About Ray Tapajna 's journey in the global economic arena - Tapsearch Com Editor and Artist

Saying goodbye to the American Dream
After 10 + years online, it's time to tell my story behind my advocacy - Tweet Twitter direct
About Ray Tapajna in the Global Economic arena continues
U.S. surrenders manufacturing industrial might 50 years after World War 2
Saying goodbye to manufacturing and factories is a hard thing to do too
We sold last PC Micro Computers Made in the USA
Reflections about our manufacturing past
Zero Defects Manufacturing versus In-process Manufacturing
Communications by rank and the unnetted - Workers having no voice....
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Introduction: I started my advocacy for human dignity in the work day and fair trade in 1992 and have been online since 1998. In 1999, I thought I had only about two years to live and so I speeded up the process primarily for my grandchildren to get a overview of the past for the sake of their own futures. As I continued to survive, my message expanded to grandchildren everywhere.

Here you will hear  a voice from the work world trying to connect it with his spiritual life. Now we are at time when a Pope sends out an encyclical about economics. It brings a vision of hope for us all. In college, Professor Gavin who I highly respected, gave me my required topic for earning my history  major.  Everyone else got to choose to write their history topic but me.  I had to write about the history of New Harmony, a Christian work community experiment in Indiana.  I did not want to do it and thought it was a foolish assignment for someone like me  who specialized in diplomatic and geopolitical history.
 
However, Professor Gavin must have seen something in me that needed to be filled.  I did not do a good job and I did not care because I just did not like the topic itself. But he tried to rub the rim of my soul to fill a crack he had found in me.  

Yet, this subject pursued me all of my days in the work world trying to make sense of our economic day as a follower of Jesus.  History taught me that all who tried to bring the monastery to the outside world ended up in failures most of the time.  This  is why I think Pope John's Vatican 2 encyclical is still waiting to be open more widely. The people were not ready for it. As long as so many think it is only human nature to shop for the cheapest price without considerind the conditions behind the price, there is little hope for thinking love will bring human dignity to the work day. I think Pope Benedict's new economic encylical was named Charity is truth for this reason. 

Something extra has happened in our times too. I never thought I would see the day where someone like former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan would center on something as  the New Harmony work community experiment as a way of saying idealism does not match up to the so called free market arena.  Greenspan dedicates a large section in his book - The Age of Turbulence- relating to New Harmony. 

He may not know it yet, but he has announced to the world that Jesus is back in the temple confronting the moneychangers of the world. This is the only time in the Bible where Jesus demonstrated anger.  In the coming pages, I trust you will open your minds and hearts to a journey in the global economic arena with someone who tried to put harmony in their work and spiritual life.  Work itself is the core of our souls.  When it is out of sync , everything else falls too. This is why I have confronted free trade and globalization as death in our economic lives. It is impossible to degrade the value of workers and work and expect anything good to come from it.  It is impossible for an economy to be based on making money on money instead of making and growing things. Money changers will be challenged directly by the order of things. In the present time, we see vividly how they are on a self-destruct course. This is time for the common man to come to the understanding of the common good. This is the time for power brokers to heed all the warnings.  In my case, I now find it best to curse the darkness that has come over us instead of lighting one little candle. This is my story of my work in life and trying to connect it with my spirit. For others, we must start gently rubbing the rims of their souls to see how we can feel the cracks.

The present Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke committed free traders heresy during the first Bush stimulus package debate when he told Congress this: The best way to stimulate the economy with stimulus money is to buy "domestically produced goods."  His message was not heeded and President Obama ignores statements like this as he put tariffs on future generations bailing out the financial community that caused the economic crisis through free trade and globalization.

Saying goodbye to the American Dream and the America I once knew is not an easy thing to do. 

The government promised help to those who lost their jobs or businesses due to free trade. Instead, many incurred even more problems from government agencies. 

I still have my prospect book which I carried with me in my daily sales calls for more than 25 years. It has about 125 pages of customers and prospects totalling about 1,500 possible clients and customer accounts. There were also many more smaller accounts that gave us an order or two a year that are not listed .

