" without paying the price for these atrocities.and that still the masses will line up to buy our products.

Don't tell me I'm wrong. Don't accuse me of not knowing of what I speak.

I have called on Ford, GM ,Chrysler, TRW, Delphi, Kelsey Hayes, American Axle and countless other automotive OEM's and Tier ones for 3 decades now throughout the Midwest and what I've seen over the years in these union shops can only be described as disgusting.

Mr Clark, the president of General Motors, states: There is widespread sentiment in this country, our government and especially in the media that the current crisis is completely the result of bad management. It is not.

You're right - it's not JUST management. How about the electricians who walk around the plants like lords in feudal times, making people wait on them for countless hours while they drag ass so they can come in on the weekend and make double and triple time for a job they easily could have done within their normal 40 hour week.

How about the line workers who threaten newbies with all kinds of scare tactics for putting out too many parts on a shift, and for being too productive (mustn't expose the lazy bums who have been getting overpaid for decades for their horrific underproduction, must we?!?)

Do you really not know about this stuff?!?

How about this great sentiment abridged from Mr. Clarke's sad plea: over the last few years we have closed the quality and efficiency gaps with our competitors.

What the hell has Detroit been doing for the last 40 years?!?

Did we really JUST wake up to the gaps in quality and efficiency between us and them?

The K car vs. the Accord?

The Pinto vs. the Civic?!?

Do I need to go on?

We are living through the inevitable outcome of the actions of the United States auto industry for decades.

Time to pay for your sins, Detroit.

I attended an economic summit last week where a brilliant economist, Alan Beaulieu surprised the crowd when he said he would not have given the banks a penny of "bailout money". Yes, he said, this would cause short term problems, but despite what people like George Bush and Troy Clark would have us believe, the sun would in fact rise the next day, and something else would happen. Here there had been greedy and sloppy banks new efficient ones would pop up. That is how a free market system works. It does work, if we would let it work.

But for some reason we are now deciding that the rest of the world is right and that capitalism doesn't work - that we need the government to step in and "save us". Save us, hell - we're nationalizing, and unfortunately too many of this once fine nations citizens don't even have a clue that this is what's really happening, but they sure can tell you the stats on their favorite sports teams. Yeah - THAT'S important. Does it occur to ANYONE that the "competition" has been producing vehicles, EXTREMELY PROFITABLY, for decades now in this country?...

How can that be???

Let's see.

Fuel efficient.

Listening to customers.

Investing in the proper tooling and automation for the long haul.

Not being too complacent or arrogant to listen to Dr W Edwards Deming 4 decades ago.

Ever increased productivity through quality, lean and six sigma plans.

Treating vendors like strategic partners, rather than like "the enemy".

Efficient front and back offices.

Non union environment.

Again, I could go on and on, but I really wouldn't be telling anyone anything they really don't already know in their hearts I have six children, so I am not unfamiliar with the concept of wanting someone to bail you out of a mess that you have gotten yourself into - my children do this on a weekly, if not daily basis, as I did at their age. I do for them what my parents did for me (one of their greatest gifts, by the way) - I make them stand on their own two feet and accept the consequences of their actions and work them through.

Radical concept, huh.

Am I there for them in the wings? Of course - but only until such time as they need to be fully on their own as adults I don't want to oversimplify a complex situation, but there certainly are unmistakable parallels here between the proper role of parenting and
government.

Detroit and the United States need to pay for their sins.

Bad news people - it's coming whether we like it or not. The newly elected Messiah really doesn't have a magic wand big enough to "make it all go away" I laughed as I heard Obama "reeling it back in" almost immediately after the vote count was tallied. "we might not do it in a year, or in four." where was that kind of talk when he was RUNNING for the office.

Stop trying to put off the inevitable .

That house in Florida really isn't worth $750,000.

People who jump across a border really don't deserve free health care benefits.

That job driving that forklift for the big 3 really isn't worth $85,000 a year.

We really shouldn't allow Wal-Mart to stock their shelves with products acquired from a country that unfairly manipulates their currency and has the most atrocious human rights infractions on the face of the globe.

That couple whose combined income is less than $50,000 really shouldn't be living in that $485,000 home.

Let the market correct itself people - it will. Yes it will be painful, but it's gonna be painful either way, and the bright side of my proposal is that on the other side of it is a nation that appreciates what is has, and doesn't live beyond its means, and gets back to basics; and redevelops the work ethic that made it the greatest nation in the history of the world, and probably turns back to God.

