bum76's Blog

that guy evidently isn't done being a tattle tale Yet. His last Book "Juiced " where he dropped the Dime on former friends and team mates wasn't enough now he is writing a new one " Vindicated " calling them " Big Names, Big Liars and the Battle to Save
Baseball."






What is this guys problem ? why does he feel the need to be whistle blower so bad...I wish this whole steroid stuff would disappear so I can read the sports section without an article about steroids.

Jose' I will not be buying your book...As a kid I admired you very much on the field. As an adult I enjoyed seeing you on the surreal life , you seemed like you weren't the jerk the media portrays you as , but please stop writing books about your old teammates...these guys should be lifelong friends of yours not people you tell on and expose them to the attention you disparately crave.

I think you should apologize to everyone you dimed out..if they want to come clean that is one thing but they do not need your help doing so.

It seem fitting this book come out on April fools day.

For years Diesel was about 25 cents cheaper than regular unleaded. In the past 5 years it has skyrocketed to about 90 cents more than Regular and about 50 cents more than premium...just yesterday Diesel went up to$4.13 a gallon ( an increase of 14 cents) and regular stayed at $3.29.

How has the price of diesel out surpassed unleaded ? Did they start making it differently ? Is there that many more diesel trucks on the road ?

I think we are getting hosed on that deal personally Because when Diesel goes up we all pay more for everything ?


This price gouging needs to end.

I seen in a recent gun magazine a few pink revolvers and semi autos . What is this world coming to?

getting shot by any gun would suck and be fatal if hit in the right spot  , but getting shot by a  "pink" gun is sorta like getting beat up by a girl...

here is one example I found not only is it ugly for a gun but the pink is just tacky.

For the first time in the 44 year history of Fish Day the parade has been canceled this year due to the very unpopular narrowing of the main streets here in Port Washington. Thousands of people signed petition's 2 years ago when the narrowing idea came up but council members shot the petitions down because of all the state money they will get from this project. They want so bad for Port to be like Cedarburg they are copying their downtown in hope of attracting more tourists.

So they think by making the side walks bigger and having tree's planted every 20 feet will just bring em' in...they are wrong.

As far as those with boats when the revamping of Ports Downtown is complete and they see what a mess it is to navigate in the 6 foot narrower streets. I am sure they will be looking for new places to Dock their boats.

Fish Day is not Fish Day with out the 2 hour parade to kick things off...and if the Fish Day committee thought things out a little bit they could find an alternate route...Holden St. perhaps

I am still going to Fish Day , but it is a shame what is happening to our quaint little fishing village...Truth be told we have not been a quaint fishing village for some time , most businesses downtown fail ( except Taverns and some restaurants ) largely due to the High Rent and over inflated property taxes , and this road project is going to hurt those businesses even more.

Port Washington officials need to WAKE UP!

anyone who has seen the commercials for this place Located  "Old Menards"  building have gotten there and realized they fail to mention it costs $7 just to get in the door...


                                          RIP OFF ! ! !

some coward has been preying on woman going to their cars late at night at Grafton area retail shops demanding money or demanding that he is driven to an ATM so he can steal more money from his victims. He even tried the same stunt at a liquor store unsuccessfully according to the news paper today .

apparently he is about 5'3" and weighs around 130 lbs. in his early 20's

so this "TWIRP" shouldn't be to hard to find seeing most "MEN" are that size in 7th grade...

I personally hope he tries this on the wrong woman , who in turn kicks his itty bitty lil ass.

If you have seen any Packer games at lambeau field you have seen Brett Favre and other Greeen Bay teammates wearing the REEBOK SIDELINE GREEN BAY PACKERS KNIT HAT(shown below).





well apparently every mall and fan apparel store in America is sold out of these according to the guy at LIDS I talked to , and reebok is going to make more but they won't be available till after January 8th...so I f you want to look like Brett favre this christmass you are going to have to shell out some dough on ebay they have gone as high as $100 on there
http://cgi.ebay.com/Reebok-GREEN-BAY-PACKERS-WINTER-HAT
-Just-Like-FAVRE_W0QQitemZ200182118277QQihZ010QQcategor
yZ24715QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
this hat is the tickle me elmo of 2007 !

    why ?

maybe I am not as cell phone savvy as teenagers these days , but I would never even drive and talk on my cell phone let alone try to send a text message.

