It's funny, but the thought processes that can formulate that sort of nonsense should have been left to Monty Python. As political thought, it is scary.
My wife had heard this somewhere and I didn't believe it. But, then, I'm the guy who once told his first set of in-laws that I didn't believe Spiro Agnew had sold out as Governor of Maryland...my rationale was simple. 85K wasn't enough for a guy in his position. But, of course, it was.
Charlie Self "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America." William J. Clinton
I heard that teaser too on NPR and stayed in the car long enough to listen to the whole story.
As ridiculous as it sounds, the commentator went on to say that the classification is pretty arbitrary. IIRC, "bakers" are an example of folks already classified as Manufacturers.
My take-home after the piece ended was that as absurd as the McDonald's reclassification was - the government's already done a bang-up job of screwing it up. Dubya' was, at best, "piling on".
Myth - According to the "Jet History" section in my Ittura Designs catalog. The history is a tad obscure and relies on knowledge of early workers. But the story goes that "Whazz-His-Name" (the man who started Jet) rode an early
707 to Japan. Liked it, was impressed, and adapted the moniker to his company.
Yes - according to that history - Jet started as an importer. What plans WMH has for it, remains to be seen.
10 years ago, the gray haired American educated and born internist finished my father's physical exam. The young Iranian med student at his side, asked if it would be ok if he palpated my father's abdomen. That young foreigner discovered an aortic aneurism - a ticking time bomb for sure death which the internist had missed. The repair surgery was successful and I have had a father to coach and support me through the most tumultuous years of my career.
Quality can be found in all nations. I buy lots of Jet.
What else do you expect? They're going to dump quality into the toilet and slap JET stickers on every piece of crap they can get their hands on. That's what such people almost always do. Buy a respected brand, sell anything they can lay their hands on under that brand, run it into the toilet, and then get rid of the division after its reputation is destroyed.
(Yes, I'm still pissed off about the total crap sitting on store shelves wearing the Tonka brand name. Hasbro, you suck, and I don't mean that in a Wreck way.)
Though I can sort of see it in a way. Next they'll do the same for BORG type jobs. After all, grabbing items and slapping them across a scanner is another robot-like endeavor. Next thing you know, every cashier in the country will have a manufacturing job.
Yes, they have always been an importer. Long before they got much into woodworking, they had a line of imported metalworking machinery. Some models of their bandsaws weren't bad but most were junk. Their milling machines were garbage, through and through.
Yes they were! I have some old Tonka stuff from the '70s myself. The plastic windshields and cab interiors look worse for wear, but the metal stuff is still fine. I have a couple of pumper trucks with little rubber push bulb things to shoot water out a hose. They still work.
I watched Tonka's downfall with my son. Around '94, we bought a dump truck and a back hoe. He eventually broke the back hoe, after digging lots of real rocky dirt with the thing for hours on end. In around '97 we bought him another one. The whole arm and bucket on the thing were PLASTIC. It lasted a couple of months.
The first one was made in America. The second one in China. What's worse, they started slapping Tonka logos on all kinds of Chinese low budget crap. The kind of cheap little car stuff you'd buy for your kid to give away at a birthday party. Nothing even Tonkaesque about them.
I hate Hasbro. Look around. They're the Microsoft of the toy world. They own Parker Bros., Milton Bradley, ad nauseum. You can tell when they've taken over someone new because you go to buy a new copy of a favorite old game, and now it's new and incredibly crappy for twice the price.
Sorry. Rant off. I know this is totally off-topic, unless you go so far as to mention that they do still sell ultra premium Monopoly sets with wooden houses. (OBWWR... wooden houses, see...)
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