- Search Cartoons
- Comic Archive
-
Payne
Store
Henry Payne RSS
Articles Blog
How did Peters survive the tsunami? (TheMichiganView.con 11.4.10)
Posted by hpayne on November 4, 2010
On Tuesday night Michigan Republicans were celebrating in the streets, smashing the Obama agenda, overturning Priuses, and cheering a state government sweep and big U.S. House wins. But one Pelosi poodle managed to escape the carnage.
How did Gary Peters – a first-term, 2008 Obama coattail Democrat in Republican Oakland County – survive?
Peters’ triumph was a lone bright spot for Democrats thanks to Big Money and the changing demographics of the 9th congressional district. But, warns Michigan political guru Bill Ballenger, Editor of Inside Michigan Politics, the party should drink its bubbly fast because redistricting under a Republican state capitol may spell doom for Peters’ district soon.
“If it was Bouchard or Bishop, the Republicans would have won,” says Ballenger matter-of-factly – getting the “what-if?” question off the table first. The question as to why the GOPers didn’t field their first string of Sheriff Mike Bouchard (who stubbornly ran for governor in a crowded field) or Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (who lost the AG primary to Bill Schuette) dogged Republicans all campaign.
Instead, Army Reservist Rocky Raczkowski (why isn’t a guy who drops his day job to put on a uniform and serve his country in hellhole Somalia considered “A Team?”), a hard-working, former state House minority leader got the nomination, riding a wave of Tea Party anger to upset Establishment Republican Paul Welday in the primary. A military man in a conservative district – a shoo-in, yes?
No, insists Ballenger, pointing out that the 9th is hardly a Republican cinch given its strong Democratic Jewish vote on its west side, youth vote in Royal Oak, and black urban vote in Pontiac. Meanwhile, the district’s core, Bloomfield Hills, has been hemorrhaging population with the decline of the auto industry.
Never a dynamic campaigner, Peters also benefited from incumbency in a rich district where buying congressmen is a necessary part of the business model. Strategically positioned on the House Finance Committee and the elite “New Democrat” fundraising club, Peters raked in money as gatekeeper for House financial reform legislation — most importantly, carving out regulatory exceptions for auto dealers. Incumbency has its privileges.
“Peters has always presented himself as a reasonable business candidate,” says Ballenger, “even as he votes Left. It’s a total sham.”
A 3:1 fundraising advantage allowed the Wall Street lackey to hammer the Rock with personal attack ads on the national Pelosi party model. With Rocky incapable of answering every volley, Peters maintained the offensive until election day — even running a false tax ad that most Democratic Party candidates pulled after watchdog groups called it a fib.
As the returns came in late Wednesday Morning, one Rocky insider called Campaign HQ “the saddest group of Republicans in Michigan.” But, says Ballenger, the Rocky setback is a speed bump.
The important event on Tuesday night was the Elephant Party’s sweep of Lansing, meaning that they will be in the driver’s seat come redistricting. That means when Peters pulls out the big bucks to defend his seat in 2012, or 2014, or. . . he may not have a district left to defend.
Washington Disconnect: SUV Sales Well Over 50 Percent of Market (National Review 11.3.10)
Posted by hpayne on November 3, 2010
As if to put a punctuation mark on how out-of-touch Washington is with the electorate, October vehicle sales released today reveal that SUV sales have now almost fully rebounded from their pre-recession numbers and now make up 53 percent of the market, with cars at just 47 percent. The numbers have flipped since last October as the economy recovers and customers return to bigger, more fuel-thirsty vehicles.
The figures came in the same month that the Obama administration ordered the EPA to study raising average mpg mandates to an absurd 62 mpg by 2025 (why not 100 mpg? Do I hear 150?) on top of an already fanciful 35 mpg figure by 2015. Currently, only cars like the tiny Smart two-seater make 35 mpg while the market trend is away from compacts.
