A tale of two articles...and how people don't get it.

Here I sit in my chair after a long shift (hey over 5 hours overtime..) and I’m drinking coffee, relaxing and browsing the Houston Chronicle and they don’t know they have a good article. Naturally it’s on the page A21.

A few days ago they also had a small article from California on jobs and the economy.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A California solar-panel manufacturer once touted by President Barack Obama as a beneficiary of his administration's economic policies — as well as a half-billion-dollar federal loan — is laying off 1,100 workers and filing for bankruptcy.

Solyndra LLC of Fremont, Calif., had become the poster child for government investment in green technology. The president visited the company in May 2010 and noted that Solyndra expected to hire 1,000 workers to manufacture solar panels. Other state and federal officials such as former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Energy Secretary Steven Chu also visited the company's facilities.

But hard times have hit the nation's solar industry. Solyndra is the third solar company to seek bankruptcy protection this month. Officials said Wednesday that the global economy as well as unfavorable conditions in the solar industry combined to force the company to suspend its manufacturing operations....

Now this is the picture of the man-child’s economy. Expensive, bankrupt, full of unemployed people wondering what happens next. It’s really funny since, as he told some people recently, on his taxpayer funded campaign bus ride:

“You can’t just make money on SUVs and trucks,” Obama said during a town hall forum in Cannon Falls, Minn. “There is a place for SUVs and trucks, but as gas prices keep on going up, you have got to understand the market. People are going to try to save money.”

Speaking like he has a clue of what the market is. He has pushed this POS called the Chevy Volt that has sold just over 2000 cars since its heralded launch in 2010. 2000 cars nation wide. 2000 cars...the Chevy dealerships in Houston sold more SUVs and pickups than that...in one month. Without a government tax refund.

But back to the article from this morning. It shows something Mr Obama has little experience with. Men at work. Making money, supporting themselves and their families, and unlike the businesses he supports, these companies are providing something people want and, are not costing the people tax dollars, but are paying taxes.

Life on an oil field 'man camp' _ not for everyone

WILLISTON, N.D. (AP) — You can almost smell the opportunity along Highway 2. It oozes deep from the sloping North Dakota prairie where oil derricks and natural gas wells sprout among the drying rolls of hay.

People come here hopeful, drawn by the promise of jobs. But they probably also utter a few prayers, or expletives, when they realize just how far from home this place really is.

Or when they see the makeshift villages of narrow metal-sided buildings rising from the plains — temporary housing to accommodate what many are calling the largest oil boom in recent North American history.

They're called "man camps," because there's something else you'll notice when you arrive in this upper corner of North Dakota: There aren't a lot of women here.
"The best thing about a man camp? Uhhh, I don't know. I couldn't really tell you," says Jacob Austin, a 22-year-old line cook at a camp outside the small town of Williston.

After a 12-hour day, he stands on a pile of rocks in the camp parking lot, playing his guitar....

Tracy Glover, manager at this camp, probably doesn't feel the same way. He is hours away from a two-week leave after six solid weeks at the camp since his last break. He's dreaming about his wife, and his Harley, back in Arizona, where he makes his permanent home. A lengthy to-do list sits on his desk.

But he's still friendly enough as he emerges from his office.

"Welcome to the middle of nowhere," he says. He is a towering denim-clad character with a wide gray mustache who looks the part of the Old West innkeeper, or maybe the sheriff. Here, he's a bit of both.

His greeting is his way of acknowledging the bewilderment he sees on people's faces when they step into the camp, whether they are BMW-driving former executives, young men fresh off the farm, or recent college graduates. Or maybe it's just commiseration.

They've come to seek their fortune, along this stretch of oil country that's known as the Bakken, where barreling fuel trucks dominate the roads. Parking lots are full of cars, RVs and pickups with plates from states where financial upheaval has shaken many Americans to their core.

The toughest among them will make that fortune. But for some, the cost will be too high — the distance from home too much to take — the work too difficult. Here, it's easy to go a little crazy in a room that's so small you have to step outside to think, only to be reminded how isolated you are under the big sky that rolls in from Montana.

"I always say, 'Oil doesn't grow where men go,'" Glover tells new arrivals.

Folks in nearby Williston might take exception to his insinuation that there is no civilization around here. But no one would dispute that there's simply been no place to put the thousands of people who are the embodiment of this modern-day "rush."

Rent for a house here can run into the thousands of dollars, if you can find one that's vacant. The most desperate among the new arrivals show up and pitch tents in vacant fields, or sleep in their cars.

So a man camp like this can be a godsend, an oasis in conditions that can be unforgiving.