What is the big deal about texting it come in handy at work or at loud places where talking on the phone is hard to do with out getting in trouble or be able to hear.

    Rumor control has it that the Grafton chic that caused the deadly accident On I43 yesterday was typing a text message...I am totally against driving and taling on the cell phone but it beats trying to send a text message.

some guy downed 7 Lynchburg lemonades in 15 minutes at wall-mart the other day...I am really kinda of impressed. not a that he did such an idiotic feat at a grocery store but at the feat itself...after a long day of work the first beer or 2 go down quick...but 7 in fifteen minutes damn....and Lynchburg lemonade is kinda  girl drink  but still 7 drinks in 15 mintes...

The only thing I have seen close to that was senior year Tim McDonald drank a 20 oz. cup filled with brandy in just under 10 minutes...within a half hour he was passed out and he ended up pissing himself and making a fool out of himself first but  ,it was actual less liquid in the amount of time than the 70 ozs. the guy at wall-mart did. 

hell 7 drinks an hour is pretty good.

 

on a separate note did you ever notice that on Dateline " to catch a predator "  2/3 of the time the would be predator shows up with mike's hard lemonade...is this stuff the official drink of sexual predators or what ?
 

the kid that did it was 20 and he was a cop and a deputy...how do you become a 20 year old cop ? I mean no one really even takes you serious till your like 25 anyway....do hic town have different standard who they accept on the force..maybe if he wasn't a cop he wouldn't have had as easy of access to an assault rifle...20 years old is way to immature to be a cop in the first place.

So at lunch yesterday my coworker comes back from lunch ecstatic about some guy going on a shooting rampage in Sheboygan.

So I asked him what the body count was and he relies 2...(a measliy 2 ) 1 really the other was a suicide.

anyway the guy didn't even work there and it was a single murder...after Virginia Tech if it isn't close to 32 I don't want to hear about it , that guy really raised the bar , huh ?

I wonder how long that record will last.

The lady he killed was very outspoken ( a Beatch ) and ny looking at her picture I could tell she looked like abitch.

Shadow however had A nice smile and looked kinda friendly...So you never know who you can piss off in this world.

The body count could have been a lot higher with 100 rounds of ammo.

I guess he Thought one was enough for him.

The whole point is it wasn't a work shooting it was a murder at a place of work.

MILWIAKEE JOURNAL SENTINAL ARTICLE

Simplicity factory closing Briggs cites excess manufacturing capacity in decision on Port plantBy RICK ROMELL and LAWRENCE SUSSMAN
rromell@journalsentinel.comPosted: June 22, 2007

Port Washington - Briggs & Stratton Corp. will close its Simplicity lawn mower and snow-thrower factory in Port Washington next year, eliminating some 325 jobs.

Briggs plans to shift most of the work to McDonough, Ga., site of another of the three factories it acquired when it bought Simplicity in 2004.

For Briggs, it's a way to shed what it says is excess manufacturing capacity.

For Simplicity factory workers, it means the loss of jobs paying an average of $18.50 an hour - nearly $4 more than the median wage for production work in the Milwaukee area.

It will be the second time in four years that a Port Washington factory with more than 300 workers has closed. In 2004, OmniQuip International Inc. shut down a 350-employee plant that turned out aerial work platforms and telescopic handlers.

Though expected - Briggs said in late April that it might close its factory - the official announcement Friday left workers glum and wondering about their futures.

"More manufacturing jobs are disappearing," 59-year-old tool room machinist Mike Helminger of Sheboygan said as he walked out of the plant after his shift ended Friday. "Who's going to hire a 60-year-old?"

The average factory worker at Simplicity, according to a spokesman for the machinists union, which represents production employees, has about 20 years' tenure at the plant. Helminger has 37.

The company, he said, "has been good to me. It's just a shame that they are moving."

Welder Mark Jensen, 42, of Cascade, thinks he'll be able to land another job in his high-in-demand field. But it won't be "like the money and benefits we're making here," he said.

Jensen said he makes $20.73 an hour, and gets good health insurance coverage.