To justify their mpg mandates, Washington Democrats claim that Americans are warming to hybrids. But October sales contradict these claims, as hybrid sales continued their drop to just 2.6 percent of the market – down from 2.9 percent last year (and 3.1 for 2009 as a whole)
The MSM, having spent all of last month extolling the virtues of new electric cars, largely ignored the inconvenient SUV data. “Most automakers reported strong truck and crossover sales while Toyota noted that its hybrid sales were off,” reported the Detroit News.
At GM, the marked SUV sales rise spelled good news as the profitable vehicles will help the Detroit giant pay off its massive government loans. GM’s “hot vehicles include the Chevrolet Equinox, GMC Terrain and Cadillac SRX followed by the larger Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia and Chevrolet Traverse,” reported the News. “On the pickup side, the Chevrolet Silverado, Avalanche and GMC Sierra saw sales rise 9 percent for the month.” All are low-mileage SUVs.
Michigan Democrats: ‘Blown away’ (The Michigan View 11.3.10)
Posted by hpayne on November 3, 2010
“And in five years, you’ll be blown away.” Make that FOUR years. Michigan has seen Obamanomics’ future. It’s called Granholmnomics. And the state has had enough.
If the Republican takeover of the U.S. House was a national rejection of Barack Obama’s radical economic agenda, then Michigan’s across-the-board triumph of Republicans from governor to taking the state House and Senate to picking up key congressional seats was a cry for help after four failed years of Jennifer Granholm’s version of Barack Obama’s European-style, Democratic Socialism.
“And in five years, you’ll be blown away,” said the Sweden-smitten governor as she launched her pro-Europe, pro-stimulus, pro-tax, pro-green transformation agenda in 2006. Her fellow Democrats were blown away Tuesday night after four years of escalating unemployment. It is a profound message to Obama to cease and desist too, lest he risk losing the White House as well as his governing majority.
Rick Snyder’s victory was not so much a vote for Rick Snyder as it was a giant “STOP” sign placed in front of Democratic polices that have bankrupted the state, divided it politically, and offered fairy tales about powering giant auto plants on windmills. Rather than address budget problems, Granholm shamelessly patched them with federal stimulus band-ads while filling her Big Union supporters with pay hike bubbly.
Virg Bernero promised more of the same, Rick Snyder did not. Mr. Snyder, you had us at “hello.”
Michiganians understand that their state has neglected fundamentals. That it needs to pare back its labor costs and get competitive again. That it needs to get its budget house in order. But Granholm’s solution ignored fundamentals. Like Obamanomics, she sought to exploit Michigan’s woes and turn it into a green laboratory.
Beginning in 2006, Granholm spent billions on infrastructure, claiming it would be a jobs engine. Lacking executive experience like her Chicago-activist-turned-president twin in Washington, she drove Michigan’s budget into a tree in 2007, shutting down government and raising taxes as the state groaned under the weight of a decade-long recession. Meanwhile, she dabbled in economic witchcraft, dishing out a cauldron of tax breaks to rich, politically-connected corporations from Big Green to bling-breasted Hollywood moguls in a fanciful attempt to “diversify” Michigan’s economy.
But the state continued to tank as businesses recoiled at the state’s anti-business unions, its perverse business tax and its rudderless budget process.
Then along came a Nerd.
A successful businessman. A man with executive experience. A political outsider with no connections to the Wayne County McNamara mafia. A budget balancer. A job creator. A bore on the stump.
The anti-Granholm. Michigan’s electorate has rewarded him with a landslide and an army of new legislators to staff the sinking ship. On a night when America buried Obamanomics, Michigan made sure Granholmnomics was in the coffin too.
The Dems’ Green-China Myth (National Review 10.29.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 29, 2010
The twin China lies of the 2010 Democratic campaign (and they are wall-to-wall here in Michigan) are that 1) Red China is stealing our jobs, and 2) Green China is an energy conservation model. China’s economy is a jobs engine at the same time it’s solving greenhouse emissions?