This particular camp houses nearly 500 residents. But you wouldn't know it to look around because "there is no normal here," says Glover, who manages the camp for Target Logistics, a Boston company that is one of several temporary housing outfits that has come to North Dakota.

By that, he means there is no such thing as a normal schedule. One guy's shift might start at 4 a.m., another's at 4 p.m. — those shifts often running 12 to 16 hours, seven days a week, depending on the work and the deadlines.

It leaves little time for the rowdiness that you might expect at a place like this. The quiet is most often broken by the sound of footsteps on the gravel that fills the camp walkways.

The men might watch a little TV, shoot some pool or hang out for a chat and a smoke. They use computers next to the laundry room or Wi-Fi on their own laptops to communicate with the outside world, and cell phones, when they work.

Target Logistics is building another camp near Tioga, N.D., that will have a barber shop, a tanning booth, a hot tub spa and a 24-hour commissary. It's a sign of what it takes for oil companies to keep good workers, some who pay their companies $400 a month, or whatever they can negotiate, for room and board at the camps.

In reality, though, these men have time only for the basics — eating, sleeping and recuperating from work that can be grueling, and dangerous, so they can go back out there and do it again...

...But to most of the men who come here, especially those who've lived elsewhere on the oil fields, the accommodation is just fine.

"It looks nice to me!" says Matthew Tjaden, a 21-year-old oil worker who has just arrived at the camp. The Minnesota native has been toiling in the oil fields since he graduated from an Iowa community college in the spring of last year....

... he'd stay for the same reason everyone else does: the money.

His degree is in recreation and leisure management. When he was in school, he was a Wal-Mart cashier and also delivered pizzas.

Now he makes six-figures working on an oil rig, 80 hours a week. He figures this time, with more experience and plenty of overtime, he'll take home $4,000 to $5,000 a week.

"I've paid off college and my car. I blew a lot of it, too," he says, detailing some of those purchases — $4,000 worth of snowboarding equipment, $5,000 worth of clothes, a $3,000 mountain bike....

"I know how the economy is back home," he says, "but I'm not worried about it as much as other people."

For him and a lot of other young guys, this boom is a way to set themselves up for life, with enough to buy a home and a new car.

For other men, it is simply survival.

Jared DeCastro, a father of three young boys, came up here a couple months ago after he got laid off from his job on a Colorado oil rig. His family stayed there...

..."I miss out on their life. But you're up here, working for them," says DeCastro, who works on a "fracking" crew, two weeks on the job and then a week back in Colorado before returning to the camp for another two-week stint. Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, is a way to get oil and natural gas out of rock.

"I can't wait to hug my boys, and my wife," DeCastro says, clearly giddy as he boards a bus that has pulled up in the man camp parking lot to take him and several men home.

In the camp kitchen, meanwhile, head chef Pat Gahn has just returned from two weeks spent in Arizona with his family, including his newborn baby.

He is tired, and looks a little sad as he heads to a stoop outside for a smoking break.

...Breakfast in his kitchen starts well before dawn, at 3 a.m., with a steady flow of diners until 8 a.m. or so.

The men pile their plates with omelets and bacon, or pancakes. There's mild excitement on days the cooks offer "eggs to order." Coffee flows generously.

The men make themselves sack lunches to take on the job with them. The kitchen stays open well into the evening.

When they have time to linger, the men talk about their children, sometimes their wives and girlfriends. A few discuss work, or the happenings at the bars in town, if any have had time or the energy to go there.

Gee, men coming from thousands of miles away, working their asses off, making very high wages...what a concept. They don’t need federal assistance. The have a job. But here is the quote of the article.

...A few feet away, Jacob Austin continues to play his guitar, now joined by Gahn, who's singing his gunslinger song.

Austin, who grew up in California, found the job here through Craigslist. He was living in Montana at the time, had already worked in Alaska and was ready for his next adventure.

In addition to his kitchen duties, he's also the camp garbage man. It's not glamorous, but it is lucrative.

"I'm making more now than I would've if I would've gone to college," Austin says.

"I was going to go to school for alternative energy — and here I am in the oil field.

"So much for solar panels."

Here it is. A group of men in the private sector, working against the efforts of the government they are paying for (Gulf drilling is still shut down and I think our Interior Secretary's boot is still on it's neck) providing for the market something needed by the market. The companies are making money, paying taxes (as opposed to needing government loans) and other companies are making money providing for these companies. Each of these companies (the oil companies and the supporting industries) are employing countless people who pay money into the treasury.

All without a Department of Jobs.

Who would have thunk it? Anyone with a concept of basic economics. The market demands things, people will provide them and money will be made. Simple.

Our leader's still haven't figured that out.

Have a great weekend.

Men at work...too rare a scene today