TKC SATURDAY NIGHT PLAYLIST!!! DEATH OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM: HARLEY-DAVIDSON BETRAYS KANSAS CITY!!!
Not so long ago there was a myth that the United States held a special place among all nations and Kansas City was at the center of a country that led the world by example with freedom and bold ideas . . . Currently, Kansas City workers are being smacked around by the corporate leadership of Harley-Davidson as they get ready to start building motorcycles in India with the blessing of President Obama.
So let's get this straight . . .
HARLEY BIKERS CAN SUCK IT BECAUSE THEIR BIKES ARE NOW NOTHING MORE THAN A REPRESENTATION OF CORPORATE GREED THAT HAS COME AT THE EXPENSE OF KANSAS CITY WORKERS!!!
Your Harley means NOTHING now . . It's not an icon, it's not a status symbol. A Harley is now nothing more than a toy.
While images of Marisa Miller riding a Harley might still captivate my imagination . . . I recognize the marketing ploy . . . In much the same way that the Tea Party will be forced to sell out their principles if they want to remain in power for any serious length of time. Somehow it's fitting that the grand sellout of Harley-Davidson started in Kansas City.
To wit, this latest installment in the ongoing story of the decline of the American economy has inspired tonight's playlist.
As always, thank you for reading this week and have a safe and fun weekend.
If Harley DOES take away American jobs, to ship production to India, then it will be time for a 100% American boycott.
ReplyDeleteWe should have UNION members and anyone else who considers himself to be a patriot to REFUSE to buy Harleys, and the boycott should include HIGHLY VISIBLE and VERY LOUD picket lines arould Harley dealerships.
Let Harley SELL to Indians!
Capitalism knows no patriotism, no allegiances but to money. Harley didn't start here, we don't own it.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's no secret that American companies have discovered India, Europe and Asia as emerging markets dying for our products. And they have enough of our money to buy them, since they already have our manufacturing jobs.
Fact is, this won't be the first overseas plant for Harley.
Wanna lament? Lament about Hallmark even tho the internet is killing off its mailto cards.
Europe is not an emerging market, nor is Asia really outside of China.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the Harleys made in India will only be sold in India. Maybe Indians are as patriotic as Americans and will only ride motorcycles made in their country. Maybe.
But India has Muslims. Muslims will undoubtedly buy Harleys. Do we want Muslims riding Harleys? They are either with us or against us.
Get used it, T. The fact is that most people want nothing to do with Kansas City, its crime, its entitlement-bred workforce or its retarded assed school district. Then there is the stupid hipster-tipster anti-white mentality of its basement-dwelling 'bloggers'... but I digress.
ReplyDeleteI certainly wouldn't move any top corporate people to Kansas City, at least if I wanted to keep them.
India has a hefty import tax against assembled vehicles and so they will import parts and assemble them there.
ReplyDeletePatriotism has nothing to do with it.
The Advanced Emerging markets are: Brazil, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, Taiwan.[13]
The Secondary Emerging markets are some Upper Middle, Lower Middle and Low Income GNI countries with reasonable market infrastructures and significant size and some Upper Middle Income GNI countries with lesser developed market infrastructures.
The Secondary Emerging markets are: Chile, China, Colombia[14], Czech Republic [15] Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia[15], Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Thailand[16], Turkey[15], UAE.
Source: wikipedia
I can confirm for you that any motorcycles produced in India will be sold in India and possibly the surrounding regions, especially southern Asian countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan. Harley-Davidson has run a similar operation in rural Brazil for years now. However, I would be inclined to speculate it's only a matter of time before foreign built H-Ds make their way stateside.
ReplyDeleteFirst, 11:18pm anon is exactly right about KCMO. Being a loser and then whining about being treated like a loser gets KC absolutely nowhere. What legitimate business would want to try to work with a circus like the KCMO economic development labyrinth and the circus at 12th and Oak?
ReplyDeleteAnd the concept of American exceptionalism is based on ideas, ideals, and a sense of optimism, not on our more recent notion that we're the best and everyone else around the world should do what we want. (Spoiler alert: Dick Cheney's gone!)
And as for the notion that Kansas City was ever the center of anything, what planet are you from?
This is flyover country, Tee.
Union people who have priced themselves out of world markets and lost most of their jobs delude themselves into thinking they have the influence to boycott ANYTHING!
ReplyDeleteReagan taught them that when he fired the PATCO air traffic controllers.
