ACHTUNG!: Alka-Seltzer recommended

[mro]

I'd hate to go drilling holes

trbig
If "ding" not too radical, you can hot glue a dowel to center of ding and try to pull it out.


mro

[mro]

BLUEJEEPLAB/ MAXIMAN

There is a limit to what any business can pay their employees. But $5.50 is simply a joke. If we are going to set a minimum then the minimum needs to be something that a guy can live on.

Market place sets wages. Few years back placed want ad for person w/mechanical experience. $18hr to start + benifits. Ad ran two weeks. 4 people applied. Would not hire any of them to sweep floor. Found kid with little experience and gave him $10 hr to start. In less than a year he was making $15 plus

Min wage is not for raising a family but for kids/people just starting out in the real world. In Bay Area cheep apartments (where you wouldn't want to live) run over $1200/mo., basic car insurance 60/100 month etc. etc..... (difficult to pay less than $30,000 and keep an employee)


mro

[BLUEJEEPLAB]

I went the Ding King route. It worked fine up until I popped a chip of paint off. It says in the instructions that you should use it only on original paint, but would I listen?

It did take out most of the dings. I took pictures, I just need to download them and then get them onto photo bucket. I ended up filling the remaining dings because they were pretty sharp. Now I am in the process of getting the tank ready for paint.



I have had pretty good success with the Dupli Color rattle can method in the past. It's all about prep work. More on how it's going later. I'll be out of town for the week, so nothing will progress until next week.

[BLUEJEEPLAB]

I created a thread in the Member's Lounge with pictures of my Ding King adventure.

[MAXIMAN]

Tod

You didn't ambush it. We need to get off it anyway.

[MAXIMAN]

Originally posted by mro
BLUEJEEPLAB/ MAXIMAN
Market place sets wages. Few years back placed want ad for person w/mechanical experience. $18hr to start + benifits. Ad ran two weeks. 4 people applied. Would not hire any of them to sweep floor. Found kid with little experience and gave him $10 hr to start. In less than a year he was making $15 plus
mro

No argument here. My point was if you tried to pass a law that REALLY set a livable minimum like $15....you'd see all the proponents of minimum wage running backwards because it defeats their motive for minimum wage. TO KEEP ENTITLEMENT MINDED PEOPLE VOTING FOR THEM.

Thus my carrot and horse analogy.

[BLUEJEEPLAB]

Max, You have my Amen. I don't see welfare ever going away because it creates a ready made set of voters.

I have had to work three jobs at times to keep the roof over my head and food on the table (sad to say I was Active duty Navy at the time), but I did it. It was a powerful motivator to gain the skills to move up on the job food chain,

Someone had stated earlier in this chain that Minimum wage was not to support a family. I'd have to agree. The only thing that will support a family is determination and grit. One has to realize that working at McD's ain't doing it and seek to improve their skills. If you fail to do that, foodstamps are your lot in life and unless your kids catch on,theirs too.

I think the trick here is to get people to realize that point. It seems far too easy to let the government pay the bills and coast. The problem with coasting is that you never get ahead.

[John]

You know what is really sad? Back when I was in the Navy in the late 70's early 80's I was a third class petty officer, and had I been married at the time, I would have qualified for food stamps. I never made more than 9k a year. The guy I joined with retired in 98 as a first class P.O, and he only gets 1k a month for retirement. He was a GSE mechanic, and then became a drug and alcohol counslor, so making Chief just wasn't going to happen for him. I don't know what military pay is now, but I'm sure it's still not very good for a young man, with less than 4 years time in service.

[BLUEJEEPLAB]

I can say that things have improved some. I was in the same boat as you in the same time frame. The only thing that saved me from qualifying for Food Stamps was that in 1981, the month before my firstborn made his appearance, Ronald Reagan saw fit to give me a 17.5 % raise, I made ET2 and went over 3 for pay all in the same month. My pay almost doubled.


I have the first Leave and Earnings Statement from 1978 and my last from 1998. I was making $450 a month base pay in 78 and over $2800 BP a month when I retired.


My Nephew is an EM3 with a little over a year in and he's yanking down almost $1500 ( no dependents) and his BAQ/COMRATS a month. A Chief with 20 is making over $50K with his allowances. It's better, but still given what these young men and women do for us, it's not much.

As an E7 with 20 years, my retirement pay is 1600 a month. Not a living wage, but pays the mortgage and Jeep payment. Like I said earlier in this Thread... Hi, Welcome to Walmart!

[xs650mike]

Not quite so...

Originally posted by MAXIMAN


That is not right..

The reason California refineries have been shut down is because the people of the great state of California are on of those..NOT IN MY BACKYARD!!! states.

So the legislature and evironNazis of California have passed utterly absurd envrionment standards to the point that they can no longer opperate those refineries.

