Rand Paul is an enigma. He is unexplainable.
He wants a balanced budget....lower taxes....and control over government spending.....which generally gets people in the heartland all pepped up and enthusiastic. He's against subsidizing energy companies.....but he's willing to offer them tax breaks for innovation. He hates TSA and says he would eliminate them.....but he never says how. He says that American's privacy rights are threatened....but never says how he's solve this. He says he's for plain old-fashion marriage, but it's same type statement that President Obama had before his conversion to being 'open'. He opposes all possible gun control, period.....which usually gets him support from the NRA crowd.
If you went down the list of twenty-five topics that the normal heartland guy would support and how they would answer a question over issues.....Rand Paul gives the same exact answer.
So, why is Rand Paul considered a 'nut'?
It's when you get to the 2nd twenty-five hot topics of Republican Conservatives and the fringe side of the Republican enthusiasm.....that you start to see Rand Paul angle to get the right spot on each of the next twenty-five topics. He wants to fit into the perfect square.
For an engineer.....the perfect square is measured and it's absolutely precise. If you say you are within 1/1,000th of an inch of the perfect specifications to the square.....that's the gimmick of Rand Paul. He really wants to fit that neat and tidy square.
If someone said that lawn landscaping had now moved to topic number 46 on the Conservative scale of important things.....Rand Paul would come out tomorrow with a three-point agenda on land landscaping....offering up tax incentives for a better lawn, recommended advice on cutting range for the mower, and a government program to offer free grass seed to the needy. It's that simple.
The heartland candidate? Yeah. He's the guy who wants to take around twelve percent of the vote in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Texas, etc. He's the all-in-one type candidate that fits the perfect square and people comment on that. The remaining eighty-two percent of voters? They'd rather not vote for the guy.....there's just something that's not real or convincing about Rand Paul.
Oddly, you can find Democrats in the south who say that they could almost support Rand Paul because he's got the right position on twenty of their top priorities.
The perfect square? There is such a thing....but it's usually not what people are walking into Home Depot or Lowes to buy.
What Rand Paul is after....is mostly votes. He ties up an election and makes things a bit more difficult for the top two or three guys in the primary. He's making them pay attention to him and his fifty-odd topics. If you want the perfect conservative.....he's the solution. At some point in the decision process...you make the decision that you don't want the perfect conservative, and then you start to question your whole priority system.
The odds of the top guy wanting Rand Paul for VP or some cabinet post? Zero chance. It'll never happen. So, Rand is mostly there for the theater side of the conservative vote. He gives the audience the best act possible, and that small group feel that he might actually deliver on these fifty-odd values that they've worked themselves into.
The news media tries to side with this view and get the small crowd all pumped up. It's fake stories and a comical sort of perception that he might actually deliver what he's talking about. Then later.....you figure out that the news media lied to you and you go back to reality.
That's the plain and simple truth with Rand Paul.
Wednesday, 8 April 2015
Monday, 6 April 2015
On the Subject of Water
“This executive order is done under emergency power. It has the force of law. Very unusual. It’s requiring action and changes in behavior from the Oregon border all the way to the Mexican border. It affects lawns. It affects people’s — how long they stay in the shower....how businesses use water."
-- Governor Brown of California
For those who haven't heard.....California has a serious water shortage. It's been building up for over one-hundred years.
You can go back to the 1910 period and find people who were staking out a negative position on reservoirs and use of mountain runoff water.
Population growth? It continued on, continuing a gradual growth, and today sits at around forty million residents.
The desalination plants? The folks in Santa Barbara are cranking up their plant. Water cost? If you compare it against the regular water.....it's fifteen times the cost. You can imagine your water bill.....if it was one hundred dollars a year under the old system.....it'll run fifteen-hundred under the new system. I should add as well....after you filter out the salt.....it gets dumped out in the process back into the local waters. So if you had one-hundred percent salt water along your coast before.....it'll probably at least three-hundred percent salt water afterwards. You can already expect legal cases to occur with environmentalists trying to shut the operation down, and regular people unable to afford water.
But we come to the subject of monitoring shower usage. I'm guessing someone will want to install a meter on showers or tubs within a home, and start to check your usage. I'm an old military guy who knew how to take a simple 90-second shower.