They told us that our heavy industry was outdated in the globlal economy and that is the reason why we lost it. However, as I page through my old sales book, note about 80 percent of all the companies are gone.  These are companies that lasted at least 30 years.  Only a few companies were in heavy industry. There were manufacturers in almost any category you can think of. Many were in high tech, electronics and even areospace.  The gobalist free traders told us our economy is converting to a service industry but almost on every page of my call booklet is a service oriented company that went out of business including major data systems houses. Later, about a 1,000 systems houses and computer dealers went out of business in just a tri-state ares.  Just randomly opening the middle of my call booklet ,  I find - railroads, transportation, chromium, cable, alloys, building supplies, calculating, electric components, aircraft parts, textile, clothing, machinery, computer, computer media, medical systems, chemical, rubber and I can go on and on with all the industries that lasted many years until  the free traders came and told us it  was over.

Many of these companies employed 5,000 or more workers. Today, it makes big news when the last remaining steel company adds 100 more workers to about a 1000 total where once at least 15,000 workers made a middle class living.  In my call booklet, I also noted about a hundred sub-manufacturers thrived off the steel mills in various production processes.  No one brings up the secondary businesses and factories  that fed off the major industrial corporations.  I also have some old computer media and components compatible lists and booklets. I carried these with me to find the compatible items for the computer centers of all these companies. Virtually none of the computer supplyer and manufacturers are left. This vast sector has been exported too.  In the 1960s I serviced many large family super markets  across the city - there were about 200 who were in busines many years. They too are gone.

The new Tea Parties can protest and talk as much as they like but nothing good will happen until we set our priorities right.  We must first acknowlege that free trade and globalization have stolen our way of life from us and is the major cause of our economic crisis.



It is sad to read about a  transit bus rider complaining  about a bus route being cancelled. She must walk a mile to catch a bus to get to work and walk down a street where she said she most likely will get mugged.  I recall a time when I jumped streetcars everywhere and it took less than a half hour to get downtown traveling seven miles. I recall when I took it everyday to my job at a large advertising art agency on the Public Square with robust traffic everywhere. The same applied when I called on the large advertsing agency just a few blocks away and sometimes it took me longer to get to the accounts than hopping on the  downtown shuttle buses, because of all the congestion of traffic and people on the streets.

Later I worked at another downtown building for an international airline with airline offices up and down the street.  We had a airline community in just a block or so with hundreds of airline workers.

Later, I had our regional computer office just north of the public square and was able to call on major national and international corporate offices for a whole day at a time without leavlng the downtown area.  I walked into giant data processing centers without even needing any security pass for two locations.

When traveling from the west side of town to the east side, I had to go around the city because it was not practical to use any of the main streets through the center of town because of all the traffic and business.  Today, the fastest way to drive from the west side to the east side is straight through the city even though there are more new highway surrounding the city. 

Today, when I drive down many of these main streets, I have to just look ahead because there are too many reminders of what was once in our busy thriving city.  Now I see the empty factories and offices which I once called on.  I see a third world looking country too where I once serviced many large family super markets.  Some of the few much smaller stores that are open, have security bars on the windows.  Other new businesses represent a dead society of temporary help and casual labor offices with payday loan stores seemingly everywhere.  

All of the real businesses have vanished.  And it is even dangerous to visit a cemetery where a family member is buried.

Our political leaders and economists let this happened and I have to wonder why. I have to also wonder why no one seems to want to talk about the past as an example of what could be possible today.  They award tax money to stadiums and arenas but never any to build a new local factory. The mayor celebrated the opening of a Walmart in the steel industry graveyard where thousands once made a middle class wage where they were able to raise even a large family in a nice home of their own plus help put their children through college.  Now  there are fewer retail workers at Walmart with many  having  to seek government assistance to survive.  The  people vote and approve the opening of gambling casinos as a way to boost the economy.  There is even a school to teach the unemployed  workers how to shuffle cards for to get a job.

