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2010: Trucks climb, hybrids fall (Michigan View 1.5.11)
Posted by hpayne on January 5, 2011
A year after two Detroit automakers emerged from bankruptcy, 2010 offered signs of hope for the U.S. auto industry with the Big Three automakers all showing solid sales gains.
They have SUVs to thank.
Washington pols and their press parrots relentlessly touted a new wave of electric vehicles like the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf. But green hybrid sales dropped 14 percent to just 2.4 percent of the market last year while light trucks roared back to a majority of vehicle sales fueled by low gas prices and fatter consumer wallets.
As a result, GM, Ford, and Chrysler all saw healthy gains in their bottom line as SUVs carry a substantial profit margin over small car sales.
Chrysler Group reported U.S. sales of 1.1 million vehicles in 2010, up 17 percent compared to 2009 on the strength of its popular Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUV products. And while President Obama heralded the company’s coming compact ” the tiny Fiat 500 ” Chrysler and Fiat chairman Sergio Marchionne prepared to expand the SUV lineup into Europe with Alfa Romeo and Maserati-badged trucks.
Ford sales were up 19 percent from 2009 on the strength of double-digit truck and car sales. And GM’s resurgence came on the back of 17 percent growth in its Chevy car and truck lines and a big 32 percent boost in GMC truck sales.
All told, trucks – which typically rake in twice the per vehicle profit of cars or more – gained three percent of total market share over a year ago to become the majority of vehicles sold in the U.S. at 50.2 percent. That’s good news for GM and Chrysler as they pay back big taxpayer loans.
The contrast in consumer tastes to Washington’s stated preference is startling.
President Obama and the Pelosicrats not only mandated vehicles get an average 35.5 mpg by 2015 but encouraged the sales of hybrids with $2500 subsidies. Yet sales of such vehicles actually declined.
On the whole, light trucks sales gained 18 percent while hybrid sales fell off by 5 percent. As manufacturers enter 2011 with oil on the rise at $100 a barrel, automakers will need to have a diverse lineup of vehicles to satisfy every consumer taste.
But 2010 made it clear that green is not an auto revolution ” it is just another niche of vehicle.
‘Cheap shot’: Guv, Brooks take the gloves off (The Michigan View 12.27.10)
Posted by hpayne on December 27, 2010
After eight years of division, bridge-burning, and kicking the can down the road, it was only appropriate that – in her last days as perhaps the state’s most ineffectual modern governor – Jennifer Granholm would take a shot at the state’s most effective pol, Oakland County Chief Executive Brooks Paterson.
“He through out his career has fanned the flames a lot,” she said of Patterson’s recent criticism of Detroit’s corrupt water department. “I urge him to come to the table with an open hand rather than a fist.”
Incendiary words from a Lansing politician whose ineffectiveness as governor has been in stark contrast to Patterson’s success as CEO of the state’s richest county. Indeed, as Granholm floundered in Lansing through two budget shutdowns, Patterson’s innovation in the face of reduced county revenue made him a rare bright spot in a leaderless landscape. “Inside Politics” political guru Bill Ballenger called Granholm Michigan’s worst governor while nationally-renowned, Lansing-based economist Pat Anderson called Patterson the “most successful elected official in Michigan.”
But the governor decided to stick her foot in it one more time. Patterson’s retort was typically frank.
“These were cheap shots, chicken shots,” he told Fox 2 News, noting that she made no similar remarks about the non-partisan Mayor Jim Fouts of Warren who has also been critical of Detroit corruption. “She’s a former prosecutor. . . either prove the charge or shut up.” Citing his extensive negotiations and contacts with Detroit officials, he said Granholm’s salvo showed “ignorance on her part. She doesn’t know what we’ve been doing. I’m disgusted. I think we’ve made a significant contribution to this state.”
Patterson also ridiculed Granholm’s attempt to take credit for diversifying the state’s economy, a strategy he says she stole from his own Automation Alley efforts in Oakland County. “The governor says her legacy is (economic) diversity,” said the Oakland County exec. “It’s absolute plagiarism.”
Granholm made her comments to Fox 2 political reporter Tim Skubick who was quick to came to the governor’s defense in his Oakland Press blog, blaming Patterson for forgetting “what time of the year this is…you know all that stuff about peace and good will.”
But Patterson’s reaction comes on the heels of similar remarks from outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester Hills), painting a picture of a governor who was more interested in scoring political points than getting things done.
“Gov. Granholm is a very smart lady,” Bishop told The Detroit News editorial board Dec. 10. “But she does not have one important thing: leadership instincts. She had a media machine that constantly attacked. I couldn’t leave town without fear of being attacked behind my back.”
The backstabs continue even as she exits the capitol.
Bishop says he warned Michigan voters in 2008 that “if you want your country to look like Michigan, then elect Barack Obama.” That is true not only of Granholm’s market socialist economic policies, but also of the deep partisan divide she has left in her wake.
Payne: Cash for Clunkers big tax hike ( The Michigan View 12.23.10)
Posted by hpayne on December 23, 2010
St. Louis – “SUVs’ comeback means bigger tax bills for some,” screamed the headline on the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch December 23, and taxpayers in the Show Me State are livid.
Here (and in other states like Virginia and South Carolina), taxes are levied on personal property, and – thanks to Nancy Pelosi’s destruction of thousands of used SUVs under the 2009 Cash for Clunkers bill – the prices of used cars are actually rising as light truck sales make a comeback.
“The personal property tax on Lisa Kamper’s Saturn Outlook was $443 this year, about $65 more than she paid last year. The 2008 sport utility vehicle had increased in value — by nearly 13 percent,” writes Post-Dispatch reporter David Nunn. “Tony Lucia’s 2007 Dodge Ram is costing him more this year, too. Its value surged by 8 percent, his taxes by $41.”
Both cars are a year older, and, by conventional wisdom, should have lost value, costing their owners less. But when U.S. House Speaker Pelosi ordered the destruction of all vehicles she and her Democratic colleagues deemed “gas guzzlers” a year ago, it distorted the used car market for SUVs.
Now, with SUVs a hot ticket again – sales are 53 percent of the market despite Pelosi’s efforts to “green” the industry – demand is outstripping supply.
“The market values of many used trucks and sport utility vehicles have risen, for the first time in memory,” says the Post-Dispatch, resulting in “hundreds of complaints from truck and SUV owners with ballooning tax bills” in cities like St. Louis.
Car sales plummeted to 10 million vehicles in 2009 at the same Pelosi declared SUVs enemies of the planet and targeted them for destruction when traded in for a Washington-approved fuel sippers. For the first time ever, more vehicles were scrapped than built.
Now, SUVs are back and buyers are willing to pay for the limited supply.
“On some vehicles, we’re talking like 20 percent increases,” Jonathan Banks of the dealers association’s Used Car Guide told the Post-Dispatch. Car prices, he says, have increased by 3 percent nationally – but big SUV prices have soared by nearly 10 percent.
Large trucks like Chevy Tahoes or Ford Expeditions that are 1-5 years old went from $17,300 in late 2007 to about $23,500 this year. Some indexes, says Banks have put used-car prices at their highest levels ever.
“St. Louis city officials said it was the first time they had seen used cars increase in value,” reports the Post-Dispatch. The result is bigger taxpayers and angry phone calls from confused residents.