You can imagine the training videos that California will have to put out.....trying to teach people to shift from the six-minute shower to the 90-second shower. Use this type of soap....dash yourself for twenty seconds to wet everything down....etc. Some idiot might even make a special shower attachment which only throws 10-second spurts of water of you and then ten seconds of nothing. People will be buzzing at the office....chatting over their ten-second method or a twenty-second method....creating fake enthusiasm over this whole bogus situation.
Bottom line? California has had a hundred years to work on their water situation, and at this point.....they are still one-hundred years behind. And when the water bill comes for the month, and you spent $450 on water.....you will finally make the decision to pack up and leave.
-- Governor Brown of California
For those who haven't heard.....California has a serious water shortage. It's been building up for over one-hundred years.
You can go back to the 1910 period and find people who were staking out a negative position on reservoirs and use of mountain runoff water.
Population growth? It continued on, continuing a gradual growth, and today sits at around forty million residents.
The desalination plants? The folks in Santa Barbara are cranking up their plant. Water cost? If you compare it against the regular water.....it's fifteen times the cost. You can imagine your water bill.....if it was one hundred dollars a year under the old system.....it'll run fifteen-hundred under the new system. I should add as well....after you filter out the salt.....it gets dumped out in the process back into the local waters. So if you had one-hundred percent salt water along your coast before.....it'll probably at least three-hundred percent salt water afterwards. You can already expect legal cases to occur with environmentalists trying to shut the operation down, and regular people unable to afford water.
But we come to the subject of monitoring shower usage. I'm guessing someone will want to install a meter on showers or tubs within a home, and start to check your usage. I'm an old military guy who knew how to take a simple 90-second shower.
You can imagine the training videos that California will have to put out.....trying to teach people to shift from the six-minute shower to the 90-second shower. Use this type of soap....dash yourself for twenty seconds to wet everything down....etc. Some idiot might even make a special shower attachment which only throws 10-second spurts of water of you and then ten seconds of nothing. People will be buzzing at the office....chatting over their ten-second method or a twenty-second method....creating fake enthusiasm over this whole bogus situation.
Bottom line? California has had a hundred years to work on their water situation, and at this point.....they are still one-hundred years behind. And when the water bill comes for the month, and you spent $450 on water.....you will finally make the decision to pack up and leave.
Sunday, 5 April 2015
Explaining Dugout, Tennessee
The first original road or recognized trail out of civilization.....into the depths of the frontier....to New Orleans.....was the Natchez Trace. The first guy who wandered through this "trail" came to report that it was "miserable" but passable. This 1742. When you take into account various hills that had to be climbed, the streams and swampy areas to be crossed, and the 440 miles required.....it was a pretty tough trip.
A guy could generally make around twenty-five miles a day on horseback in these type of conditions, so you can figure the Nashville to Natchez, Mississippi trip took about eighteen days. Even when you got to Natchez.....you really weren't in New Orleans yet....you still had another four days minimum to make it into the 'big easy'.
It wasn't until 1801....roughly sixty years later....that the US Army was brought in to "fix" the Trace. The Army stuck around for several years and accomplished a fair amount of the renovation. Then contractors were hired to work the final effort. Somewhere around 1809/1810....the Trace was upgraded to the level that wagons could make the trip with some ease. That opened up a big deal for trade and commerce.
That was the sole road in the entire region until 1817.
Through various political efforts.....money was put aside in 1816 for General Jackson....then the military commander in the new frontier....to build a second road that would go from Nashville (his headquarters) to Madisonville, Louisiana (a couple miles outside of Jackson, Mississippi). It's length was 436 miles. Even when you finished the trip to Jackson....you were still four days of travel away from New Orleans.
The survey of the route took place in 1817 and work started immediately. What can be said was that thirty-five bridges had to be built as part of the overall plan. There's not a precise history to this piece of American history. One newspaper account talks of 300 men who were involved in one phrase, and another separate account talks of fifty men.
The road was completely open from beginning to end....around May of 1820. There's a number of seventy-five-thousand man-days of labor attached to the road. Whether it's accurate or not.....is questionable.
If you draw a straight line from Nashville to Madisonville, Mississippi.....that's pretty much accurate. The road has to intersect and go through Florence, Alabama....because this was one of the rare points on the Tennessee River where you might cross on horseback or wagon....without the aid of a bridge or ferry.
For me....it's an interesting route because it will come down through Lawrence County, Tennessee. It will take a straight route similar to Highway 43 which exists today, from Summertown to Lawrenceburg. Somewhere about four miles north of Ethridge, Tennesseee....to the east of Jackson Military Road....was Anderson Creek (not related to Anderson Creek of Alabama).