When Briggs announced in June 2004 that it had agreed to buy Simplicity Manufacturing for $227 million, local officials were optimistic that operations wouldn't be moved.

At the time, a Briggs executive said the company had no plans to reduce Simplicity's work force or shut down any of its operations.

But with flat sales in its lawn-mower business, other than for the increasingly popular zero-turn machines, which aren't made here, Briggs has more factory capacity than it can use, Simplicity spokesman Troy Blewett said.

Weighing in favor of the Georgia factory, though, was its location, which is nearer to Briggs' engine plants in Murray, Ky., and Poplar Bluff, Mo., Blewett said.

Wauwatosa-based Briggs opened the Poplar Bluff and Murray engine plants as part of a long-term strategy that, since the mid-1980s, has seen it shift much of its manufacturing from Wisconsin to the South.

For many in Milwaukee in the '80s and '90s, Briggs came to epitomize the economic forces that saw many companies move factory jobs out of the industrialized Midwest and into lower-wage areas.

Not quite 30 years ago, according to a 1989 Milwaukee Journal article, Briggs employed nearly 12,000 people in the Milwaukee area. Today, Blewett said, the company employs about 1,375 here, plus another 500 in Jefferson.

As with Simplicity, the shutdown of the OmniQuip plant in 2004 followed a purchase of the local company and a decision by the acquiring firm to shift production elsewhere.

OZAUKEE PRESS ARTICLE

Simplicity closing
to cost Port 325 jobs

Company founded here in
1922 played vital role in city, lives of those
proud to make quality products




AMONG THE 325 EMPLOYEES pondering their fate after hearing that
Simplicity Manufacturing in Port Washington will close next year are
(from left) Sally Bley, Sue Ann Johannes, Ann and Dennis Race, Janice DeSmidt,
who is president of Local 1430, and Joseph Johannes.
Photo by Sam Arendt By KRISTYN HALBIG ZIEHM
Ozaukee Press staff
Posted 6-27-07

Briggs & Stratton Corp. sent a shock wave through Port Washington Friday when it announced it will close its Simplicity Manufacturing plant next year, eliminating 325 jobs and severing the city's connection to a company founded here 85 years ago.

Just three years after purchasing Simplicity, Briggs &Stratton announced it plans to transfer the Port Washington operations to another of its facilities, probably one in McDonough, Ga., that has excess manufacturing capacity. The Port plant is slated to close Oct. 15, 2008.

The closing will cost Port Washington the last of the large manufacturing facilities that were once the backbone of the city's thriving industrial economy.

Over the last decade, roughly 1,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost to plant closings. Garden Way, which purchased another of Port Washington's longtime makers of garden tractors, and OmniQuip closed factories, some of which remain vacant to this day.

For Simplicity employees, some of whom were hired after other plants shut down, the closing of a local facility founded by industrialist William J. Niederkorn in 1922 is devastating news that affects families — husband-and-wife teams as well as workers whose fathers and grandfathers once labored for the company.

"I'm sure Mr. Niederkorn is rolling in his grave right now. He really cared about this place and the people who worked here," said Janice DeSmidt, president of Local 1430 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents the firm's employees.

"After 85 years, I just can't believe it's going to be gone," DeSmidt added. "I never thought that when Briggs bought us that this would happen. I thought they would invest in the company and keep us going. I was all for it.

"I was wrong."

Port Washington Mayor Scott Huebner said the closing will leave a hole in the fabric of the community.

"It's tragic for the people who work there. It hurts the entire city because of the jobs it will take away, the business it generated just by being here and the tax base it provides," he said.

"And it hurts a little bit more because this is a company whose birthplace was the City of Port."

Vince Shiely, president of Briggs &Stratton Yard Power Products Group, said Friday the decision was not an easy one for the firm.

"We cannot possibly describe to our employees or people in the Port Washington area how difficult this decision was for us," he said. "In the end, the issue was not whether we should invest more in this facility to make it competitive.

"The issue was that our business has excess manufacturing capacity and we concluded that folding the Port Washington production into our other operations was the most appropriate business decision."