But it’s not Missouri officials they should be blaming. It’s soon to be ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Feds: Detroit organized crime family (The Michigan View.com 12.16.10)
Posted by hpayne on December 16, 2010
Using legal instruments designed to bring down mafia mob bosses, the feds’ massive, 38-count federal indictment Thursday of the “Kilpatrick Enterprise” – if true – exposes a political empire built on shakedowns of city and federal taxpayers for tens of millions of dollars through extortion and bribery.
While then 31-year-old prodigy Kwame Kilpatrick was elected mayor in 2002 promising a new generation of city leadership, he was apparently just the new generation family don – a junior Detroit Corleone who saw his position as an opportunity to milk constituents to grease the palms of family and friends.
He came by his behavior naturally. While her son and husband were being indicted Thursday, Mob Mom Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick, Detroit’s soon-to-be-ex-representative in Congress, was shaking down – albeit legally – America’s taxpayers for $1.5 million in pork as Democrats forced through a last-minute omnibus spending bill in Washington.
The View’s Mike Brownfield has a full report here.
Cheek-Kilpatrick’s’ money grab came on top of news last week that she – and fellow Democratic Rep. John Conyers – were the only two members for the Michigan Congressional delegation to use taxpayer dollars for personal cars. How tacky – two state reps using the state’s poorest district to live a rich lifestyle.
Fox2 News reports about that here.
Indeed, Conyers is further proof that corruption is hereditary. His $80,000, $1250-amonth Cadillac Escalade Premium edition was leased – and illegally provided – for his 20-year-old son.
But as the Kilpatricks prove, Detroit corruption is a family affair. The federal indictment alleges that Kilpatrick and his father extorted “hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, free flights and other benefits from a variety of contractors. Some of the allegations date back to Kilpatrick’s days as a state representative before he was elected mayor in 2001.”
The Detroit News has the full report here.
The 13 instances of extortion read like something out of The Godfather. Kwame’s pal Bobby Ferguson, a construction contractor, allegedly “kicked back at least $424,000 in cash and other benefits to the former mayor and Bernard Kilpatrick deposited more than $600,000 in cash into his personal bank accounts while his son was mayor,” reports The News. For example:
— The mayor canceled a $10 million sewer repair contract because the winning bidder refused Ferguson’s demand for a 25 percent share. He awarded the work to another contractor who agreed to Ferguson’s demand.
— Twice Ferguson extorted contractors for $10.4 million in work on sewer repair contracts for Detroit. And he extorted a company for $5 million in work on a combined sewer and recreational facility.
Kwame is already in federal prison for violating probation. “If you steal from taxpayers, you are going to be held accountable,” said U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade after indicting the Kilpatricks under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) act traditionally used to combat organized crime.
Organized crime? That’s the Kilpatricks all right.
Protesting in Cancun, freezing in Michigan (The Michigan View.com 12.15.10)
Posted by hpayne on December 15, 2010
Should Michigan voters support a plan to send billions in tax dollars to mitigate global warming’s effects in the Third World at a time when their state is setting records for cold weather, their per capita income is down 5 percent in a decade, unemployment is hovering near 13 percent, and Detroit warming shelters are expecting a 25 percent increase in homeless?
“That’s a strong way to put the question,” says Andy Hoffman, professor of sustainable enterprise at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and the Environment, who just retuned from sunny Cancun with a U-M delegation of 30 students and alumni to monitor the 2010 United Nation’s Climate Summit.
It’s a question global warming activists should get used to.There’s a new sheriff in town in Michigan’s Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, the new chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who with other Republican legislators will be keen on asking why the United States tripled its funding of global warming aid to developing nations — to $1.7 billion — this year when deficits are out of control and global warming legislation is a dead letter among the American people.
A green advocate, EPA veteran, and prolific author, Hoffman is unfazed by the brutal weather than greeted his companions upon their return from Cancun. “One cold snap is not a sign that global warming is losing steam,” he says, though the Green movement itself has made a history of exploiting warm weather events to advance its agenda. “There are long-term concerns about shifting weather patterns. Think of the droughts in Africa.”
Last year’s Climategate scandal, however, revealed that top global warming scientists were manipulating data to fit their pre-conceived unions. That scandal — and a decade of flat temperatures — have combined to gut public support of the climate movement. An unpopular House cap-and-trade bill — passed with the support of the entire Michigan Democratic delegation — fueled this fall’s tea party rage against a Democratic Congress that seemed intent on burdening a crippled U.S. economy rather than helping it to its feet.
Hoffman seems undeterred.
He says spending billions “to develop technology and components transfer to developing nations” is crucial in heading off a climate catastrophe. He says that Upton & Co. should find somewhere else to cut — perhaps defense spending at a time when the U.S. is fighting two wars on the Mideast terror front. He deflects a question as to whether fighting global warming is as important as fighting the War on Terror, but says it’s essential that the U.S. not only send billions aboard but invest billions at home to develop green technologies.
“We should be doing what China is doing in renewables, or else we’re going to be buying these technologies from abroad,” he says, sounding a common theme of green envy for the Communist nation that — ironically — is building a new coal plant at the rate of one-per-month while the GranObama administrations have strangled coal power here. “Any new technology requires government support”This is poppycock, of course.
From automobiles to cell phones, new products have succeeded in America because its markets are relatively free of government interference. Capital is finite, and the more capital is free to find its most efficient use, that is where prosperity will grow.
Michigan and the nation are desperate for that kind of prosperity. Its electorate has just voted to steer away from Green Democrats who have diverted one-sixth of the trillion-dollar stimulus package to green technologies.
Rather than traveling to Cancun to lobby for a post-warming, green utopian future funded by U.S dollars, Hoffman’s U-M students might have spent the week in a Detroit soup kitchen, seeing how the poor freeze when the state’s economic engine, the auto industry, doesn’t produce enough carbon-burning vehicles.
Cox: Obamacare ruling ‘a welcome sign’ (Michigan View.com 12.15.10)
Posted by hpayne on December 15, 2010
Judge Henry Hudson’s ruling Monday declaring Obamacare’s individual mandate unconstitutional gave a boost to Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox whose office has joined 19 other AGs in Florida in the Mother of All Lawsuits against the Democrats’ health scheme.
“Never before in our history have you had to buy something as the price of citizenship,” Cox said in a Monday press release. “Today’s ruling is a welcome sign that Michigan’s legal challenge to this unprecedented overreach by Congress and the President will succeed.”
The Virginia ruling comes just two months after another district court judge in Detroit dismissed a challenge to the Obamacare mandate
“If Congress can require this, then there’s no check on federal power,” added Cox on The Frank Beckmann Show Tuesday AM. While Cox will be relinquishing his office this January, incoming AG Bill Schuette has said he will continue the suit. “I’ll pass it on to him,” Cox told Beckmann. “I will be watching with great interest. This case is important to what we are as a people.”
Like Michigan’s challenge, the Virginia district court case questioned Washington’s authority to force Americans to purchase a product as the price of citizenship. “If Congress can require this, then there is no check on federal power,” he warned in an appearance on The Frank Beckmann Show Tuesday AM.