At some point around 1820 (the year that his second wife gave birth to daughter Nancy).....my ancestors gave up on Indiana as a possible settlement point, and headed south. Some words indicate the initial plan was for Wetumpkia, Ala....in the far south of the state. One might speculate that the period of an extended stay around Dugout was chiefly because of the birth of Nancy.
Various events occurred and the small group of travelers instead stepped off the Jackson Military Road and traveled about two miles eastward, to Anderson Creek, Tennessee. Here in some clearing, they set up a camp to stay for a couple of weeks. This location would be called "Dugout". There might have been people who used Dugout before this period, but it was a name that would stick around for decades.
Dugout, Tennessee today? Non-existent. There's Dugout Road....that's the only reminder of the small community that existed there along the creek. A community existence of Dugout? It probably hasn't been uttered since the early 1900s.
Somewhere in the history passed down by various folks, there's a false attribution of Dugout being on Second Creek, which runs near Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. Second Creek officially starts along Rabbit Trail Road....about three miles south of Leoma, Tennessee (a good fifteen miles south of Dugout). The origin of the Creek starts around where Glendale Road intersects with Rabbit Trail Road.
What I would speculate is that the family members on this little trip spent some recovery time at Dugout, and drove on for a day along Jackson Military Road, and came to Leoma. The Road would normally head southwestward toward Florence. For some reason, they departed Jackson Military Road and headed along Rabbit Trail....then using the flat land around Second Creek as their path. They would cross the Tennessee line and make it along to the Whitehead community.
One might imagine a trading post in the local area of Whitehead, and the family members discussed things with the locals, and made a decision to stay there in the region. No one says much over the population in the local area. Within five miles of Whitehead.....I doubt if there were more than two-hundred people. The trip had ended.
No one says much over the journey....likely taking six weeks of active travel, with stopping points probably in the Nashville area and Dugout. It would have been a miserable experience because of the physical efforts involved and the emotional strain.
The ancestors to this little group have been almost two hundred years in the same area.
It's an interesting little story, with a slice or two of history added.
A guy could generally make around twenty-five miles a day on horseback in these type of conditions, so you can figure the Nashville to Natchez, Mississippi trip took about eighteen days. Even when you got to Natchez.....you really weren't in New Orleans yet....you still had another four days minimum to make it into the 'big easy'.
It wasn't until 1801....roughly sixty years later....that the US Army was brought in to "fix" the Trace. The Army stuck around for several years and accomplished a fair amount of the renovation. Then contractors were hired to work the final effort. Somewhere around 1809/1810....the Trace was upgraded to the level that wagons could make the trip with some ease. That opened up a big deal for trade and commerce.
That was the sole road in the entire region until 1817.
Through various political efforts.....money was put aside in 1816 for General Jackson....then the military commander in the new frontier....to build a second road that would go from Nashville (his headquarters) to Madisonville, Louisiana (a couple miles outside of Jackson, Mississippi). It's length was 436 miles. Even when you finished the trip to Jackson....you were still four days of travel away from New Orleans.
The survey of the route took place in 1817 and work started immediately. What can be said was that thirty-five bridges had to be built as part of the overall plan. There's not a precise history to this piece of American history. One newspaper account talks of 300 men who were involved in one phrase, and another separate account talks of fifty men.
The road was completely open from beginning to end....around May of 1820. There's a number of seventy-five-thousand man-days of labor attached to the road. Whether it's accurate or not.....is questionable.
If you draw a straight line from Nashville to Madisonville, Mississippi.....that's pretty much accurate. The road has to intersect and go through Florence, Alabama....because this was one of the rare points on the Tennessee River where you might cross on horseback or wagon....without the aid of a bridge or ferry.
For me....it's an interesting route because it will come down through Lawrence County, Tennessee. It will take a straight route similar to Highway 43 which exists today, from Summertown to Lawrenceburg. Somewhere about four miles north of Ethridge, Tennesseee....to the east of Jackson Military Road....was Anderson Creek (not related to Anderson Creek of Alabama).
At some point around 1820 (the year that his second wife gave birth to daughter Nancy).....my ancestors gave up on Indiana as a possible settlement point, and headed south. Some words indicate the initial plan was for Wetumpkia, Ala....in the far south of the state. One might speculate that the period of an extended stay around Dugout was chiefly because of the birth of Nancy.