The Institute for Energy Research demolishes the Obama-Friedman-Clinton mantra that China is a granola-crunching paradise for tree-huggers:
The Obama Administration is either making up energy statistics or they are woefully ignorant, as the record of China is clear. In order to lift its people from poverty to plenty, China has embarked on the greatest expansion of energy use of all kinds in world history. They use 3.5 times more coal than the US, and long ago surpassed our economy in carbon dioxide emissions.
This year they passed the United States as the #1 consumer of energy in the world, a title we had held for over a century. Unlike the Obama Administration, the Chinese are developing their oil shale resources. They are welcoming investment in their offshore oil industry and are planning to build 2 dozen nuclear power plants while the US dithers over the permit for 1. While US politicians and the Obama Administration call for the removal of dams and their renewable energy, China in the last decade has added more hydroelectric capacity than the US has built since 1776.
China (has just) unveiled a new supercomputer that is 1.4 to 2.6 times as fast as the fastest computer in the US. What is the computer going to be used for? Solar panels? Windmills? Butterfly Power? Hardly. As the China Daily reports, their new computer “has begun trial use among target clients including….the National Offshore Oil Corporationdata center.”
They’re going to use it to look for offshore oil. Something the Obama Administration won’t let us do.
Re-elect Not-Rob-Steele (The Michigan View 10.29.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 29, 2010
You are the universally-recognized hero of universal health care. You inherited the mantle from your father who first introduced socialized care legislation in 1943. You spent 55 years in Congress as Captain Ahab chasing his Moby Dick. You introduced every session of Congress since 1957 by submitting a nationalized health care bill. You are so revered that even your Medicare gavel, first pounded in 1965, is an icon. You were cheered on the House floor when Obamacare – finally, the universal health care solution – passed October, 2009. You were given the podium by Speaker Pelois herself to pound your iconic gavel in a “vindication” celebration, as The New York Times itself called it. You sat next to the President Change himself in a packed, East Room signing ceremony to acknowledge your achievement. You thrust your crutch in the air when the air when the crowd gave you a standing ovation. You were booked by The Daily Show so that you and Jon Stewart himself could celebrate the arrival of universal health care by breaking open walnuts with your iconic gavel. You would be running this fall to celebrate your victory – and you had the photo album to prove it.
You are John Dingell. Your campaign victory lap has arrived. And now you want everyone to know. . . that your Republican opponent is a China-outsourcing, Social Security-stealing mega-rich fraud?
In an election when Democrats are running from Obamacare, perhaps the most extraordinary tale is that the one man who never gave up hope on socialized medicine refuses to claim his Great Victory. So reviled is the Democrats’ health care power grab, that not even John Dingell will acknowledge its existence.
“Imagine Steve Forbes getting himself elected, ramming through a flat tax, and then clamming up about what he’d done,” says a media colleague.
As Dan Calabrese of The View’s Campaign Buzz blog catalogues, Dingell hasn’t used one frame of the carefully choreographed footage from Obamacare victory party last spring.
Instead, his ugly campaign has tried to drown cardiologist-turned-Republican candidate Rob Steele in the gutter. Just this month alone, Dingell’s – er, Not-Rob-Steele’s – campaign has consisted of, in order:
– A TV ad that claims Rob Steele “opposes workers” and supports “tax breaks for companies that ship jobs to China and India.”
– A press release claiming Rob Steele “supports tax cuts for companies that ship jobs to China and India.”
– A radio ad that claims Rob Steele supports “tax cuts for the mega-rich,” billions in borrowing from China, privatizing Social Security, “gambling your retirement money on Wall Street,” and being “just another vote for special interests.”
– A TV ad that claims that Rob Steele supports China outsourcing, “tax breaks for himself and the mega-rich,” and gambling your Social Security on Wall Street
– A TV ad claiming that Rob Steele just stole grandma and is selling her to Chinese slaveholders.
(Okay, just kidding about that last one.)
No ads touting Obamacare. No ads with Big John and his iconic gavel. No pictures signing health reform – crutch thrust in the air to thunderous applause! – at the White House. No justification for Dingell’s 55 years in the House except that he can bring home pork.