While narrow in its scope and only addressing Virginia’s statute banning the mandate, Hudson’s ruling was a blow to the cornerstone of Obama’s takeover of health care and echoed the larger AG’s suit that Obamacare is a violation of the Commerce Clause.
“A thorough survey of pertinent constitutional case law has yielded no reported decisions from any federal appellate courts extending the Commerce Clause or General Welfare Clause to encompass regulation of a person’s decision not to
purchase a product,” wrote Hudson. “The unchecked expansion of congressional power to the limits suggested by the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision would invite
unbridled exercise of federal police powers. At its core, the dispute is. . . about an individual’s right to choose to participate.”
Back in October, District Court Judge George Steeh in Detroit bought Obama’s argument that the mandate was not a violation of the Commerce Clause. “By choosing to forgo insurance plaintiffs are making an economic decision to try to pay for health care services later, out of pocket, rather than now through the purchase of insurance, collectively shifting billions of dollars, $43 billion in 2008, onto other market participants.”
The next arena for this battle comes Thursday when Florida Judge Roger Vinson will hold a hearing on motions for summary judgment in the case.
The conflicting opinions lead many observers to project the case will ultimately be settled by a deeply divided U.S. Supreme Court – an appropriate end to the highly partisan legislation that seeks to regulate nearly 20 percent of the U.S. economy. In a symbol of his divisive presidency, Obama is the first president to pass modern domestic legislation without a single vote from the opposing party.
True to form, Metro Detroit Congressional reps split on the Virginia decision along partisan lines.
“I have stood firm in my position that Congress had no authority to impose a mandate that an individual purchase health insurance,” said Republican Rep. Candice Miller in supporting Hudson’s decision.
By contrast, Democrat Rep. Sander Levin didn’t try to make a legal argument for the mandate – the administration has argued everything from tax law to the Commerce Clause to justify it – but simply said “a quality health care system for all Americans is built on the premise that responsibility is shared between employers, the government, and the individual.”
He also took a partisan shot at Hudson as a biased “Bush appointee.”
Granholmnomics is already the national model (12.11.10)
Posted by hpayne on December 12, 2010
After leading Michigan through a lost decade and her party to a resounding defeat on November 2, Governor Jennifer Granholm wants America to know that history will smile on her legacy. In a post-election public relations offensive, Granholm last week proclaimed herself a visionary who has built the foundation of a “Green Belt” economy in Michigan that should be implemented nationally.
It already has.
“If you want your country to look like Michigan, then elect Barack Obama,” Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop warned Presidential-candidate John McCain in 2008 – explaining how Obama intended to follow the Granholm economic model of public stimulus and green tech subsidy.
Indeed, since taking office in 2009, Obamanomics has mirrored Granholmnomics with the same disastrous results: a stalled economy and a historic election defeat that gave a mandate to Republicans to reject European market socialism. In a defiant Detroit News interview and an op-ed article for both The Huffington Post and Politico, Granholm urges Michigan and America to stay the course.
Obama and Granholm are natural allies. Both are attractive, charismatic Harvard-trained lawyers with no experience in business, a missionary’s belief in spreading global warming gospel, and a zeal for green tech.
Convinced that Michigan must play a central role in their utopian vision of a post-carbon America, Obama recruited Granholm to lead a discussion of the “new economy” at the 2008 Democratic Convention and then tapped her expertise again for his economic policy team upon entering the White House in 2009.
The subsequent similarities between Obamanomics and Granholmnomics are striking. Compare, for example, Granholm’s January, 2008 State of the State address with an Obama campaign speech later that same year.
Granholm:
“I’m proposing a Michigan economic stimulus package — nearly a billion dollars for needed infrastructure and building improvements. But let me talk for a moment about one sector that has blockbuster potential for Michigan: alternative energy . . . . Because of the need to reduce global warming and end our dependence on expensive foreign oil, the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries will create millions of good paying jobs. I say we will win these jobs for Michigan and replace the lost manufacturing jobs with a whole new, growing sector.”
Obama:
“(My stimulus plan) will be a two-year, nationwide effort to jumpstart job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy. We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels, fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.”
Central to Granhobama economics is the belief that government should pick economic winners and losers – devoting public resources to investing in politically-favored, green companies.
In her HuffPo article, Granholm pretends that Michigan has been a “laboratory” and that “Washington can take a lesson from what is happening in Michigan,.” In fact, Granholm’s state vision has been entirely dependent on federal largesse – a fact that she later admits, writing that “we pancaked our state incentives on top of the competitive federal Department of Energy grants to advanced battery companies and suppliers.”
True to Obama’s 2008 speech, he has devoted stimulus money to feed his – and Granholm’s – new economy vision. “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 —Obama’s $787 billion stimulus — has been marketed as a jobs bill (that) has obscured its more enduring mission: a long-term push to change the country,” reveals Time Magazine’s Michael Grunwald.
“One-sixth of the total (stimulus) cost,” writes Time, “(this) is an all-out effort to exploit the crisis to make green energy, green building and green transportation real; launch green manufacturing industries.” In a “trickle-up” transfer of wealth from taxpayers to rich corporations, billons in federal dollars have gone to GM, Ford, South Korea’s LGChem, A123 Systems and other Big Green firms in Michigan – and other states.
“We need a moon shot – a Jobs Race to the Top,” writes Granholm. “Race to the Top” meet “21st Century Jobs Fund” – an identical, $2 billon state plan she put in place in 2006 in Michigan to award green companies with public funds (of 505 applicants, 67 won Michigan’s “race to the top” in the program’s first year).
“In five years, you’re going to be blown away,” she said in 2006. But five years later, Michigan’s unemployment rate has doubled. This time, she’s moderated her rhetoric to a national goal to “create three million new jobs in three years.”
Obama has followed her model to the letter – right down to the moon shot analogy. “We’re taking chances, because that’s how you put a man on the moon,” says the Energy Department’s Arun Majumdar about federal funding of grid-scale storage, solar energy and other green technologies are too costly to compete without subsidies.
The result? Like Michigan, the economic recovery since the recession ended in mid-2009 has been slow compared to past recoveries.
Though economically obtuse, Granholm’s article gives a glimpse into her – and her White House ally’s – sheer audacity.
“Here’s how it works,” she says. “Take funds the U.S. now spends on economic development programs (about $170 billion). Focus the competition on clean energy job creation. Devote the competition to rewarding the most effective public-private partnerships. (For example) state governments might give incentives for solar energy production.”
More humble policymakers would just return that $170 billion to the private sector. But Granholm and Obama want to be like private investment bankers making investment picks (turning government “into the world’s largest venture-capital fund,” says Time). The difference being that investment in their tax-funded venture is mandatory and does not have to produce financial results!
What happens when the subsidies run out? Just as Granobama have looked to Europe for inspiration, look to Europe for the fallout. In total financial collapse due to pursuing its reckless Greenomics, Spain is gutting the subsidies that have propped up its green experiment.
Granholm claims she (and Obama) have created the foundation for a new economy. But it is a model built on the quicksand of government subsidy.
