Ford...Found On the Road Dead

Nobody’s Opinion; Ford announced today, right after the UAW convention in Las Vegas, that it would be opening up a new manufacturing plant in Mexico. They would be spending $9.2 billion in Mexico over the next six years.

The reporter said it was “sensitive” of them to wait to announce this.

The strippers in Las Vegas should run out and buy a Ford just to thank them for perhaps saving a few of their lovely lives. Can you imagine what might have happened if they had announced this during the convention? The teamsters would have made the Muslims in France look like real amateurs. All Fords parked on the strip in Las Vegas would have been fair game, for road-raged union workers looking for a Mexican.

Found on the Road Dead would have taken on a whole new meaning.

This is a common saying around here, because some people were complaining that in the last few years, Fords were not exactly the engines of perfection that they used to be.

Well, I can’t complain because I have a 94 Cougar that still runs great. But my neighbor, who got laid off from the Ford Company here in our city of Hazelwood, has a beautiful red corvette sitting in his garage. Ford was Hazelwood’s biggest industry; everybody in the city either worked for Ford, or had a relative who did.

I caught him the other day staring at it. He told me how tough it had been to find another job; in fact he couldn’t, so he was working three part-time jobs to make ends met. It was getting so bad, that he was thinking about selling his prized possession…his red corvette. The most expensive car in our little nobody neighborhood. It was a hard decision because he was trying to put his two daughters through college…and all their savings were gone.

“No, not the corvette…no…don’t do it.” Of course, I had a selfish reason. I always liked to peek into his garage when going on my daily walk, natural voyeur that I am.

And that’s pretty much the story throughout the whole area. Houses all over going up for sale. Families with three or four kids moving back into grandma and grandpa’s house.
Thousands of men without jobs. Woman were going back to work after being out of the workforce for twenty years…and sometimes when people lose jobs, they fight a lot.

Most of these people had a hard time believing that these wonderful jobs, where they had great medical, vacation, and never a worry of being fired, would ever disappear. And the local politicians kept telling them in every election, they would die first, before they would let the Ford plant close up.

Then we found out that Ford was mad because they were overcharged in back taxes by a tune of 1.8 million. Oops…said our mayor. Gee, we don’t know where that money went…guess if you people want to keep the Ford plant here, your property taxes must go up to pay Ford what we owe them.

So when it shut down, everyone was shocked. Our biggest tax revenue was gone.

Sorry, folks, we’ve got to raise property taxes to make up for it…again.

What’s funny is that, after the Ford plant closed, the city decided to carve up some very prime farm land in the Mississippi basin, and bring in a huge mall. Some of these families’ farms had been handed down for three generations. It was a fight, but of course the city won. They just put a lot of propaganda into the papers about how great this mall would be. The families tried, but they didn’t have a chance.

Where was Al Gore? Where was Hannah?

To get the developers to come here the city mayor decided that this new mall would not have to pay city taxes for eight years, the citizens of Hazelwood would pay for it. So…property taxes go up AGAIN.

And then they went up again when 16 city schools in St. Louis, just closed down. Why, we needed to build schools to take them all in!

Did we have any say in this? Don’t kid yourself.

The politicians have upped the property taxes so high that some of the big guys in the Capitol, Jefferson City, (MO) were running on the idea that if elected, they would give money to the poor who couldn’t afford their property taxes’ paid for by the ones who supposedly could. It worked.

Now, 2 years later, because no one has a job, and all any money they have goes directly to taxes, the new great mall has gone bankrupt. They might as well give it to the Mexicans.

The main road now has lovely pawn shops.

Still--- our politicians remained determined. They raised our taxes AGAIN and put street lamps down Main Street to make it look like the city has actually prospered, when in fact, soon it will resemble Tombstone in Tijuana.

This “redeployment of high cost labour” doesn’t just affect the men who worked for Ford and their families, it kills whole American cities dead.

But Ford…Ford is ecstatic about all of this because it is now going to go to a country where there is no union, no medical, no liability, and Mexicans will work for practically nothing. AND to sweeten up the pot, Mexico’s superior trade agreements with Europe and South America means that Ford could ship form Mexico around the world more favorably than they could form the US.

Mr. William Clay Ford will be richer than Henry Ford could ever dream. He is on some company ship right now, leaning out in front saying…”I’m the King of the WORLD!”

So in the future the Mexicans, due to poverty wages paid in their own country by international American companies, will not want to starve, therefore they will be driving on the NAFTA interstate to America, in Fords, to take the higher paying jobs in America from the out-of-work x-union Americans.

After they get across the border, they will just leave their Fords on the side of the road, dead. Because…the new Fords will be built by cheap labor, and as my mother always said. “You get what you pay for.” (You’re mother said that too, go on…admit it.)

Maybe the old union guys can get a job hauling the old Fords that the Mexicans will abandon, and that they used to make…off the road.

And if my property taxes go up one more time…I’m gonna sell my Ford to the nearest Mexican.


Nobody’s Perfect; Tiger Woods didn’t even make the U.S. Open cut today. Well, if anyone is the perfect golfer, it’s Tiger Woods. The fact that he couldn’t muster the concentration shows that maybe Tiger’s secret to success was due to a love of a great dad. Yes, Tiger had talent, but it was the love between father and son that made him the champion he is today.

Nobody Knows: Just how many sons and daughters who have lost their fathers in Iraq, or on 9/11--- will have to face Fathers Day in memories and sadness. Hopefully, a higher power will be with them and help them get through the day. They are hero’s, all of them. And there are no words for strangers to say….only be proud, and be brave, and always remember their sacrifice and carry it in your hearts, as we carry you in ours.

Nobody Cares; Brittany Spears just announced that she thinks she will go to Nambia to have her baby since it got Angelina so much attention. I heard they have people over there that can actually carry babies. It could be a smart move.