Category: Economy

On August 13th, a man died after a forklift rolled over and trapped him. Video of the story can be found at this URL. person trapped under forklift in elk grove
“The man who died after being pinned under a forklift early Tuesday is Armando Estrada, a 42-year-old resident of Sacramento.” forklift accident results in fatality  I’m sorry that the man died but I am not surprised.

I briefly worked at Elk Grove Milling many years ago. Here are some of my recollections.

On my first week on the job, a worker got his right arm caught in a screw conveyor. He had multiple compound fractures from his wrist to his shoulder. His arm was almost severed in at least three places. He lost so much blood that the injuries were no longer bleeding. I helped administer first aid to him.

It took firefighters more than 30 minutes to arrive. After a long stay in the hospital he was finally released. I saw him a few months later. He had his arm is some sort of primitive looking brace with steel pins going thru his arm to try to get the bones to heal and align properly. Based on the extent of the injuries that I saw, his arm will never be the same.

As a result of that incident, I was asked to do a safety survey of the site. I documented many safety violations and potential hazards. I included photos of the problems that I noted along with a narrative of what needed correction. To my knowledge none of the problems that I found were ever corrected…at least not in anything resembling a timely manner.

I know that other industrial accidents had occurred at Elk Grove Milling prior to my employment there.

The Elk Grove Milling facility is a patchwork of uneven concrete slabs with conduit and anchor bolts sticking out of the concrete. Some of the unused equipment is still in place instead of being removed. Exposed wiring and open electrical panels are also in abundance on the site. Electric motors without guards can be found in various placed. Ladders without correct cages and landings were easy to spot during my time there. In addition many of these hazards were covered in dust and hulls from the milling process. Portions of truck and forklift routes are on uneven dirt and gravel roads.

Elk Grove Milling makes various types of pelletized horse feed. The ingredients for this feed are lying on the ground in a warehouse that is partially enclosed. The building also has some holes and other penetrations where wind, rain, rats, and other things can easily get into the ingredients. Ingredients are separated by primitive dividers that keep them from mixing too much while in storage. Excessive moisture causes some ingredients to cake-up. As a result of moisture, mold and mildew can be seen growing on the surface of many ingredients later added to the horse feed. Batches that are returned by customers or fail quality control are mixed with fresher ingredients and recycled into even more horse pellets. Excessive moisture in the finished pellets sometimes cause problems for customers.

Not surprisingly, the owner would occasionally field calls from people that accused the horse feed of killing their horses or making them very ill. On more than one occasion I heard the owner on the telephone vociferously denying these accusations.

There is a reason Purina products cost more than Stable Mix. Sanitation and quality control cost money.

Bob, I think a world of hurt is about to rain down on your livelihood.

Many people have tried to reduce the astronomical size of the national debt to something that Rush’s “low information voters” can understand. Many such attempts revolve around trying to equate our nation’s debt to household budgets and credit cards but this doesn’t really do the whole discussion justice.

I wish to advocate a different approach. Let’s embrace the largeness of the debt and explain it in a way that regular Americans can understand it. Three levels of debt that need to be illustrated are national, state, and local government.

I would like to see the debt displayed similarly to this map of 2012 election results by county.

(shown above)

 

My idea is to display how much American real estate would need to be sold to the Chinese or whoever in order to pay down the debt. The map would need four colors, one color for each level of government debt and a fourth color to show what is leftover. If you really want to illustrate the point, you could do two maps, one current debt and the other all the unfunded obligations that government has made.

For dramatic effect, start the map on the western shores of the Mississippi River and let’s see if anything remains of “flyover country”. I think it would be an interesting exercise. Perhaps we could literally show that the government has mortgaged the future of our citizens in a way even “baby-boomers” could understand.

Other than the return line at Fry’s Electronics, I don’t have too many times that I have to return items to retail stores. In the wake of Christmas this year I did have to exchange two items; one at Best Buy and the other from Kohl’s.

Best Buy
In an irrational fit of nostalgia, I purchased a copy of Doom 3. I really wanted it to get the bonus copy of Doom 2 that was included. I have the original CD of Doom 2 from about 1995 but it will not run on my 64 bit copy of Windows 8. The code on this new CD was modified to run on a 64 bit OS. The down side was I finally had to get a Steam account. I have been trying to avoid Steam for many years but they finally got me on this purchase.

