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President's Message
Don't Miss Out On A Great Opportunity
ABMA is excited about next month's Manufacturers Conference and this is your last opportunity to register for the meeting.
I am confident that attendees will receive significant benefit from their participation and you do not want to be the one that says "I wish I would have gone".
As you will see below, in addition the top-notch keynote presenters, we have confirmed experts that will offer insights from Embracing the Digital Age to Enhancing Leadership Skills and Addressing Your Company's Knowledge Gap and Understanding Transportation Trends and much much more.
Whether you are a long time participant in ABMA meetings or coming for the first time, you will obtain valuable ideas and strategies that will postively impact your company.
Until Next Time,
Scott
ABMA Manufacturers Conference - Deadlines Approach
The Manufacturing Conference is less than one month away and some deadlines are quickly approaching.
- The room block deadline is TODAY. Click here to reserve a room.
- Registrations by Friday, September 18 will be included in the on-site materials.
In addition to our keynote sessions (listed below), ABMA has secured insightly presenters for our other sessions.
- Embracing the Digital Age - Rick Van House, Know Advertising
- Accelerating Leadership Development - David DeLong, Smart Workforce Strategies
- Transporation Challenges & Opportunites - ABMA Member - BNSF Logistics
- Insurance Trends - ABMA Member - HSB Global Standards
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
Dr. DeLong is president of Smart Workforce Strategies, a consulting firm that helps organizations improve performance by solving problems created by changing demographics and risks of knowledge loss. He is also a research fellow at the MIT AgeLab and has been an adjunct professor at Babson College.
 Ross E. Eisenberg is vice president of energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, the largest industrial trade organization in the United States, representing over 13,000 small, medium and large manufacturers in all 50 states. Ross oversees the NAM's energy and environmental policy work, and has expertise on issues ranging from energy production and use to air and water quality, climate change, energy efficiency and environmental regulation.
Bob Bessette from the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners (CIBO) will moderate an End-User Sector Panel Discussion with representatives from Michigan State University (MSU), General Motors (GM), DTE Energy and Dow Chemical to close the meeting.
This year’s Manufacturers Conference has focused numerous sessions on the future leaders of the boiler industry and we encourage you to share meeting details with others within your company that would benefit from attending.
For more details on the meeting and to register, please click here.
For more information, please contact Cheryl Jamall at [email protected].
ABMA New Office - Celebrating Our Industry
ABMA is pleased to share photos from our new office that includes contributions from our member companies. ABMA would like to thank Clarage, Michigan Seamless Tube, Nationwide Boiler and Victory for their support.
We are thrilled to be able to be able to show the story of today's boiler industry to visitors to our association office and welcome additional photos for our wall.
 
 
Washington & Beyond
Fred Lyon, The Lyon Firm
"The Four Horsemen"
Speaking at the ABMA June meetings in Hilton Head, I confidently assured the audience that my good friend Scott Lewis of Optimus Industries had a better chance of winning the next presidential election than Donald Trump. Writing in the July ABMA newsletter, I suggested that once the summer vapors evaporated, the Trump and Sanders candidacies would have faded into past summer memories of Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain. I was wrong.
Me and virtually everyone else who follows politics vocationally and a vocationally. That includes conservative commentators like George Will, Karl Rove, and Charles Krauthammer, each of whom despise the possibility of a Trump nomination as anathema to the prospects of the Republicans winning the White House in 2016. Each has forecast that Trump’s candidacy is a bubble, doomed to inevitably burst, sooner, rather than later. But it hasn’t happened yet, with his poll numbers going up every cycle, today topping 30% among Republicans, the first time any of their 17 candidates has exceeded that number.
So what is going on? Have we really entered into a new era of political appreciation or is it just the strength of Trump’s unique personality that is keeping his nontraditional campaign alive? Combined with his ability to fund his own campaign and his uncanny ability to deliver sound bites in the manner of a reality TV show star in a reality TV oriented culture?
It has to be more than Trump. Because in addition to his ascendancy in the polls, other non-politicians have moved to the head of the pack in both parties. Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Bernie Sanders (yes, I know he has been an elected official for decades which may make him a politician but as a Socialist from Vermont, he still earns the non-politician label). For the establishments of both parties and the media elites, it is a veritable Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, wreaking havoc on the political landscape in ways never before seen.