Various events occurred and the small group of travelers instead stepped off the Jackson Military Road and traveled about two miles eastward, to Anderson Creek, Tennessee. Here in some clearing, they set up a camp to stay for a couple of weeks. This location would be called "Dugout". There might have been people who used Dugout before this period, but it was a name that would stick around for decades.
Dugout, Tennessee today? Non-existent. There's Dugout Road....that's the only reminder of the small community that existed there along the creek. A community existence of Dugout? It probably hasn't been uttered since the early 1900s.
Somewhere in the history passed down by various folks, there's a false attribution of Dugout being on Second Creek, which runs near Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. Second Creek officially starts along Rabbit Trail Road....about three miles south of Leoma, Tennessee (a good fifteen miles south of Dugout). The origin of the Creek starts around where Glendale Road intersects with Rabbit Trail Road.
What I would speculate is that the family members on this little trip spent some recovery time at Dugout, and drove on for a day along Jackson Military Road, and came to Leoma. The Road would normally head southwestward toward Florence. For some reason, they departed Jackson Military Road and headed along Rabbit Trail....then using the flat land around Second Creek as their path. They would cross the Tennessee line and make it along to the Whitehead community.
One might imagine a trading post in the local area of Whitehead, and the family members discussed things with the locals, and made a decision to stay there in the region. No one says much over the population in the local area. Within five miles of Whitehead.....I doubt if there were more than two-hundred people. The trip had ended.
No one says much over the journey....likely taking six weeks of active travel, with stopping points probably in the Nashville area and Dugout. It would have been a miserable experience because of the physical efforts involved and the emotional strain.
The ancestors to this little group have been almost two hundred years in the same area.
It's an interesting little story, with a slice or two of history added.
Saturday, 4 April 2015
The Card Game
Generally, if you work for the media or any gimmick society....you got a "card".
You can play the "racist" card....when you need sympathy for blacks or attack anyone who needs to be brought down a step.
You can play the "sexist" card....when you need to go after guys in general.
You can play the "ableism" card....when you need to go after people who have a problem with issues of physical or mental handicaps.
You can play the "classism" card....when you need to spank some folks over their rich nature or economic advantages.
You can play the "anti-seminism" card....when you need to go after Jews.
You can play the "gay" card....when you need to go against people who have issues with gays.
There are literally hundreds of 'cards' that you can play when the mass movement needs some creative inertia out of thin air. The key? Hatred and resentment. That's the end product to the "card" game. You can use dozens and hundreds of formulas to play the card, as long as the final product equals hatred and resentment.
Turning a pizza business into a "card" game? It was tough, but fairly creative. Next week? A barber shop? A tattoo parlor? A muffler shop? A women's gown shop? A sports team from Seattle? A marijuana shop in Pueblo, Colorado?
The "card" game revolves around you being able to identify yourself as part of a bigger group, a tribe, or a mystical creation. As long as you feel isolated....the "card" game thrives. The minute that you start to ask questions....to develop some process of reasoning over the problem or issue...the "card" game starts to end. It can't sustain itself in that type of open discussion.
It's like the gimmick of tolerance and intolerance. The distance between the two can be measured in 1/1,000th of an inch. The fact that you can proclaim yourself absolutely tolerant in one brief statement.....then strangely state your intolerance to the opinions or ideals of others, makes your position in life questionable. At that moment....your transparency of tolerance slips from a ten to a zero.
The redneck card? The church card? The government bureaucrat card? The Tea Party card? The anti-environmentalist card? The climate change card? The Latino card? The anti-drug-thug card? The anti-cop card? The anti-bank card? The anti-capitalist card? The anti-Republican card? The anti-Democrat card?
There is a perpetual game being played out in society....for change and power. The cards are the tools to bring about both. If you deny the cards....the game ends. It's that simple.
You can play the "racist" card....when you need sympathy for blacks or attack anyone who needs to be brought down a step.
You can play the "sexist" card....when you need to go after guys in general.
You can play the "ableism" card....when you need to go after people who have a problem with issues of physical or mental handicaps.
You can play the "classism" card....when you need to spank some folks over their rich nature or economic advantages.
You can play the "anti-seminism" card....when you need to go after Jews.
You can play the "gay" card....when you need to go against people who have issues with gays.
