#31 Russian Trash and I, Pencil

In My Right Mind

Radio Show #21-11, Podcast #30, Nov 2021:

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TRASH FROM RUSSIA:

Saule Omarova continues to make the case against her nomination to

be Comptroller of the Currency, as critics need only to quote her own

words.

This is the same whacko who wants to close all banks and have the

federal government control your money movements, set your wages and dictate

supply chains. You might recall she attended Moscow University on the

Lenin Scholarship. She maintains the Soviet economic model is still

superior to ours. These are the types of clowns the Bidenistas continue

to advocate for to run/ruin our government.

The latest example against her nomination is a video interview she

gave in February in which the Cornell professor opined on “the case for a U.S.

national investment authority.”

The conversation at one point turned to climate change and its

impact on fossil-fuel producers, and Ms. Omarova was on the case. “A lot of the

smaller players in that industry are going to, probably, go bankrupt in short

order—at least, we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate

change,” she said in the session that was part of the Jain Family Institute’s

“Social Wealth Seminar” series.

But then she adds that the response would be to set up a National

Capital Management Corporation that would “become a kind of equity investor at

that point, taking over management of those companies and basically leading

them through restructuring to a new technological basis and to a new

technological business model.”

So first put private companies out of business “in short order,”

then put government central planners to work to restructure them as the

political class wants. Give Ms. Omarova credit for candor. Most progressives

disguise their real intentions.

All of this matters because as Comptroller Ms. Omarova would have

enormous authority to regulate banks. It’s clear from this interview that one

of her policy ambitions is to deny capital to certain companies that she wants

to go bankrupt. Senators will have to decide if they want the Comptroller to be

a one-person systemic risk to the banking system. WSJ

I PENCIL:

“I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and

awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can

understand

me—no, that’s too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware

of the miraculousness which I

symbolize, you can help save the

freedom mankind is so unhappily

losing. I have a profound lesson to

teach. And I can teach this lesson

better than can an automobile

or an airplane or a mechanical

dishwasher because—well, because

I am seemingly so simple.

Simple? Yet, not a single

person on the face of this earth

knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?

Especially

when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion

of my

kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.

Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the

eye—there’s some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead,

a bit of metal, and an eraser.

My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of

straight

grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now

contemplate

all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used

in

harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Then

think of all of the craftsmen that made those tools and the truck drivers who

delivered them and the union workers who built those trucks and the grocery

stores all of those people frequent to feed themselves, and the workers at

those stores, and the farmers that grew and raised all of that food.

Think of all

the persons who mined the ore, the making of steel and its

refinement into those saws, axes,

motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages

to

heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess

halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why, untold

thousands

of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!

The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can

you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and

railroad

engines and who construct and install the communication systems

incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.

Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into

small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in

thickness.

These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put

rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a

pallid white.

The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went

into

the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the

light

and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill

requires?

Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are the

men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas &

Electric

Company hydroplant which supplies the mill’s power!

Don’t overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand

in transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.

Once in the pencil factory—billions of dollars worth in machinery

and building,

all capital accumulated by thrifty investors and willing lenders

from a multitude of banks—each

slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which

another

machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places

another

slat atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are

mechanically carved from this “wood-clinched” sandwich.

My “lead” itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The

graphite is mined in Sri Lanka. Consider these miners and

those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks

in

which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that

ties

the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make

the

ships, and those who man the ships on deck and in the engine

rooms. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—

and the harbor pilots.

The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which

ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting

agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically

reacted with sulfuric acid. After

passing through numerous

machines, the mixture finally

appears as endless extrusions—as

from a sausage grinder—cut to size,

dried, and baked for several hours at

1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase

their strength and smoothness the

leads are then treated with a hot

mixture which includes candelilla

wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and

hydrogenated natural fats.

My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the

ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor

beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are.

Observe the labeling. That’s a film formed by applying heat to

carbon black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what,

pray, is carbon black? Why, even the processes by which the

lacquer is

made a beautiful yellow involve the skills of more persons than

one

can enumerate!

My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons

who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make

shiny

sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my

ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied?

The

complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel

on it

would take pages to explain.

Then there’s my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the

trade as “the plug,” the part man uses to erase the errors he

makes

with me. An ingredient called “factice” is what does the erasing.

It is a

rubber-like product made by reacting rapeseed oil from the Dutch

East

Indies [Indonesia] with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the

common

notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are

numerous

vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy;

and

the pigment which gives “the plug” its color is cadmium sulfide.

NO ONE KNOWS

Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single

person

on the face of this earth knows how to make me?

Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation,

no one of whom even knows more

than a very few of the others. Now,

you may say that I go too far in

relating the picker of a coffee berry

in far-off Brazil and food growers

elsewhere to my creation; that this is

an extreme position. I shall stand by

my claim. There isn’t a single person

in all these millions, including the

president of the pencil company,

who contributes more than a tiny,

infinitesimal bit of know-how. From the standpoint of know-how the

only difference between the miner of graphite in Ceylon and the

logger

in Oregon is in the type of know-how. Neither the miner nor the

logger

can be dispensed with, any more than can the chemist at the

factory or

the worker in the oil field—paraffin being a by-product of

petroleum.

Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field

nor

the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or

makes the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the

machine

that does the knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the

company performs his singular task because he wants me. Each one

wants me less, perhaps, than does a child in the first grade.

Indeed,

there are some among this vast multitude who never saw a pencil

nor

would they know how to use one. Their motivation is other than me.

Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees

that he can

thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he

needs or

wants. I may or may not be among these items.

There is a fact still more astounding: The absence of a master

mind,

of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions

which

bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found.

Instead, we

find the Invisible Hand at work.

I’ll stop here. But that my friends is whycenrally planned

governments…aka socialist and communist economies are WAY less efficient than

is capitalism; There is simply too much a couple of planners can plan

for. The reward of profits for one’s efforts, the ability of

entreprenuers to recognize inefficiencies in systems and respond by providing

equal products at a lower cost, or better yet, better products at a lower cost

is how capitalism works, and we call it the “Invisible Hand.” The

definition of the Invisible Hand is simple to wit: “The invisible hand is a

metaphor for the unseen forces that move the free market economy. Through

individual self-interest and freedom of production and consumption, the best

interest of society, as a whole, are fulfilled. The constant interplay of

individual pressures on market supply and demand causes the natural movement of

prices and the flow of trade.”

So the notion that some idiot, woke thugs can run a $21 tyn

economy is a complete Friggin’ JOKE, and if you vote for socialism, then you

are the joker, and the joke’s on you!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-want-them-to-go-bankrupt-saule-omarova-comptroller-biden-nominee-11636668294

file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/I,%20Pencil%20(PDF%202019)%20(2).pdf

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/invisiblehand.asp

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