Bishop: Mulhern ‘extremely counterproductive’ (THe Michigan View 12.9.10)
Posted by hpayne on December 9, 2010
In a candid, wide-ranging interview Wednesday with The Detroit News editorial board, departing Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, painted first man Dan Mulhern as a crazy in-law in a dysfunctional Lansing political family that bickered through the last four years even as the state’s fiscal situation imploded. At a time when Michigan desperately needed leadership to address its fundamentals, Lansing instead was led by a feckless Gov. Jennifer Granholm and a split legislature where Democrats and Republicans deeply mistrusted one another’s motives.
“Dan Mulhern was never present during any negotiation I had. He has been extremely counterproductive,” said Bishop in response to Mulhern’s broadside this weekend blaming the senator for his wife’s troubled tenure. “It was like he was scared of her,” Mulhern told the Detroit Free Press. “So how do you negotiate with someone who is scared of you?”
“Gov. Granholm is a very smart lady,” said Bishop, who led the Republican Senate for the Democratic governor’s last term. “But she does not have one important thing: leadership instincts.”
Worse, Bishop described a governor more interested in political intrigue than in building bipartisan bridges. “She had a media machine that constantly attacked,” he said describing the pair’s chilly relationship. “She came at me all the time. It’s hard to build trust with someone who doesn’t’ want to bring down the wall. I couldn’t leave town without fear of being attacked behind my back.”
The result was a state government that shut down twice — in 2007 and 2009 — without a budget agreement. Granholm, Bishop said, would introduce reforms such as a service tax, but always as stalking horses to increase taxes – a non-starter for Republicans who feared tax hikes would send the wrong message at a time in which the state was struggling to retain businesses.
Indeed, the governor’s 12 percent hike in personal income taxes in 2007 did nothing to stem budget red ink, says Bishop. “It did damage to the business environment here and revenues fell off anyway because we were losing manufacturing.”
Meanwhile, Republican proposals also went nowhere unless Democrats extracted revenue hikes in return. Lacking the strategic skills of former Senate leader John Engler, Bishop nevertheless focused his caucus on union pay reform, proposing a five percent pay cut and 20 percent co-pays on health insurance to bring public workers’ costs more in line with the private sector. Bishop says he valued a solid relationship with Democratic House Speaker Andy Dillon – “Andy and I generally saw eye to eye” — though Dillon’s embrace of union reform increasingly cast him as a heretic in his own caucus.
This leaderless, rudderless menagerie of political doctors came at a time when the Michigan patient was suffering severe trauma to its vital signs. Hemorrhaging revenue as Detroit’s auto industry went south, the state budget was being consumed by entitlement costs (“Medicaid has ballooned 60 percent since 2000,” says Bishop) and union benefits. In addition, Granholm was strangling business with increased regulations.
In 2008, when the McCain for President campaign pulled up its Michigan stakes to concentrate elsewhere, Bishop pleaded (to no avail) with McCain to stay. He told McCain that Michigan should be his base camp. He told him that Granholmnomics was Obamanomics in practice.
He told McCain he should warn voters that “if you want your country to look like Michigan, then elect Barack Obama.”
Instead of addressing the state’s fiscal fundamentals, Granholm applied Band-Aids. Treated with budget tricks, tobacco settlement money, and federal stimulus dollars, the patient’s problems were masked. “The governor was never good at dragging the big issues across the finish line,” reflects Bishop.
Now the Snyder administration will inherit the mess. Bishop is optimistic that Michigan is fixable, ticking off a handful of reforms – “low-hanging fruit” he calls them – from holding department heads accountable for budgets to punishing pols who miss votes. “Snyder has a mandate to make big changes,” he says.
The biggest change needed? Leadership.
Chairman UpendObamacare ( The Michigan View 12.8.10)
Posted by hpayne on December 8, 2010
Maul the Midwest. Coddle California. Dictate to doctors. Hobble health care. Ban the bulb. Cancel coal. Destroy Detroit. Grovel to the Greens.
Goodbye to all that.
Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Left Coast) is out. Hail the new Chairman Fred Upton (R-Middle America).
In a demonstration of the sea change that November 2 has brought to Washington, Upton – an auto-friendly, Obamacare-reviling, global warming critic – has been given the reins over the House committee with perhaps more power to reverse President Obama’s radical agenda than any other: Energy and Commerce.
With jurisdiction over the EPA and the Department of Health and Human Series, Upton has a chance to deal crippling blows to Obama’s anti-carbon and pro-national health care vision. In an extraordinary turnabout, Michigan will go from being in the cross-hairs of Chairman Waxman, a Green religious zealot with a Left Coast disdain for “flyover country,” to being in the driver’s seat under the 13- term Chairman Upton from St. Joseph. Upton will also be a very different chair from the last Michigander to hold the post, John Dingell, who – though pro-auto – used the bully pulpit to preach socialized medicine.
Upton seems energized by the challenge.
“I look forward to standing shoulder to shoulder with Speaker Boehner, Leader Cantor, Whip McCarthy and the entire Republican Conference as we repeal Obamacare, fight rampant job-killing regulations, cut spending, and help put folks back to work,” he roared upon learning of his coveted new post Tuesday afternoon.
“We face many challenges, but priority number one is to repeal the job-killing Obamacare law,” continued Upton, signaling to the Tea Party-led electorate that Republicans heard them loud and clear.
Under Waxman, leftist HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was given a free hand to impose Obamacare and demonize business. Just days after the election, Waxman applauded Sebelius’ new rules mandating how insurers had to spend their premium dollars..
“In today’s market, too many insurers – particularly in the individual health care market – charge high premiums and yet spend 30 percent or more on administrative costs, high salaries, and profits,” declared the Dictator from Beverly Hills.
Shot back Upton today: “If we have learned anything these last two years of soaring unemployment and out-of-control spending, it is that government is not the answer to all our ills.” Ultimately, Upton recognizes that his committee’s charge is not just to oversee – but to reverse Obama’s agenda entirely.
The congressman, who served in the Reagan Administration from 1981-5, told the Washington Examiner’s Byron York that his task is like the “game Jenga, in which small wooden blocks are stacked in a tower. Players remove blocks from the lower part of the tower and place them on the top, seeing how high they can raise the structure before it collapses from lack of support below.”
“Ultimately the tower falls,” Upton told York. “I’m convinced that if you take the health care law and begin to look at all of the different parts, you can make it fall.”
He will also fight a rogue EPA which Waxman gave free run to regulate carbon emissions in defiance of public will and the failure of Washington to pass cap and trade.” The Obama administration is on notice – they will not be allowed to regulate what they have been unable to legislate,” says Upton in direct shot across EPA’s bow.
Upton’s reward comes after a challenge from Joe Barton of Texas. Barton’s opposition was fueled by concern about Upton’s commitment to principle as he was a co-sponsor of the outrageous 2007 law that banned Americans from buying incandescent light bulbs by 2012. The law has not only denied consumers’ choice but destroyed hundreds of American manufacturing jobs. Upton, a team player by reputation, pushed the law on behalf of his president at the time, George Bush – who himself was trying to buy his way into Green heaven after a lifetime as an oil man.
Upton has indicated has learned his lesson. While repeal of Obamacare will take some time, Upton can reassure the troops immediately with one bold stroke:
Restore the bulb.