Somewhere under that gruff, tough, 80-year-old exterior, John Dingell must be weeping. This is it? This is why he got into public service? This is why he carried his father’s torch? This is what he wants people to know about him? To respect about him?
John Dingell, the shrunken, embarrassing, symbol of the 2010 Democratic majority.
Check for the union label (The Michigan View 10.28.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 28, 2010
In the election stretch run, a beleaguered Democratic Party has struck its familiar pose as the party for Main Street, not Wall Street — a political levee against a flood of corporate and special interest money. But as the enormous special interest sums flowing into the paradoxically anti-special interest campaign of Secretary of State candidate Jocelyn Benson show, the image couldn’t be more misleading.
Thanks to massive stimulus expenditures in Washington on politically-favored public employees, Democrats are awash in special interest money this election cycle. While taxpayers have suffered through the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the federal government has used their tax money to cushion fat public employee unions. Thankful unions have cycled millions of that revenue back to Democratic campaigns.
The result? The Number One campaign spender this year is not Big Business, it is Big Labor.
“The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is now the biggest outside spender of the 2010 elections,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “The 1.6 million-member AFSCME is spending a total of $87.5 million on the elections.”
“We’re the big dog,” brags Larry Scanlon, the head of AFSCME’s political operations, and Big Labor wants to stay there.
State government unions have been the recipient of $160 billion in Democratic largesse to prevent public-sector layoffs. In Michigan, it has allowed public unions like AFSCME, the MEA, and the UAW to avoid layoffs and pay cuts. The Mackinac Center reports that state employee payrolls grew by four percent even as private payrolls were slashed 11 percent. Democrats have been at the receiving end of huge campaign gifts as Big Labor fears a GOP win this November will reduce the gravy train to a trickle.
Every major Democrat in Michigan is raking in the campaign donations. Democratic Secretary of State candidate Jocelyn Benson told The Detroit News this month that she’s running in part because of her concern over Big Money influencing politics. “It will be my mission as your next Secretary of State to ensure that no large corporations or powerful special interests down (sic) out your voice,” she says on her website.
That is an odd claim from a candidate who has raised a staggering $800,000 – in part from radical George Soros-supported activist groups – but primarily from Big Labor. For example, the SoS candidate has receives a whopping $34,000 (the maximum contribution allowed) by the United Auto Workers. Yes, the UAW. Even as its auto membership has declined, the union has become a major public employee representative boasting UAW Local 6000 – the state’s largest public employee union.
In a View analysis of Benson’s campaign contributions, Big Labor is everywhere. In addition to the UAW’s gift, the anti-special interest candidate’s contributor list is a Who’s Who of Big Labor special interests:
Michigan Education Association Political Action Committee: $33,950 American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees: $10,000 American Federation of Teachers, Michigan PAC: $5,000 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, PAC Local 58: $5,000 Michigan Nurses Association PAC: $5,000 Plumbers and Steamfitters 85 PAC: $2,500 United Food and Commercial Workers: $2,000 – Iron Workers Local: $450
And so on. Benson also insists that she is a non-partisan candidate, but her Big Union backers – unlike corporations which play both sides – are extremely partisan with some 90 percent of their contributions going to Democrats. If elected to office, the “non-partisan, non-special interest” candidate looks increasingly like a Trojan Horse for George Soros and a mule for Big Labor.
About that Volt Planetary Gear Flap: A Correction (National Review 10.27.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 27, 2010
Detroit – Last week, I reported that the media dust-up over whether the Chevy Volt is an EREV (extended range electric vehicle) or a series hybrid mattered because it was the difference between a $7,500 tax credit — or just $2,500 per Volt sold. I stand corrected.