If they had to spend the capital to get those refinieries up to the insane standards that the state requires you'd be paying a helluva lot more for gas than you are.

So they move those refining operations offshore (overseas) to keep cost down and profits up.

You've been mis-informed Cody, they can and do operate those refineries. There are 6 major refineries in the San Francisco Bay Area alone. One (Tosco Avon) was recently closed even though it was highly profitable. They'd had numerous fires, explosions and safety violations over the years. The Contra Costa Fire Department didn't much appreciate them trying to handle fires in-house and only call for help after it got really serious. I used to live within a mile of Avon Refinery and they released foul smelling gas into the air every night in the wee hours of the morning. I left for work at 4 am and the air would be full of sulphurous fumes. It was recently sold and the buyer shut it down for unspecified reasons. All the other 5 Bay Area refineries are in full production.

The Chevron Refinery in Richmond pays about $7 million in fines every year for toxic spills into San Francisco Bay because it's cheaper for them to do that than to fix the problems. So much for the "Environmental Nazis", they don't have near the money or clout the oil companies do. (Hadn't you heard that Californians live in and for their cars?) The pollution in the bay has gotten so bad that the crab fishery in practically non-existent now. I don't suppose the crab fishermen appreciate Chevron profiting at their expense. Chances are the crab you buy at Fisherman's Wharf aren't local and you wouldn't want to eat the local ones anyway. The Shell refinery in Martinez has had problems in the past but they've brought their operations into compliance and have had few problems in recent years. I suppose you'd consider it only coincidental that Contra Costa County (where the refineries are) has the highest rate of cancer in California and that Marin County (just across the bay where the rich folk live) has the highest breast cancer rate in the country.

Not in my backyard? You're listening to too many "conservative" talk show hosts if you believe that crap. California is a major petroleum producing state, it's a huge economic base (which is why the small potatoes crab fisherman are ignored). There are oil fields and refineries all up and down the state.

Most refinery closings are due to the oil companies trying to keep gasoline prices up. Shell Oil (a Dutch company BTW) bought a refinery in the San Joachin Valley that was the most profitable in the state and promptly shut it down in order to create a shortage to bring up prices. A consumer group and laid off employees brought suit to force Shell to reopen it. Shell claimed that it was unprofitable to operate. When this was disproved in court they sold it to another corporation who is operating it and making a handsome profit.

[MAXIMAN]

Mike

Please don't patronize me about the petroleum industry. When is the last time you drilled a well Mike? When's the last time you built a refinery or a pipeline besides from your commode to the nearest septic tank?

The fact is environmental regulations are so restrictive in California refiners don't have near the profit ratio as they do other places (read Texas Gulf Coast)... and even there they are pretty stiff.

I tell ya what Mikey. If refining is so damned lucrative in the great state of California, then what's stopping YOU from going into business there?

My company is a natural gas refiner here in Oklahoma. We refine natural gas into pipeline spec gas for final end point consumption. We refine condensables (LP Mix) from said gas stream via Joule-Thompson refrigeration process. We've been doing that for 24 years now.

A few years ago...about ten if I remember correctly...we had an opportunity to build a gas system with a refining plant in your lovely state.

After we reviewed a couple thousand pages of bureaucratic BS and mind bending regulations we did not walk away from that deal .... WE RAN! And that was ten years ago. I can only imagine the nightmare it is now.

So tell me Mike...when's the last time you built a refinery...IN ANY STATE?


I used to live within a mile of Avon Refinery and they released foul smelling gas into the air every night in the wee hours of the morning. I left for work at 4 am and the air would be full of sulphurous fumes. It was recently sold and the buyer shut it down for unspecified reasons. All the other 5 Bay Area refineries are in full production.

Unspecified my butt. The reason is real simple. Avon wasn't profitable MIKE. Duh! If it were someone would be operating it. So what's stopping you? I know what's stopping TAG Petroleum. It isn't worth it. For those of you in lah lah land that means it is not profitable.

Certainly there are refineries operating in California...but those poor souls do not enjoy having to refine their.

Cause?...regulations MIKE. I know first hand. I wouldn't build a refinery anywhere in the USA right now for a plethora of reasons. But If I did California would be the last place because their regulatory bodies are sea of red tape!

TRY AGAIN MIKE.

Now I'm outta here. I simply don't have time to educate you on the specifics of oil and gas processing. Besides you don't need it. You already know it all.

[mro]

Actually SF Bay is cleaner now than 20 years ago.

That’s not saying there is not illegal discharges from the refineries, but the current "ecological disaster" is the delta. So much water is pumped south that the deltas environment has changed, and is continuing to change. Salt water incursion has restricted many species of aquatic fauna to areas much closer to Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. Bottom of the food chain is dying off and taking a lot of other critters with it.