There are literally hundreds of 'cards' that you can play when the mass movement needs some creative inertia out of thin air. The key? Hatred and resentment. That's the end product to the "card" game. You can use dozens and hundreds of formulas to play the card, as long as the final product equals hatred and resentment.
Turning a pizza business into a "card" game? It was tough, but fairly creative. Next week? A barber shop? A tattoo parlor? A muffler shop? A women's gown shop? A sports team from Seattle? A marijuana shop in Pueblo, Colorado?
The "card" game revolves around you being able to identify yourself as part of a bigger group, a tribe, or a mystical creation. As long as you feel isolated....the "card" game thrives. The minute that you start to ask questions....to develop some process of reasoning over the problem or issue...the "card" game starts to end. It can't sustain itself in that type of open discussion.
It's like the gimmick of tolerance and intolerance. The distance between the two can be measured in 1/1,000th of an inch. The fact that you can proclaim yourself absolutely tolerant in one brief statement.....then strangely state your intolerance to the opinions or ideals of others, makes your position in life questionable. At that moment....your transparency of tolerance slips from a ten to a zero.
The redneck card? The church card? The government bureaucrat card? The Tea Party card? The anti-environmentalist card? The climate change card? The Latino card? The anti-drug-thug card? The anti-cop card? The anti-bank card? The anti-capitalist card? The anti-Republican card? The anti-Democrat card?
There is a perpetual game being played out in society....for change and power. The cards are the tools to bring about both. If you deny the cards....the game ends. It's that simple.
Governor's Task Force?
From my homestate news (Alabama).....the word is out that the governor (Bentley) will do an executive order. Yeah, it's shocking....even governors have executive order capability. It's supposed to come out on Monday.
The deal? Well....he thinks there is a health crisis in the state and he is forming a task force on health care improvement.
Generally, you can expect this task force (probably seven to ten folks) to meet a couple of times and discuss what you can do with limited or marginal funding. It's a fairly limited debate.
You could tax the heck out of sugar products, alcohol, or fatty foods (even taxing Burger King and McDonalds in some whacked-up fashion). You could do some kind of kid's educational program and mandate it for all Bama schools. You could get the two major universities in the state (Auburn and Alabama) to use their media and health students to build video clips or advertising campaigns to help the state.
The thing is....folks tend to eat greasy foods, consume fat at an alarming rate, drink full-up sugary drinks by the six-pack, smoke a full pack of cigarettes per day, and enjoy a fair amount of alcohol when possible. It's not easy to force some habit to change.
Not to cast doubt on the governor's task force, but other than paying for hotel expenses at some fancy resort in Orange Beach for them to meet up for a couple of weekends to discuss matters....I just don't see much coming out of the deal.
The best approach? I'd give up on the bulk of folks in Alabama. I'd take my ideas and match them up against six to twelve-year-old kids. Forget regular heath classes in school....you need to 'turbo-ize' the health studies program within the state and actually give them the concept. Toss in more physical activities for kids and younger adults. Maybe twenty years down the road.....you might see more of a change.
That's my two cents on the subject.
The deal? Well....he thinks there is a health crisis in the state and he is forming a task force on health care improvement.
Generally, you can expect this task force (probably seven to ten folks) to meet a couple of times and discuss what you can do with limited or marginal funding. It's a fairly limited debate.
You could tax the heck out of sugar products, alcohol, or fatty foods (even taxing Burger King and McDonalds in some whacked-up fashion). You could do some kind of kid's educational program and mandate it for all Bama schools. You could get the two major universities in the state (Auburn and Alabama) to use their media and health students to build video clips or advertising campaigns to help the state.
The thing is....folks tend to eat greasy foods, consume fat at an alarming rate, drink full-up sugary drinks by the six-pack, smoke a full pack of cigarettes per day, and enjoy a fair amount of alcohol when possible. It's not easy to force some habit to change.
Not to cast doubt on the governor's task force, but other than paying for hotel expenses at some fancy resort in Orange Beach for them to meet up for a couple of weekends to discuss matters....I just don't see much coming out of the deal.
The best approach? I'd give up on the bulk of folks in Alabama. I'd take my ideas and match them up against six to twelve-year-old kids. Forget regular heath classes in school....you need to 'turbo-ize' the health studies program within the state and actually give them the concept. Toss in more physical activities for kids and younger adults. Maybe twenty years down the road.....you might see more of a change.
That's my two cents on the subject.