The tax credit is determined — not by drive-train — but by battery size. To quote the federal legislation itself:
Section 30D provides for a credit for certain new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles. The credit is equal to the sum of: (1) $2,500, plus (2) for a vehicle which draws propulsion energy from a battery with at least 5 kilowatt hours of capacity, plus an additional $417, and $417 for each kilowatt hour of battery capacity in excess of 5 kilowatt hours. Under § 30D(b)(3), that portion of the credit determined by battery capacity cannot exceed $5,000. Therefore, the total amount of the credit allowed for a vehicle is limited to $7,500.
Your federal government at work. At 16 kilowatt hours, the Volt’s battery qualifies.
Which is why those wealthy California greens will get $7,500 off their new green status symbol. And therein is the real reason GM badly wanted to designate the Volt an EREV (even though it really operates more like a series hybrid).
“They did not want to be painted with the same brush,” says Ward’s auto analyst Bill Visnic. Because if Leo diCaprio wants a new green status symbol, he wants something that is “different” than his hybrid Prius. Though U.S. taxpayers will not be amused to learn that subsidizing Leo’s new toy will cost them $5 grand more than the Toyota.
The Empty Mayor (The Michigan View 10.25.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 25, 2010
The Angry Mayor became The Empty Mayor Sunday.
Bill Clinton’s visit to Detroit was supposed to be a high point of Bernero’s “Comeback Kid” campaign. Instead, the embarrassment of a half-empty Renaissance High auditorium led The Drudge Report and symbolizes a campaign of incompetence and elitism.
Clinton’s red meat speech was meant to light a fire under Democratic turnout – but he couldn’t even motivate Democrats to attend his motivational speech. “He began his speech just before 3 p.m. in a high school gym that was less than half full,” reported The Detroit News’ Paul Egan. “Shortly before Clinton took the stage, the Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, urged attendees to leave bleacher seats along one side of the gym and try to fill the area in front of the podium before Clinton began his address.”
This is a campaign not ready for prime time. Short of The One, Clinton is the party’s biggest fundraiser. And Bernero’s ground campaign couldn’t bus in enough folks to fill the seats? Heading into the election’s stretch run?
Bernero’s dais was a Who’s Who of Michigan politics including the mayor’s running mate Brenda Lawrence, John Conyers, Debbie Stabenow, SOS candidate Jocelyn Benson, AG candidate David Leyton.
“Clinton is still a rock star in Detroit,” said Wayne County Commissioner Kevin McNamara. Trouble is, the dais nearly outnumbered the rock star’s audience.
“This is two problems,” says Michigan pollster Steve Mitchell of Mitchell Research. “It’s a problem of campaign organization. You don’t book a facility for Bill Clinton unless you can fill it. But it also has to be disconcerting to Democrats as a precursor of low base voter turnout.”
Worse, the appearance at public Renaissance High only highlighted last week’s news that Bernero – the pro- teacher union, Big Government cheerleader – hypocritically attended private schools himself and sent one of his kids to private Catholic School, even as he questions the value of school choice for suffering Detroit families stuck in Michigan’s worst public school system.
His podium partner is no less elitist when is comes to public schools. Clinton sent his own daughter to Sidwell Friends, one of Washington’s most elite private schools when he was president and an opponent of school choice in the District of Columbia.
The private school pals were no doubt uncomfortable in their unfamiliar public school surrounds – a discomfort made more so by the empty seats.
Soros slithers into Michigan politics (The Michigan View 10.23.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 23, 2010
The heavy hand of George Soros has been back in the headlines this week with his nearly $2 million contribution to NPR and alleged meddling in the Juan Williams firing. His influence is being felt in Michigan in a key state election as well.
Jocelyn Benson, the ambitious, young lefty running for Secretary of State is one of a handful of races targeted by Soros’ SOS Project this year according to the American Spectator.
Secretary of State races would seem an odd target for the billionaire political mogul, but control the SOS office and you can control close electoral outcomes. Soros learned that in 2000 when a Republican SOS in Florida resisted Democratic efforts to change election rules in midstream, denying “hanging chad” votes and ultimately the chance for Al Gore to steal a presidential election.