Tax cuts for the rich: Should Ilitch keep it or Pelosi spend it? (The Michigan View 12.3.10)
Posted by hpayne on December 3, 2010
As a punch-drunk America staggers towards a massive Washington tax left hook on January 1, Washington Democrats and their media chorus are framing it in the ol’ class warfare language of keeping tax cuts for the wealthy. But the premise is misleading. After all, “the wealthy” are people — entrepreneurs, innovators, job creators.
Here’s a better question: Is it better, for example, that entrepreneur Mike Ilitch keep his millions in Detroit — or ship them to Washington?
Remove the media class caricature and put a human face on America’s wealthy, and the choice is a no-brainer. The $10 million-a-year that Ilitch could keep from the Bush tax cuts, according to a back-of-the-envelope assessment of Ilitch’s tax bill by experts, would be a huge boon to Detroit from one of its savviest investors. Sending his hard-earned dollars to D.C., on the other hand, would guarantee its disappearance down a rat-hole of bureaucracy, administrative paperwork, politically-correct-experimental-green-projects, pork and so on.
“Who could do more with $10 million-a-year for the city of Detroit — Ilitch or the feds?” asks one financial expert drafted by The Michigan View.com to assess Ilitch’s tax exposure.
Ilitch, and “the wealthy” like him in Michigan — DeVos, Meijer, Penske, Gilbert, Taubman, Brown, and so on — are human job engines. They are economic multipliers — investors capable of mobilizing not just their own millions but inspiring investment from others in more businesses, communities and cities. Ilitch, for example, is currently pursuing a multi-million dollar strategy for downtown Detroit that would further define its core city as a destination for sports and entertainment and multiply opportunities for restaurants and small retail. Every dollar that he spends in Detroit means jobs and development.
As a privately-held company, we do not know Ilitch Holdings’ tax liability, or how much they have saved from the Bush tax cuts. But we do know that in 2010 Mike Ilitch is #238 on America’s wealthiest list with a net worth of some $1.7 billion. The Michigan View.com asked local financial experts — top area accountants and a money manager – to conservatively estimate what Ilitch would have to cough up to the feds if tax cuts were to expire on Americans making more than $250,000 a year.
Iltich’s holdings are vast — from sports teams to real estate to restaurants — but we asked our gurus to make very general, rule-of-thumb estimates of his potential income. They settled on three pillars: income earnings, capital gains, and real estate capital gains. To make our estimate as simple as possible, we reduced it to two: income and capital gains, both of which will be subject to Obama’s New Year tax hike.
Estimating a ten percent profit, Ilitch’s taxable income would be $170 million in his 35 percent top bracket – or $59 million. If the Bush tax cuts expire, Ilitch’s tax rate would increase by 4.6 percent to 39.6 percent or an increased tax bill of $8.3 million.
Capital gains? Conservatively estimating 30 percent of his wealth is in paper ($510 million), our experts estimated a 5 percent capital gains profit or a $3.8 million tax bill. An expiration of Bush capital gains cuts would raise the rate from 15 to 20 percent for a net gain for the feds of another $1.3 million All told an increased IRS tab for one of Detroit’s most productive citizens of about $10 million-a-year. Or a staggering $50 million over five years. Send it to Washington and it would go through the sausage mill: appropriations, benefits, federal union rules, redistribution to states, administrative costs. . . .
Or Mr. Ilitch would keep his tax cut, and the $10 million to $50 million might never leave Detroit, one of America’s poorest cities, a city in need of millions in investment from entrepreneurs like Ilitch who are eager to do just that, creating jobs, local tax revenue, and quality of life.
“I’d much rather Ilitch spend his money supporting the Tigers’ pitching staff than masking unsustainable federal spending,” muses James Hohman, an economist with The Mackinac Center.
Tax cuts for the wealthy sounds better all the time.
Volt: Back to the Future (The Michigan View 12.1.10)
Posted by hpayne on December 1, 2010
The Mighty GM Publicity Machine and its Media Chorus put on a show in Hamtramck, Michigan Tuesday, introducing the General’s new Chevy Volt electric car with anticipation not seen since . . . well, since GM last rolled out its ill-fated EV-1 electric car just over a decade ago.
Even by Detroit’s carnival barker standards, the first plug-in Chevy Volt to come off the assembly line generated an impressive display of hyperbole and myth-making. But then, not every vehicle launch is accompanied by politicians and the full-backing of the federal government. Washington’s ruling class has proclaimed the Volt a revolution in automobility (and GM is more than happy to milk the free publicity) which gave the event the air, if not the reality, of a game-changing moon-shot.
“Every aspect of the Volt — from its aerodynamic shape to its battery chemistry — is a testament to the importance of math and sciences,” crowed Chief Carnival Barker Mark Reuss, President of GM North America, about the egg-shaped vehicle before him. “By encouraging Detroit-area students to pursue these topics, we hope to cultivate the next generation of engineers who will build upon the Volt’s innovative technologies.”
Actually, the Volt’s battery-driven technology is hardly new.
The battery lost out to the internal combustion engine (its current direct-injection evolution is itself a marvel of the math and sciences) in the early 20th century and has been playing catch-up ever since. What has changed is consumer taste. In 21st century, three-car garage America, automakers have discovered a new niche – not unlike sports-car-buying motor heads who covet Chevy Corvettes – of influential green buyers.
The current darling of this niche class might as well be steam power, the other technology that displayed early auto promise before succumbing to the ICE’s superior mix of cost and convenience.
Why, if this GM electric thing fails for a second time (after a now-familiar greengasm of ecstasy over the EV-1’s revolution, a fickle press quickly soured in 1996 when the little electric didn’t get the advertised 100 miles-per-charge and sales sagged). . . imagine – imagine! – a car that only runs on water, that is lighter than a combustion engine (well, if you leave out the boiler), that has instant torque and is as easy to refill as your local creek, and. . . and we’ll call it the GM Stanley Steamer!
And Senator Carl Levin can take credit for it.
Yes, Senator Levin. Since the automobile is the most regulated consumer product on the planet, political interference is inevitable. And so in addition to today’s roll-out of the global warming-fighting, foreign oil-independent Volt (which draws its electricity from coal and gets its lithium batteries from mines in Australia and South America) we also got Carl wheeling out his giant straw man.
“We’ve always known there would be doubters,” said the Michigan Senator in a letter to GM’s CEO – leaked for the occasion, natch. “Congratulations on answering them so well. (TheVolt) is testament to the notion that industry and government can work in partnership to advance the complimentary goals of strengthening our industrial economy and protecting our environment.”
Actually, no one ever doubted GM – America’s biggest car company – could build an electric car. But plenty have reason to doubt whether it will ever sell above cost (the $41k wonder costs $40 k to produce), whether it’s good policy for American taxpayers to be subsidizing rich celebrity buyers like Leo DiCaprio at $75000 per Volt sold, and whether anyone other than green elites will pay $41 k for a glorified Chevy Cruze with gas at $2.90 a gallon.
Hamtramck was a glorious place to be Tuesday morning as American ingenuity polished another beautifully-engineered product. But while pols were high-fiving each other over their joint government-industry, planet-saving small car . . . just a few miles south on I-75 in Detroit, Jeep Assembly was cranking at full-speed, three-shifts-a-day, 24-hours-a-day to meet America’s unslakable thirst for $30,000, V-6 –powered Jeep Grand Cherokee SUVs.
And they make a nice profit of $5 grand apiece.