I took the game out of my stocking on Christmas day and after the children had divided their loot and the turkey was carved, I sat down to install the game. I created my Steam account and then was prompted for the product key for the game. Much to my dismay, there was no product key in the box. The box was tampered with just enough that some enterprising kid had pried the paper with the key out of the box. (In case you are not familiar with Steam, you don’t need physical media to own the game, only a product key. Once you enter the key, Steam will let you download the game on your PC. )

The next day after work, I attempted to exchange the game for a new one. I expected Best Buy to give me the third degree about the license missing. Whether it was my age or just company policy, they let me swap it for a new one. They even verified that there was in fact a license in the new box. I left a happy customer.

Kohl’s
In Kohl’s I never saw an employee except at a cash register. I was left on my own to see if I could locate an appropriate item to exchange. In my case a pair of slippers that I was given were one size too small. I made two passes thru the shoe area to find any slippers. As it turned out, there was no area for slippers. It appears to be a holiday only item. On my second pass I found two opened boxes with slippers in them sitting on a display island in the store. The one that was the style that I prefer and the correct size still had fragments of wrapping paper on the box as a result of someone else returning them.

I went to my car to retrieve the small slippers which were purchased at a different Kohl’s store and the receipt. I then took both the item I was returning and the replacement box to the counter. They scanned both and stapled a receipt to my sales slip and I was free to go. No ID check or signature needed; even when item was purchased at a different store!

The exchange process in both stores was quick and the lines were short. Thanks for the good customer service.

Yesterday, like millions of Americans, I went to Chick-fil-A to show my support of traditional marriage and the First Amendment. Actually, I bought breakfast there for my whole family and returned about 8 p.m. in hopes of finishing the day with a milkshake. We waited about 50 minutes to get to the counter and place our drink order (by then they were out of many food items including ice-cream). Some friends that we saw in the drive-thru line said it took about an hour and a half to get to the place where they could give their order and almost two hours to complete the whole evolution.

The atmosphere was festive, the people were polite to each other and it was genuinely fun to be there. The line periodically did “the wave” and everyone got along great. No one cared that the place was out of food. I heard people say they would settle for a catsup packet if that was all that was left. They wanted to show their support. I thought of the people voting in Iraq that waited in long lines and earned a purple thumb when they voted. Yesterday we voted and the sound reverberated down the spines of the ruling class.

The message was loud and unmistakable. Barry Obama and his minions have struck a nerve with main street Americans. The people have had enough and are ready to shove the children out of the White House. Political correctness finally crossed the Rubicon.
Yes, Mr. President, the Cathy family did build it without your help. Now get out of our way and let our people grow.

In case you thought Barry Obama was the only one out of touch with the real world…

California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones went against a unified front of labor and employer representatives siding with the insurance industry and the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau (WCIRB) in approving a 8.3% increase mid-year rate hike for California employers. Added to the 37% rate increase he approved for January, July and later renewals are facing an average rate increase of 45.3% over last year at the same time.

from http://wcexec.com/Jones-Approves-45-Workers-Comp-Hike-for-71s.aspx

emphasis added.

High tech jobs going out of state as this vacant Intel facility near Sacramento illustrates.

A few days ago I went to Border’s Books to browse their remaining inventory during their going out of business sale. I had a feeling that sections would be somewhat disorganized. The attached photo is one such example. Since there were several pre-season football games on the TV at the time of my visit, I thought maybe this was a commentary on fantasy football. The photo below is not staged, just strangely random.

Also, I found Charles Dickens classic “A Tale of Two Cities” in the Science Fiction section.

Yeah. Amazon.com is taking the newly imposed tax to the ballot. The California legislature is willing to take a one billion loss just to say they tax Internet sales. California has no way to track these sales taxes except to have complete access to all sales records of Amazon and their California affiliates. Amazon and other online retailers can’t be compelled to give these records to the government. California would lose this fight in Federal Court but it would take years and they would have to go thru the Ninth Circuit to win. The ballot is a better place to start and they have the funds to see this thru to the end.

Today’s mail from the State of California was a lay-off notice (a.k.a. SROA letter). Where is the media on this one?
How can there be a lay-off when there is no budget?
Oh, they spent $5.65 to send a four page letter to each person on the list. The six page resume/application I mailed today cost me $0.65.

I’m sure no managers were harmed in the making of these weighty decisions.

Happy Memorial Day!