Sixty Years Ago

Sixty Years Ago

Sixty Years ago today on July 11, 1960, I walked into the offices of “California Texas Oil Corporation”, at 380 Madison Avenue, between 46^th and 47^th Streets, in New York City, to begin my first salaried, professional, engineering job.  The Process Engineering Department was in Room 1215, and being a newbie, I did not even rate a Dilbert-style cubicle.  My desk was in the “bullpen”, with those whom we then called “secretaries”.

I had a young family, had just completed my active military duty as an Army Signal Corps officer, and had just moved to Metuchen, New Jersey, in the New York City area.

When I first saw the name of the company, I thought “California wouldn’t be so bad, but I’m not so sure about Texas” (sic).  I soon learned that Caltex were an integrated international oil company who were a joint venture of Standard Oil of California and Texaco, and they had oil production, refining and marketing all over the world. I had just interviewed with the SOCAL Refinery in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, who had almost exactly the same Engineering structure as Caltex in NYC, but the international nature of Caltex attracted me.

It turns out that I spent more time in my nearly 30 years with Caltex at their Corporate headquarters in New York and Dallas, than overseas, but that’s just the way things went.  I did live in The Netherlands, Lebanon, Kenya. England, at various times.  I also travelled extensively throughout Europe, Pakistan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore.

By 1960, I was not new to working for a living.  I had been doing that, first with menial labor-intensive jobs in my early teens, to full time shifts in the Berkshire cotton mills while I was in high school, (before Warren Buffet bought them and took the name), to both technical-type and street-wise jobs while going to college in Boston. I can still emulate the accent and relate that I “pahked cahs at Bahston Gahden”.

I did just about every crappy job in the world in my teens, including back-breaking and dirty farm work, digging ditches, drilling and blasting ledges on construction, and several other forms of low wage, physical labor.  I was also relatively smart in my little high school class of 100+ kids, so I decided to get out of that little corner of the Berkshires, and do something more substantial.

We were not a wealthy family, by any means, so my first thought was the military and the GI bill, but my mother and Mr. Grosz, the principle of my high school convinced me, with appropriate scholarships, to go to college at Northeastern University in Boston.  Northeastern had a co-op program where I could defray part of the cost of going to college while gaining experience in my chosen field.

Even back then, and at a young age, I did a cost/benefit analysis of going to college and getting a degree versus working and earning for those 4 or 5 years.  I estimated that it would take me to nearly 30 years of age to break even, just on the basis of lost earnings.  I hesitate to do this sort of calculation in the present day, with colleges and the government gouging students and their families with almost “unrepayable” student loans, while expanding campus infrastructures to Olympian proportions.

I chose Chemical Engineering as a field of study because, at that time, the field paid the most.  Electrical Engineering was comparable, but I preferred Chemistry and Physics compared to even more advanced derivative math than Chemical Engineering required.

I didn’t intend to write quite as much, but I’ll include the above in the autobiography that I’m sporadically working on.

Ray Gruszecki

July 11, 2020

A Dystopian Fourth of July

A Dystopian Fourth of July

It’s a sad Fourth of July for our dystopian society and country.  We are enjoined from normal celebrations by an inconsistent gaggle of executive orders and dicta, rather than laws, relating to Covid-19, handed down by mainly leftwing mayors, judges and governors, on the advice of unelected “experts”. The virus continues to spread, abate, and then bounce back, no matter what our mitigation efforts.

Marxist based activists and agitators roam our streets defacing and destroying our statues and monuments and “cancelling” icons of our culture, history and heritage.

According to Pew Research, two-thirds of our gullible American public have imbibed the koolaid meted out by the biased mainstream media,  and believe that the mob in the streets is right in its actions, and that President Trump is an incompetent racist that is responsible for the virus, the economic downturn from the shutdowns, for the emotionally based, but not factual, systemic racism in our society, and for a litany of other ills afflicting the country. 

These same gullible Americans fail to see the failures, hypocrisy and ineffectiveness of the democrats in congress, who are so obsessed with “hating Trump” and their slide toward socialism as defined by “The Squad”, that they fail in their most elementary legislative duties.

And Trump as the autocratic businessman president also doesn’t help his own cause.  His focus on the “bottom line”, or economics, as in a corporation, to the minimalization of other, “softer” issues makes him look like a crass, egotistical despot.  He is obviously a patriot who is here to make the country a better place. Why else would he give up a life of comfort and luxury to work 20-hour days for donated pay, and to be exposed to the most vile political and media campaigns against him?

But that makes no difference.  It’s all in the perception, and the perception is formed by the antagonistic media, and impromptu, midnight tweets.  In the eyes of much of the public, Trump’s frequent TV appearances to keep the public informed, have devolved into empty “reality shows”.

All of this adds to the feeling of dystopia and impending doom.  If the double-digit lead that Joe Biden in his basement, currently holds over Trump, in fact results in Trump losing the presidency in November, the country will indeed be thrust into a truly advanced dystopia.

Who would wield executive power?  Certainly not the senile Biden.  Presumably a socialist “comintern” style central committee directing Vice President Kamala or Stacey.  A Marxist inspired lawlessness will prevail.  Biden has already said that he would raise taxes.  The stock market would tank, along with our 401k’s and IRA’s.  The “Green New Deal” would lead us into a depression worse than the corona virus pandemic.