Soros is determined that that not happen again.
“At the top of the SoS Project’s slate of candidates is Minnesota’s radically left-wing Mark Ritchie,” reports The Spectator, “a former community organizer whose cavalier attitude toward electoral fraud and whose shamelessly partisan conduct during the recount process cleared the way for Al Franken to steal last year’s U.S. Senate election.”
“The strategic targeting of the SoS Project yielded astounding results in 2008 and 2006,” continues The Spectator’s Matthew Vadum. “In 2008, SoS Project-backed Democrats Linda McCulloch (Montana), Natalie Tennant (West Virginia), Robin Carnahan (Missouri), and Kate Brown (Oregon) won their races.”
SOS has already given $3000 to Benson. She is defensive about Soros, first telling Frank Beckmann she knew little about him (an unlikely claim given her party ambitions and the fact that she was a field director for the 2004 Kerry prez campaign), and then admitting that she had taken the SOS Project money.
But there’s more. “Benson is a candidate ACORN would love,” writes Vadum. “Last year in Michigan, she helped to lead the fight to stop the Republican secretary of state ‘from disenfranchising voters who were victims of home foreclosures.'”
Indeed, Benson has made the foreclosure conspiracy a centerpiece o her campaign even as the current SIS, Terry Lynn Land denies any such plot. The Detroit News editorial board asked Benson where she got her evidence.
Benson cited widespread “media reports.” When pressed on which media she was referring to, she admitted the conspiracy was “reported” by only one publication: The Michigan Messenger. What is the Michigan Messenger? A left-wing propaganda publication funded by George Soros.
“The Alternatives” timely media panel (The Michigan View 10.22.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 22, 2010
“It’s fortuitous that this media panel is happening tonight,” said John Fund Thursday. “How many of you heard what has happened to Juan Williams?”
National Politically-correct Radio’s firing of liberal black journalist Williams for his thoughts on Muslim airport stereotyping ” and Fox News renewal of his contract ” were a perfect backdrop for a panel on “The Alternatives: How New Media is Changing the Political Landscape,” sponsored by The Michigan View.com and The Mackinac Center.
The panel, featuring Fund of Fox/The Wall Street Journal, Frank Beckmann of WJR-Radio, Ken Braun of Michigan Capitol Confidential, Kathy Hoekstra of the Mackinac Center, and yours truly (editor of the View) convened in Pontiac to discuss the conservative media revolution that now challenges the liberal Mainstream Media across the country today.
The program was broadcast live on WJR-Radio as well as simulcast at Mackinac.org. An enthusiastic audience of 100 filled the Oakland County Commissioners Auditorium to hear of a diverse menu of products from national cable news to talk radio to local Internet publicans that have transformed the media landscape and that are having a profound effect on this year’s elections.
A decade ago, NPR’s censorship of Williams might have ended his career. Today, he is welcomed with open arms by a more tolerant alternative media and his story told instantly through dozen of media outlets across the country.
Thanks to all who joined us last night. You can watch the fill telecast at Mackinac here.
Why Care about the Chevy Volt’s Planetary Gear? Follow the Money ( National Review 10.21.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 21, 2010
Why has the complex drive-train engineering of the Chevy Volt become a headline in the popular press? Why does anyone care whether the Volt is an EREV (extended range electric vehicle) or a series hybrid? Simply put, it’s the difference between whether Government Motors gets a $7,500 tax credit — or just $3500 per Volt sold. It’s the difference between whether the sticker says $41,000 or “just” $33,500. It’s the difference between how many credits GM gets towards Obama’s artificial average-vehicle-mileage mandate of 35 mpg.
When the feds start running consumer markets, engineering quibbles matter.
As Holman Jenkins wrote in the WSJ on Wednesday, “the gasoline engine that generates electricity when the (Volt) batteries are depleted will, under certain circumstances, directly turn the planetary ring gear and help drive the car.”
