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Editorial: The Joe Blow Show
Posted by hpayne on February 6, 2012
When Joe Biden comes to town, be sure and have your bull manure shovels ready.
Last fall, the veep used Flint as a prop to bash Republicans opposed to the president’s $500 billion jobs bill, claiming that murder and rape had tripled as a result of a cut in funding for officers. He implied further bloodbaths if Congress refused to act. Trouble was, Biden’s’ facts were made up out of thin air. In truth, murder had doubled in Flint, not tripled, and rape had actually declined.
Veep Gaffer was back (get used to it, swing staters) this week, milking another Michigan town for White House political gain. This time, Biden adopted Grand Rapids’ venerable American Seating Company as the poster child for the administration’s protectionist, anti-globalist business policies. “Your kids are going to hear as much about insourcing as you heard about outsourcing,” Biden told the crowd promoting the administration’s plan for punishing companies that outsource abroad.
The 125-year old America Seating firm should be proud that its success has attracted the attention of the office of the vice president. But voters should be leery of Biden’s attempt to force its business prescription on everyone.
American Seating is hardly a typical American company.
Begin with the fact that it is the only unionized major furniture maker in Western Michigan. Other “Furniture City” giants like Herman Miller, Hayworth and Steelcase do not fit the administration’s narrow definition of “middle class workers” as belonging to the UAW. Biden’s visit smelled of another Big Labor payoff.
American Seating can afford Big Labor in part because it is a niche company. Unlike its Grand Rapids brethren, it has moved away from retail furniture and into the narrower market of stadium seating — a market it dominates. More telling, 55 percent of its sales now depend on the manufacture of public transit seating.
That is, it depends on the likes Joe “Uncle Sugar” Biden.
Yes, the Obama Administration and American Seating know each other quite well. In 2010, American Seating officials flew to Washington to lobby for stimulus money for Grand Rapids’ public bus system; 80 percent of the seats on its vehicles are provided by American Seating.
Just a year ago, American Seating got a visit from Obama’s deputy transportation secretary who applauded the company for providing “green collar jobs” and proving the worth of The Buy America Act, a protectionist piece of legislation which forces the government to hire domestic companies like American Seating for projects receiving federal money.
In other words, Biden can applaud the fact that 75 percent of American Seating’s jobs are right here in the good ol’ USA because that’s how the company got Uncle Sugar’s money. Neat, huh?
The labor requirements of American Seating, in other words, are quite different than, say, a consumer products company that has to sell direct to the consumer. President Obama’s cherished Blackberry, for example, is manufactured almost entirely abroad because of the intense price pressure of that market.
And then there’s this. While government has been very good to American Seating, it hasn’t been so good to other Grand Rapids furniture makers. Union favoritism aside, Biden would likely have gotten a frosty reception from Herman Miller & Company because the Obama Administration is currently taking business from it. That’s right, the biggest U.S customer for office furniture — a market American Seating does not play in – is the federal government which is trying to steer federal contracts to the federally-owned Federal Prison Industries at the expense of West Michigan furniture makers.
So while one Grand Rapids company is benefiting from the federal government, others are being squeezed by it.
There’s a lesson in letting Washington get too involved in private industry. Beware of visiting veeps in election years.
Editorial: Hail the failed Messiah
Posted by hpayne on January 30, 2012
In 2009, Barack Obama’s stimulus showered higher education with tens of billions of dollars in college aid and higher ed porkulus grants funding everything from plankton research to Arctic languages study. The explosion in Pell Grant spending alone – already one of the primary drivers of tuition inflation – by some 800,000 recipients transformed the program into an entitlement, sort of a Medicare for lower-income students.
So on Friday, President Obama came to the University of Michigan to decry the costs of higher education and lecture universities on being more fiscally responsible. We’re not making this up.
“If you can’t stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down,” said Obama whose tution entitlement increases will perversely fuel the inflation he decries. His administrations’ stimulus grants to Michigan universities, too, have become a laughing stock of academic featherbedding, including $440,000 in taxpayer funding for a U-M study on galaxies with black holes and a $322,000 Eastern Michigan University study on languages of the Arctic.
The long student ticket lines and sycophantic media coverage of Obama’s U-M visit could not obscure the fact that Metro Detroit is a reminder of how Obamanomics has failed his two biggest 2008 election constituencies: Young people and blacks.
The Messiah has failed his flock.
“Young people may be the biggest losers of the economic recession,” writes Politico citing census data that puts youth unemployment at levels – only 55.3 percent of 16-29 year olds are employed – at its lowest level since WW2.
College grads today face the bleakest job environment in generations as Obama’s regulatory juggernaut has flattened job creation. But at least Obama pays youth a visit.
The first black president continues to treat devastated urban areas like Detroit as fly-over country. While larding the UAW industry – er, auto industry – with attention, he has ignored Detroit’s economic implosion. The city just racked up a staggering 380 murders for 2011, once again laying claim to America’s Most Violent City, while unemployment hovers at 50 percent, adult illiteracy 50 percent, and Motown sinks into bankruptcy under the weight of obstinate Democratic unions.
Forty miles west of Detroit, Obama rolled out snappy contests like “Race to the Top” and “First in the World” funding competitions. But these gimmicks can’t paper over the realities of Detroit youth and Detroit unemployment. They are the true face of Obamanomics.
Editorial: Obama SOTU recycles Granholm SOS
Posted by hpayne on January 26, 2012
Governor Mitch Daniels’ stirring, pro-growth, small government rebuttal to President Obama’s class warfare, Big Government State of the Union speech surely left GOP primary voters praying that Daniels will reverse his decision not to run for president. But the Indiana governor is also a reminder of what is possible when voters choose leadership.
Daniels’ gubernatorial twin, Michigan’s Rick Snyder, is carrying out similar, metrics-oriented reforms after years of Big Government ineptitude under Obama’s’ twin, Jennifer Granholm. Yes, we can, America.
Indeed, Obama’s SOTU speech was a loud echo of Granholm’s infamous 2006 State of the State address in which she promised that “in five years, you’re going to be blown away” by her program of green investment, government spending, and government job retraining. Obama quoted chapter and verse from the Granholmnomics textbook.
– He heralded Washington’s failed investment in green energy companies like Solyndra – a repeat of Granholm’s 21st Century Fund and its failed investments in green companies like Fisher Coachworks, RASCO, and Evergreen.
-He scapegoated the Chinese for robbing American jobs, lifting a graph right out of Granholm’s speech when she promised that “I will continue to go anywhere and do anything to bring jobs to Michigan. Instead of seeing our jobs outsourced to China.” Echoed Obama: “I will go anywhere in the world to open new markets for American products. And I will not stand by when our competitors don’t play by the rules.”
– He found a mom – “Jackie Bray is a single mom from North Carolina” – who had been restrained by government to find a job. Just as Granholm did – “Armenia Smith, a Detroit mom who lost her job but gained the training she needed to become a nurse.”
– Obama even invited a Michigan man – Bryan Ritterby of Energetx, a wind turbine manufacturer – to declare that American manufacturing is back. Just as Granholm did in 2006 when she invited Greg Boll of Cummins Bridgeway.
And so on. Eerie, huh?
But Obama did go somewhere that Granholm dared not go: He presented himself as a capitalist pioneer at a time when American businessmen agree he is the most anti-business president in memory.