Sorry - don't cut my head off, I'm just the messenger sharing with you the "bad news"

Gregory J Knox
President
Knox Machinery, Inc.
Franklin, Ohio 45005

The following is meant to help those who care develop a better understanding of where our society is; and we hope you will commit yourself to help better impact your family and friends. America deserves better from its citizens. ~Vic

By Mark Alexander
After the most recent presidential election, when, as you may recall, our once great nation exposed its collective flank -- unmitigated ignorance -- to the world, a reputable pollster, John Zogby, endeavored to determine how 66 million of us could be so profoundly stupid.

We reported his findings in our "Non Compos Mentis" section two weeks ago, including, for example, that 56.1 percent of Obama supporters did not know his political career was launched by two former terrorists from the Weather Underground; that 57 percent did not know which political party controlled congress; that 72 percent did not know Joe Biden withdrew from a previous presidential campaign because of plagiarism in law school; and that 87 percent thought Sarah Palin said she could "see Russia from my house," even though that was "Saturday Night Live" comedian Tina Fey in a parody of Palin.

The Zogby polling was designed to determine how much influence the media had on shaping public opinion, and, thus, the outcome of the election. Of course, establishing that the political landscape would look very different if the media were neutral is filed under "keen sense of the obvious."

However, a report issued last week by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute is more relevant to understanding why Barack Obama received so much support from those between 18 and 30 years of age -- support that put him over the top.

For the last two years, ISI has assessed the civil literacy of young people at American colleges and universities, testing both students and faculty. The civics test included a cross section of multiple-choice questions about our system of government, history and free enterprise -- questions to assess the knowledge that all Americans should possess in order to understand their civic responsibility and make informed decisions in matters such as elections.

More than 14,000 freshmen and seniors at 50 schools nationwide were given the 60-question exam. More than 50 percent of freshmen and 54 percent of seniors failed the test. (So they get dumber?)

This year, ISI went beyond the "institutions of higher learning" to assess civic literacy across demographic groups. The 2008 civics quiz asked similar questions to those asked to college and university students in previous years, but also included questions about civic participation and policy issues. The results were then subjected to multivariate regression analysis in order to determine if college and university graduates had a higher civic IQ than the rest of society.

As you might expect, 71 percent of Americans failed the test, with an average score of 49. Educators did not fare much better, scoring an average of 55 percent. As the researchers noted, "Fewer than half of all Americans can name all three branches of government, a minimal requirement for understanding America's constitutional system."
College grads flunked, answering 57 percent of the questions correctly, compared to 44 percent for high school grads.

Less than 24 percent of those with college degrees knew that the First Amendment prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States. Further, only 54 percent can correctly identify the basic tenets of the free enterprise system.

Would you be shocked to know that elected officials have a lower civic IQ than the public they ostensibly serve? Indeed, these paragons of representative government answered just 44 percent of the questions correctly. Almost a third of elected officials could not identify "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as the inalienable rights in our Declaration of Independence.

Our Founders, those venerable Patriots who signed our Declaration of Independence and codified the liberty that is declared in our Constitution, understood that liberty could not long survive an epidemic of ignorance.

According to George Washington: "The best means of forming a manly, virtuous, and happy people will be found in the right education of youth. Without this foundation, every other means, in my opinion, must fail."

John Adams wrote: "Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. ... Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties..."

Thomas Jefferson insisted: "Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day. ... If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free -- in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

James Madison agreed: "A people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. ... What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support?"

Today, however, it would seem that ignorance is not only blissful but virtuous.

Quote of the week

"In 1993, a Department of Education survey found that among college graduates 50 percent of whites and more than 80 percent of blacks couldn't state in writing the argument made in a newspaper column; 56 percent could not calculate the right tip; 57 percent could not figure out how much change they should get back after putting down $3.00 to pay for a 60-cent bowl of soup and a $1.95 sandwich, and over 90 percent could not use a calculator to find the cost of carpeting a room. But not to worry. A 1999 survey taken by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni of seniors at the nation's top 55 liberal-arts colleges and universities found that 98 percent could identify rap artist Snoop Dogg and Beavis and Butt-Head, but only 34 percent knew George Washington was the general at the battle of Yorktown. With limited thinking abilities and knowledge of our heritage, we Americans set ourselves up as easy prey for charlatans, hustlers and quacks." - George Mason University economics professor Walter E. Williams