See this comment below from our friend Michael Wagner of StampingOutALiving.com:

“Here’s a stunning legal decision: A jury ruled Wednesday that the Port Authority was negligent in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 … The jury determined that the agency was 68 percent liable for the incident. So if the Port Authority was 68% liable, that leaves the actual bombers with, at most, 32% of the liability for their actions.

Stunning … “

Mind you, Michael is a Canadian, and scratches his head when he looks south and sees stuff like this going on. In the story he cites, the Port Authority lawyer is quoted as saying, “To hold the Port Authority twice as liable as the terrorists for the 1993 bombing stands logic, rationality, and reason on their heads.” Indeed it does.

In all, notes the story, six people were convicted and sentenced to life in prison in criminal court for their roles in the bombing. Yet a just of 6 people found the Port Authority 68% liable for this heinous act of terrorism. Do we need any more reminders that we need legal reform in this country?

Click here to remind your Member of Congress to vote for H.R. 420, the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act today.

Under this banner, the Chicago Tribune ran an excellent editorial earlier this month that just made its way to us. Our Chicago readers have already seen it no doubt, but its message bears repeating. In fact, it echoes a lot of what you’ve seen ’round the blog these days, i.e., that the real crisis isn’t the price of gasoline but rather the price of natural gas, and more specifically, lack of supply of natural gas. Among the great points made therein:

– Natural gas heats more than half the nation’s homes and four out of five homes in the Midwest;
– The Energy Department predicts that natural gas costs will rise 50%, assuming a normal winter;
– About 17% of the nation’s electricity is generated by natural gas. It’s clean and environmentally-friendly;
– Natural gas prices have quadrupled since 2001, because — stop us if you’ve heard this one — supply has remained stagnant while demand has soared;
– Natural gas prices are set on a local, not international, market. If we increase US supply, it will directly impact US prices.

Faithful blog readers have heard all of this before. Says the Tribune, the high price of natural gas, “Can’t be blamed on OPEC or…oil companies. The nation has resisted drilling because of environmental concerns.” (Read: “pressure”). Right now, as you read this, there are 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves in the Outer Continental Shelf, yet federal moratorium blocks access to 85% of it.

Like we said, if you’re shivering this winter, or if you’re paying twice as much to heat your home, go thank one of the tiny band of radical environmentalists who have had a death grip on our energy policy for 30 years. Or, you could just click here to tell your Member of Congress and your Senators to do something about it.

President Bush was right next door to NAM headquarters today at the J.W. Marriott hotel, speaking to the Economic Club of Washington. Our boss, Gov. Engler was there. The President laid out his plan for economic growth, hit on most of our issues: lowering taxes, eliminating the death tax, getting energy prices under control, reducing our dependency on foreign oil and increasing domestic exploration. He hit a bunch of other topics along the way, too. Here’s the transcript of his speech and here’s a link to some highlights of the speech from the White House.

Last evening, the blogger-in-chief was in Orlando (not to worry–the hurricane had long passed) speaking to the annual dinner of the Manufacturers Association of Central Florida.

This is a group recently rejuvenated by small manufacturer and NAM board member Al Stimac (see Wednesday Poster of the Week). Al is a do-er, a rocket and the personification not only of the best of manufacturing but also of the American Dream. There were probably about 150 manufacturers in the room. We gave them the manufacturing fun facts.

It was great, as always, to be in the company of manufacturers who are out there innovating and driving the economy every day. A big concern from everyone was the problem of attracting and keeping qualified workers. However, here in the shadow of Disney, asked if it’s hard to compete with them for talent, they answered simply, “no – -we pay better”. What can we say? Manufacturing is a great career.

Was privileged to be preceded on the program by Rick Joyce, former President of the Dixon-Ticonderoga, kings of the #2 pencil. He gave a great speech about manufacturing, its risks and opportunities, ended up very bullish on manufacturing.

Two prominent local politicians turned out as well, State Senator Lee Constantine and State Representative Fred Brummer. We appreciate their support for manufacturing. The night finished with the Manufacturer of the Year awards. All the winners are listed on MACF’s website today. Congrats to them, innovators all.

Thanks finally to Jim Whitaker, President of MACF and Executive Director Laurie Price, for the invite and for their hospitality and thanks as always to Al Stimac for his leadership and friendship.

OK, here’s the weekly dose of Wednesday posters, but this week we take a slightly different tack. Remember we said that we had some vintage ones and some new, cool ones and we’d be alternating between the two? Well, we’ve not been doing much alternating, since we thought the vintage ones were so fun. But here’s one of the new ones to get you started. These are the brainchild of our own Beth Solomon, designed in conjunction with the NAM’s Irina Stepanova and Kevin Sullivan and printed by NAM Board member Ann Brown of New Vista Enterprises. They were initially done for National Manufacturing Week in Chicago way back in March, and were really well received so we now have them decorating the lobby at the NAM HQ. They depict a number of our members – mostly small manufacturers and a number of them Board Members – in some non-manufacturing settings, but all carrying the NAM message. Click on the poster to see a larger version.

