The second annual Manufacturing Day took place in Evanston, Illinois, last week. Although I attended last year, I skipped it this time around.

Manufacturing Day, I’d discovered, isn’t long on nuts-and-bolts realities or objective facts. Rather, it promotes a specific corporate agenda, with information trimmed to suit. The principal sponsors for this national event are the Alliance for American Manufacturing and Shell Oil, so no surprise there. It is dismaying, though, that our local officials have bought into this public relations campaign so uncritically.

A worker adds an ingredient to a fresh batch of a lubricant mixture at IRMCO in Evanston, Illinois, during a Manufacturing Day tour in 2012.

 …