Governor Daniels used the late Steve Jobs to illustrate Obama’s contempt for out-sourcing, risk-taking One Percenters, while Obama tried to hijack Jobs’ memory for political gain.
“We should support. . . every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs,” said the president. ” So let’s pass an agenda that helps them succeed. Tear down regulations that prevent aspiring entrepreneurs from getting the financing to grow.”
In fact, Obama has been the enemy of innovators by tying them up in red tape and demonizing the private equity “wealthy” who provide their seed capital. “Having built a small business into a big one, I can tell you that today the impediments that the government imposes are impossible to deal with,” says Home Depot legend Bernie Marcus. “Home Depot would never have succeeded if we’d tried to start it today.”
“Contrary to the President’s constant disparagement of people in business, it’s one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs – what a fitting name he had – created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew,” said Daniels, getting the Jobs lesson right. “The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands. . . is a pro-poverty policy.”
Obamanomic is a pro-poverty policy. But we already knew that. Granholm tried it in Michigan.
State of the State: Snyder does Daniels
Posted by hpayne on January 18, 2012
After a year on the job, Rick Snyder is still a puzzle to political pundits. On the eve of his second State of the State address (SOS), Lansing doesn’t know what he will say. Despite a historic year of legislative accomplishments, the political class finds him opaque. Where is he going? What’ll he do next? Who is he?
He’s Michigan’s Mitch Daniels. How do we know? He’s told us so.
“When I looked around the country for role models, the state that popped up, that I believe is a top ten state, is Indiana,” said Snyder in introducing the Indiana governor at a Mackinac Center event in Lansing this fall.
His nod to Daniels is a familiar talking point in interviews. An admirer of Daniels’ business background, the ex-Compuware CEO has adopted Daniels “dashboard” metrics, long-term budgeting discipline, and government-as-a-service-business models.
And like Daniels, Snyder has achieved quick success, taking advantage of Republican legislative majorities to pass an astonishing sweep of legislation in his first year.
Mackinac Center President Joe Lehman calls Snyder’s freshman year the “best year for reform since Gov. Engler’s first term.”
Snyder’s vague, “reinventing Michigan” 2011 SOS barely hinted at the flurry of legislation that was to come: Business taxes cut, a balanced budget, charter school expansion, corporate welfare axed, government employment benefits brought more in line with the private sector, school spending restrained, teacher tenure toughened, welfare capped at four years, worker’s comp streamlined, the item-pricing law nixed, and more.
Democrats howled. Yet GOP conservatives rarely cheered — still suspicious of a man they tagged as a RINO during the campaign.
Now, as SOS II looms, party conservatives are again restive. As with SOS I, Snyder has given little hint of his legislative priorities. An then there’s that fellow Daniels next door who has become a conservative icon – elevated by a presidential election year in which his star rose and conservatives wept when he failed to enter the GOP fray.
As Daniels kicks off his legislative year with calls for a Right to Work Indiana, Michigan conservatives are once again ashamed of their governor. Why can’t he be more like Mitch?
But upon closer inspection, the R2W issue reveals a Daniels who is more like Snyder than the Right acknowledges. Like Snyder, Daniels did not initially embrace R2W. He shied from it. Indeed, while Daniels’ service in the Reagan administration and penchant for quoting The Gipper – both badges of scout honor that The Nerd lacks – gave him quick entry into the conservative club, his gubernatorial record has also been under constant attack for RINO-ism.
There was Daniels’ call for a 1 percent tax hike on the wealthy, his tax on liquor and beverages to fund a state takeover of sports arena and convention centers, and a state health exchange which raised taxes on cigarettes in order to help uninsured families purchase a private health insurance policy with state subsidies.
These controversial plays torpedoed the Indiana governor’s approval rating into the low 40s early in his term – reminiscent of Snyder’s equally problematic 30-something approval rating that is making Republicans nervous on the edge of an election year.
They have reason to worry, says Michigan political guru Bill Ballenger. “The polls are bad,” he says, remembering that Gov. Daniels’ policies led to Democratic gains and a split legislature in Indiana two years after his election.
In the end, Daniels’ relentless focus on fiscal discipline, education choice and economic growth paid dividends. With time, the reforms paid off despite his lack of ideological purity. Snyder looks to repeat that success.
Contrary to popular wisdom, the Daniels role model — followed to a “T” by Snyder — is not conservativism; it is creating a successful business climate. What defines Daniels and Snyder is their executive’s competiveness. They are CEOs who see their states as businesses in a battle for market share. And they will adapt their business models accordingly.
Listen to Snyder in that Lansing speech introducing Daniels:
“Governor Daniels was kind enough to have a meeting with me,” said Snyder of his 2009 visit. “I was telling people in the campaign that you know the largest source of business for the state of Indiana? It’s the state of Michigan because of the Michigan Business Tax. So here I was going down to Indiana (to tell Daniels that) I want to get rid of the dumbest tax in the United States so that (his state) doesn’t get most of the business from our state. Now, if you’re on the receiving end of that, would you be excited about seeing me? No.”
Fast forward two years. Snyder has made Michigan more competitive with Indiana — and suddenly Daniels has embraced Right to Work. It makes his “business” more competitive than Snyder’s. If Michigan’s governor is on the receiving end of that, will he be excited about seeing Indiana as a Right- to-Work state? No.
Which is why I’m betting Rick Snyder will soon be a R2W advocate himself. It’s how CEOs — er, governors — stay competitive.
Auto show headliners: What is your favorite car?
Posted by hpayne on January 17, 2012
What kind of car do you like?
It might be the hardest question a Michigan politician is asked to answer. The query is riddled with landmines. The answer must be Detroit-made, of course. But by which manufacturer? GM, Ford, or Chrysler? And does preference for a luxury car indicate the privilege of class? Does a favorite SUV betray a lack of concern for the environment?
The Michigan View popped The Question to the state’s political leaders at the Detroit Auto Show’s black-tie charity event, January 14 (and a coupla Michigan celebrities just for fun). And to notch up the pressure, we also asked what cars they own. Here are their brave answers.
Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville
“A Chrysler 300, a Chrysler 200 convertible, a Ford Mustang, and a Cadillac ATS,” said the senator from Monroe in naming the show cars he’d like to take home with him.
You’ve got one there from every Detroit manufacturer, senator.
“Of course. I’m not stupid!” he laughed.
Governor Rick Snyder
“I’m a nerd. I really like all the new electronics in these new cars,” said the governor as he surveyed the new, hi-tech Dodge small car, the Dart. “You’d have to ask my wife what car she’d want to take home from here. ”
As governor, Snyder is chauffeured in a government car – getting his work done in the back seat as he commutes around the state from his Ann Arbor home. “My kids each drive a Ford Escape,” he says. And then, dusting off memories of his driving days: “I used to own a Corvette.”
There may be hope for the nerd yet.
Mayor Dave Bing
“I no longer drive a car,” said Detroit’s CEO, who, like Governor Snyder, uses the back seat as an office. “But I like what Detroit is making.”
So, Mr. Mayor, if you could take anything off the floor tonight, what would it be? A Camaro? A Corvette? A Mustang?
“Yes!” responded a mayoral aide and whisked the winking mayor to his next media interview.