Friday, 3 April 2015
The Frontier Story
There is this epic point of my family history where the family members leave 'civilization' (namely....Surry, North Carolina). It's the area or county around Mount Pilot and Mount Airy....from the Andy Griffith series.
It's a combination of two reasons....property prices are escalating and crops have burnt out. The general strategy of farmers throughout the 1600s and 1700s of the new colony in America was to plant the only two crops that made cash money.....cotton and tobacco...YEAR after YEAR. Naturally, land nutrients shifted around and without fertilizer.....you started to notice less and less production after the fifth year of same crop usage. Dutch farmers in more northern states knew of the issue and had several crops....which they tended to shift around on properties....to help with nutrients. Of course, this meant a smaller profit scale but more stability.
So, the two sons of "Joseph" (1753-1829) set in motion this migration past the state line and into the wild frontier. Joseph doesn't have a big rich history tied to himself. At one point, he did own 200 acres of property, served with some distinction in the Revolutionary War, and had a total of two sons and two daughters.
The two sons? "Jim" and "William". Jim was born in 1784 and William in 1787. Jim is my ancestor.
Jim ends up marrying Maggie Boggs, who was born in 1797. He was roughly fourteen years old at the time. Maggie (born in 1785) would have been twelve years old. On the outer edge of the frontier....the age deal probably was somewhat typical at the time.
Over the next eighteen-odd years....there's only one child from this marriage. Somewhere around 1813....Maggie passes away. There's a decision made that year by Jim to pack up and leave for the new frontier, with his brother. Their original target was Indiana but discovered two years into this episode that the winters were too harsh. The move from NC to Indiana....sometime around 1815. The move to Alabama? Around 1817/1818.
The original arrival point? Dugout, Tennesssee. It's a an area on Second Creek and near Lawrenceberg. For a while, they camped out there, and then made it further south to the Whitehead area where there was a trading post of some type. The trip ended at that point. They both stayed on and settled in the local area.
Alabama property sales started in the 1819 period, so they likely settled and purchased property.
For all practical purposes.....these two were in the new frontier for barely a year or two....then civilization arrived (statehood).
It's a combination of two reasons....property prices are escalating and crops have burnt out. The general strategy of farmers throughout the 1600s and 1700s of the new colony in America was to plant the only two crops that made cash money.....cotton and tobacco...YEAR after YEAR. Naturally, land nutrients shifted around and without fertilizer.....you started to notice less and less production after the fifth year of same crop usage. Dutch farmers in more northern states knew of the issue and had several crops....which they tended to shift around on properties....to help with nutrients. Of course, this meant a smaller profit scale but more stability.
So, the two sons of "Joseph" (1753-1829) set in motion this migration past the state line and into the wild frontier. Joseph doesn't have a big rich history tied to himself. At one point, he did own 200 acres of property, served with some distinction in the Revolutionary War, and had a total of two sons and two daughters.
The two sons? "Jim" and "William". Jim was born in 1784 and William in 1787. Jim is my ancestor.
Jim ends up marrying Maggie Boggs, who was born in 1797. He was roughly fourteen years old at the time. Maggie (born in 1785) would have been twelve years old. On the outer edge of the frontier....the age deal probably was somewhat typical at the time.
Over the next eighteen-odd years....there's only one child from this marriage. Somewhere around 1813....Maggie passes away. There's a decision made that year by Jim to pack up and leave for the new frontier, with his brother. Their original target was Indiana but discovered two years into this episode that the winters were too harsh. The move from NC to Indiana....sometime around 1815. The move to Alabama? Around 1817/1818.
The original arrival point? Dugout, Tennesssee. It's a an area on Second Creek and near Lawrenceberg. For a while, they camped out there, and then made it further south to the Whitehead area where there was a trading post of some type. The trip ended at that point. They both stayed on and settled in the local area.
Alabama property sales started in the 1819 period, so they likely settled and purchased property.
For all practical purposes.....these two were in the new frontier for barely a year or two....then civilization arrived (statehood).
Wednesday, 1 April 2015
Volvo Coming
Over the weekend....Volvo finally put out an announcement.....they will build a plant in the US...their first plant to manufacture Volvo cars.
Rumor has it that North Carolina is one of the states, with at least two additional states involved in negotiation right now.
Most Americans have zero knowledge over Volvo and probably would never buy the car.
From the historical prospective.....there are three eras of Volvo.
