Well, that’s it for 2006. And looking back, 2006 held a lot of good news for manufacturers.

Manufacturing output hit record levels of production, twice the growth of the overall economy. Productivity rose more than 4.5 percent — triple the productivity increase in other sectors of the economy. Factory-floor jobs stabilized and even added a few.

And earlier in December, Congress passed priority legislation for manufacturers — expanding access to domestic energy supplies — in other words, allowing drilling out in the Gulf of Mexico — reauthorizing the R&D tax credit, and renewing important trade benefits to keep exports strong.

Many challenges remain, of course, those involved in addressing the 32 percent cost disadvantage U.S. manufacturers face compared to our major global trading competitors. Too many lawsuits, high taxes, regulations, employee mandates, expensive energy — all are financial burdens that make it harder for us to compete.

The NAM will work hard on these and other issues in 2007, and we’re optimistic about the new Congress’ willingess to act in support of the manufacturing economy and the 14 million workers it employs.

On behalf of all of us at the National Association of Manufacturers, I heartily wish you and yours a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

A few tidbits to pass along at year’s end on one of our favorite topics:

We wish you a happy New Year which we hope is filled with healthy skepticism and sound science.

Much has been made of late about the Interior Department’s decision to undertake rule-making on whether polar bears should be listed as “threatened.” As it turns out, this is in settlement of a lawsuit filed by a bunch of enviro groups, aimed at the most high-profile — and cuddly — animal they could find. (If you get close enough, just don’t try to pet them.)

Here’s a link to a good piece in the Washington Times by Steve Milloy on the topic. He notes — as we did in this space a few days ago — that polar bears have “survived much warmer times than we are now experiencing — like 1,000 years ago when the Vikings farmed Greenland during the Medieval Climate Optimum and 5,000-9,000 years ago during the period known as the Holocene Climate Optimum.” Of course this pre-dated the enviro groups and our lawsuit-happy culture, too.

Milloy also notes that “The Greenland ice melt, for example, was actually larger in 1991 than in 2005 and the Greenland ice cap is thickening. Data from the Canadian Ice Service indicate there has been no precipitous drop-off in ice cap amount or thickness since 1970.”

All of this has been lost in the hysteria. Everybody wants to save the cute polar bears, of course. However, as Milloy notes, the US Fish and Wildlife Service notes on its website, “There are no overall data on global polar bear population.” Who needs it when there’s hysteria and speculation?

Hope this adds a little balance to the media coverage of this event over the last few days.

You may recall that last year for CoolStuffBeingMade we featured how clocks are made. We weren’t sure how we could out-do ourselves this New Year’s but then looked no further than Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, the home of Beistle Party Favors.

With some 4,000 products, Beistle is the largest manufacturer of party goods and decorations in the world. In this video, you’ll see how party decorations go from idea to colorized concept sketches and later to printing on a 2,000 pound roll of paper.

As you watch this 17-minute video, you may notice that some products being manufactured are out of season. However, as Account Manager Kim Pike notes, “when you are the largest manufacturer of party goods, you are always out of phase…you can be printing Halloween products in December and Christmas in July….we are about six months ahead of the season.”

At about ten minutes into the video, you’ll see some of the classic New Year’s party decorations being made: the fringe trumpet, paper snakes, New Year’s hats and feather tiaras.

From there, the all products go through inspection, warehousing and packing where it is ultimately shipped to your store where it awaits your purchase.

So, remember while you are celebrating this New Year’s Eve that most likely your decorations and party accessories were made in Shippensburg, Pa by American manufacturers.

Click on the image to view the video and feel festive New Year’s manufacturing vibe.

In honor of former President Ford’s passing, the NAM will be closed on Tuesday, January 2, 2007. As Governor Engler stated in his message earlier this week, “President Ford was a man of integrity, of strength and of courage. In a very divisive time, his decency and his leadership restored trust and rescued the Republic.”

President Bush has proclaimed Tuesday a National Day of Mourning and we urge everyone to take time on that day to reflect upon President Ford’s contributions to this nation and his place in history.

America’s Business and host Mike Hambrick welcome 2007 with a selection of the best of 2006, led by an interview with Michelle Wucker, author of Lockout: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right.The NAM’s Hank Cox recalls “The Way it Was” with Eli Whitney, and Mike talks to Renee Giachino of The American Justice Partnership, who never rests in her drive for tort reform.

In our “Factory Floor” segment, we hear from David Kosloff of Roosevelt Paper in Laurel, N.J. Frank Hugelmeyer, president of the Outdoor Industry Association, then discusses the economic value of recreation.

A far-reaching discussion of the use of information technology in health care includes Mike’s interviews with Ryan Streeter, a White House domestic policy advisor; Dr. Paul Grundy, Director of Healthcare, Technology and Strategic Initiatives for IBM Global Well Being Services; and Dan Pelino, general manager, IBM Global Healthcare and Life Sciences Industry. (IBM’s health care blog is here.)

On a note of safety, officers with NYPD’s Operation Nexus, counsel businesses on how to recognize suspicious activity that might be terrorism-related.

And NAM President John Engler closes with “The Last Word,” by marking the New Year with a review of the state of manufacturing in 2006 and its prospects for 2007.

For more on America’s Business and to listen to this week’s broadcast, please click here.

If you keep money and valuables in a bank or bank vault, you have probably felt pretty secure in keeping them there. Of course, there are today’s hackers and phishers who try to gain access to electronic accounts, but today we are taking a look at would-be robbers who want to get their hands on real cash and jewelry socked away in a bank.

