When the history of the coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...epoch is written, The Watchdog hopes historians don’t neglect to mention Prestige Ameritech and its owner, Mike Bowen. The North Richland Hills company is America’s No. 1 maker of hospital surgical masks.
During this crisis, you’d think the company would be pushing forward on all cylinders, working 24/7 to manufacture the one commodity that Americans and the rest of the world want so badly.
You’d be wrong.
The company is only operating weekday shifts. You drive by nights and weekends and the employee parking lot is empty.
"People are curious why there aren’t any cars in the parking lot," North Richland Hills Mayor Oscar Trevino told me.
And why is that, Mr. Mayor?
"The system got him," the mayor said about Bowen, who is executive vice president of the company. "And he’s unhappy about it."
The story of Bowen’s unhappiness is a cautionary tale about what can happen if Americans searching for cheaper prices send entire industries offshore to countries like Mexico and China.
Everything Bowen has warned about has come true. He warned that allowing another country to serve as our main supplier of personal protection equipment has the potential to become a national security nightmare.
Bowen declined to talk to The Watchdog for this story. He’s busy.
"There is 200 times more demand than there is supply," he told former presidential adviser Steve Bannon on Bannon’s podcast. "My phone is ringing every two minutes. Every one minute I am getting an email."
An examination of his warnings going back more than a dozen years tells the story.
The common theme is that during an outbreak like this, everybody wants to be his customer. But as soon as an outbreak subsides, his customers dump him and run back to China. The reason? His masks may cost a dime each, but a made-in-China mask might go for two cents.
"Last time he geared up and went three shifts a day working his tail off," the mayor recalled. "As soon as the issue died, he didn’t have any sales. He had to pay unemployment for all these people, and he had to gear down."
As Bowen explained to Bannon, "I’ve been preaching this American-made story since 2007. Nobody listened. The whole mass market was only interested in price. I’ve been everywhere trying to get people to listen. I’ve talked to congressmen. I’ve talked to generals. I’ve written the president. I wrote President Obama five or six letters, and he sent me a presidential proclamation suitable for framing."
Bowen wants a guaranteed contract, not a proclamation. It’s tough to win a bid to supply U.S. hospitals through their group purchase agreements that seek the cheapest price when your competitor pays low wages, ignores environmental concerns and is subsidized by a Communist government.
If we want to ensure we have domestic suppliers for critical items, we may need a federal law requiring hospitals to purchase one domestically made item for each cheap foreign made one. Even now, many of those highly touted donations are the result of purchases from China — the rest being boxes found forgotten in supply closets.
Last month, he got another proclamation but no contract to go with it. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida...
, R-Florida, named Prestige Ameritech the "Senate Small Business of the Week." The citation notes that the company "has ramped up their daily production to 600,000 masks."
The company could do so much more.