An empty call for a BOYCOTT is just today's attempt to practice their biggest negotiating ploy. Extortion. Fuck em!
Today's unions are just bumper stickers. Fact is, their attitudes ruin everything they touch!
Don't think so? Just look at your kids, products of union teachers and moron dads who think they're entitled because they pay dues to what's left of the mafia!
I think I'll buy a Toyota truck next time.
Radioman....Your criticism of Hallmark is not fair. The only cards produced out of the country are the cards sold in foreign markets. I know you think you know more than anyone else about everything under the sun. But I used to work for Hallmark in Germany and am very familiar with what was made and were it was made. Really...why should Hallmark produce cards and then have the expense of shipping heavy paper products overseas?
ReplyDeleteTony reviewed "Cats" on another blog, his clarion call for us all, "Seriously, this is a show that EVERYONE and ANYONE must see in order to attain at least a cursory knowledge of the fine arts in popular culture around the world today."
ReplyDeleteThe devil must be ice skating in hell, I agree with Tony, and Cats is pretty cool.
Politics and economic interest make for some strange bedfellows.
Harley, selling fucking motorcycles made in India, in the US is FUCKED!!!!
HARLEY!! This free trade shit is killing our economy and our souls are sold to the same Captains of Industry on Wall Street that have brought us to our collective knees during this current "Recession".
Those millions and millions of jobs we have lost, are NEVER coming back!
Fuck Harley. I owned two of them, will never encourage anyone to buy another. I have had all GM and Ford trucks and vehicles my whole life.
Radioman, I get the union thing. The Teachers Union (I was once a teacher in the KCSD long ago.) is a negative pernicious travesty that has hindered and damaged our children. The baseball union flat out killed the greatest game ever invented.
But we thrown the baby out with the bathwater. The pendulum has swung too far (IMO) in the other direction.
Hey Tony, you and Pat Buchanan are butt buddies, check it out.
Buchanan on the history of U.S. protectionism: "Behind a tariff wall built by Washington, Hamilton, Clay, Lincoln, and the Republican presidents who followed, the United States had gone from an agrarian coastal republic to become the greatest industrial power the world had ever seen -- in a single century. Such was the success of the policy called protectionism that is so disparaged today."1
Buchanan on national sovereignty: "Like a shipwrecked, exhausted Gulliver on the beach of Lilliput, America is to be tied down with threads, strand by strand, until it cannot move when it awakens. 'Piece by piece,' our sovereignty is being surrendered."2
Buchanan on the trade deficit and jobs: "In 1996 the U.S. merchandise trade deficit hit an astounding $191 billion. Never before had an advanced industrial nation recorded such a deficit. If, as Presidents Bush and Clinton have contended, $1 billion in exports equals twenty thousand jobs, America loses between 3.5 million and 4 million manufacturing jobs annually."3
Buchanan on the North American Free Trade Agreement: "Two years after NAFTA, the predictions of its opponents had all come true. The U.S. trade surplus with Mexico had vanished; a trade deficit of $15 billion had opened up. . . By 1997, 3,300 maquiladora factories were operating, employing 800,000 Mexican workers in jobs that not long ago would have gone to Americans."4
Buchanan on imports: "Americans no longer make their own cameras, shoes, radios, TVs, toys. A fifth of our steel, a third of our autos, half our machine tools, and two-thirds of our textiles and clothes are made abroad."5
In 2000, 22% of American wealth was owned by 10% of hte populaiton. Now 2% of hte population owns 25% of hte wealth.
Google this stuff, it is everywhere. We ae b ecoming a 3rd world country. The disparity between the rich Republicans and the rest of us proles is astonishing.
Fcuk that "Outsource" program too.
China owns us lock stock and barrel.
We are poorer, work longer and with less than at anytime I can remember in my 60 years.
JMO, but I think we should, as a country, buy American.
Tony reviewed "Cats" on another blog, his clarion call for us all, "Seriously, this is a show that EVERYONE and ANYONE must see in order to attain at least a cursory knowledge of the fine arts in popular culture around the world today."
ReplyDeleteThe devil must be ice skating in hell, I agree with Tony, and Cats is pretty cool.
Politics and economic interest make for some strange bedfellows.
Harley, selling fucking motorcycles made in India, in the US is FUCKED!!!!
HARLEY!! This free trade shit is killing our economy and our souls are sold to the same Captains of Industry on Wall Street that have brought us to our collective knees during this current "Recession".