Governor Gra – mole?
Posted by hpayne on November 30, 2010
The big day has arrived. You’re front and center at the unveiling of the Chevy Volt, the car, the icon, the manifestation of your dream as governor of a Michigan reborn as a Green Belt manufacturing state.
And all the GM CEO can think about is your moles.
Gramole_GM“And, uh. . .Governor Gramole. . . there you are. Thank you very much for being here,” misspoke GM’s new CEO Dan Akerson this morning as he struggled with the governor’s name. The bright side? At least he didn’t mention her ears.
New boss, same as old boss: Calley’s insurance mandates (The Michigan View 11.29.10)
Posted by hpayne on November 29, 2010
Governor Rick Snyder says he wants to make Michigan more business friendly. He may want to tell his lieutenant governor.
Brian Calley raised some eyebrows this summer upon his appointment to be Snyder’s right-hand man when Lansing watchers recalled it was Calley who had co-authored the very Michigan Business Tax Frankenstein that Snyder had targeted as a centerpiece of his campaign. The Snyder team quickly assured his supporters that Calley’s MBT tryst was not love, but a necessary evil to end the disastrous budget shutdown.
But only days after the Snyder-Calley team has been swept into office, Calley is once again stepping on his governor’s pro-business message by making Granholm-esque insurance company-bashing a priority. Is this really how the The Nerd wants his administration to come out of the blocks?
Conservatives quickly jumped on Calley’s latest anti-business brickbat ” mandated autism coverage – with The Detroit News editorializing that “one of the few competitive advantages Michigan has on health care costs is that it doesn’t have a lot of health insurance mandates – rules requiring that health insurance provide coverage or specific treatments for particular diseases or disorders that drive up coverage costs.”
In the midst of a decade-long recession, Michigan would seem ill-served by giving up any competitive advantage. But Calley has aggressively pressed his point with news interviews, a letter to The News, and now an appearance Monday morning on the Frank Beckmann Show with autism activist Steve Bockmann.
“So-called insurance ‘mandates’often elicit knee-jerk opposition, but I urge Michigan legislators to think beyond short-sighted responses. The opportunity to turn around the lives of children with autism is available, but it is out of reach for most Michigan families because the cost of treatment can reach $50,000 annually,” Calley ” who has a four-year-old with autism ” wrote in The News. “Twenty-three states have already reformed their laws to cover autism. Now Michigan must step into the 21st century. Michigan must resist the status-quo mentality that leads some to reject autism insurance reform, especially when the fiscal and human benefits to the state would be so overwhelming.”
Government knows best? Everybody else does it? It’s the future? Where have we heard that before?
Yes, those are the guiding principles of the Jennifer Granholm – used to mandate, for example, renewables by Michigan utilities and drive up the cost of Michigan energy ” a program staunchly opposed by Snyder/Calley in the campaign.
Like Granholm and Big Utiltiy, Calley apparently believes Big Insurance doesn’t know its own business. “Autism is a complex condition and medicine’s understanding of it is rapidly changing,” says The News editorial. “A state coverage mandate introduces unknowns into the state insurance market, which is itself in flux because of changing federal law.”
There are a myriad of conditions that companies must study every day (here’s another one – dyslexia which afflicts my family) which is precisely why we have markets ” so that they can design policies that best suit their clients.
The Michigan and American electorates revolted against Know-it-all Democratic politicians who think they know better. Incredibly, one of the recipients of that revolt ” Republican Brian Calley ” seems not to have gotten the message.
Obamacare carnage: Kids lose union health coverage ( the Michigan View 11.29.10)
Posted by hpayne on November 29, 2010
Think opposition to insurance mandates only comes from heartless small businesses? That Obamacare saves money? That there aren’t consequences to Big Government mandates?
Then get a load of this headline at The Wall Street Journal today: “Union Drops Health Coverage for Workers’ Children.”
Why? Because Obamacare’s mandates have made it too expensive for the SEIU ” yes, the same SEIU that is one of the biggest liberal union, Democratic lobbies in the country ” to continue insurance coverage of its employees.
“One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants,” reports The Journal. “The union blamed financial problems it said were caused by the state’s health department and new national health-insurance requirements.”
How has Obamacare destroyed insurance coverage for kids?
“New federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26,” (the union) wrote in a letter to members Oct. 22. “Our limited resources are already stretched as far as possible, and meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”
“The fund informed its members late last month that their dependents will no longer be covered as of Jan. 1, 2011,” continues The Journal. “Currently about 6,000 children are covered by the benefit fund, some until age 23.”
Ah, those compassionate liberals.
The Volt’s Reason to Be (National Review 11.26.10)
Posted by hpayne on November 29, 2010
Critics of the Chevy Volt rightfully point out that GM’s new plug-in hybrid is an overpriced Chevy Cruze, that it is not a revolution-in-the-making but a niche vehicle, and that it should stand on its merits without expensive taxpayer subsidies. But those critics also assume a rational world.
The world American automakers live in today, though, is highly irrational — governed by irrational Washington agencies that have bipartisan political support to draft irrational mpg mandates that force carmakers to irrationally build cars consumers don’t want to buy.
The Chevy Volt is GM’s rational answer to irrationality.
This week, the EPA announced that the Volt will get an EPA MPG rating of 60 mpg, which will go a long way towards helping the company meet the government’s absurd 35 mpg average for all the vehicles the company makes. That is, since consumers prefer cars that get 21 mpg on average (53 percent of vehicles bought today are SUVs, after all), GM can throw in the Volt’s 60 mpg to goose up its fleet average and avoid millions in federal fines and public execution by the national media.
The EPA arrives at its 60 mpg figure with a suitably obtuse averaging of the Volt’s 93 mpg on battery power alone (which it can manage for up to 35 miles) and the 37 mpg it will get on the car’s tiny 1.4-liter gas engine once the battery runs out of juice. All of these ratings will appear on the $41,000 window sticker of the Volt in a blizzard of mumbo-jumbo that will make its rich green buyers feel good about saving the planet.
It will also make GM feel good about meeting the fed’s ridiculous rules.
And it will make everyone else feel $7,500 lighter in the wallet from the subsidy of each Volt sold.
The ‘Recovery Fall Tour’: More Subsidies for the Rich ( National Review 11.24.10)
Posted by hpayne on November 24, 2010
Goodbye “Recovery Summer Tour.” Hello “Recovery Fall Tour.” Different name, same waste of taxpayer dollars.
At a Chrysler facility in Kokomo, Indiana today, President Obama stubbornly continued his pre-election theme that the UAW bailout and green jobs are rescuing the American economy. The president, Veep Biden, and Fiat/Chrysler Chief Sergio Marchionne touted Chrysler’s $300 million investment of taxpayer money into the Indiana plant to build a new generation of transmissions.
But the president’s visit only managed to highlight again the stimulus’s “Robbing Hood” economics: stealing from taxpayers to pay big corporations. Obama’s posse was accompanied by Delphi executive Gary Cameron, whose company was the recipient of $89 million in federal stimulus money to help “transform America” into a green economy.
Delphi will use its tax dollars to build green-vehicle components to be used in hybrid cars targeted at buyers making over $100,000 a year. The grant “definitely improved our competitive position,” said Cameron. “Kokomo is obviously a manufacturing site today because of the stimulus-partnership money.”
