Meeting Report

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johnkarls
Posts: 2034
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Meeting Report

Post by johnkarls »

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Ordinarily there is no meeting report.

Only “ordinarily” because there have been at least two exceptions. A report for our 12/13/2013 meeting on the subject of Third Trimester Abortions was produced because there were so many requests, including quite a few from our regulars who had been unable to attend. And because at our 1/14/2014 meeting, we were all so shocked and appalled over how dysfunctional American foreign policy toward Pakistan had been that a “brief, final note” was posted on the face of the “Discussion Outline” section of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SatlLake.org “in case we ever have occasion to discuss this or any related topics again.”

This report is in the nature of the 1/14/2014 meeting report -- trying to preserve valuable insights in case we ever pass this way again.

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Attendance

Betsy Bradstreet, Thomas Chancellor, Ted Gurney, Tucker Gurney, John Karls, George Kunath, Bill Lee, and June Taylor. [Jay Hansen had RSVP’d but was a “no show.”]

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Frustration With Nomenclature, Etc.

A considerable amount of time was consumed by two misunderstandings --

(1) Thomas Chancellor was continually interpreting each criticism of the Democratic Party by John Karls (and by, in effect, our author) as praise for the Republican Party. Rather than, as John tried to explain, the Shakespearian position of “A Pox On Both Your Houses” from Romeo and Juliet.

(2) Bill Lee was continually questioning why blue-collar white workers (the focus of our author in What Is The Matter With White People) and others who have deserted the Democratic Party would not “vote in their own economic self interest” -- which was missing the point that the Democratic Party continually pays lip service to the interests of large segments of its base while “selling them down the river” for Campaign Contributions.

But even more time was consumed with confusion over the definitions of “socialism” and “communism” --

Vis-à-vis communism, Yours Truly has always tried to distinguish between “economic communism” and “Marxist communism” -- pointing out that economic communism (“from each according to her/his ability and to each according to her/his need”) was the essence of the teaching of Jesus Christ, but Marxist Communism was opposed to religion in general, and Christianity in particular, because Marx and Lenin viewed Christianity as “the opiate of the masses” which made it impossible to incite the proletariat to revolt when they were busy “laying up for themselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal.”

Socialism, on the other hand, was always strictly defined when Yours Truly majored in economics as governmental ownership of “the means of production” so that any company that is owned by government(s) would be considered a Socialist Enterprise. A good example would be Airbus which produces about 50% of the world’s commercial aircraft and which was formed by the British, French and German governments to compete with Boeing.

Another good example would be NASA (the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration) though some of our attendees argued at great length that a governmental enterprise that is not intended to make a profit (though NASA’s supporters over the years have often claimed that NASA would be economically beneficial), or that is intended to make a profit but fails to do so, is NOT a socialist enterprise.

And to make matters worse, during the Cold War the American media constantly labeled the Soviet Union as “communist” even though (1) it only called itself the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics (USSR), and (2) it only really practiced socialism -- in other words, governmental ownership of the means of production but making virtually no headway on Jesus Christ’s second objective of “to each according to her/his need” since virtually from the get go, Soviet leaders recognized that economic incentives had to be employed.

It should also be noted that the Marxist idea of the solidarity of the worldwide proletariat can easily be trumped by the patriotism of each country’s proletariat. As was on prominent display in James Michener’s “Poland” in which he records how all of Western Europe, especially the French and British, were dreading how the Soviet Red Army at the end of the Russian Revolution, had not only defeated the White Russians but was beginning to “snow ball” toward the Atlantic as all of the proletariat in the path of the Red Army joined its ranks!!! But how the Polish proletariat rose up to stop the Red Army because of the patriotic idea that they preferred being ruled by the Polish Aristocrats they knew, rather than the Russian Serfs whom they didn’t!!!

Which (patriotism trumping worldwide proletariat solidarity) is the reason why the Vietnam War did NOT need to be fought. In brief, U.S. intelligence promptly reported the 1959 Sino-Soviet split which was caused by the Chinese locating all of their nuclear testing/research/production facilities in Chinese Turkestan (aka Sinkiang Province) because they didn’t care whether nuclear accidents killed zillions of their Islamic Turks. While the Soviet Union had done the same thing in Russian Turkestan (which later fragmented into all of the “Stans” except Afghanistan which had always been independent and Pakistan which fragmented from India). In 1959, the Soviet Union awoke “in a cold sweat” to realize that the Chinese were fomenting a revolution in Russian Turkestan UNDER CHINA’S AEGIS in order to render the Soviet Union a NON-NUCLEAR POWER overnight!!! While the Chinese awoke in “a cold sweat” to realize that the Soviets were doing exactly the same thing in reverse.

However, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson didn’t believe the intelligence!!! They thought it was a mere ruse by Monolithic Worldwide Communism Inc. to fool us!!! So they launched and prosecuted a long, bitter, costly war that did NOT need to be fought!!! And it took Nixon and Kissinger to evaluate the intelligence correctly and make the Opening to China. And terminate the unnecessary Vietnam War.