Those millions and millions of jobs we have lost, are NEVER coming back!
Fuck Harley. I owned two of them, will never encourage anyone to buy another. I have had all GM and Ford trucks and vehicles my whole life.
Radioman, I get the union thing. The Teachers Union (I was once a teacher in the KCSD long ago.) is a negative pernicious travesty that has hindered and damaged our children. The baseball union flat out killed the greatest game ever invented.
But we thrown the baby out with the bathwater. The pendulum has swung too far (IMO) in the other direction.
Hey Tony, you and Pat Buchanan are butt buddies, check it out.
Buchanan on the history of U.S. protectionism: "Behind a tariff wall built by Washington, Hamilton, Clay, Lincoln, and the Republican presidents who followed, the United States had gone from an agrarian coastal republic to become the greatest industrial power the world had ever seen -- in a single century. Such was the success of the policy called protectionism that is so disparaged today."1
Buchanan on national sovereignty: "Like a shipwrecked, exhausted Gulliver on the beach of Lilliput, America is to be tied down with threads, strand by strand, until it cannot move when it awakens. 'Piece by piece,' our sovereignty is being surrendered."2
Buchanan on the trade deficit and jobs: "In 1996 the U.S. merchandise trade deficit hit an astounding $191 billion. Never before had an advanced industrial nation recorded such a deficit. If, as Presidents Bush and Clinton have contended, $1 billion in exports equals twenty thousand jobs, America loses between 3.5 million and 4 million manufacturing jobs annually."3
Buchanan on the North American Free Trade Agreement: "Two years after NAFTA, the predictions of its opponents had all come true. The U.S. trade surplus with Mexico had vanished; a trade deficit of $15 billion had opened up. . . By 1997, 3,300 maquiladora factories were operating, employing 800,000 Mexican workers in jobs that not long ago would have gone to Americans."4
Buchanan on imports: "Americans no longer make their own cameras, shoes, radios, TVs, toys. A fifth of our steel, a third of our autos, half our machine tools, and two-thirds of our textiles and clothes are made abroad."5
In 2000, 22% of American wealth was owned by 10% of hte populaiton. Now 2% of hte population owns 25% of hte wealth.
Google this stuff, it is everywhere. We ae b ecoming a 3rd world country. The disparity between the rich Republicans and the rest of us proles is astonishing.
Fcuk that "Outsource" program too.
China owns us lock stock and barrel.
We are poorer, work longer and with less than at anytime I can remember in my 60 years.
JMO, but I think we should, as a country, buy American.
? posted twice, sorry
ReplyDeleteOne more comment on unions.
ReplyDeleteThe Construction unions dictate that all of their members, build and assemble in a pre determined way.
I know this sounds simple, but all over the nation, for the most part, construction unions verify their work and we Ameicans can feel safe.
Basically, the fuckin buildins dont fall on our heads or set us on fire, like they do, the world over.
This is classic.
ReplyDeleteHarley's made in India... that's a riot.
An Indian Harley...WTF!
And they give me shit about my nekkid Goldwing, which btw, was made in Marysville, Ohio.
But...they say...all that money goes to a foreign company. I say yes it probably does. Where does the Harley cash go? I say... in a pocket not belonging to me.
You do know that H-D is a publicly traded company that is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Did you also know that a lot of foreigners have stock in Harley?
Funny stuff.
What's this with the "with the blessing of President Obama"?
ReplyDeleteHe has nothing--nada--to do with this.
I've asked this question at least a few times: Can't we end the tax deductions for taking American jobs offshore?
http://moravings.blogspot.com/2010/11/cant-we-kill-tax-deductions-for-taking.html
7:49, Hallmark's been making piece goods in Mexico for years, and shipping them to Lawrence. Especially the hand tied bows and other things requiring manual labor.
ReplyDelete(I was in the Army once but that doesn't make me an expert on today's defense practices!)
Radioman, I appoligize. My information was from a long time ago. But my father was a very high up executive with Hallmark, so I do know that they were all US manufactured at one point. Wasn't trying to brag and that's why I only identified my own work experience with them. Could have lived without your comment, but I do know how you are....
ReplyDeleteThey're looking at moving to INDIANA, the state! NOT India.
ReplyDeleteThis toolbag Tony is playing on words and suckered you all in.