L. Brooks Patterson
“I drive a Chevy Impala,” said Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, “but I’ve got my eye on a new Chrysler 300.” But you knew that one of Michigan’s most colorful pols was only getting started.
“I used to own a Plymouth Barracuda,” he said of the famous, snarling, early-70’s muscle car. Close your eyes and you can easily picture Brooks cruising the Woodward Dream Cruise in the hot rod icon.
And what would he drive off the show floor? “Oh, I want that new Viper,” he said of Chrysler’s plans to re-introduce the earth-shaking supercar. Alas, Brooks will have to wait for New York’s auto show to get a peek.
Miss Michigan Kristen Danyal
The only thing prettier than the cars are the ladies, chief among them Miss Michigan’s stunning Danyal who we found wowing passersby in front of the Ford exhibit. She was raising money for The Pink Fund, a breast cancer awareness group. The 21-year old beauty’s stallion? A Range Rover Sport.
True to the state she represents, this miss knows her wheels. “I’d take the Maserati GranTurismo or the Chevy Volt,” she said of her dream cars.
Attorney General Bill Schuette
“I drive a Buick Lucerne, my wife a GMC Acadia, and we also have a Jeep,” said the AG describing the contents of his garage.
His dream car? A Chevy Camaro he said without hesitation. Careful, top cop, have too much fun in that bad boy and you’ll attract the cops.
Radio Talk Show personality Paul W. Smith
It’s never hard to find celebrities at the Detroit show. They hang out at the WJR-Radio booth where Paul Dubya – as he is fondly called – broadcasts the show every year. Looking regal in a black penguin suit, Paul W took a break from chatting up celebs to divulge that he cruises in Buick’s head-turning Enclave crossover.
His dream car? The familiar voice of Detroit’s early morning drive wants Caddy’s new Bimmer-beating ATS or Lincoln’s sleek new MKZ.
The Dingells
The lion of Michigan’s Congressional delegation, cane-wielding John Dingell, was on hand in the original electric vehicle – a golf cart – to speed him on his rounds. The Dean of Dearborn had kind words for the Caddy XTS, but his heart is with Ford. What car would he cruise in for the ladies – one Mrs. Dingell in particular? “A Ford Mustang,” he replied.
For her part, the diminutive Debbie – who keeps a flaming red Cadillac STS and a Ford Escape in the family garage – also has likes Detroit muscle. She’d like to drag Big John’s Mustang in her show favorite: a Chevy Corvette.
Payne: Send in the clown
Posted by hpayne on January 7, 2012
Like Charlie Sheen, Stephen Chu was one of 2011’s Losers of the Year. Obama’s Energy Secretary presided over the Solyndra debacle. His prediction that America demanded electric cars went up in flames with the Chevy Volt. His declaration of a post-carbon economy made him a laughingstock as America struck – make that fracked – gold with another century’s supply of oil and natural gas.
But in the Obama Administration – like the Sheen camp – failure is winning. So the president is sending his Energy Sec to take a victory lap at the Detroit Auto Show next week.
After all, cluelessness runs in the Administration family. Asked by oil mogul Harold Hamm if he were aware of the oil and gas revolution marching from the Dakotas across Pennsylvania, Obama reportedly replied: “Oil and gas will be important for the next few years. But we need to go on to green and alternative energy. Energy Secretary Chu has assured me that within five years, we can have a battery. . . with the equivalent of 130 MPG.”
The Ego-in-Chief long ago declared fuel-efficient cars the future in his presidential campaign – then bought Chrysler and forced its Fiat management team to build a 40 MPG Fiat 500 tin can to prove his point. The 500 failed in 2011 as miserably as Mr. Chu.
Chrysler rebounded in spite of its presidential savior as the company sold 419,000 Jeeps at a $5000-profit-per-sale. Obama’s Fiat? It sold a mere 20,000.
Save the planet? SUV the Planet is Fiat’s motto.
Yet The One will hail Detroit’s 2011 resurgence as an affirmation of his vision. “The Obama administration will be in full force at next week’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit – with at least two cabinet secretaries and several other key officials in attendance,” reports The Detroit News as Chu, Commerce Sec John Bryson, EPA Chief Lisa Jackon, and NHTSA Chief David Strickland will all descend on Detroit. .
For his keen insight into post-carbon America, Chu is the headliner. He will discuss “how innovation can help keep the industry . . . competitive,” continues The News.
This just a week after Chu’s latest blunder was exposed. Fisker, the recipient of $529 million in Energy Department loans, recalled its luxury Karma plug-in due to fire concerns. The Finnish-built $100,000 vehicle is a toy for the super rich. This is reviving the American auto industry how? Chu is also under fire for throwing $730 million at Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov, arguing that the lightweight steeel produced by his Detroit Rouge Steel property is essential to greener autos. And so on.
In taking federal loans, this is the kind of clown that Detroit’s Big Three have let in the door. And like the proverbial dinner guest, he doesn’t know when to leave.
The remarkable revival of Romney (The Michigan View 12.22.11)
Posted by hpayne on December 22, 2011
Newt Gingrich may be the Republican Flavor of the Month, but the real story on the cusp of January’s Iowa primary is the remarkable comeback of Mitt Romney. Just six months ago he was written off as a Dead Man Walking by the conservative establishment. Unelectable. Terminal.
Toast.
Like Michigan’s Rick Snyder in 2010, he was an unelectable RINO despite deep pockets and impeccable organization. But just as Granholmnomics predicted the failure of Obamanomics, Michigan is proving to be America’s’ barometer in the 2012 election as well. One Tough Nerd meet One Tough Mitt. As in the 2010 governor’s race, conservatives have realized that a competent businessman is their best hope to win independents and a must-win election.
How dead was Romney?
The tea party tsunami of 2010 announced the overthrow of Obamacare as the defining issue of 2012. Romney’s Massachusetts fling with the individual mandate was a sin. When the former governor refused to disavow Romneycare – Obamacare’s evil Massachusetts twin – in a closely-watched May speech in Ann Arbor, conservatives all but wrote off his GOP nomination chances.
“The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board is painting Mitt Romney as a ‘compromised and not credible’ candidate for president, wrote Politico.
Prominent National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg called the speech “a sincere, intelligent, cogent, informed political disaster.”
“Romney has a huge problem that a wide array of Tea Partyers, Republican activists and officials, and conservative operatives think he can’t overcome: RomneyCare,” concluded Jennifer Rubin, author of The Washington Post’s influential “Right Turn” blog after polling conservatives at the annual CPAC summit in February. “If there is one point of consensus among plugged-in Republicans on the 2012 field, it is that Romney can’t win unless he does a mea culpa on RomneyCare. Since he didn’t and he won’t do that, he’s not going to be the nominee.”
He was finished. Rejected by the body conservative. Not.
Last week, conservatives from National Review to Ann Coulter to Bill Bennett rushed to the microphone to denounce Romney’s only remaining viable opponent, conservative icon Newt Gingrich, as. . . unelectable. The clear inference of this piling on: Mitt Romney is conservative’s pick as the most-electable candidate.
What happened?
Through a combination of skill, circumstance, and sheer luck, Romney has emerged as the candidate for the times. Yes, the son of successful Michigan Governor George Romney could have clinched the nomination long ago if he had only renounced Romneycare in 2009. Or 2010. Or even last May. He didn’t, but his vow to repeal Obamacare upon entering the White House reassured the Right.