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The Insight Worth Preserving

After we had been struggling for more than an hour with all of the confusion caused by nomenclature, etc., Thomas Chancellor opined that our country’s real objective should be to provide real jobs for everyone who wants to work. And praised Roosevelt’s New Deal for trying to do that.

By way of background, we had concluded at our 2/12/2014 meeting that the reason why America had succeeded in its policy of exporting so many American jobs was the “free flow of capital” and we launched our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign to renew 1968 Executive Order 11387 to curtail the “free flow of capital” sufficiently to provide real jobs for all Americans who want to work.

Yours Truly immediately tried to support Thomas Chancellor’s idea of having the U.S. Government provide meaningful employment even though our pols insist on exporting American jobs in return for Campaign Contributions.

Unfortunately, Yours Truly used the term Socialism in describing the governmental enterprises that Thomas was advocating, and trying to deal with all of the confusion raised once more by that term consumed the rest of the time before the 9:00 pm closing time of our Salt Lake Public Library host.

However, June Taylor, Thomas Chancellor and Yours Truly continued the discussion in the plaza behind the library for quite some time afterwards even though we no longer constituted a quorum of six members, and even though no notice had been provided the other five meeting participants because we hadn’t anticipated we would continue.

[June Taylor is the University of Utah's Radiology-Research Professor and Thomas Chancellor is a retired University of Utah Law School Professor.]

But we did come to an understanding that “socialism” is simply a governmentally-owned enterprise such as NASA or, during its early phase, Airbus (Yours Truly actually posed these examples of “socialism” for the first time during this rump session).

And that Thomas did not need to be upset because of his mindset that “socialism” is universally abhorrent because of the British and Soviet experiences.

However, Yours Truly re-emphasized his position from our formal meeting that governmentally-owned enterprises are very often, if not virtually always, a tremendous waste of economic resources (and that his post-meeting examples of NASA and Airbus are relatively-rare exceptions).

Accordingly, the three of us reached an understanding that if we ever come this way again because our pols continue to insist on exporting American jobs in return for Campaign Contributions rather than renewing 1968 Executive Order 11387, we “cut to the chase” of considering whether it would make sense to recommend specific governmentally-owned enterprises that would provide real jobs for all Americans who want to work.

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Three additional items of note.

We agreed that we would need to “chase the rabbit” of investigating whether socialist enterprises might violate the rules of the World Trade Organization and/or our various multilateral trade agreements such as NAFTA. [Though, of course, International Law 101 teaches that its first and most important principle is that treaties are NOT like contracts, in that treaties are only valid so long as both parties still want them to continue in force, whereas contracts are still enforceable even though one of the parties no longer favors its continuation.]

Though not mentioned in our discussion, a governmentally-owned enterprise could provide its own training programs. Which might be far superior to college and post-graduate programs that do not focus on skills that are economically worthwhile. And which would not pile up mountains of student-loan debt.

And the real “elephant in the room” is how to ensure that tremendous economic resources will NOT be wasted with governmentally-owned enterprises. After all, restricting the “free flow of capital” still relies on economic efficiency within the constraints of restricting that “free flow” rather than trusting governmental bureaucrats to produce miracles like NASA and Airbus.

Respectfully submitted,

John Karls
Unofficial Ad-Hoc Ex-Post-Facto Recording Secretary

johnkarls
Posts: 2034
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

General Motors Institute

Post by johnkarls »

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The foregoing Meeting Report concluded with Three Additional Items of Note, the second of which was --

“Though not mentioned in our discussion, a governmentally-owned enterprise could provide its own training programs. Which might be far superior to college and post-graduate programs that do not focus on skills that are economically worthwhile. And which would not pile up mountains of student-loan debt.”

The best example of a private enterprise which provided its own training programs was General Motors Institute (1926-1982) which morphed into Kettering University in 1982 after the decline of General Motors Co.

General Motors Institute offered Bachelors Degrees (and later, Masters Degrees as well) in various scientific fields, engineering, mathematics and business.

But, most importantly, applicants were required to find a General Motors unit that would sponsor him/her.

Which meant that every other semester, the student worked as a full-time employee of the sponsoring GM unit instead of taking academic courses.

The students were NOT guaranteed employment by General Motors upon graduation.

But the raison d’être of General Motors’ ownership of GMI 1926-1982 was that even though the University of Michigan’s Engineering Department ranked on a par with MIT during that period because of, inter alia, its close association with GM, General Motors had a greater need for engineers than was being provided by independent universities.

The reasons for citing this example???

First -- because the tuition was subsidized by GM and because students were earning a regular full-time salary every other semester while working for a General Motors unit, they were NOT piling up any student-loan debt and were typically graduating with money in the bank!!!

Even during The Great Depression!!!

Second -- they were graduating with a degree that American industry wanted!!!

