Don't let facts get in the way.
Have you heard the screaming?
"It's just reckless spenders we don't like."
"The big government and reckless spending model has failed."
"When consumers aren't spending and businesses aren't investing, if the government, under Obama, didn't spend, the recession would have turned into a depression."
"This is myth floated by big government economists and liberals who don't have the power to magically see alternate realities. It's POSSIBLE that might have happened, but not necessarily."
"Bush and the Republican Congress spent trillions in better economic times. But for the debt they ran up, no one would believe that the current spending was a problem."
"Obama's so-called stimulus bill ran up the deficit and acheived very little in return."
Go get the facts.
This is aimed at all sides.
If you make unfounded statements, you weaken your arguement.
If you only listen/watch NBC or FOX you are not getting all the facts. Always check the bias of your information source, they all have some.
Take this example.
When Alexander Haig died, CNN quoted him as saying, "As of now, I am in control here, in the White House", which implies that he did not know the constitutional power progression and had wrongfully seized power. NPR quoted him as saying, "As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending return of the Vice President", which seems to me to say he was reassuring the people that the government was secure and he was holding the fort until the commander arrived.
What he actually said was, "Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of State in that order, and should the President decide he wants to transfer the helm to the Vice President, he will do so. He has not done that. As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending return of the Vice President and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course". This shows that he had the progression wrong ( either truly or accidentally) but was not seizing power.
Foundations are not politically neutral. Foundation bias based upon Brookings' data of citations by Republican and Democratic party congressmen:
| Center on Budget and Policy Priorities |
Left 38 |
| Urban Institute |
Left 24 |
| Council on Foreign Relations |
Left 10 |
| Brookings |
Left 3 |
| Carnegie Endowment for International Peace |
Left 2 |
| Institute for International Economics |
Right 1 |
| Center for Strategic and International Studies |
Right 4 |
| American Enterprise Institute |
Right 13.5 |
| Cato Institute |
Right 14 |
| Heritage Foundation |
Right 30 |
Poll bias: After searching and searching I cannot conclude anything about polls except that they need to be taken with that proverbial "grain of salt".
This quote from an anonymous mathmatician says it all.
"They are stratified sampling. Meaning, prior to the conduct of the enumeration, there is already a perceived bias on the result.
The best poll would be non-stratfied, SINGLE RANDON SAMPLING, which is the standard used by the scientists, engineers and real economists."
Now if I just knew what that meant.
My bias:
Registered Republican 1965 to 2006.
Registered Democrat 2006 to present.
Is it better to be a"Tax and Spend Democrat" or a "Borrow and Spend Republican"?
EDUCATION
Purdue University, West Lafayette,Indiana
Bachelors of Science Degree, June 1969
University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
Twenty-one credit hours toward Masters of Arts Degree in Higher Education Administration, discontinued to start employment with Bendix Corporation in Florida
EXPERIENCE DETAIL
Collins Radio Co. -- June 1969 to
September 1971
Now a Division of Rockwell International
After college I started work at Collins as
a Q.A. Engineer on electronic equipment for aircraft.
Working for Collins was a dream come true for me, as I
knew their name from my boyhood interest in ham radio. In
mid 1970, there was a major recession, and I took a
position as a technical writer. Interesting that I worked
as a technical writer, as I received a D in the technical
writing course I took in college. By 1971 my number came
up and I was laid off, the last group of people laid off
before the economy turned around.
Honeywell International Inc. --
September 1972 to January 2002
Formerly Allied/Signal Inc.
Formerly Bendix Corporation
This section is long; it covers 29 years.
I joined Bendix as a technical writer and advanced to a System Engineer on Flight Control and Automatic
Direction Finder Systems. Along the way I got
opportunities to work on production problems, government
agency interface, military specifications and design
implementation. A highlight was a period working on major
proposals for Communications-Navigation-Instrumentation (
CNI) Systems for Boeing 757 /767 aircraft. In that role I
worked with professional proposal managers as a
contributor, an editor, a manager myself, and then a
consultant for a sister Bendix division.