Today we take this kind of security for granted. Yet it wasn’t always the case that banks were so secure so we welcome a new book that describes how bank lock innovators, including the Diebold Co. in Canton, OH, invented and manufactured sophisticated, secure locks beginning in the late 1800s that made bank vaults truly secure. Aptly named, American Genius: Nineteenth Century Bank Locks and Time Locks, the authors (father and son team of John Erroll and David Erroll) chronicle the “clever design, intricate craftsmanship and fine-grooved machinery that goes into sealing up valuables behind thick walls and fiendishly difficult-to-open doors,” as one reviewer put it.

Linus Yale invented a Double Dial bank lock in 1863 which revolutionized the bank lock business with his innovation of using 100 million possible combinations. It was so unique that it won a silver medal at the Paris Exposition in 1867. Of course, banks weren’t the only customers for these locks. So were companies that stored a lot of cash and even the U.S. Treasury. The book is filled with beautiful photographs showing the ingenious inner workings of these locks and the handcrafted artistry of decorative motifs and even folk-life scenes.

The Wall Street Journal reviewer of this book concluded: “such artistry, minute and meant to be hidden, reminds one of the decorative carving high up on skyscraper ledges: beauty that few will see. Never have the nuts and bolts of capitalism looked so good.” One might say that never have the nuts and bolts of the manufacturing process looked so good, for it was the manufacturers who innovated and made these designs into working reality. That’s what manufacturers do, even today. And we wish every one of these indispensible innovators a Happy New Year!

For a full review of the book, check out Stuart Ferguson’s column on page P9 of the December 2, 2006 Wall Street Journal. Click on the book title above for a short description of the book and a picture of its cover on Amazon.

We got an e-mail from our Web site host prodiver, PJ Doland who indicates he’s developed a new way to kill objectionable content on Web sites.

Have you ever accidentially clicked on a link that takes you to a place where you didn’t expect and worried that your boss might find out? Well, PJ proposes the following solution.

Called the NSFW directive, which stands for “not safe for work.” This attribute follows Google’s HTML attribute of “nofollow” which is generally applied by most blog software to comment and trackback content before it is posted. This minimizes the incentive for comment spamming as a means of improving a site’s PageRank status.

PJ’s new attribute has several exciting implications for content creators and site visitors:

Content creators can now apply the attribute to hyperlinks. Visitors will be able to configure their browsers to warn them, or stop them, before continuing on to URLs flagged with the attribute.

Content creators can now apply the attribute to image tags. Visitors will be able to configure their browsers to block display of images flagged with the attribute.

Congratulations PJ! Best of luck in this going mainstream.

At the company’s A Thousand Words blog, a Kodak exec reminds us what is truly important this holiday season and throughout the year. Illustrated with stunning photos taken at the scene (with a Kodak camera, natch), she describes how her house burned down shortly before Christmas. Everyone escaped unharmed, including the dog, and the family salvaged from the embers a box containing photo albums and mementos — miraculously undamaged.

Digital printing is also truly important, Xerox informs the blogosphere.

Season’s Rantings from General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz. GM’s blogging powerhouse has this to say about suggestions that the government might increase its Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards: “Forcing automakers to sell smaller cars to improve fuel economy [is like] fighting the nation’s obesity problem by forcing clothing manufacturers to sell garments in only small sizes.” As a wiser, alternate strategy, he recommends more government R&D on ethanol and fuel cells.

IBM’s vice president of technical strategy and innovation reports on a recent lecture by the President and CEO of the Vassar Brothers Medical Center about challenges facing the healthcare system. Dr. Daniel Aronzon, the Big Blue Blogger notes approvingly, advocates greater accountability, transparency, and efficiency. Key to resolving these issues, says the blogger, is better use of technology and applying to hospitals the methodology of lean manufacturing.

The Cisco High Tech Policy Blog touts a newspaper op-ed by the company’s chief development officer calling for a national broadband plan, to prevent the U.S. from falling further behind other advanced economies in high-speed internet access.

For those interested in getting away from it all — except the vicinity of a Starwood hotel — The Lobby blogs daily about enticing locales around the world.

Hoover’s, the Dun & Bradstreet research subsidiary, blogs at its Bizmology website about ESPN’s recent agreement to broadcast at least 26 Arena Football League games next year. Cue the Hank Williams, Jr. music: Are you ready for some (indoor) football?

Tonight on reliably lefty PBS you can find a show, “Dimming the Sun” about — not sure we got this right but here goes — how “global dimming” caused by air pollution is actually reducing the temperature of the planet by almost two degrees Fahrenheit. This according to climate gadfly and media darling James Hansen. So what is it — are we warming or cooling? We gotta know what to be scared about.

Hansen says that as we cut back on pollution, the global dimming will stop and guess what comes next? A whole heckuva lot of warmed over inconvenient truth. It’s a kinda warming-cooling-warming thingy. As Ralph Kramden would say, “Hummina, hummina, hummina….” It’s enough to make a real scientist go batty.

We did a little research ourselves this Christmas season, viewing some climate video archives. We found evidence that back in the 50′s up at General Waverly’s place, the Columbia Inn in Pine Tree, Vermont, it was 68 degrees in late December. There was no squawking about warming or cooling, just a rollicking chorus of “White Christmas” when at last it began to snow.

So let Hansen talk bout the cooling-as-warming climate doppleganger. Us? We’ll follow the old man wherever he wants to go.