More importantly, as Obamanomics has strangled the recovery in its crib, 2012 has become an election about jobs and leadership – not ideology. Alarmed by Barack Obama’s abdication of leadership, voters – just as in Michigan after Granholm – crave competency. Romney’s unflappable demeanor in the GOP debates reminded voters what that looks like. And like One Tough Nerd in Michigan, One Tough Mitt’s business background is not only reassuring – but the antidote to Obama’s painful lack of management experience.
“Governor Romney won our endorsement last time,” wrote National Review in its anti-Gingrich edit, reminding readers that Mitt was the conservatives’ choice over John McCain. “He is highly intelligent and disciplined, and he takes conservative positions on all the key issues.”
Romney was also lucky in his opponents. Heavy-hitters like Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie demurred. A third Great Right Hope, Rick Perry, was more impressive on paper than on the field. Cain imploded. Newt polarizes. The latter two also reminded voters of the importance of family stability in a nominee – so much for Mormonism being a negative.
And so conservatives have resurrected Romney after driving a stake though his heart.
As Iowa approaches, Romney has surged ahead in the latest Rasmussen poll. In a state he wasn’t supposed to win. Just like the nomination he wasn’t supposed to win. Like Snyder in 2010 (against Virg Bernero), Mitt will face the class warfare arrows of a Democratic demagogue. And like Snyder (and the ghost of Jennifer Granholm), voters will respond to an executive who knows how to create jobs.
Or so conservatives are convinced. Welcome back, Mitt.
The bulb is saved ( The Michigan View.com)
Posted by hpayne on December 19, 2011
The lights are still on.
In a shrewd political move at the end of the Washington fiscal year, House Republicans – led by Michigan’s Fred Upton – inserted language in the annual Appropriations Bill funding the U.S. government that blocks federal energy standards banning the traditional, incandescent light bulb. Thomas Edison can stop spinning in his grave and the American people can cheer a victory for consumer choice.
The light bulb ban was a dark symbol of the Obama Administration’s zealous appeasement of the green god of Global Warming. It was also a window into Washington crony capitalism as General Electric lobbied for a bulb ban – initially also supported by key Republican lawmakers – in order to force consumers to buy more expensive compact fluorescents. Like CAFE laws that mandate industry auto mpg, the restrictive federal energy rules were a sneaky backdoor regulation mandating the amount of energy a bulb used – effectively eliminating the cheap incandescents chosen by 85 percent of American consumers.
“It’s a milestone for personal freedom,” says Freedom Action’s Myron Ebell who fought hard in the trenches to overturn the ban. “This is a significant reversal of Nanny State regulations. Maybe this is a turning of the tide.”
The bulb’s rescue however, will not restore the hundreds of jobs lost over the last two years in the United States as GE and other bulb manufacturers shuttered factories and shipped the jobs to China where more expensive CFL bulbs can be manufactured with cheap labor. The action also does not remove the dreaded act from the books. It has only been defunded. Republicans say it will take the election of a Republican president to scrub the anti-incandescent ban from the books.
“We heard the message loud and clear from Americans who don’t want government standards determining how they light their homes,” said Rep. Upton in a statement.
Upton’s leadership did not come without eating some crow as he was an original sponsor of the ban when George Bush – suffering from Guilty Oil Man Syndrome – pushed the legislation in 2007. Despite repeated setbacks as House efforts were met by Harry Reid’s Senate stonewall, Republicans maintained pressure as the public became more aware of the impending January 1, 2012 ban.
Democrats and their corporate cronies did not go down silently. “The light bulb language had emerged as a sticking point in negotiations this week,” reports Bloomberg News, “and its inclusion in the final bill is a blow to Democratic efforts to remove it.”
“I strongly oppose that language,” huffed Senate Energy Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico, who was joined by an Iron Triangle of Democrats, Greens, and industry groups. “Eliminating funding for light bulb efficiency standards is especially poor policy as it would leave the policy in place but make it impossible to enforce,” raged the coalition.
Upton was joined by Reps. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, in saving the bulb – with a significant assist from Speaker John Boehner and House Appropriations Committee Chair Hal Rogers of Kentucky who know a winning political issue when they see one.
Along with the 120,000-job Keystone pipeline, the bulb issue is proof that the Green religion is not only an imposition on personal freedom – but a job killer.
This time, Big Government lost. Merry Christmas.
Payne: Detroit rail derailed ( The Michigan View 12.15.11)
Posted by hpayne on December 15, 2011
Today, a coalition of federal, state, and local leaders announced the demise of America’s latest Train to Nowhere: Detroit’s light rail project. Finally, sensibly, public dollars will be dedicated to a far cheaper and more flexible bus system rather than follow the failed rail models of Portland, Denver, and Detroit’s own People Mover experiments.
“(Light rail) is a giant hoax perpetrated on the taxpayers of Detroit and the United States,” wrote transportation expert and Cato scholar Randal O’Toole in The Michigan View.com last week. “Although promoters often call light rail ‘rapid transit,’ it is actually very slow. When operating in city streets such as Woodward, they average less than 15 mph. The $60 million-per-mile cost of building light rail is enough to build a four-lane freeway. But the average light-rail line carries only about one-fifth of a freeway lane. Since most of those people would have ridden a bus, light rail offers little congestion relief.”
Buses. What a concept. They currently beat Michigan’s other “high speed” rail boondoggle, Amtrak, from here to Chicago.
In breaking the news to Michigan’s Congressional spendaholics that he will be redirecting its $25 million grant to a tri-county, 27 station initiative, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood “told the Michigan Democrats that Detroit didn’t have the required funding to make light rail work – either in matching funds or long-term operations,” reports The Detroit News.
No surprise there. O’Toole details the whopping costs – now $200 million per mile of rail construction – in Portland. “Not only does light rail cost a lot, the costs never stop,” he writes. “Construction costs are only the beginning. These are followed by the subsidies to development, which in Portland cost taxpayers $60 million a year. Then there are the maintenance costs – all those tracks, wires, stations, and expensive railcars are far more costly to maintain than buses.”
LaHood gave no further details on what caused the sudden change in direction. Just last month Sen. Carl “It’s fun to spend other people’s money” Levin crowed about millions more for Woodward’s rail line.
But here’s a hint from The News story: “(Governor) Snyder and others have pushed for a cheaper rapid bus line.” The accountant-turned-governor surely knows his O’Toole.
“A light rail system 3.8 miles up Woodward doesn’t speak to regional transportation,” added Detroit Mayor Dave Bing who also has a business background. “Not when 60 percent of the employed of the city work outside the city.”
The usual suspects screamed at being thrown from the train. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that “Green Belt” Governor Granholm would have blessed the move. Sen. Carl Levin stamped his feet at not getting his $500 million train. Detroit’s MSM sprinted to local activists to condemn the move.
Amazing. With America drowning in red ink and Detroit on the verge of bankruptcy, they still think money grows on trees.
Payne: All-American Muslim family values ( The Michigan View 12.13.11)
Posted by hpayne on December 13, 2011
Last week, the Left’s Green religious nuts were at an international global warming confab in South Africa trying to give Mother Earth legal rights. Not to be outdone, the Right’s religious crazies decided to attack The Learning Channel and its advertisers for airing a positive show about five American Muslim families in Dearborn.