I n 1981 I was given a temporary assignment that changed
my life. I was to help the LSI (Large Scale Integration)
group develop a documentation system that was compatible
with the rest of the factory's system. This assignment
eventually led to me ordering equipment
and developing procedures to manufacture commercial-grade
and prototype integrated circuits. Before long I had
complete scheduling, material-control, quality-control,
documentation, and assembly engineering responsibility
for a 2,000 square foot facility which produced 12000
parts per year.
By 1984 the operation in Florida had
become too small and the top corporate management at
Bendix wanted a professional looking organization for
building devices with their name on them. They offered
the key employees at the Florida facillity a chance to
start a new, high-reliability wafer fabrication and
assembly facility in Columbia, Maryland with capability
of one million parts per year. Not being a complete
dummy, I jumped at the chance. My part was to plan the
layout of the assembly facility. Subsequently, I directed
construction of the facility. I also selected, specified,
and ordered all production, quality-assurance, and
environmental-test equipment. After developing operating
procedures and hiring initial personnel, I felt it was,
"my factory". Like I said, a temporary
assignment that changed my life.
For the next five years, my focus was
developing the start-up facility into a full production
facility producing MIL-STD-883C Compliant parts.
Production included pin-grid-array packages up to 224
leads, leadless chip carriers, 16- to 64-lead side-brazed
packages, glass-frit-seal ceramic flatpacks, and others.
Assembly processes included eutectic die attachment of
die up to 460 by 470 mils, and automatic gold and
aluminum wire bonding. Complete military-standard
screening and qualification testing capability was
installed.
An organization either grows or dies. The
Columbia facility grew, and in 1989 it was large enough
to split the Assembly Engineering Group off of the
production facility. As head of this group, I was
responsible for developing processes, device mechanical
designs, and production tooling to manufacture new
products. The group also supported Marketing and
Contracts in communication with external customers,
including bids and proposals.
I moved up in 1994 to a Staff Engineeer
for mechanical design and production processes. My charge
was to adapt the factory capabilities to maintain
profitable operation as a niche market manufacturer. I
developed subcontracting sources and re-tooled machinery
as equipment aged and staff was reduced. Operations were
progressing nicely. We even received ISO-9001
Certification, for which I developed the Product
Identification and Tracability section.
All good things came to an end in 2001
when Allied Signal bought Honeywell and closed our
efficient little operation in favor of a facility
producing radiation hardened devices for uncle Sam.
National Semiconductor Corporation --
April 2001 to September 2011
Life didn't end when Honeywell closed the Columbia operation.
As fate would have it, an opening occurred at National Semiconductor
just as I was leaving Honeywell.
I became the manufacturing process
development engineer for an ultra-high-speed,
multi-chip-module project. The project was exciting for me
as it had been a long time since I had hands-on
engineering responsibility for development of processes,
and an equipment budget that exceeded the requirements. Was
that engineer heaven?
Well, after 5 years, the multi-chip-module project that was supposed
to last 8 months was successfully completed.
The slowdown from a three-shift operation to a lightly staffed, two-shift,
low-production lab left a big void that could be the
opposite of engineer heaven. There was plenty of work, but
not the excitement of a state-of-the-art development project.
Watching the desintigration of something you have poured your essence
into is a heart-wrenching event. There were no follow-up projects to utilize
the equipment and processes on which so much effort was exerted. So,
after sitting idle for 5 years, many millions of dollars worth of very slightly
used assembly equipment was scrapped, not surplused, junked.
For a "gearhead", this was definitely the opposite of engineer heaven.
Common knowledge has it that when it is time to retire, you know it.
Texas Instruments Corporation --
September 2011
ITT Corporation --
September 2011
Excelis Corporation --
September 2011
National Semiconductor was bought by Texas Instruments. TI doesn't
do business with the U.S. Government, so they "No-Bid" the up-coming,
single-bidder contract I worked on. ITT got the contract on a re-bid
, then ITT split off Excelis and the contract; that is 4 companies in a month
for which I have worked. Less money, less benefits, a change in the
customer's product plans, less emphasis on my area of expertise; when
it is time to retire, you know it.
I retired 1 April, April Fools Day.
Copyright Dale Thompson,
April 2, 2004 through
last revision on April 1, 2012.