In addition to Delphi, federal stimulus has also gone to Korean multinational LGChem and A123 Systems to make green batteries for upper-class chariots
Peters punts on Pelosi (The Michigan View.com 11.12.10)
Posted by hpayne on November 12, 2010
Rep. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, ran away from Speaker Nancy Pelosi in his 2010 re-election campaign. Despite voting with the San Francisco Democrat’s radical agenda 95 percent of the time — including support for a massive, budget-busting stimulus bill and the anti-small business Obamacare — Peters championed himself a “blue dog,” budget-cutting, pro-small business independent Democrat who expressed “frustration. . . with Democratic leadership.”
The tactic worked: Peters was a rare Democratic survivor of the Republican tsunami that swept the country on Election Day.
In the wake of that debacle, Pelosi shocked Washington by announcing she would run again for her party’s congressional leadership post. Independent, Blue Dog Democrats have reacted with revulsion, speaking out publicly against the House leader who is synonymous with Washington extremism. “At least 15 Democrats have said publicly that they have lost faith in her ability to lead,” reports Politico on the Blue Dog insurrection. “Even the New York Times’ editorial page has called on Pelosi to step aside.”
Rep. Peters, however, has been nowhere to be found. He has avoided press inquiries and not taken a stand on the controversial Pelosi leadership issue.
Until today. In a contentious interview on the Frank Beckmann Show Friday morning, the independent, leadership-frustrated, anti-spending Peters told Beckmann that on the matter of Speaker Pelosi’s re-election he. . . “will wait to see what happens when I get (back to Washington). That’s just insider politics.”
With the campaign behind him, “Blue Dog” Peters true “Beige Dog” colors are coming out again. While sources say he is privately not as supportive of Pelosi as Michigan congressmen like Sander Levin and John Dingell who represent more liberal districts, Peters’ public silence speaks volumes. Still an insecure, second-term junior member of Congress, Peters cannot afford to cross his potential party leader.
The candidate who ran as the bold defender of small business and the enemy of Big Special Interests, can no longer afford to publicly cross the most anti-small business, pro-Big Special Interest speaker in modern Congressional history. “We’ll see who’s running,” he told Beckmann. “We’ll wait and see who’s there.”
By contrast, across the border in Ohio, Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, told the Youngstown Business Journal he’s not sure Pelosi’s the right choice. “She’s obviously in charge so she needs to take the brunt of the responsibility for (the election),” he said. “I was brought up to be loyal to people who helped you and I want to be — but at the expense of what?”
Inside politics? Pelosi’s leadership was a core issue of the fall election.
On another sore point, Beckmann pressed Peters on the gutter campaign the Democrat employed against GOP opponent Rocky Raczkowski. Peters ran the nastiest congressional campaign in the state, tarring the Republican with personal attacks so vile that Rocky has filed a lawsuit against Peters. But Peters also pushed the fiction that Raczkowski wanted to raise taxes by 23 percent. The ad campaign — an attack on tax reform eliminating the income tax in favor of a national sales tax supported by Rocky and other Republicans — was so misleading that independent watch dog groups denounced it and many Democrats removed it from the air.
But not the 9th district incumbent. “Any regrets?” asked Beckmann about the ad. “Did it hurt your credibility?”
Peters was unrepentant. But when Beckmann asked again, Peters seemed to suggest that the political ends justified the means. “In 30 seconds,” he said, referring to the ad spot’s running time, “what can you do? That’s nothing new in politics. You focus on those areas that benefit you.”
Peters words would come back to haunt him moments later.
Discussing the Obama deficit commission’s proposal to raise taxes as well as cut spending to address a record, $1.3 trillion deficit (created by Peters’ and Pelosi’s spending binge), Peters allowed how tax increases were necessary. “If you’re going to bring it down, no one area is enough,” he said urging a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts.
Beckmann took the opening and pressed Peters on whether the “pro-small business” pol was advocating tax hikes. “You talked about an ad that only talked about one side of the story? You can’t have one side of the story,” said Peters referring to his own one-sided ad.
Responsible leadership means not giving one side of the story – unless you need to win an election.
Chrysler’s Small-Car Savior Wants to Build . . . Fiat SUVs! (National Review 11.10.10)
Posted by hpayne on November 10, 2010
Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has gone native.
Brought to the United States by President Obama a year ago to teach the planet-killers at Chrysler how to make fuel-efficient econoboxes like the ones that proper Europeans drive, the refined Italian executive has fallen in love with big, money-making American SUVs. In an announcement that shook the auto world this week, Sergio announced that he wants Chrysler to help make . . . Alfa Romeo and Maserati SUVs.
Mama Mia! Just wait until Papa Obama gets back from Asia!
On the condition that Fiat would build a 40-mpg car — the Fiat 500 — in the colonies, President Obama agreed to hand over Chrysler for free to the Turin-based automaker in April 2009. “At long last we might finally see some small, fuel-efficient cars from an automaker that milked the SUVcash cow until long after it ran dry,” cheered the snobs at Wired magazine.
But a funny thing happened on the way to converting the savages to the Green faith: Fiat starting making green in the U.S. market. Not tree-hugging green — but the kind of green that comes from selling the old-fashioned, iconic Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV.
Thanks to Americans’ renewed love affair with light trucks — the cuddly giants made up 53 percent of market sales in October compared to just 47 percent for cars — Chrysler’s third-quarter earnings soared. While Washington is forcing Detroit to make small electric cars consumers don’t want, America’s lust for SUVs may rescue the recently bankrupt companies.
Profits on SUVs dwarf those on small cars. Indeed, says Jesse Toprak, auto analyst with TrueCar.com, the Mexican-made Fiat 500 may just break even for Chrysler while the Detroit-manufactured Grand Cherokee is raking in between $3,000 to $5,000 per sale.
“The trend that is really helping Chrysler right now is the return to SUVs among consumers,” says Toprak.
And the Jeep truck brand holds the key to increased Chrysler sales abroad as well. “The potential of the Jeep outside the U.S. is actually better than inside the U.S.,” says Toprak. “If you own a Jeep in the Middle East, for example, you ‘have made it.’”
That is, the vehicles Nancy Pelosi & Co. despise are actually the vehicles that can lead the company that taxpayers were forced to bail out to profitability (Obama himself is the biggest obstacle, as he seeks to punish Detroit automakers with a further doubling of fuel-mileage mandates to 62 mpg by 2025). What’s more, the American invention that our president apologizes to the world for is actually the vehicle that the world craves as a status symbol.
If Fiat’s Marchionne didn’t understand that before he came to America, he understands it now.
The Chrysler flagship Grand Cherokee — fuel mileage just 17 mpg — increased sales a whopping291 percent in October leading a 37 percent increase in overall Chrysler sales. Fiat’s new American brand now projects its 2010 operating profit to hit $700 million, up from an expected, break-even $200 million.
No wonder Marchionne is an SUV convert.
Light trucks are money in the bank — and a big reason every automaker in the world wants to be in the low-gas-price U.S. market. Sergio’s got religion all right. He announced November 8 that he wants Chrysler’s Detroit Assembly Plant — the very facility Obama visited last July to crow about his Detroit bailouts – to build SUV platforms for as many as four brands: Chrysler, Dodge, Alfa Romeo, and Maserati.