Radioman, that is the most IGNORANT claim about unioned teachers ruining our children. You want to know why our kids are "ruined"? Look up the acroymn "NCLB".
ReplyDelete1:33, you WOULD have lived without my comment had you not incorrectly told me I was wrong. But you know how I am...When guy says I'm both ignorant and arrogant, I feel obligated to go tell you to fuck yoruself.
ReplyDeleteI didn't do that, I just corrected the fact and mentioned to you that your experience a long time ago doesn't make you an expert.
Apology understood. Hope it made you feel better, since you know enough about me to know I'd doubt your sincerity. I too worked at Hallmark but too long ago. My sister in law did just force- retire from Lawrence within the past year and she was bitching about it to me about about the layoffs. And just a month ago I drove by the plant over there and remarked to myself how empty the parking lot is over there.
Not as bad as the one at Crown Center, where they put an office building on it. I used to take a jitney bus from where I parked to the plant but that too was a long time ago, before they closed it.
I was always amazed how because Mr Hall smoked, he allowed smoking rooms in the bldg. But you had to risk getting run over by a forklift to get there. That was before I got rid of that particular addiction. And again, before they shut down the plant. It was a long time ago, they'd just watered down their brand so to get a piece of the discount store business. Expressions, they named it. The card stores had a fit because they ended up competing with the grocery and discount stores.
Times change, huh? Now Harleys gonna be made by Indians. I'm surprised they didn't get bought out a long time ago by Honda!
-0-
I didn't see any acronym's on NCLB (because I didn't look.) But I DO know what TENURE means.
Harley's problems are management inflicted. Does anyone else remember when AMF ran The Motor Company in the ground? Willie G. and a bunch of motorcycle guys took it private and with some Tariff help from Reagan made it VERY successful. The UNION guys participated in this. Management failed to find a way to get the younger riders into Harleys. They couldn't figure out how to market Buell. Most dealership wouldn't support the brand. They never really took Buell technology to the Harleys and sometimes they brought technology out before it was ready. Tony's choice of Marisa Miller is IMPECCABLE. To Tony's play list I'd add 2 by BobSeger: Roll Me Away and Makin Thunderbirds. To The Radioman, I drive and will continue to drive UAW made Ford Trucks. Mine are made in Kentucky, USA.
ReplyDeleteIf you wanted to see it, they have tours at the KC plant. And as with everything else Harley, they sell t-shirts. If you want to see a dealership in operation, I'd recommend Gail's in Grandview. Her parents were part of the mid 70's resurredtion of The Motor Company.
ReplyDeleteNo Sir, I don't like it.
ReplyDeletekansas city chiefs = NIGGERS!!!!
ReplyDeleteFact Check: yes, it is india.
ReplyDeleteAnd this week President obama said that shipping jobs to india creates american jobs and doesn't take them away.
take that to the bank.
Before this goes away... REREAD Tony's post at the top here, notice it is full of FALSE ASSUMPTIONS and is DOWNRIGHT WRONG ON MANY LEVELS.
ReplyDeleteIn my view, that's a major credibility problem for him for this one was SOOOO EASY to validate... simply with a Google news check.
YEt it sat here all weekend. He should have edited this piece...marked OUT the bad parts by changing their color to gray or using the line out font.
With a note. Notherwords this needed a correction!
Bloggers can do corrections much better than newspapers which have to wait for another publication... but they have to have SOME RESPECT FOR TRUTH!
Radio man your comment needs at least 500 more words before we can take you seriously. Start now.
ReplyDeleteI just need to let Tony give me bright Reds and Blues, and large capital letters. And pictures of the ugly people we talk about. Oh wait, I could do that on my own blog.
ReplyDeleteI'll just stick with bold and whatever length my msgs end up when I'm done or have to go to the bathroom.
You know, after your posts get so long most of us just zoom right on past them looking for something concise, witty, and maybe, relevant?
ReplyDeleteNo body in their right mind would open a business in KCMO the new Detroit. High crime, uneducated workforce, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut we have those 50 jobs making electric trucks up there at KCI. The new green economy will save us, that's for sure!
ReplyDeletePeople were able to get the GAP to scrap its new logo through a social media campaign. Why don't we campaign to get the GAP to sell American-made clothing? And, yes, a boycott of foreign-made Harleys would be great, too.
ReplyDeleteConcise. Witty.
ReplyDeleteThe Harley plant isn't in the welfareland part of KC.
ReplyDelete