The public does not protest these things but idolize sports stars like LeBron James who wears the Nike emblem and gets millions of dollars promoting Nike where workers make only 20 cents per hour and their factory team leaders make less than $50 a month.  They do not make enough to buy just one pair of Nike shoes.

Is this who we are now.  Is human nature on trial?  Is it human nature to shop for the cheapest price no matter what?  Is it human nature to shop yourself out of a job?

All the jobs and businesses endeavors I enjoyed are gone with only one exception and that company is owned directly by foreign government.  I  look through my old files containing the thousand  customers and active prospects , I once enjoyed. They are no longer anywhere to be found. They have vanished off the face of the earth as if they never existed.  With this in mind, I begin my story......

This weblog is my online journal. I started my advocacy for human dignity in the workday and fair trade in 1992 and have been online since 1998.  At Tapsearch Com sites and blogs I mix published letters, articles, commentaries, reviews with my topical art that talks the issues too. Ray Tapajna Chronicles sites and blogs include the main sites at http://tapsearch.com/tapartnews/ and http://tapsearch.com/flatworld    At http://tapsearch.com/communications-by-rank  we talk about workers having no voice in the process of globalization and free trade with this being ignored by the past Presidents for years and now President Obama bails out the financial community while ignoring the real tangible value of labor and workers. (with an overview by author and education consultant, Brian Alger and his Experience Designer Network.)   Workers are the core of society and their value acts as real money standard in comparison to all the manipulations of a world playing a monopoly game with paper money.  Now our economy based on making money on money instead of making things is burning out.  Actually Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said it all when he told Congress during the first Bush stimulus package debate that the best way to restore our economy is to buy "domestically produced goods."  Currently our leaders in governmnet still ignore this.  Only local value added economies in balanced geopolitical settings work where value can be grown and recycled from the raw product to the final end user or retail stage. It is senseless trying to restore any individual economy if the money spent at retail goes to where the products are made in far away places across the globe. It is also senseless to use impoverished workers outside the USA who can not even buy the things they make let alone have anything left over to buy anything the U.S. may have left to sell. ( See http://tapsearch.com/super-links   or http://linkbun.ch/aztb  or http://www.gumpages.com/?id=3880   for links to our sites and blogs since 1998 - Ray Tapajna Chronicles forecasted the economic crisis years ago.

Click here for Ray's bio and background from the Babe Ruth New York League Championship game program. For more about Ray's lifetime experiences, see next page.

Click here for : Thomas Palaima - compares some of the advocates to Thomas Merton's thoughts below. - see article at our Pope Benedict economic and ethical review ) Thomas Palaima is the Raymond F. Dickson Centennial Professor of Classics in the universitys Department of Classics and a MacArthur Fellow for his work in Aegean prehistory and early Greek language and culture. He is the director of the Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory. Professor Palaimas scholarly interests include human responses - individual and collective - to war and violence in ancient and modern societies, writing systems and their uses, the decipherment of ancient scripts, ancient history and Greek mythology. Professor Palaima received the Chad Oliver Teaching Award from the Plan II Honors Program in 2005 and the Texas Exes Jean Holloway Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2004. He is a regular contributor of commentary pieces for print and radio.

All these people embody the thoughts of Thomas Merton that inspire Ray Tapajna from Cleveland, Ohio, a tireless advocate for the forgotten common worker:  ( Workers who are the core of society are still left without a voice in the process of free trade and globalization - nothing will work until this time worn fact is realized and changed. )

"Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, you may have to face the fact your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no worth at all, if not perphaps, results opposite of what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you wil start more and more to concentrate noton the results, but  on the value, the rightness, the truth of work itself."

Top Newspaper in Ohio story about Ray Tapajna's Power to the People Art featuring the American Dream is Burning

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4:40 pm est

2009.12.01

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Saying goodbye to the American Dream and America as I once knew it, is a difficult thing to do

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