We’re not making this up.
“The Learning Channel’s new show ‘All-American Muslim’ is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law,” said the evangelical Christian group, the Florida Family Association, as it celebrated Lowe’s buckling to pressure to pull its ads. “The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.”
Oh, please. By this obtuse standard, the Cosby Show was propaganda because it showcased middle-class blacks while ignoring the carnage of inner city gangs.
In fact, Christian groups should applaud “Muslim” precisely because it is a celebration of liberty and traditional family values. Were these values embraced in next-door, inner city Detroit, there would be a lot less pain in the world. “All-American Muslim” is a window into what makes America great – an immigrant culture (in this case, Middle eastern) that celebrates family, education, and hard work to afford the next generation a better opportunity.
Says one Muslim police officer in the show: “I really am American. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.” You bet.
Spend time on Muslim Dearborn’s Warren main street and you’ll see American pride worn on every sleeve. These are people who came to America by choice. When Saddam Hussein’s statue fell in 2003 there was more American flag-waving in this Metro Detroit enclave than at a Michael Phelps gold medal ceremony.
But TLC’s Dearborn is hardly a Mideast ghetto – its is the American melting pot at full boil as young Muslim women parade in miniskirts while others cover themselves in hijabs. Indeed, if TLC really wants to stir things up, it should follow around Dearborn’s Rima Fakih, the curvy, hard-drinking, pole-dancing beauty who was the first Muslim women crowned Miss USA.
In Dearborn, Muslim comes in a red, white and blue bikini.
The jobless of the future (The Michigan View 12.07.11)
Posted by hpayne on December 7, 2011
One-hundred-and-twenty-five “jobs of the future” expired last month.
Despite millions in federal and state subsidies – $375 million to be exact – one of the icons of America’s new Midwest “Green Belt” industry, A123 Systems, sent pick slips to dozens of Michigan employees. Call them the “jobless of the future.” The celebrated battery maker’s struggle also exposes the green industry’s House of Cards. That is, without perpetual subsides for its chief product, electric cars, the whole industry will collapse.
A123’s has suffered as its subsidized client, electric automaker Fisker Automotive, has stumbled. Itself the recipient of $530 million in federal subsides, Fisker has struggled to get its business – $100,000 luxury sedans for the rich – off the ground.
To meet Fisker’s sales goals of 10,000-20,000 units a year, Washington has constructed an industry financed by a web of interlocking subsidies from $7500 tax breaks for buyers to guarantees of government purchase to free battery chargers.
“I certainly believe there will be consolidation over time,” A123 CEO David Vieau told AnnArbor.com in explaining why jobs are disappearing in an industry that is supposed to be leading America out of the Great Recession. “That’s happened with every new technology I’ve experienced in the last 40 years. So that’s not too surprising.”
No it hasn’t.
“Every new technology” like cell phones, and personal computers, and PDAs didn’t get billions in federal stimulus dollars after Washington Masters of the Universe anointed them the Jobs of the Future.
No, these industries developed core customers, and solid business models, and attracted billions in private capital as a result. By contrast, Obama & Co. have decreed an artificial market based on a dream and thrown money at chosen firms like A1243 to service it. Lacking any market perspective, Washington’s venture splurge has created a glut of battery manufacturers chasing too few electrical customers with too many batteries.
“This is important not just because of what you guys are doing at your plant, but all across America, because this is about the birth of an entire new industry in America – an industry that’s going to be central to the next generation of cars,” The One told Vieau at the White House in 2010.
Talk about your messiah complex. How could he possibly know that with a legal degree and a career in social activism?
“Investors recently have shown little faith in the company,” reports Ann Arboe.com of the private equity companies with a little more experience in such things. A123 stock debuted at $13.40 a share in its Sept. 29, 2009 IPO. It has since declined a whopping 93 percent, to an all-time low of $2.01 on Nov. 25, 2011. This is where American taxpayer dollars have gone to “stimulate” the American economy.
Suckers.
Obama’s job predictions have been no better than his stock picking. In 2010, he promised that A123 would create 3,000 jobs in Michigan alone. His Michigan ally, another lawyer and then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm, put the figure at 5,000.
They have been spectacularly wrong. Today, A123’s personnel count has fallen from a high of 1000 to about 700.
A123’s Vieau is better at selling pols than product. His company has yet to make a dime. But neither have other bankrupt Michigan recipients of green stimulus like Fisher Coachworks and RASCO and Evergreen – not to mention national embarrassments like Solyndra.
Payne: Justice admits misleading on Terry smoking gun (The Michigan View 12.05.11)
Posted by hpayne on December 5, 2011
Gungate, the growing scandal surrounding botched federal sting Operation Fast and Furious that sold firearms to Mexican drug dealers, took an explosive turn Friday as President Obama’s Justice Department admitted it had provided misleading information on guns involved in the murder of Michigan native and federal customs agent Brian Terry.
“(U.S. Attorney in Phoenix Dennis) Burke said that the guns found at the Terry murder scene were purchased at a Phoenix gun shop before Operation Fast and Furious began,” reports the AP. “In fact, the operation was under way at the time and the guns found at the Terry murder scene were part of the probe. ”
The department’s document dump came late Friday in order to minimize media publicity. Michigan’s MSM has largely ignored the scandal even as Michigan’s Terry has been at the center of the disturbing operation.
The truth about the weapons involved in Terry’s death were part of a larger admission of falsehoods by Eric Holder’s Justice Department. “In a letter last February to Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had not sanctioned the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser and that the agency makes every effort to intercept weapons that have been purchased illegally,” continues the AP report.
“In Operation Fast and Furious, both statements turned out to be incorrect.”
The revelation comes after Terry’s family has been publicly critical of AG Holder for not being more forthcoming on their son’s death and for not apologizing for the botched federal operation.
The Friday document dump revealed the inner workings of a Justice Department at odds with Congressional oversight. U.S. Attorney Burke – who has since been removed from his post – wrote: “By the way, what is so offensive about this whole project” of response “is that Grassley’s staff, acting as willing stooges for the Gun Lobby, have attempted to distract from the incredible success in dismantling” Southwest Border “gun trafficking operations” and “not uttering one word of rightful praise and thanks to ATF – but, instead, lobbing this reckless despicable accusation that ATF is complicit in the murder of a fellow federal law enforcement officer.”
In truth, it seems that the ATF is very much complicit and will likely add fuel to the Terry family’s plans for a federal lawsuit.
Leftover turkeys ( The Michigan View 11.27.11)
Posted by hpayne on November 28, 2011
You can’t find the solution unless you know the problem. Yet, as Detroit teeters on the brink of bankruptcy this Thanksgiving holiday, its pundit class continues to gobble, gobble, gobble like a pen of confused turkeys.
Detroit is getting the stuffing knocked out of it because:
1. An 80 percent illegitimacy rate has destroyed the two-parent family – the absence of which is the Number One cause of poverty in America – feeding the three-headed pathology of illiteracy, unemployment, and crime.
2. The middle class has fled as a result of #1.
3. City government maintains the region’s worst city services with the region’s highest property taxes, extinguishing incentive for #2 to move back into the city.