Engaging the planetary ring gear is the type of genius engineering solution auto nerds come up with to make cars better. The Volt, properly understood, is a “plug-in hybrid” since it is capable of running on the battery ALONE all the way to 100 mph (a “dual mode” Prius hybrid, by contrast, runs on a gas engine with a battery for low-end assist).
But by crossing the breach between the gas engine driving a generator or directly driving the wheels (that outer, “planetary” gear in the transmission), it created havoc for GM’s public-relations department which had advertised the Volt as the real deal electric (“230 mpg!” Also a fabrication, but that’s another story) and therefore worthy of the $7,500 “electric” handout as opposed to the $3,500 “hybrid” handout. Regardless, GM — or rather, the rich Greenies who need the latest $40-grand status symbol — will get your $7,500 in tax money because the tax credit was designed for the Volt in the first place.
The whole flap shows the cynical loopholes that pervade this industry now that the government is making the rules.
Mitch Albom, special interest lobbyist ( The Michigan View 10.19.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 19, 2010
In his weekly client newsletter — er, Sunday column — entertainment lobbyist Mitch Albom – er, Detroit Free Press writer Mitch Albom — demonstrates why government programs and tax subsidies are so hard to end.
Albom takes umbrage at GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Snyder’s unusually specific pledge to end a 42 percent tax subsidy for the movie and television business — a business that Albom, himself a writer of film scripts — admits to lobbying for. “(Snyder) claims they don’t pay off and calls for phasing them out — this during a campaign when candidates are usually evasive,” writes Albom, who — if Snyder were less specific — would undoubtedly write the stock liberal hack’s column taking umbrage at a Republican candidate not being more specific about where he wants to cut government (which is precisely why candidates don’t go into specifics. But I digress. . .).
Lobbyist Albom says that eliminating the tax subsidy “would be bad for Michigan. I was involved in bringing these tax incentives to our state. I helped with their creation, testified before the Legislature, met numerous times with the governor and her staff.” But why stop there? Why not a subsidy for his struggling newspaper? Or fellow struggling book authors? Or. . . .
Albom and his rich Hollywood friends are a classic special interest (Big Hollywood meet Big Oil and Big Ethanol) with a built-in celebrity factor (special interests loooove celebrity salespeople). Lobbyist Albom naturally claims the program has worked. “Within three years, we jumped from less than $2 million in film and TV activity to more than $600 million to date. Name me another business that grows that fast.”
No doubt, the program has worked for scriptwriter Albom who stands to benefit from cheaper film costs thanks to his Michigan neighbors. Indeed, as a Michigan radio personality, his radio program also benefits from the steady flow of celebrities — Richard Gere, the cast of Detroit 1-8-7 — that parachute into the state.
But the hard evidence is that what’s good for Mitch is not necessarily good for Mich.
In a devastating study, the Mackinac Center found that after two years the film subsidies “impact on the overall state economy is too small to measure, (but) its effects on taxes and the budget are significant. The state has authorized $117 million in film credits, and the Department of Treasury estimates that the subsidies will cost $155 million in the upcoming fiscal year.” Ouch.
“Critics of the program — usually people who will never benefit from it — say we’re not making back enough money,” snorts Albom in response. This is an argument? By this logic, if you don’t like the wasteful B1 weapons program, you obviously aren’t a defense contractor who benefitted from it. Don’t like Big Ethanol subsidies? Why, you don’t grow corn?
It’s all about jobs, jobs, jobs, says Albom. “It is terribly hard to measure the ripple effect of a movie or TV show — the hotels, rental cars, restaurants or tangential businesses.” So it makes us feeeeeel good. And by that standard, no subsidy will end. Ever.
“We give tax incentives to all kinds of businesses (more than $3.5 billion to more than 500 companies under Gov. Jennifer Granholm, according AnnArbor.com). Isn’t that partly what our tax money is for? To create jobs, ignite citizens and boost the image of our state?” writes Albom.