This first one features Al Stimac of Metal Essence, who we’ve written about before. He’s just a great American success story and a great manufacturer.

Enjoy!

A vote is expected Thursday on H.R. 420, the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act. This is the third vote in a trilogy of votes aimed at reining in the lawsuit culture in this country. Remember, we spend more of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on lawsuits in this country than any one of these countries spend on their entire GDP. The first two bills, you’ll recall, passed by a comfortable margin last week, in part due to the enormous number of manufacturers who weighed in through the blog and otherwise. We need you again.

This one puts teeth into Rule 11, the rule that ostensibly prevents the filing of frivolous lawsuits. Some manufacturers would be amazed to find out that such a rule exists — you’d never know it from watching what’s going on out there. This bill will also discourage “forum shopping” — the practice of filing a lawsuit in the most plaintiff-friendly court — by requiring lawsuits to have a relationship with the jurisdiction in which they’re filed. Can you believe we need to legislate this?

We’ll consider these votes to be Key Manufacturing Votes, meaning Members of Congress will be graded on how they vote on this bill. Every Member of Congress received this card on Tuesday. Please take a moment to click here to weigh in once more to help pass this bill and move one step closer to ending the rampant lawsuit culture that chokes innovation, investment and jobs.

As we mentioned yesterday, energy is our focus this week, and will be our focus for a very long time — until we start seeing energy prices begin to level off. Yesterday a group of small and large manufacturers met with Congressional Black Caucus staff to brief them on the economic and jobs impact that increasing energy prices could have. Here’s a link to our press release on the day’s events.

“Energy prices will soon start to have an impact on food and home-heating bills,” said one of our small manufacturers, whose natural gas bills have risen 100 percent (!) since August. It’s not going to be pretty this winter.” These folks also met with Sen. Burr (R-NC) and the staff of Sen. Dole (R-NC) as well. As we’ve said, if people are shivering this winter, they should thank an environmentalist. They are paying the prices — literally — for 30 years of moratorium. Yes, we need to conserve and yes, we need to find alternative fuels, but in the meantime we need to be opening new areas to exploration. Haven’t we learned anything? No nuclear plants started since the 70′s, no refineries built since the 70′s, the highest natural gas prices in the world.

If the Outer Continental Shelf were opened to exploration, it’s a start. It has has 420 trillion cubic feet of recoverable resources and 77 billion barrels of oil. That’s enough natural gas to heat more than 100 million homes for 60 years and enough oil to fuel almost 85 million cars for 35 years.

As the saying goes, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.” The environmental movement in this country has not led, — in fact, they’ve been obstructionist — haven’t followed. Time to get out of the way.

As everyone by now knows, yesterday the President nominated Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) Chair Ben Bernanke to be the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Of course, Allen Greenspan’s shoes will be tough to fill, but we think Bernanke is up to the job. With a B.A. From Harvard and a Ph. D. from MIT, Bernanke is no slouch. He’s been Chair of the CEA since June 2005 and was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve before that. From 1996 to 2002, he was professor and chairman of the Economics Department at Princeton University, and that’s an OK school, too.

Not to be a broken record, but he understands the pressures that energy prices will have on the economy. He said this just last month: “High energy prices are burdening household budgets and raising production costs, and continued increases would at some point restrain economic growth.” Yes they will. Glad this is on his screen.

In any event, NAM President John Engler applauded the choice today. Here’s a link to his statement on Bernanke’s nomination. Looks like Wall Street liked it, too, posting it’s largest one-day gain since July on the news. We look forward to his swift confirmation by the Senate.

Somebody sent us this nice shout-out from the good people over at Ogilvy Public Relations. It’s their “Index of Blogs We’re Reading” and somehow our humble little blog made the cut. We’re in there with some pretty good company — check it out, we’re the fifth one listed.

Thanks again to the folks at Ogilvy for a little recognition. We’ll have doubled our traffic to four readers by week’s end at the rate we’re going..

We all want to make more money, right? Well, this Thursday, the NAM is hosting another one of its famous Webinars on “Accessing Capital, Creating Liquidity and Preserving Wealth for Owners of Privately Held Companies.”

Basically, its like this: you’ve worked long and hard to build your business. Now you need to maintain its profitability and competitive position while taking it to the next level, or you wish to diversify your net worth and free up some of the personal wealth locked up in your company.

Today’s capital markets offer a variety of options that allow owners of privately held companies to diversify their equity risk and capitalize their companies for accelerated growth.

Our sponsor, Matrix Capital will explain all this and more on Thursday.

If you’re interested, click here for more information or click here to register.