4. Public employee union costs are unsustainably high, putting increasing pressure on a budget that shrinks with the flight of the middle class tax base because of #1.
As fundamental as dribbling, shooting, passing, and screening is to basketball, so are those fundamentals to understanding how to turn around Detroit.
Yet, in a remarkable, wing-flapping reent feature called “Living with Murder,” the Detroit Free Press never once addressed any of them. Not once. Instead the paper organized a “community forum” so that people can “talk” about “solutions.” Like “encouraging urban gardening” and “increased access to transportation.”
We’re not making this up. Family destruction has created an assembly line of murderers preying on Detroit citizens and city elites organize gabfests. Gobble, gobble, gobble.
The Freep is not alone. National media routinely find hope in Detroit without getting to know the team or its lack of fundamentals. Take Forbes magazine which, in a June 29 cover story, called Detroit the “City of Hope.” Again, we’re not making this up.
Detroit quickly made a chump out of this prediction with a spectacularly bloody summer followed by this fall’s budget crisis. Of course, little of this was foreshadowed in reporter Joann Muller’s fairy tale which ignored Detroit’s core problems by interviewing Detroit celebrity businessmen about the region’s business comeback – a largely suburban phenomenon divorced from the gritty reality of Detroit proper. Only Quicken Loans’ Dan Gilbert really looked at the city itself – focusing on his own heroic efforts in downtown Detroit’s one-square mile business district.
The city’s other 137 square miles? Ignored by Forbes.
Then there are city boosters like James Melton, a Detroit-based columnist with the Northstar Writers Group, who takes MIView contributor and Detroit News columnist Nolan Finley to task for having the audacity to point out that Detroit’s gobbling leadership is dooming the city to financial failure.
Melton’s solution? “Regionalism.”
“Regionalism gets started when we recognize that the lines on the map of southeast Michigan are imaginary,” writes Melton. “The middle class people who fled the city over the past half century did not, I hate to tell them, flee far enough. Like it or not, we’re all in this together. But whether you realize it or not, you are missing something – a lot of things, in fact. More power is generated simply from the magic of urban density, which brings together people and ideas in unexpected ways.”
Got it? Me neither. But he would have been very comfortable at the Freep’s happy talk community forum session. Gobble, gobble, gobble.
Payne: Newt’s immigration solution (The Michigan View 11.26.11)
Posted by hpayne on November 26, 2011
Jon Caldara of Colorado’s Independence Institute says immigration policy has become as emotionally divisive an issue as abortion, and the over-the-top, black-and-white reaction to Newt Gingrich’s sensible suggestion for immigration reform this week is evidence.
The heart of Gingrich’s proposal was for a guest worker program which is essential to any immigration reform. Presently, the U.S. creates the perverse magnet of the world’s greatest migrant labor market – but without the work papers to make it legal. Gingrich and others sensibly propose a guest worker program in addition to a the traditional track of citizenship.
“The Krieble Foundation is a very good red card program that says you get to be legal, but you don’t get a pass to citizenship,” Gingrich said at Tuesday’s Heritage-sponsored presidential debate. “And so there’s a way to ultimately end up with a country where there’s no more illegality, but you haven’t automatically given amnesty to anyone… I would urge all of you to look at the Krieble Foundation Plan.”
If that’s the first you’ve heard of Newt’s “red card” comments, you’re not the first. Media coverage largely ignored them.
That’s because Gingrich’s GOP opponents went straight for immigration red meat rather than engage in a serious discussion. Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney both screamed “amnesty” – a calculated term to inflame the debate. And the MSM, eager for political conflict, followed them right down the rabbit hole.
This knee jerk came from Gingrich’s nuanced answer on a “humane” solution to the already 12 million illegals in the country today. But Romney & Co. reacted as if the only solution is to send troops into every corner of America and round up a population the size of Ohio for deportation. This is absurd, of course. All the more so because Flip-flop Mitt knows better, having once been on the other said of the issue, calling in 2007 for “permanent residency or citizenship” for the “12 million or so that are here illegally.”
Oops, as Rick Perry might say.
Admittedly, Gingrich likes the intellectual conceit of referring to things like the “Krieble Foundation plan” instead of the plain English of “guest worker permits.” But his comprehensive solution of border enforcement, worker permits, and citizenship is the path to real reform. It is also the only path for a Republican Party whose negative, nativist “secure the borders, secure the borders, secure the borders” mantra is fast alienating the fastest-growing minority in America, Hispanics.
Divisive politics is for Occupiers and Obama. Republicans should ignore immigration’s black and white extremes and build a red coalition – starting with the red card program.
Henry Payne is editor of The Michigan View.com
Obama’s sputtering transplant (The Michigan View 11.23.11)
Posted by hpayne on November 23, 2011
In his massive surgery to graft the European model onto the United States, Barack Obama’s Fiat 500 is the latest failure.
Behind this week’s automotive trades headlines that Fiat’s brand chief has been fired from Chrysler North America is the fact that Obamacar has limped out of the starting gates in the USA. The tiny, 40 mpg Fiat 500 was Green Church elder Obama’s central requirement in handing Chrysler over to Fiat for free in 2009. Fiat is “committed to building new fuel-efficient cars and engines right here in the United States,” Obama said in hailing Fiat as the European tutor come to school Chrysler dopes on how to make green cars. “Fiat is prepared to transfer its cutting-edge technology to Chrysler.”
Since lecturing Detroit automakers as a candidate in 2007, Obama has fashioned himself an expert on what Americans want in an automobile. His choice of Fiat was inspired by the chance to bring the Eurobox to the States. Never mind that gas prices in Europe are $8 a gallon. Or that Americans drive longer distances. Or that Europeans demand smaller cars for narrower streets.
The One knows autos.
In March of 2009, Obama initially denied Chrysler bailout funds unless its business plan included more small cars. The president’s auto task force urged the Chrysler-Fiat alliance saying it “has the potential to address some of these problems and provide Chrysler with a path to viability. A Chrysler/Fiat alliance could lead to Chrysler manufacturing fuel-efficient vehicles using Fiat’s technology.”
Fast forward two years and 500 sales have a flat. Meanwhile, Americans are gobbling up Chrysler SUVs – in defiance of Obama’s Europath for the company – and fueling the automaker’s resurgence.
In October, Chrysler’s Jeep truck brand sold 35,000 vehicles (with fat $5k profit margins) as the company posted a $200 million third-quarter profit. The Fiat 500 sold just 2,000 copies.
Despite a splashy U.S. debut including an ad campaign featuring pop star Jennifer Lopez and expensive, wrap-around, front page ads in USA Today, 500 “sales are far below projections,” reports The Detroit News.” About 15,800 Fiat 500s have been sold in the U.S. through October. That makes it nearly impossible to meet the target of 50,000 a year in North America annually.”
Obamacar is hurting on its home continent as well. The brand had been losing market share and is unprofitable. The Fiat 500 is more evidence that – like Solyndra and windmills – Obama’s fascination with Europe has little to do with facts and everything to do with ideology. The president is determined to convert Americans to the Green Church – but they aren’t buying.
Now, if every ccar came equipped with Jennifer Lopez. . . .
Payne: Hoorah for Supercommittee failure ( The Michigan View 11.22.11)
Posted by hpayne on November 22, 2011
The deficit reduction supercommittee failed. Good.
