Tony does read the comments, but there are so many, he might miss a few. If you want him to know about this, you can email him at Tonyo94@gmail.com.

oooo requesting to join!!!

Well, you have to perform miracles, of course! Or just volunteer a lot without joining. (I can’t stand greasepaint on me so I’m not tough enough to be a real Sister.) The Saints are sort of an auxiliary. But I got a lovely certificate in a gilt frame!
I have not heard that about the “track cream” but I have a friend who does needle exchange and I will look into it. How long ago was this? Does she remember any of the Sisters’ names? I can also check with long-time Sisters. Bless her for doing harm reduction. It sounds like it would be really tough in many ways.

+100 points for referencing the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence! My wife is from San Fransisco and told me about them a few years back, sent me to their website etc. Given that just to become a Sister, you have to go through Novice and Postulant status, what on earth did you have to do to get Sainted?
Oh, and also they apparently made (maybe still make, I don’t know) the best track cream ever, which they used to distribute to all the needle exchange sites. My wife is a harm reduction worker now and was trying to get the recipe so she could get the agencies here to make up some batches…I don’t think she ever did figure out what-all went into it. Must be a closely guarded secret 🙂

If anyone, BTW, I knew you would get it. LOL

Won’t most just chalk it up to covert hostility though? I guess if you can at least change one person’s mind, it’s worth it.

The flycorvair article is extremely jingoistic and narrow minded. And, of course, it is
also very simplistic in its assessment of the reality of the situation. The author’s frequent use of “Communist” in conjunction with China is a tipoff that this is your typical red-meat kneejerk “buy American” view. Though the Communist Party still runs the country, they are Communists in name only, and they are hardly trying to nuke their biggest trading partner, the way the Soviets may have been trying to shut us down militarily in the Cold War.

On the one hand, I am concerned about shipping highly skilled US jobs overseas — jobs like aerospace workers. I believe the economic recovery, which has been fairly slow the last couple years, would accelerate greatly if workers got raises instead of companies optimizing corporate profits. We in Global Capitalism HQ know that companies have optimized profits about as far as they can go and profit margins (the most important factor in stock prices) have little room to go anywhere but down. When workers have more money to spend, companies throughout the economy grow. When rich people have more money to spend, they don’t actually spend it. One rich person making $1 million per year doesn’t buy ten times as many cars as ten families each making $100,000 per year. Or ten times as much toothpaste, toilet paper, laundry detergent, or anything else.

Since Continental’s business of replacement parts is essentially a service, distribution and inventory management business, you can’t actually outsource huge chunks of it. I don’t know how many jobs have gone overseas as a result of the Chinese acquisition of these companies, but I would bet serious coin that it is far less than most people would expect.

On the other hand, from the strategic and investment point of view, Continental and the rest of the companies mentioned are past their prime. I don’t remember the numbers on production of piston-engined GA aircraft recently, but it’s got to be pretty low at this point, even before the recession. The aerospace makers are cashing in on turboprops and jets of all sizes; the Chinese haven’t bought these businesses. I suspect that the overwhelming majority of Continental’s business these days is furnishing replacement parts for 30-year-old (or older) motors in existing hulls. And Cirrus (have loved their planes since their kitplane days 30 years ago) has been in out of bankruptcy more times than Elizabeth Taylor has been married. Without disrespect to the fabled history of these businesses, they are almost certainly never going to see growth again like they did in their best years.

I happen to believe that the stage is set for a number of interesting developments in general aviation over the next decade, as composites technologies get better and cheaper, and as a new wave of modern engines are developed (most piston engines in production today are variants of designs laid down 50+ years ago), potentially including very small turboprop engines that will be far more reliable than piston engines they replace. The Chinese ownership of those businesses named in the blog post will not give them any competitive edge to play in those new markets as they emerge.

Read about Joseph Schumpeter’s classic concept of “creative destruction.” The idea has been around since the 1940s. Some use this to justify “screw the poor” economics like the current GOP platform; I don’t agree with that, and I don’t think that was Schumpeter’s intent. But the overall concept does describe the concept of industries’ tendency to be born, grow, mature, die and be replaced by newer technologies and business models that tend to increase the net wealth of the economy that efficiently buries old technologies (including by selling them off to low-cost producer countries) and enables formation of replacement industries in their place.

Failing to upgrade industrial production for decades during the Cold War (i.e., little creative destruction to take place) meant that Russia emerged into the post-Cold War era with very few valuable exports other than raw materials (which are the lowest-value exports in the food chain). The US is a lot wealthier in many different ways because commercial aviation buried the passenger railroad industry (and the freight railroad industry is moving more tonnage than ever, so getting them out of the passenger business helped them focus on what they do extremely well, though that took a while to happen).