So, I suggest that it is time for Americans to adopt a dose of good, old fashioned, realism and pragmatism, hold their noses again, and opt for Trump, who is truly the lesser of two or more evils.  If we don’t, we will be a socialist country, in the first phase of the downward deterioration experienced by Venezuela in the late 1990’s.  The violent Marxist rioters in our streets aren’t kidding.  They are a harbinger of things to come, if we think that Trump is such an ogre, and vote him out in November.

Ray Gruszecki

July 4, 2020

No Cops, What Next? Revolution?

No Cops, What Next? Revolution?

Now the inmates are truly taking over the asylum!  At least the useful idiots comprising the millennials and gen-z’s being herded by the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement toward anarchy in our cities. 

While literally still violently destroying our history, culture and heritage, this Marxist mob, using the mantle of civil rights, and taking full advantage of our first amendment, has now embarked on a campaign to defund or disband large city municipal police departments.  And they are being helped in this effort by clueless and/or leftist educated members of democrat city administrations.

In the meantime, American citizens, (and primarily poor, black American citizens), are being beaten up, robbed and killed by criminals who have been treated to the democrats’ “catch and release” programs.  The police increasingly have the “blue flu”, are retiring early, or just plain quitting.  Who can blame them, when they have only vilification, and no support from their city administrations?

Where will it end?  Will the federal government override the state and local governments like President Eisenhower did in Arkansas in 1957, and send in federal troops?  Is the “Silent Majority” strong enough to vote out the current crop of weak democrat politicians, and vote in Law and Order candidates that will calm the Marxist inspired masses?  Or will it result in continued violence and revolution, with armed vigilantes fighting the left-wing mobs, and imposing another unwanted form of civil order?  Because, at some point, that vast Silent Majority across the country, might very well take up arms, and stop the continuing deterioration of their way of life.

Too far out?  So was a virus that shut down our country and ruined our economy.  So was the killing of one black American in Minneapolis, that acted as the trigger for untold civic destruction.  History has shown that when a situation becomes uncomfortable enough for a large enough number of people, all it takes is an idea, no matter how bizarre, and a charismatic leader or movement, to change a country beyond imagination.

Think of Hitler in civilized Germany. Simon Bolivar in South America, Lenin and Stalin in Russia, Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, Castro in Cuba, and the most pertinent of all, for us, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, - countless others.

Hopefully our republic is robust enough to withstand these attacks on our fundamental liberties.   We have always prevailed before.   But the siren song of socialism and Marxism is strong.  Many of our younger people are attracted to the altruistic aspects of this overall corrosive philosophy.  They forget, or have not been taught, that it always devolves into the sacrifice of liberty and freedom to totalitarianism, and has resulted in the deaths of over 100 million people in the 20^th century.

Ray Gruszecki

July 2, 2020

Covid Numbers and Other Considerations

Covid Numbers and Other Considerations

The overall Covid statistics are not great.  Maybe we should go out by the millions and yell and scream obscenities, and deface and break more statues.  Oh, I forgot, Covid selectively spares BLM mobs. It just likes to attack church groups, Trump rallies, and such.  Sorry, I just can’t avoid the cynicism in this dystopia.

Covid cases in one day, on June 30, are 47,813 in the U.S., 185,130 in the world, 7,959 in Texas, and 601 in Dallas County.

Deaths from Covid for the same day, are 1,332 in the U.S., 6,089 in the World, and 59 in Texas.

The corresponding positivity is 2.8% for the U.S., 3.3% for the world, and 0.7 % for Texas.

No laws have been passed telling us what to do.  Only Dicta and executive orders by our local, state and federal executives, who are being informed by non-elected medical and scientific experts.  Remember, it was on this basis, fueled by fear and the unknown nature of the virus, that we originally shut down most of our country and economy for three months, and caused untold grief and consternation to a great swath of our population.

The virus numbers we now see daily are alarming.  We, America, are now the corona virus pariah of the world.  The EU has closed its borders to us (if they even have borders). 

The advice of Dr. Fauci, Dr Brix, Dr Redfield, Admiral Giroir, Surgeon General Adams and other medical experts should be well received and heeded voluntarily, and not by dicta or executive orders without force of law, by local and other despots.

Surely, we need to take reasonable precautions to mitigate the spread of the virus.  Hygiene, sanitation, wash your hands a lot, avoid touching your face, socially distance, avoid crowded, indoor spaces, and wear masks, (today’s recommendation).  Do these precautions in spades if you are aged and/or have systemic health issues, and also if you are young and have any kind of social contact with grandma or grandpa.

In the meantime, it would appear that other than the common sense dictated by the numbers, the corona virus pandemic, like so many other issues, has been politicized by the radical leftists, with the sole purpose of “getting Trump” (for the uncountable umpteenth time).  The rationale here is let’s keep the economy subdued by lockdowns, thereby harming Trump’s election chances on his signature political theme, the economy.  Concomitant with this, the dems say, with the 90% biased mainstream media’s help, let’s continue to twist and falsify the racial and police reform issues to keep the virulent identity politics issue alive.

At any rate, we are “in a pickle”, folks.  Covid-19 won’t quit.  We have Marxists and anarchists in our streets trying to destroy our history, culture and heritage, with the democrat run cities, not only allowing it, but abetting it.  We need to vote for law and order and America, not what can become a Marxist inspired Venezuela.  It really is time for that “silent majority” to flex their muscles, and be a little less silent.

Ray Gruszecki

July 1, 2020