Rather than “Underwater Basket Weaving”!!!

[The mythical worthless degree on which college athletes on scholarship anywhere in the country were supposedly working when I was young because they could be guaranteed passing grades by their faculty which was allegedly part of any college athletic department worth its salt.]

And Third -- they were graduating with a considerable amount of experience that was highly valued by American industry!!!

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Excerpts about General Motors Institute from the Wikipedia article on Kettering University follows immediately below.

An interesting piece of trivia???

Mitt Romney’s father-in-law, Edward Davies, attended General Motors Institute during The Great Depression and graduated in 1938.



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Kettering University (aka General Motors Institute 1926-1982)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kettering University (formerly General Motors Institute) is a private cooperative education and experiential learning-based university in Flint, Michigan, offering bachelor’s and master's degrees in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and Business fields.

Kettering University ranked 14th nationally among non-Ph.D.-granting engineering universities and fourth nationally among mechanical engineering programs in the 2015 U.S. News and World Report ‘Best Colleges’ edition.[4] Kettering ranked 12th nationally and first in the Midwest and Michigan in Return on Investment in PayScale.com’s 2015 Return on Investment Rankings.[5] PayScale.com also ranked Kettering 15th nationally and first in Michigan in its 2014 Salary Potential rankings.[6] A 2015 CNN Money article examining the top private colleges in the country in return on investment ranked Kettering 10th, noting that Kettering is sending graduates “out into the world with the skills employers are looking for.”[7] An article in the 2014 issue of Automobile Magazine listed Kettering University among five universities nationwide that students looking to break into the auto industry should attend.[8]

Kettering University undergraduate students are required to complete at least five co-op terms to graduate.[9] Students gain paid work experience in a variety of industries with Kettering’s more than 550 corporate partners, including some of the world’s top Fortune 500 companies, and graduate with more than two years of professional experience accompanying their degree.[10]

Kettering University is named after inventor and former head of research for General Motors Charles Kettering. Along with his distinguished career that included his development of the automatic cash register, automobile self-starter, and research on magnetism and solar energy, Kettering was also a proponent of cooperative education that included professional experience to supplement instruction in classrooms and labs.[11] Kettering University’s belief in experiential education descends from Charles Kettering’s foundational belief in the power of combining theory with practice.[11]

Originally founded as The School of Automotive Trades by Albert Sobey under the direction of the Industrial Fellowship of Flint on October 20, 1919, Kettering University has a long legacy with the automotive industry. The university became known as the Flint Institute of Technology in 1923 before being acquired by General Motors in 1926, becoming the General Motors Institute of Technology and eventually the General Motors Institute in 1932.[2]

Sometimes referred to as the “West Point[12] of industry,” GMI focused on creating business and industry leaders through the unique co-op model (following the development of this program at the University of Cincinnati in 1907). GMI also pioneered freshmen level manufacturing courses (Production Processes I & II), and automotive degree specialties. A fifth-year thesis requirement was added in 1945, along with the ability to grant degrees. The first bachelor's degree was awarded on August 23, 1946.[2]

The co-op program required applicants to find a GM division to be their sponsor. Work and school were mixed in six-week rotations, dividing the student body into A-section and B-section. At any given time, when A-section was in school, B-section was at work. After six weeks, B-section would go back to school and so on. This resulted in students moving eight times per year and a 48-week school/work year. Because General Motors used the school to train its engineers, tuition was partially subsidized. In June 1979 (the Class of 1984) co-op rotations were expanded to twelve weeks.

After GM reduced operations in Flint, the company and the university separated on July 1, 1982. The name of the institution became "GMI Engineering & Management Institute" and the letters "GMI" were retained to allow easy identification with the old General Motors Institute. The university began charging full tuition as an independent private university. The university kept the cooperative education model, expanding the number of co-op employers for students. The university also began offering graduate programs for both on- and off-campus students.[2]

The university’s name was formally changed to Kettering University on January 1, 1998, in honor of Charles Kettering.[13] The name change allowed the university to create a separate identity from General Motors as well as publicize the fact that academic programs were expanding beyond just automotive-related offerings.

The university launched a physics program in 1995, and had the first ABET-accredited applied physics program in the world in 2013.[14] A chemical engineering program as well as a pre-med course of study were launched in 2008.[15] The chemical engineering program received ABET accreditation in 2013.[16] The computer science program received ABET accreditation in 2007.[17] The university added an applied biology program in 2013.[18]

Kettering University offers Bachelor of Science degrees in Applied Biology, Applied Mathematics, Applied Physics, Biochemistry, Bioinformatics, Business Administration, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Engineering Physics, Industrial Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering.[19] The university also offers Master's degrees in Business Administration (MBA), Information Technology, Manufacturing Management, Operations Management, Manufacturing Operations, Engineering Management, and Engineering.[20] Most undergraduate programs require completion of 160 credit hours for graduation. Kettering also offers students more than 40 minors, concentrations, specialties, and courses of study.[21]

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