The leaders of the Big Three shrunk to midgets as they walked to the mound against the electrician from Kokomo, playing for the first time in the big leagues. The corporate players had $20 million dollar contracts. Shawn Fain from the UAW team was on a rookie deal after barely making the squad. How did Fain and the UAW sweep their World Series? First, he seemed to understand the game better than the well-paid veterans. He asked for much more than he expected to get, including a 4-day workweek and $40 an hour. He knew the weaknesses of the Big…
Author: Lloyd Graff
Last week, Lloyd Graff wrote a blog called “What Brings Me to Work,” which we think will speak to a lot of you out there, people who work in a family business, and people of retirement age who keep working—not because they have to, but because they get to. Maybe you’ve read the blog already, but even if you have, we think you will enjoy hearing it in podcast form, being read by the man who wrote it. Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link, or: …
It is a day to talk about stupidity and how it usually catches up with you if you are in a big public position. First, it is the heads of Ivy League colleges who have in many cases allowed their schools to subvert what I consider to be the goal of colleges–liberal education, the right to doubt, ask questions, create new ideas. Sadly, particularly at our supposed elite schools, dissenting from the prevailing left-wing, fake liberal point of view is frowned upon and often receives ostracism and expulsion from the “club.” When I went to college it was a place…
It felt like a knife to the kidneys, slowly sinking into my flesh, twisting to inflict even more pain when I heard the initial news reports on Saturday morning. I didn’t know how bad the vicious massacre in Israel was, but just imagining the mass killing at the Music Peace Festival was devastating. I have felt a love affair with my homeland from a distance since I was 13 years old in 1958. That was when the fiction book Exodus was published, written by Leon Uris. The movie, starring Paul Newman, came out in 1960. It was about the founding…
The Sam Bankman-Fried trial opened this week with jury selection. I have been fascinated by the case, not just because of the size of the losses of the investors or because some of the people he had paid were sports celebrities like Tom Brady and Steph Curry. The heart of the case, which makes me feel like I want to sit in a box seat, revolves around Bankman-Fried and his occasional girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, who has decided to become a witness for the prosecution. Has Ellison come down with a case of guilty conscience or is she trying to soften…
In 2009, we ran a short commentary about an intriguing product, a brass bell made on an Acme screw machine. The post generated a lot of commentary about the item, its creation, and the history of these machines in general. We are resharing this in a unique format with the comments, so that you might also add to the discussion. Though we do not have another bell to give away, we believe the subject matter to be of interest to our current audience, prize or no prize. The Original Post From https://todaysmachiningworld.com/precision-machining-rings-out/ Original Text By Lloyd Graff and Noah Graff…
American Ninja Warrior just completed its entertaining 2023 season with 17-year-old Vance Law winning a million dollars by completing incredible challenges of strength and coordination faster than any of the other contestants. All of the finalists were in their teens or 20s. Now we get to watch the not-so-entertaining American Bungling Warriors battle it out in Detroit for a new UAW contract with the Big Three auto companies. Unfortunately, everybody on this show will be a loser. The precision machining business will be a loser too, at least in the short run. The prominent players are all playing their roles.…
We will get an auto strike tomorrow. How do I know? Do I have a plant at the negotiating table? Have I bugged Shawn Fain’s phone (head of UAW)? No, no, no. But my gut tells me that the Union is aching to punch their company bosses in the gut. It’s just been too long to live under the guise of harmony as the truckers, pilots, and dockworkers have shown the world their power. The money differences while, they seem big on paper, will be compromised because labor costs for Union and non-Union auto workers will ultimately be within reach…
Wednesday last week was exactly 15 years since Risa drove me 55 miles to see a friend who was an infectious disease doctor. I thought I might have had pneumonia, but I suspected it was something worse. He was attending to a boy with a leg issue, but he saw me waiting and came out after a few minutes to say hello and listen to my heart. He put the stethoscope on my chest and with concern in his voice he said, “Lloyd, I’m going to wheel you into the emergency room myself.” The last thing I remember is the…
My son-in-law, Scott, bet a friend a fancy dinner that neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden would be the next president. No odds were given. I silently pledged that I would not write about the upcoming presidential election, but this contrarian bet gave me the entree to discuss politics without needing to pick a team. Scott is fairly apolitical, very smart and works in the artificial intelligence field, but when he told me about the bet several weeks ago, I considered it briefly and then told him to prepare to pick up the check. But now I believe he is…