Today is another day to compete with the Chinese, and I am grateful that there are still businesses in the US selling American made products. I will put the final coat of finish on boxes that go to Appalachian Spring and ship them tomorrow.

Tonight is the Mad Hatter's Ball, a fund raising event for The Eureka Springs School of the Arts. I usually make a wooden hat of some kind, and this year, my mind is a blank. I serve on the board of the organization working to bring quality craft education to our region.

By watching the news, I see that the old Reagan concept of "trickle down economics" is still a driving force in Republican thinking. The question I've always had is "trickle down to what?" Through the application of a modest amount of common sense you would know that people only invest in things they know something about. If you look at the rise of American manufacturing you see that it happened at the hands of tinkerers, inventors and makers. You look at the decline of American manufacturing, and you notice that it happened in the hand of accountants, professional managers, and out-sourcing.

Can you get it? It is not hard to understand but you have to come at the matter from the common sense perspective of the hand. The expectation that the wealthy would use their extra money to put people to work except as servants and gardeners was complete Republican fantasy that has come home to roost as we watch the investment bubble created by misguided, clueless investors come to a point of collapse.

As an interesting case study, look at Apple computers. It was created by inventors, driven into the ground by professional CEOs and re-emerged upon the return of its inventor/founder as the creator of the iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and has been involved in nearly every important innovation in American consumer electronics over the last 10 years. So, yank the professional CEOs and replace them with inventors and see what happens. It will be a change for the better.

So when some blooming idiot mentions trickle down, and gets all starry eyed for the days of Ronald Reagan, just think "trickle down the drain." It is what we have done over the years to the once creative American manufacturing industries.