As Washington’s parallel universe – Michigan under Granholm – proved in the great 2007 budget deadlock, lurching from crisis to crisis and cobbling together backroom deals on deadline in no way to run a government. Indeed, the solution is worse than failure. In 2007, Senate GOPers caved to pressure from Granhom and her media parrots – and the straitjacket of a balanced budget requirement.
Under a “compromise” hailed by the media, GOPers caved to a 12 percent income tax hike and new business service taxes raising $1.5 billion in return for fragile promises of spending reform. Within days, reported the Mackinac Center, “the legislature passed bills spending the entire $1.4 billion.” Three years later, the deficit had ballooned to $2 billion
Only the election of a GOP governor and legislature stemmed the red ink. That’s the lesson for the nation. In a deeply split country, only elections can bring fiscal discipline.
Like Granholm, Obama has abdicated his responsibility as leader, using the budget process as campaign fodder. The president teed up the supercommittee as a shot in his 2012 campaign game to “blame a do-nothing Congress.” A failed deal also feeds his class warfare theme that GOPers are “protecting the wealthy’s tax breaks” (i.e. the Bush tax cuts that Obama himself supported just last year).
The supercommitte was always a political trap. “You remember that $800 billion revenue number always floating around from the Democratic leaks?” reports Larry Kudlow of National Review. “Well, that’s the static-revenue estimate of repealing the 35 percent and 33 percent Bush rates. And sometimes that Democratic revenue number moved up to $1.2 trillion. Well, that would include the static-revenue estimate of the 5.6 percent millionaire surtax. Get it? In an important sense, the whole supercommittee debate from the Democratic side was about taxing the rich.”
Democrats’ media parrots played along.
“Days away from a deadline, Congress’s deficit-reduction supercommittee is stymied, stumped in large part by one of Washington’s seemingly unsolvable problems: What to do with the Bush-era tax cuts?” wrote the Wall Street Journal joining the Democratic chorus. “Republicans are digging in against any agreement that does not extend current income-tax rates, which are scheduled to expire at the end of 2012.”
In a dramatic example of today’s divided media, the Journals’ own editorial page had to remind its readers of what its front page refused to tell them: Spending, not a lack of taxes, had taken us to this precipice.
“Domestic programs received a nearly $300 billion windfall under the 2009 stimulus, so a sequester would take back a little more than one-fifth in 2013,” reported the editorial page. “Total domestic discretionary spending doubled to $614 billion in 2010 from $298 billion in 2000. Since 2008 the Pentagon budget has grown by 10 percent, versus 24 percent for nondefense discretionary, 37 percent for Medicaid, 70 percent for education and more than 100 percent for food stamps.”
The whole exercise was a sham. Republicans should ignore it. America should ignore it. The real solution is defeating Obama in 2012. Just as the only solution for Michigan’s fiscal woes was defeating Granholm in 2010.
A Hog inspires a Nerd ( The Michigan View 11.16.11)
Posted by hpayne on November 16, 2011
Thank a Hog for the Nerd.
At a Mackinac Center dinner in Lansing Monday night featuring Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Governor Rick Snyder did the honors of introducing a neighbor he has long credited as his gubernatorial role model. “He was kind giving me so many ideas that I stole,” said Snyder in revealing that a trip to see Indiana’s CEO in 2009 helped form his ideas of applying metrics to government.
Snyder also revealed that Daniels had something to do with the Nerd’s signature campaign slogan.
“Governor Daniels is famous for motorcycle rides,” said Snyder of the Harley-riding Hoosier Hog. “I brought that back to my wife, Sue. She was kind enough to say, ‘Honey you’re a nerd. You can’t ride a motorcycle.'”
One Tough Nerd rode that all the way to Lansing.
But the evening highlighted the similarities between the two men – both former corporate exces (Daniels with Eli Lilly and Snyder with Gateway Computer) who took their private-sector experience to the governor’s office. Both made balanced budgets a priority in their first term, and both focused on making government more efficient through metrics and “dashboards” measuring achievement.
“A balanced budget for one year is simply not efficient. We are going beyond that. We are going to show fiscal responsibility on the balance sheet and not just the income statement. That’s something Gov. Daniels and Indian led the way in,” said Snyder.
But Daniels’ outward taste for biker leather indicates a swagger that may signal the most significant difference with the quieter Snyder.
Whereas the Nerd has shied from public confrontations with union bullies (while still earning their enmity), Governor Hog notoriously body-slammed Big Labor on his first day in office. By executive order, he decertified all government employee unions by executive order thus removing the requirement that state employees pay union dues. Dues-paying union membership subsequently dropped 90 percent among state employees, significantly reducing a political war chest – funded by taxpayer dollars- that unions had used to fight Republicans.
Perhaps trying to instill some of that Hog attitude in his Nerd friend as Snyder embarks on Year #2 in office, Daniels gave this piece of advice: “Whatever needs to be done, do it quickly,” he said. “Do it now.”
The Romney auto ambush (The Michigan View 11.11.11)
Posted by hpayne on November 11, 2011
With relish, former Michigan Governor Granholm, the Democratic Party, and their CNBC allies ganged up on Mitt Romney at the Michigan debate with what they think is a sure-fire winner for President Obama in the key swing state of Michigan: the auto bailout.
“When the U.S. auto companies were on the brink of collapse Michigan native Mitt Romney actually went so far as to write an appalling opinion piece in the New York Times titled, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.'” wrote Granholm in a pre-debate column for NBC. “What if Mitt Romney Had Been President in 2009?”
When Washington “was considering financial assistance for the automakers, you said, no, let Detroit go bankrupt.” parroted CNBC debate host John Harwood Wednesday night.
In fact, Romney advocated doing EXACTLY what the Obama Administration did: Let Detroit go bankrupt.
That’s right. The 2009 Obama “auto bailout” was a “managed bankruptcy” – just what Romney had advocated in 2008. A managed bankruptcy is a restructuring of a company with government serving as financier-of-last-resort (as with frozen capital markets in the Great Recession). The difference between Obama and Romney was in how it was restructured.
“My view with regards to the bailout was. . . that it was the wrong way to go,” responded Romney coolly to Harwood’s ignorant question.
Obama “managed” the bankruptcy with a heavy federal hand to favor Big Labor, shafting private investors with a return of only 29 cents on their dollar and rewarding the UAW with large ownership stakes. As a result, the Detroit companies – despite making strides towards more competitive wages – did not tackle the fundamental workplace rules that have plagued the industry for decades.
“Had Mitt Romney been president in 2009, he would have simply let General Motors and Chrysler meet their demise,” writes Granholm. That is a flat out lie.
What would Romney really have done? Read the New York Times article that Granholm cites: “A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk,” penned the ex-Massachusetts governor.
So much for letting them “meet their demise.” In fact, Romney’s approach would have left the companies and their unions to sort out their problems while government made sure needed capital to keep crucial supply lines running didn’t dry up.
Bankruptcy experts embraced Romney’s plan.
“GM would guarantee warranty support with a segregated fund if necessary. And debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing – loans that provide the near-term cash for reorganizing companies – is very safe,” wrote bankruptcy lawyer Michal E. Levine in The Wall Street Journal in July, 2008. “It would be lined up before a filing, not after, so any problems wouldn’t be a surprise. As a last resort, we could at least consider a public DIP loan to support a reorganizing GM with a good chance to survive.”