The first era, from 1927 to the early 1970s.....was the Swedish era (my term). They were a Swedish company and built cars for sale primarily within the Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland). What you can typically say was that it was an engineer's car....built a decade ahead of most technology that you saw with the automobile industry. They weren't booming....but they were making a fair profit.
In the early 1970s.....the second era came.....where Volvo branched out into Europe and the US. What made their cars better than everyone's cars was the safety factor. They put every possible safety option known at the time into the standard Volvo cars. The legend was.....if you got into a Volvo and had an accident.....you survived.
The problem with the second era Volvo cars was that they were "plain" and expensive. You paid twenty to thirty percent more for a Swedish-made Volvo. There wasn't any sports-car version, and no one under the age of thirty would buy a Volvo.
Chinese investors came after 2008 and bought the company.....they were in serious jeopardy at the time like several major car companies. Thus....we enter the third era....where the company survives but with Chinese ownership.
If you sat down and listed the forty top safety items that could be put into a car....you'd discover that Volvo tends to have every single item in the standard car (it's not optional in their mind). Between that and the Swedish manufacturing costs.....that's the primary reason why Volvo cars cost so much in the US.
Would a US plant change the perception and the cost? I imagine that they've figured the formula and might be able to find a model or two that fits into the prospective of an American buyer.....for the right price. It's an enticement to get you....the buyer....into a Volvo franchise and get you to first base to buy your first Volvo. Maybe ten years down the line.....as you get ready for a replacement vehicle....you'd want to spend the extra $15,000 and buy the typical $45,000 Volvo SUV or four-door car.
I've never owned a Volvo....but I've ridden in a couple. It's like a plain sports-car version of a Lincoln Towncar. The ride is perfect....the style is professional....the horsepower is there, and you find no flaws.
I agree....it'll take a while and most Americans will just ask where the heck it's made. But after a brief ride from a dealer's model......you might start crunching the numbers and realize that the safety factor in the Volvo adds $100,000 onto the value of the car. Maybe it'll help you survive an accident....which is something that you typically don't think about with the Mustang or Dodge Charger.
Anyway....Volvo is a name you might hear more often now.
Rumor has it that North Carolina is one of the states, with at least two additional states involved in negotiation right now.
Most Americans have zero knowledge over Volvo and probably would never buy the car.
From the historical prospective.....there are three eras of Volvo.
The first era, from 1927 to the early 1970s.....was the Swedish era (my term). They were a Swedish company and built cars for sale primarily within the Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland). What you can typically say was that it was an engineer's car....built a decade ahead of most technology that you saw with the automobile industry. They weren't booming....but they were making a fair profit.
In the early 1970s.....the second era came.....where Volvo branched out into Europe and the US. What made their cars better than everyone's cars was the safety factor. They put every possible safety option known at the time into the standard Volvo cars. The legend was.....if you got into a Volvo and had an accident.....you survived.
The problem with the second era Volvo cars was that they were "plain" and expensive. You paid twenty to thirty percent more for a Swedish-made Volvo. There wasn't any sports-car version, and no one under the age of thirty would buy a Volvo.
Chinese investors came after 2008 and bought the company.....they were in serious jeopardy at the time like several major car companies. Thus....we enter the third era....where the company survives but with Chinese ownership.
If you sat down and listed the forty top safety items that could be put into a car....you'd discover that Volvo tends to have every single item in the standard car (it's not optional in their mind). Between that and the Swedish manufacturing costs.....that's the primary reason why Volvo cars cost so much in the US.
Would a US plant change the perception and the cost? I imagine that they've figured the formula and might be able to find a model or two that fits into the prospective of an American buyer.....for the right price. It's an enticement to get you....the buyer....into a Volvo franchise and get you to first base to buy your first Volvo. Maybe ten years down the line.....as you get ready for a replacement vehicle....you'd want to spend the extra $15,000 and buy the typical $45,000 Volvo SUV or four-door car.
I've never owned a Volvo....but I've ridden in a couple. It's like a plain sports-car version of a Lincoln Towncar. The ride is perfect....the style is professional....the horsepower is there, and you find no flaws.
I agree....it'll take a while and most Americans will just ask where the heck it's made. But after a brief ride from a dealer's model......you might start crunching the numbers and realize that the safety factor in the Volvo adds $100,000 onto the value of the car. Maybe it'll help you survive an accident....which is something that you typically don't think about with the Mustang or Dodge Charger.
Anyway....Volvo is a name you might hear more often now.
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