Originally Posted by ko4qc

I just farted...does anyone care?...:>)

Originally Posted by Regis

All of this is fine by me. All of you are entitled to your opinion, as I am entitled to mine. It is one of the last things we’ve got in this PC, don’t-make-anybody-mad-world. Call me an Elitist, I don’t care, as I see it everywhere. Go visit the Corvette forum and you’d be surprised at how elitist that is, even between the distinct generations. The C5 guys bag on the C4, calling it a doorstop and one of the ugliest Vette’s ever built. The Chevy guys bag on the Ford guys and so on and so on. Give me grief if you’d like, but that’s my say

It goes deeper than that if you want to see it for what it is. I see the ‘Buy American’ struck a raw nerve. I’ve been watching this for years and what I’m seeing is the destruction of the American Middle Class. Wages have been stagnant against inflation for decades and what we’re seeing is a rising in the Gini Coefficient. Simply put, that means that the income disparity between the Rich and the Poor is widening and we’re approaching the numbers that Latin America has. We’re closer to them than Europe.

We used to produce high quality products in this country and in some instances, still do. We used to have a huge steel and textile industries and they’re nearly gone. We used to have a whole lot of smaller stores and now we have a Wal-Mart on every corner. What influenced me was a few direct experiences of the quality that used to be America. A long-time friends 1946 Chevy pickup, opening the doors and hood and feeling the solidity and quality of the handles, the solid action, closing and latching. Finding a vintage O’Keefe and Merit stove from the 40’s in a thrift shop and just as curiosity, twisting one of the *****. I was surprised at how tight and sweet it felt as I turned it. Imagine that, a 50 year old stove that gleams in white porcelain and chrome and still functions exceptionally well.

Working as a computer technician for Xerox in the early 80’s and repairing the last of the big daisy wheel printers. Laugh, clown laugh, but the big Xerox Diablo 630 printers were exceptionally well built. They weighed 50 pounds and that was because of the cast frames. The carriage cruised on a pair of ž inch thick round steel stock that was polished and machined to a high gleam and had brass and babbit bearings. What do you get now? Some piece of disposable crap that has the absolute minimum that you can get away with. You can pick up most modern printers and literally flex them.

My woman still has her Suzuki Intruder and I’ll tell you this; everything on it, is twice as hard to do as on a Harley Davidson. Just removing the seat was a huge exercise in patience. Changing a turn-signal lamp took ten minutes, as the socket kept rotating deep in its rubber cup. Getting to the dual carbs wasn’t easy either and I decided to heck with it and took it to Suzuki dealer after Suzuki dealer. Found one guy in the whole north Los Angeles County area who could do a quality job, but most of the mechanics were apathetic and left numerous damages to the bike, including deep scratches on a custom paint job, disconnected wiring and poor workmanship. You could smell the apathy when you were back there. After all, it is just a disposable bike, like everything else around us. Throw it away when you’re done and get a new one.

The blame is widespread. There is no replacement for the wealth that was lost in the Housing Bubble, as that was the last Bubble to be blown, after the numerous ones that preceeded it, including the Dot-Com and Tech bubble. No Country produces wealth without creating something of physical value. A real industrial economy requires a ton of CapEx or Capital Expenditure spending, while a Service Economy requires little. The mainstream media tells you not the truth, but a socially engineered lie. You’ll rarely see what your Local, State or Federal Government is voting on. You have to dig to find the truth now. No news on IBM dumping 5,000 jobs just a couple of months ago and outsourcing that to India. What were those laid-off people making? I’ve saved numerous articles, just for perspective. Here’s a nice example. MSNBC, Dec 21, 2006; “Ex-Pfizer CEO to leave $180 million richer”. Now look at MarketWatch, Jan 22, 2007, just a month later, “Pfizer to slash 10% of workforce….that it plans to slash about 10% of it’s workforce by the end of 2008, or roughly 10,000 workers.

I live in a bankrupt city, surrounded by a bankrupt state and an increasingly bankrupt country, that relies on the kindness of foreigners to buy our U.S. Treasury Bonds, but who are now wondering what kind of trash they are holding. Look at the news today and see China, Venezuela and other countries increasingly looking at dumping the dollar as the reserve currency. Even the Mideast is contemplating this.

Rag on me, bag on me, but I’m not going to apologize. I only brought this up, because I’m tired of hearing metric cruiser riders or associates make excuses for not buying a Harley by digging into the brand that I’m proud to own. If you like your bike better fine, but don’t bag on mine, as I find it to be a quality build throughout. Every time I wash it, I can stick my hands just about anywhere on there and not get a scratch or cut from cheap castings, where they cut the corners and didn’t take the flash off, or poor workmanship.

No regrets here.