Yee-haw! “The improving financial picture is helping make possible development of the fleet of new vehicles that Chrysler executives believe will further bolster the bottom line,” reports the Detroit News, “and take the once dying automaker to Wall Street, as a publicly traded company, in 2011.”
Industry analysts still bemoan the fact that Chrysler’s product mix is still too heavily dependent on SUVs — making it vulnerable to gas-price hikes — but Marchionne is laughing all the way to the bank.
How quickly can Chrysler churn out Fiat SUVs? Reports the News: “The timetable to add a Detroit-built Alfa, and possibly a Maserati, from Grand Cherokee underpinnings is 12 to 18 months, Marchionne said.” Global volume of the Italian SUVs could total 5,000 outside the U.S.
The accelerated schedule would mean jobs, jobs, jobs. Not the green, taxpayer-subsidized jobs that Obama promises. But the private, sustainable jobs that Wall Street investors crave.
“I’ve never seen a vehicle have this kind of support,” Marchionne admitted of the Grand Cherokee, adding that he underestimated its quality and appeal. Welcome to America, Sergio. You knuckle-dragging savage, you.
Dillon-less Democrats: Now what? (The Michigan View.com 11.8.10)
Posted by hpayne on November 8, 2010
As Frank Beckmann first reported on the View Sunday, Rick Snyder named Democratic House Speaker Andy Dillon his state treasurer Monday morning. The move fulfills Snyder’s campaign promise to reach across the aisle for budget solutions. But what does it mean for a reeling state Democratic Party? Is losing its biggest name and most prominent legislator another punch in the gut?
No, agree two prominent Michigan political analysts – but for very different reasons.
Bill Ballenger, editor of Inside Michigan Politics, says that the Dillon’s defection is symptomatic of a self-destructive party that lurched to the Left this election and paid the price. Joe DiSano, a Democratic political consultant with Lansing’s Main Street Strategies, says good riddance. He says Dillon’s inept party politics laid the foundation for the Democratic defeat and his departure will allow the party to focus on its core issues.
“This will have no impact. What Democrats did to Dillon sent a signal. We don’t want you. You have no future here,” Ballenger told The View in reference to moderate Dillon’s resounding defeat in the Democratic Party primary to left-wing union-toadie Virg Bernero.
A proponent of union health benefit reform to tackle that state’s gaping budget deficit, Speaker Dillon’ s ideas found more advocates in Republican than Democrat circles. Bernero exploited that rift — along with Dillon’s pro-life abortion views – buy lining up Big Labor support and running Dillon out of the Democratic primary in a huge upset last summer. Soured by the experience, Dillon refused to endorse Bernero for governor and speculation of a Snyder alliance began – even briefly fueling rumors that he might be the GOP nominee’s running mate.
Ballenger says that the odds were always long for Democrats in 2010, but rather than run to the middle, Big Labor decide “to fly the flag. Bernero ran a class warfare campaign and they got creamed.”
Dillon’s move will give him a fresh platform to espouse his ideas on union benefits reform. But it also removes the Democratic Party’s most obvious choice to lead the party back to the mainstream after a disastrous campaign in which it not only lost the governor’s mansion — but the both houses of the Legislature as well.
DiSano, however, says that Dillon shoulders a great deal of responsibility for the Democratic debacle.
“Losing Dillon is a net plus,” he says. “His claim to fame is two government shutdowns. He is a complete failure.”
The veteran strategist, who co-hosts the blog “TwoGuysNamedJoe.com,” with fellow consultant Joe Munem, says that — far from being a progressive party leader — Dillon’s lack of pragmatism in pushing benefits reforms spit the party and “took a lot of oxygen out of key issues like lobby reform and campaign finance disclosure.” As a result, the House speaker “never gave a sharp contrast to the Republicans” and was a much responsible for the Nov. 2 wipeout as was the head of the ticket.
But DiSano and Ballaneger agree that Dillon’s departure leaves a huge void in the Michigan Democratic Party. Who will fill it?
“They have to look themselves in the mirror and ask: Do we keep doing this?” says Ballenger. “Or do we have to go in a new direction? The choice was never going to be Dillon.”
But if not Dillon, who?
Bernero is damaged goods. Young party phenom, 33-year-old Granholm wannabe Jocelyn Benson, went down in flames to Ruth Johnson in the Secretary of State’s race. DiSano doesn’t see Benson as an immediate prospect. Instead, he points to this week’s election to replace Dillon as House minority leader as the start of the process of finding their Moses to lead them out of the wilderness. Woodrow Stanley and Richard Hammel — both long-serving, Flint-area, Big Labor pols — will likely emerge as the winner of that contest, says DiSano who also likes Senate Democrat Gretchen Whitmer as “a fresh voice.”
Ballenger isn’t impressed. “The Democrats had a bright person in Andy Dillon,” he says. “But they screwed up. Now the Republicans are taking advantage.”
Payne: Election ’10 by the numbers (The Michigan View. com 11.5.10)
Posted by hpayne on November 5, 2010
As the dust settles on November 2, the numbers reveal a Michigan route of historic proportions and a referendum on the Granholm years. Or, as Detroit News columnist Dan Howes calls it: “The Lost Decade.”
“How bad did the gubernatorial race turn out for Virg Bernero?” writes our political editor Dan Calabrese. “Not only did he win only five of Michigan’s 83 counties, but four of them just barely gave him the nod.
“The Lansing State Journal reports that Bernero carried Ingham (where The Angry Mayor lives) by only four-tenths of a percent. Bernero also carried Wayne (61-39), Genesee (52-48), Washtenaw (50.4-49.6) and Gogebic (51-49) counties. By the way, remember when blue-collar Macomb County was considered a bellwether county for not only state but national elections? It went 62-38 for Snyder.”
The Detroit News’ history buff and View columnist, Jeff Hadden, judges the Democratic Party’s “Ground Zero”partisan base vote at 38 percent. A little guesswork, yes, but also calculated on the disastrous campaign of Jeffrey Fieger that lost to popular Gov. John Engler in 1998 – Engler’s third term when no one wanted to run against him because everyone knew it was a lock – by 62-38.
Thirty-eight percent. Ground Zero. Bernero won 40 percent, meaning that he won just 2 percent of voters other than those who still think Jimmy Carter was the greatest president of all time. Speaking of Carter, his veep and 1984 Reagan opponent, Walter Mondale, only won three states in his sacrificial lamb campaign. Practically Bernero-esque.
Want good Democratic news? Don’t look at the state Senate. Republicans gained six seats and now hold a staggering 26-12 majority. Calabrese again:
“The Republican majority (is) so enormous, the Democrats will be able to caucus in a booth at Burger King.” Oh, yes, and the Dems also lost their majority in the House.
But it was just the economy right? There’s nothing fundamental here. Michigan saw right through those racist, Tea Party right-wing nuts, right? Wrong. Steve Mitchell’s exit polling found voter favorability ratings for the conservative Tea Party movement running 53-37.
“Mad as hell and won’t take it anymore?” Won it, 61-26.
After eight years of Jennifer Granholm, that’s your political landscape. The worst governor in Michigan history? You be the judge. One last number: Unemployment is 13 percent.