“How I Became So Conservative, Opinionated, and Anti-Government”

This column presents a conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives.  Focus is on items impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights.  I hope you will read the column regularly and it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. 

I thought some of our readers might be interested in how I evolved into an ultra conservative, government hating, activist who spews venom at the bureaucracy and political elite at every opportunity.  People with attitudes like mine are not born that way….they are formed after decades of pain and suffering at the hands of the SYSTEM.
I am not a product of my home and childhood political environment.  My father was a staunch Roosevelt Democrat.  He and mom had struggled through the depression, and never forgot their experiences of that era.  While my sister was a baby, they lived in a tent with a dirt floor in the back yard of a friend’s house.  Dad finally got a job with Sun Oil Company, became a district foreman, and later enjoyed a typical middle class lifestyle.
Dad always wanted me to be an engineer, so I ended up going to college at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.  I chose Industrial Engineering as a field of study.  After all, there would always be “industry” which needed those skills.  (Today I can see that I should have instead taken City Planning, or Government Management, or at least Civil Engineering.)
After college I entered the Air Force, did my duty, tried to become an air force pilot, had a slight vision defect and never qualified, so I finally separated from the service.  I then went to work for a small consulting engineering firm near Atlanta.  The year was 1965, and my starting salary was an astounding $8500 per year…my wife Judy and I were suddenly rich.
Up to this point I had little or no interest in politics, government activities, or anything else which was going on.  The Viet Nam War had the country split into hawks and doves, the “hippies” were a weird group of dope smoking young tramps, and I was totally focused on family, career, and getting ahead.
During this era I do remember that I was a hawk, favoring an aggressive approach in Viet Nam…until the end neared and it became obvious that the entire affair was political, and our leadership was not really serious about the effort.
Also during this time, my work frequently caused me to deal with industrial unions in client plants. I was sickened by the level of corruption, arrogance, and incompetence of their leaders, which caused me to begin to develop a disdain for what they were doing as they pretended to be looking out for their members, while in reality they were really only interested in sucking monthly dues out of their pay checks.  I also remember my fears of the impact on companies from the unions and their “bought” politicians as they pushed the minimum wage to $ .90 / hr., $1.25/ hr., $3.35 / hr., and upward.  I could see that it caused all prices to go up correspondingly and the workers really were no better off.  It was about the unions fooling their members into thinking they were helping them, and the politicians going along in order to get union member votes and union campaign donations.  We had protective tariffs, so prices went up and the businesses were not really hurt by the increased cost of labor.
By the time 1972 arrived I was the #2 man in the consulting company, and had a posh corner office on the 23rd floor of a downtown Atlanta skyscraper, looking down on Peachtree Street.  For some reason I had always had a strong entrepreneurial drive, so when an opportunity came  along to put together a financial package with a couple of partners and start an apparel factory somewhere in the Southeast, I decided to take the chance.  I was 32 years old, and I felt that if the venture failed, I could still put a meaningful career together somewhere.  The economy was booming and opportunities were plentiful.
I visited numerous towns in Georgia and Florida seeking a suitable building, a good labor force, and the best deal I could find.  I finally visited Jackson County, at the request of a young, aggressive chamber executive in Marianna, Bill Stanton. That visit resulted in me deciding to start a small, 100 employee factory in the old Liddon Mercantile building in Sneads. (A couple of years later we acquired the Warnaco factory in Marianna which had announced its closure, and began operating two plants.) At that time factories were already in operation in Marianna, Cottondale, Graceville, Donalsonville, Chipley, Bonifay, Quincy, Havana, Malone, and Cottonwood, Alabama….thus leaving only the Sneads-Chattahoochee area as a possibility.  (Remember all of those plants, all of those jobs and payrolls?)
It was at this time I began to encounter government for the first time.  Codes, “inspectorcrats”, bureaucratic generated delays, government forms, government reports, state licenses, city license, permit fees, monthly reports, quarterly reports, annual reports, weekly tax deposits, audits, property taxes, intangible taxes, unemployment compensation taxes, more audits, and on…and on….and on.  All of this because you were willing to risk your life’s savings to create two factories which produced  products, put three hundred people to work and create a local payroll of over $40,000 per week (In 1970 dollars).
After ten years or so of this unnecessary government intrusion into our business, I was ready to sell to a larger company when the opportunity came along.
I next resumed my engineering consulting work, and teamed up with an old college roommate and we formed an international consulting company.  We worked with hundreds of other manufacturing companies as they struggled to survive amidst a hostile industrial climate.  At one point I was President of a national manufacturing association, the American Apparel Manufacturers Association.  I was in this position when debates were raging about NAFTA, GATT, and Favored Nation Trade Status for China.  Clinton was President, but both political parties were in favor of these trade deals and the concept of “free trade” and “global markets”.  The legislation passed, and by just a few signatures being signed, the industrial future of our nation was doomed. 
Over the next ten years, 1995 to 2005, I watched helplessly as the huge apparel, textile, and other labor intensive industries which employed over two million people and included almost 20,000 factories across our nation packed up and moved to other parts of the world.  I saw fine, well managed, professional, humanitarian, businesses forced into closure as a flood of imports conquered our market.  I saw China capture a major portion of these lost jobs and factories and read of the tremendous growth as their new industrial revolution began.
Today I see our economy in near depression, with no real hope of ever creating enough jobs to employ our actual labor force.  I find myself an Industrial Engineer in a nation with no Industry.  It was by accident I happened to become involved with the TIMES.
The income here is certainly no match for what I experienced when we had a need for Industrial Engineers in America…but the TIMES does give me a chance to vent my anger, frustration, and the wisdom I acquired by seeing all of this occur.  My perspective helps me “Get It Right”.  I have seen thirty years of mismanagement of our nation, and I want to hold those who were involved accountable for the results.  “I’m Mad As Hell…And I’m Not Going To Take It Any More!!”
Some of the lessons I learned include:
●    No matter how smart or professional you are in running your business…you are never in full control of your affairs.  A bureaucrat or a politician somewhere afar can enact new rules, requirements, or conditions which will forever destroy what you have built.
●    Always be careful when you jump on a “bandwagon” and become part of some new movement…..it may be driving towards a cliff.

Rudiments:  Odds and Ends Worth Mentioning-
●    (Something Nice)  I want to express my sympathy to the Superintendent of Schools, Lee Miller and his family for the loss of his Father, Dr. Frank Miller last week.  The death occurred while Lee was handling the Sneads commencement, then he had visitation the afternoon before the Graceville and Cottondale evening commencement exercises, then the funeral was the afternoon before the Marianna graduation exercises.  I can imagine the strain as he dealt with the trauma of his family situation while looking after the needs of all of the graduates in the county and his busiest work week of the year.  Lee said he lost eleven pounds during the week.    

“As government at any level grows….liberties, rights and freedoms are diminished.”
(It was announced this week that 20% of the labor U.S.  force now is comprised of government employees.)

Note:  The opinions stated in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Hatcher Publications.