At the moment, large parts of the electorate are mad as hell and they are not taking it anymore. After years of Congressional inaction, political posturing, and empty rhetoric, voters are not so much saying who or what they are for as they are saying what they are against – traditional politicians afraid to speak their minds. Policy prescriptions are taking a back seat, voters want candidates who are not afraid to speak aggressively, no matter the content of their arguments.
Horsemen 1 – Ben Carson. A distinguished pediatric neurosurgeon with absolutely no electoral or political experience whatsoever. Dignified and soft-spoken, he had a very strong performance in the first Republican debate. A man of deep faith, he is an African-American who may be able to make inroads into the black community, especially its evangelical component, sufficiently to make a difference among minority voters notoriously hostile to the Republican Party. But, he is light on policy specifics – will he hold up when he is begins to actually outline his platform, what he is for, not just what he is against?
Horsemen 2 – Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard who absolutely dominated the first Republican “kids’ table debate” and despite a lack of elective experience, shows a strong command of policy issues. Questions on foreign policy that Trump was unable to answer in interviews with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt, Fiorina knocked out of the park. Questions abound about her tenure at HP which led to her firing – and The Donald recently questioned whether she has the looks to be president (not sure what that has to do with anything but what do I now)? Keep an eye on Carly, for Vice President.
Horsemen 3 – Bernie Sanders, former Mayor of Burlington, Senator from Vermont, an avowed Socialist who is not even a registered Democrat. Sanders is capitalizing on the growing impatience of the Democratic base with Hillary Clinton and her centrist, Wall Street-centric positions. Once Elizabeth Warren elected not to run, Sanders inherited her Occupy Wall Street supporters. He will do well in Iowa and New Hampshire. It is when the campaign moves South on March 1 that Hillary hopes to have built a fire wall against Sanders. It is a fair question – how long will the rest of the country support someone who honeymooned in the old Soviet Union?
And the Fourth Horsemen, in a league by himself, Donald Trump. Outspoken, politically incorrect, opinionated, a candidate who is expertly capturing the mood of an extraordinarily disgruntled electorate – or at least a substantial portion of the Republican Party. His is a candidacy like none other – focused on a single highly controversial issue, illegal immigration, with straightforward remedies, deportation and a big wall. Willing to make personal attacks on his opponents, their heroism, their looks, their faith, Trump has tapped into a discontent that says much about the current state of mind of many American voters.
And he has done so in a way that defies his appeal to his Tea Party supporters. He has expressed support for a tax increase on hedge fund managers, he has admired single payer health care systems in Canada and Europe, he once was pro-choice, and he has spoken fondly of both Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. Unlike other Republican candidates, he considers Social Security and Medicare to be sacrosanct. While claiming to be a “big” Christian, the details of his faith participation remain scanty. Mostly he is self-referential – “you are just going to love the things I do when I am President.” Take him at his word.
Much of this suggests that popular understandings of the Tea Party base of the Republican Party as a small government, libertarian movement is misplaced (where are you Rand Paul)? Instead Trump is tapping into old school populism – we (the producers) want ours, we don’t want them (the parasites) to have theirs. The Republican establishment is abhorred. Even outliers like Bobby Jindal today attacked Trump as an egomaniac, devoid of intellectual curiosity, a carnival act.
So far such attacks just work in Trump’s favor. Whether that continues to be the case while the Republican establishment considers its options, I am out of the prediction game, at least until the next newsletter. In the interim, I am reconsidering the bona fides of the potential candidacy of my buddy Scott Lewis.
Click Here for the Full Article
POWER-GEN 2015 - Las Vegas, NV
Once again, ABMA and numerous members will be exhibiting at one of the largest Power Generation events. For more details on POWER-GEN, please click here or use the link below to register.
Click Here To Register
Destination Orlando 2016: AHR Expo - The World's Largest HVACR Marketplace
The AHR Expo brings the entire HVACR industry together under one roof to see the latest products and technology, learn about the innovations and trends that are shaping the future, and do business face to face. Returning to Orlando for the first time in six years, the Show is anticipating more than 50,000 professionals in attendance, nearly 2,000 exhibiting companies, and a wide variety of educational sessions. As the AHR Expo is by far the largest HVACR event in the world, this means more opportunity to explore, learn, network, and get things done.
Click Here for More Details
Mark Your Calender - 2016 Annual Meeting - January 15-18
 The 2016 Annual Meeting will take place January 15-18 at Hyatt Regency Gainey Ranch Resort in Scottsdale, AZ.
We are pleased to confirm our favorite economist Alan Beaulieu will be presenting at the 2016 Annual Meeting.
Additional details on the meeting will be shared in the coming months.
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