Briggs &Stratton will move Port Washington operations to another U.S. plant that has excess manufacturing capacity and is closer to several of the company's engine plants, company spokesman Troy Blewett said.

Snapper walk-behind mowers and rear-engine riders are made at the McDonough, Ga., facility, he said, while Simplicity and Snapper lawn and garden tractors and some large-frame snowthrowers are made at the Port Washington plant.

"We're not going to ramp down production," Blewett said. "Everyone will be employed through Oct. 15, 2008."

The company's contract with its workers expires that day.

That contract calls for a number of Simplicity products to be made exclusively at the Port plant — including the Regent tractor and any replacement for it, as well as the Legacy, Prestige, Conquest, Broadmoor and Baron tractors and their Snapper versions. It also calls for the level of snowthrower production at the Port plant to be maintained, subject to market condition fluctuations.

DeSmidt credited that clause in the 2004 to 2008 contract extension with keeping the facility open until next fall.

"We kind of knew they were going to sell the company then," she said, noting the extension was negotiated shortly before Briggs &Stratton purchased Simplicity in 2004. "We just wanted to protect our people. We felt more stable.

"That was the best thing we ever did. At least it bought people some time to make plans."

Briggs &Stratton, which moved the management and office staff from Port to Brookfield last year, announced in April that it was studying the possibility of closing the Port Washington plant, citing a number of infrastructure issues.

It was an about-face for a firm that lauded the Port plant when it purchased Simplicity just three years ago.

"It's a very good plant and it makes really good stuff," Thomas Savage, Brigg's senior vice president of administration at the time, said. "It's an older plant, but we toured it, our production people toured it and it's more than adequate for what they do."

City officials said they were hopeful at the time that Simplicity would remain open.

"I always thought it would have been more positive," City Administrator Mark Grams said. "It sounds like Briggs &Stratton's business has taken a downward turn, which led to this. I don't think it was the fault of Simplicity. They were doing all right, as far as I know.

"I think the quality of the workforce here is excellent, especially compared to what you're going to find down south.

"I think they (Briggs &Stratton) are just looking at bottom-line numbers."

Warner Frazier, who was Simplicity's president from 1980 until his retirement in 2000, said Tuesday that after the office employees were moved last fall, "I thought that could be the beginning."

"It's a sad day, no doubt about it," he said. "I think they (Briggs) knew they were acquiring a good company and they planned to keep it growing — maybe not in the way we all had expected or hoped.

"You read about manufacturing in the state, and this certainly isn't an isolated incident."

Speculation about the future of the plant continued when officials rebuffed the union's offer to discuss concessions, and when they said they wanted to consolidate some of its operations closer to its customer base, which Briggs said was in the Southeast and East, and its large suppliers.

"In the back of our minds, we knew it was going to happen," DeSmidt said. "People are just so disappointed."

The news hit employees hard, she said, especially those people who have worked for the company for decades and those who came to Simplicity after losing jobs at Garden Way and OmniQuip.

The average tenure is between 20 and 25 years, DeSmidt said.

"We have a lot of people in their 50s who have 30-plus years in," she said. "Those are the people who are going to really have it tough."

Workers can retire at age 60 if they have at least 20 years with the company, DeSmidt added.

"There are quite a few people who can retire in that time frame. But a lot of people aren't going to meet that requirement," she said. "We'll be looking at taking care of anyone who's close (when negotiating severance package)."

The union is currently polling employees to find out what is most important to them in a severance package, she added.

Simplicity has always offered its workers a living wage, DeSmidt said, saying the average hourly wage is about $18.50.
Although Briggs &Stratton has said it will work with employees to provide outplacement services as well as assistance benefits, DeSmidt is skeptical about the positions Simplicity workers will find.

"The replacement jobs you hear about are $8 an hour," she said. "You can't live on that."

City officials pledged to do what they can to help the workers find new jobs, saying they will work with the Workforce Development Center and other agencies.

Although the decision to close the Port plant will affect employees more than anyone, DeSmidt said the overall effect will be far reaching.

"I really feel for this town," she said. "There are going to be a lot of industries affected by this.

"The people who lose their jobs can't buy more things, which will affect stores and the manufacturers who make the things that aren't being purchased. That affects the next job."

leters to the editor from last week