There are plans to place gates in the upper delta to keep out salt water to help preserve "drinking & agricultural" water.

There should be more of just about "EVERY" kind of business in CA.

CA. has about the 5th largest budget in the world. Has more than 10% of USA's population. And even with many 10's of thousands that are leaving the state our population still grows. (most of the ones that are leaving are the productive type)

That being said, the environmental laws here are the most strident, anti business of anywhere.

There are but about 50K registered big rigs in CA. But there are more than 400K coming into the state. One reason is taxes on the trucks, but the other is the cost of the pollution requirements for CA registration.

Intel vice president had a news conference several years ago and stated that Intel would not create ANY new jobs in CA. Why? Because every level of CA government was in there pocket and wanted more. Apparently Intel wouldn’t pay off the politicians.
__________________________________________________ __

If not for the recent electrical fiasco there would not have been any new power plants. Why? Red tape/environmental/not in my back yard
__________________________________________________ __

There is still compelling reasons to stay here though, just for the moment its kinda hard to think of them

mro

btw
big steel died quite awhile ago in CA

[xs650mike]

There are environmental regulations for a reason Cody, and it's not because a bunch of socialists hate corporations, it's because people like to breathe clean air and drink clean water. I grew up in L.A. where the air was brown from photochemical smog, my eyes burned every day for the first 15 years of my life. It's not nearly as bad down there now as it was during the '40s and '50s and that is entirely due to motor vehicle emissions standards and industrial pollution regulation. You were recently witness to the beauty of the Sierra Nevada and Lake Tahoe. You probably don't realize it but Tahoe is in deep trouble. Just 25 years ago the water in that lake was pristine in clarity which was attributed to its great depth. As the shoreline was developed, raw sewage was dumped into the lake but it still maintained its clarity. Environmentalists (those pinko commie wackos!) sounded alarms and tried to regulate development but the big bucks developers won out and things continued as they were. Now the water in the lake isn't clear anymore and it will never be clear again. The developers made their profits but the lake has been trashed for the rest of us. Not the developer's lake, our lake, yours and mine. If this continues one of the main reasons for lakeshore properties' high value will be gone. The developers will have killed the goose that lays their golden eggs. If I'm pissed off about people f**king up my state purely for higher profit, I have every right to be. I've got nothing against money or people or corporations making money but no one has a right to take from me and all of us what is rightfully ours, the air and water and the Earth belong to everyone regardless of someones personal property rights, no one has a right to breed skunks upwind from my house because when they do that they're infringing on my personal property rights.

Re Avon:
Why would someone buy the Avon refinery if it wasn't profitable, surely the buyer had access to the books? I have a suspicion of why it was closed. They had an explosion and fire that took the lives of some employees. OSHA got involved and found gross violations of safety regulation. I think the owner realized it would have to do a major modernization to bring the place into compliance and not wanting to put forth the required investment it just paid its fines and closed the place.

At the time I lived near the Avon Refinery I was plant foreman and later plant manager at a small paint and lacquer factory within sight of Avon. We were a supplier of coatings to industry and we used many solvents supplied by the same Bay Area refineries of which I spoke in my earlier post. We were also subject to many of the same regulations regarding airborne pollutants and toxic waste disposal. We were only found in violation of air pollution regulations by Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAQMD) once during the time I was there. We were given 30 days to bring the plant into compliance which we did. We were never fined or penalized in any way. The plant was hugely profitable for its owner in spite of the so-called "regulatory nightmare" that is California in general and the Bay Area in particular. We were also subject to many OSHA, city and county safety regulations since we had thousands of gallons of highly inflammable solvents as well as many drums of nitrocellulose (guncotton) used in lacquer making on the premises at any particular time. We worked in what is called a "solvent rich" atmosphere. We had no problem with complying with those regulations as well as a few safety rules of our own since an explosion would not only have killed everyone on the premises, it would probably have leveled the entire block. I was always sort of in awe that we were allowed to operate in that location at all.

My point is that if a small corporation can comply with all environmental and safety regs and still be very profitable, why should it be any different for a large corporation. Oil companies are in business to make money and if they weren't making money in California they'd leave. Granted Cody, your company wouldn't be able to make as much of a profit in California doing what you do as you do in Oklahoma so I don't blame it for not opening an operation here but others do here what you do there and they do make a profit or they wouldn't do it. Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer choice.

Right now I happen to live in the only county in California that has met all state clean air standards (strictest in the nation) for the last 16 years running. We are the only county in California where vehicle smog checks are not required. If I have anything to say about it, it will stay that way.

BTW, ESPN just named our own Clear Lake the second best bass fishing lake in the world. Can't remember what the best lake is called but it's in Texas.