Having erected her straw man, Granholm goes on claim that Obama’s managed bankruptcy – er, bailout – has led to resurgence in the U.S. auto industry.
“The recovery package worked, GM and Chrysler are back on their feet, and more than 1.4 million jobs that otherwise would have been lost were saved,” she writes. “A lot of the credit for the good times at General Motors, Chrysler and to a certain extent Ford is going to the bailout orchestrated by President Barack Obama.”
Nonsense. A similar resurgence would have happened under Romney’s managed bankruptcy given the government guarantees Levine describes and the solid product in the pipeline before the 2008 financial crash.
What would be different is the long-term viability of GM and Chrysler.
Under Obama’s UAW Bailout, Detroit “won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed,” Romney wrote in 2008 (a bit too dramatically, I grant you). But in essence he is right. The Big Three are still less competitive than their non-union foreign competitors. The evidence? Already Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne is chaffing at two-tier union labor agreements.
It should also be noted that Romney’s smart, measured response (where was this measure on the ill-conceived Romneycare?) does not sit will with the black and white economics of the Right either.
As Granholm was bashing Romney from Debate Stage Left, Rick Perry was bashing Romney from Stage Right for considering any federal intervention at all. “Gannett News Service called Romney’s plan a ‘massive federal bailout,'” said Perry in a press release before the debate.
Nevermind that the release so twists the GNS quote as to border on fabrication. In fact, not providing government financing for a major manufacturing industry at a time of frozen capital markets would have been suicidal. Both Bush and Obama and Romney agreed on that much. The tragedy is that a Democratic president put his foot on the scales of a managed bankruptcy.
GOP debate, the Michigan lesson ( The Michigan View 11.08.11)
Posted by hpayne on November 8, 2011
he Republican candidates should hold every debate in Michigan. Under its attractive-Harvard-trained-lawyer-with-no-executive-experience-who-wanted-to-transform-Michigan-to-a-Green-economy (sound familiar yet?) Gov. Jennifer Granholm, the state from 2002-2010 was a blueprint for everything Obama has tried as president.
Before the federally-subsidized Solyndra scandal, there was the scandalous, Michigan-subsidized RASCO fiasco.
Before Obama’s $800 billion stimulus there was Granholm’s 2006 $2 billion stimulus (It will “create tens of thousands of new jobs. We’ll invest. . . public and private funds to develop new sectors of our economy. In five years you’ll be blown away,” she said).
Before there was a debt ceiling showdown threatening a government shutdown there was Granholm’s 2007 budget showdown that shut down government.
Before Obama’s proposed tax hike in the middle of a recession, there was Granholm’s 14 percent recession tax hike — all the revenue from which was immediately spent, leading to an even larger $2 billion deficit.
Before Obama’s stubborn 9 percent unemployment, there was Granholm’s stubborn 11.4 percent unemployment.
Before Standard & Poor’s Obama downgrade, ratings services during Granholm’s reign downgraded the Wolverine State from “AA− with a stable outlook” to “AA− with a negative outlook.”
And so on.
And like the GOP presidential primary field on display at Oakland University Wednesday night, Granholm’s disastrous tenure brought a flood of GOP candidates for governor who ran a hard — often contentious — race for governor that resulted in a businessman being elected governor. Mitt Romney and Herman Cain, meet Governor Rick Snyder.
The ultimate lesson of “Michigan’s Lost Decade” (as we call it here) for the USA is that demagogues like Granholm and Obama do not change their spots. They do not compromise. They must be defeated at the polls.
Only then will things change.
Snyder’s election in 2010 — and the Republicans that rode in on his coat-tails — reversed Michigan’s course overnight. Within six months, a gaping state deficit had been erased. Special tax breaks — except those grandfathered in — for politically-connected corporations were eliminated. An impossibly complicated business tax code was simplified — and flattened. And the ratings agencies upgraded the state’s bond outlook.
Yes, Snyder has made political miscalculations as a rookie pol — as will businessmen Romney and Cain if elected. But in Washington — unlike Lansing where the GOP legislative leadership is suspect — Republicans have veteran, serious leaders like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell who will add starch to the executive spine.
As hopeless as Washington may seem today, Michigan is evidence that the country can survive arrogant zealots — and begin to rebuild.
Wright in Detroit – ‘War on the Poor’ (The Michigan View 11.06.11)
Posted by hpayne on November 6, 2011
Grand Circus Park, Detroit –“There is a War on the Poor,” roared Jeremiah “Goddamn America” Wright in downtown Detroit Sunday as he echoed the class warfare rhetoric of his former parishioner, Barack Obama. “(Is) the tea party any different than a lynch party?” Wright added.
How times have changed.
Coordinated with the nearby Occupy Detroit movement, Wright’s appearance was a dramatic illustration of how Democratic Party rhetoric has come full circle to parrot the extreme pastor that Obama distanced himself from in 2008. “Consider the GOP – the Grand Obstructionist Party – trying to put one black man out of his job,” said Wright in one of a pair of speeches at Central United Methodist Church (an ally of the Occupy Detroit movement ) that demonized rich corporations that he and Obama believe are at the center of America’s doldrums.
Wright’s speech was part of a chaotic day in Motown that brought together Obama’s 2012 base at Detroit’s “Obamaville.” Elected as the Great Uniter with a broad coalition of voters in 2008, the downtown scene was an illustration of how – after three years of Obamanomics – the president has become the Great Divider, leader of a narrow coalition of the angry.
A powerful orator, Wright’s sermons before the leftist Methodist congregation bore all his trademarks – delicious religious metaphor salted with anti-Israel rhetoric and gutter politics. But while the soaring recitation of biblical passages brought nods, his audience delighted in the red meat.
He blamed Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and the Koch Brothers and “conservative think tanks fueled by corporations” for a War on Poverty “that has waned.” He saw a pharmaceutical industry conspiracy to deny blacks AIDS remedies while making “money off people like Magic Johnson.” And he bemoaned a “new Jim Crow Era of mass incarceration” behind a veil of “law and order” whereby “white folk were the law, rich folks were the law. . . and black folks were out of order, the poor were out of order.”
Like Obama, Wright’s world is a sea of victims at the mercy of the faceless rich.
Bookended by Wright’s sermons was an afternoon Big Labor march down Woodward Avenue – Detroit’s main street – to hook up with the Occupy Detroit camp.
There the UAW launched a sympathy rally for Occupy Detroit. In fact, the rally was simply an affirmation that Occupy Detroit has been a Big Labor front all along as the rally assembled many of the same faces and signboards that had kicked off Occupy Detroit two weeks ago.
The UAW rally brought out Democratic Congressman Gary Peters – a self-proclaimed moderate and major campaign beneficiary of big banks and utilities – whose presence indicated the hold the Far Left has on Democrats. There were no moderates Sunday as speakers railed against corporations and demanded bigger government.
“The middle class has gotten the short end of the stick,” said Peters. But there was little middle class in evidence amongst a crowd of anti-capitalist activists, public employee union members, and left-wing students.
“What did you do in the Class War, Daddy?” demanded one of the Occupy posters. From Obama to Jeremiah Wright to Big Labor, this is the battle cry of a radicalized Democratic Party.