As we continue to push for the passage of the energy bill in the Senate, we make the point that exorbitant energy costs — the highest natural gas prices in the world – are chasing manufacturing jobs to places where folks can get their natural gas cheaper. But here’s the rub and a point that Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa) raised a while ago at an NAM meeting: for the true environmentalists out there, for those who really care about the global economy (and not just a political agenda), wouldn’t they want new power plants brought on line here in the good ol’ US of A, where we have stringent environmental controls? Otherwise, this power generation will move to other parts of the globe, like China and Russia, where there is little or no environmental regulation. Even EU countries spend less than we do on environmental compliance, despite the rhetoric. At the end of the day, we’ll have a global environment that’s worse off, not better.

Makes us wonder: Just who and what are the environmentalists protecting….?

There was a memorial service today for Bennie Welburn. For those of you who didn’t know Bennie, for about the past 20 years he was…

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Just to irritate Lou Dobbs, we’re going to put up some pro-CAFTA stuff later today and Friday. Keep an eye out, there will be some neat info that makes the case for CAFTA pretty unassailable, even to the Harvard-educated like Lou.

Tuesday night found us in that great manufacturing city, Erie, Pennsylvania, for the centennial of the Manufacturers Association of Northwest Pennsylvania (MANP). It was a total manufacturing extravaganza, there’s no doubt about it. If you knew their President, Ralph Pontillo, you’d understand. Ralph doesn’t really think small about anything. In a city without a dominant large employer (just a bunch of small and medium ones) Ralph has about 7,000 members, owns his own building, puts on an annual banquet. Past speakers have included

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Thanks to you faithful blog readers out there — both of you — for boosting our traffic. We watch the numbers each day with great anticipation, have watched our daily traffic multiply twenty-fold in the last few months. Would it surprise you to know that in spite of all our beautiful prose and provocative writing, the most popular day is still Friday, for the “Friday Follies“?

Around the blog barn, many theories abound. The blogger’s apprentice — hoping for a fat raise — says it’s the blogger-in-chief’s soaring narratives. Other (less economically interested) wags have opined it was certain photos that were posted that spiked the traffic. We won’t say which photos, we’ll let you guess.

In any event, keep it coming, tell your friends, tell your foes. Tell Lou Dobbs.

From the bottom of our blogging hearts, we thank you!

On Friday at the NAM, our Manufacturing Institute will sponsor a forum on “International Trade and Jobs”. This will be a perfect antidote to those of you suffering Dobbs fatigue, as it will present facts — anybody remember facts? — about the link between international trade and jobs. Unfortunately for Lou, you’ll probably hear about things like exchange rates and the high domestic costs — non-wage — of production here in the US. Sadly, there won’t be a sweatshop or an illegal immigrant in sight. The Dobbsians will be truly disappointed.

The forum will feature Martin Baily, former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Jerry Jasinowksi, President of the Manufacturing Institute(and a Ph.D. economist himself) and Frank Vargo, the NAM’s VP for International Trade. In short, there will be three pretty smart people who don’t have to worry about ratings.

if you’re interested in attending, contact Bill Canis at bcanis@nam.org.

In case you late sleepers missed it again this past Sunday morning (or were all in church dozing through the sermon) here’s a link to this week’s radio program, Manufacturing America’s Future, airing on WMAL in Washington DC. This week’s show covered topics near and dear to us like the energy bill, and the usual interview from the shop floor with a real live manufacturer. Give it a listen, we think you’ll enjoy it.

There is no doubt that the new “Change to Win” Coalition is winning the press battle with the gang that couldn’t shoot (or spin) straight over at the AFL-CIO. Looks like the AFL isn’t paying Abernathy nearly enough, time to boost that retainer.

In any event, we were interested to see that the Coalition’s take on Sweeney’s cloaking himself in unity to blunt the onslaught was quite similar to ours. Great minds….

You’ll recall that in response to a fairly blistering attack on Sweeney by the Coalition last week, he issued a statement basically flaunting the fact that he has the votes to win (“Win what?”, you might ask…)and saying that they all needed to just shut up and be unified. We observed that in this case the unclothed emperor was using unity as a mere fig leaf, a puny shield to the torrent of criticism.

Well, today, the Coalition made a similar observation, noting that, “Labor solidarity is not about the unity of institutions or leaders or sustaining a bureaucracy under the banner of the ‘house of labor’. It’s about uniting workers to fight for a better life.”

Looks like the bloom is off the fig leaf.

Under that headline ran an interesting piece by Lou Uchitelle of the New York Times. Apparently, the other Lou — Dobbs — doesn’t read the Times, or at least he doesn’t heed it.

Uchitelle, well-known to us, is an earnest if liberal reporter who covers stories with an economics angle. This is a typical Uchitelle piece, a fairly thoughtful case study of NAM member Whirlpool Corporation. The article starts out by talking about German-made washing machines being shipped to the US in spite of a $32/hour labor cost in Germany, as compared to a $23/hour rate here. “Globalization is often viewed as a rootless process of constantly moving jobs to low-wage countries”, he says, (Lou Dobbs, are you listening….?) “But the issue is more complex.” If the New York Times has figured that out, why hasn’t Dobbs?

The article notes that the manpower required to make appliances is declining, with the advance of mechanization, productivity and innovation. This, says Uchitelle, “dilutes the drawing power of lower wages.” Correct.

We’ve also made the point repeatedly that manufacturers tend to locate their facilities to be close to the customer, and Uchitelle’s piece bears that out. Noting that Whirlpool pays $23/hour in Ohio, as compared to far less in Mexico and China, he quotes Whirlpool’s CEO as saying, “…For one hour of labor [the amount of labor going into each machine], the difference won’t begin to cover shipping costs….”

Finally, he quotes the plant manager from Whirlpool’s Ohio plant as saying, “The reason we are here and not outsourced is that we do excellent quality work…”

As we’ve said in this space so many times, we are the best manufacturers in the world. If Lou Dobbs would believe that and look at some of the facts he is so fond of ignoring, maybe he could get off the outsourcing issue and get back to chasing his imaginary wave of illegal immigrants full time.

As the battle over CAFTA heats up, (and as Lou Dobbs gets more shrill on the topic) watch this space later this week for some more facts on CAFTA. We’ll be posting some neat stuff, some fun facts, and some state-by-state data on how your state will benefit from CAFTA. Here’s a fact sheet to get you started.