No. Private investment — not tax goodies — is what creates jobs. That’s what made Michigan an industrial power. That’s why — despite Granholm’s billions in special interest subsidies these last four years, the state’s unemployment rate — jobs, jobs, jobs — has climbed from 7 percent to 15 percent. Government-subsidized jobs aren’t permanent jobs. They will disappear as soon as another state ups the tax credit ante.
All that’s left for Albom is to huff and puff: “As I often want to say to these angry critics, so what’s your great idea?” It’s the same great idea that this country has had since its founding, Mitch. It’s right there on the Mackinac Center’s website and dozens of others: Create a low-tax, low-regulatory, pro-Right to Work, pro-growth environment and watch the jobs flood in.
It works every time.
Would Jesus drive a Chevy Volt? ( The Michigan View 10.15.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 15, 2010
Back in ’03, as a shiny new arsenal of light trucks dominated the Detroit Auto Show, an anti-SUV movement took to the streets to protest that the gas-guzzlers inside. The trucks, they are argued, were underwriting the terrorists we were fighting in the Middle East.
Their slogan: “What would Jesus drive?”
Led by influential left-wing millionairess Arianna Huffington, a powerful coalition of Democratic lawmakers, green groups, journalists, national church groups and Hollywood celebrities launched the “Detroit Project,” an ad campaign that contended that cars were a moral decision and that American sinners must move to hybrid electrics and declare energy independence from abroad or else continue to fuel nefarious petro-dictatorships (in the words of the New York Times Thomas Friedman) and their destabilizing policies.
Now, fueled by billions in green stimulus subsidies, a $4-a-gallon gas scare, and a 35 mpg decree from the greenest president in history, that movement has culminated in this month’s GM roll out of the first iconic plug-in hybrid, the Chevy Volt. The Volt embodies the Green movement’s ideal auto. It can drive 40 miles without using a drop of gasoline. It is one of a fleet of vehicles – including cars from Nissan, Tesla, and Fisker – that rely on batteries for power.
But would Jesus drive them? No, concludes influential Car & Driver columnist Aaron Robinson.
In a pair of devastating columns, Robinson shows that the lithium battery-powered revolution looks a lot like the oil status quo that Greens have spent the last decade denouncing. The essential elements of lithium-ion batteries must be imported from thuggish, foreign regimes. The batteries in the electric Nissan Leaf contains about nine pounds of lithium. Nissan claims capacity for a half-million electric cars per year by 2015, meaning it will need about 2,250 tons of lithium annually.
Goodbye oil dependence, hello lithium and cobalt dependence.
“Wherever energy has been discovered in the past century, fortunes have bloomed,” writes Robinson in his September column, “As We Go Green with Clean Electric Cars, Somebody’s Going to Get Dirty.” Bolivia’s lithium-rich, 4000-square-mile Salar de Uyuni salt flats “has earned it the title of the ‘Saudi Arabia of lithium. And the Bolivians are not the only ones in South America getting measured for sheik’s robes. Argentina’s Salar del Hombre Muerto (“Salt Lake of the Dead Man”) and the salt playas in Chile’s high Atacama Desert represent about 80 percent of the world’s easily exploitable lithium reserves.”
The majority of that reserve is in Bolivia, home of half the world’s known lithium deposits – and ruled by Evo Morales, a populist socialist closely aligned with anti-American Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who likes to say things like: “Either capitalism dies or else Planet Earth dies.” You know Chavez? He’s one if the petro-dictators that lithium batteries are supposed to liberate us from. Venezuela is a major U.S. oil exporter.
The authoritarian Chavez is a model for Bolivia’s Morales, who want s to nationalize the lithium industry as Chavez nationalized the Venezuelan oil company, CITCO. Morales, reports The New Yorker magazine, is “friendly with Fidel Castro, of Cuba, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President. Ahmadinejad visited La Paz in November to announce a joint project to study lithium technology. ‘I’m a big admirer of you and your people,’ Morales told him. ‘Our people have the mandate to liberate ourselves from the empires.'”
And cobalt – also an essential ingredient in the green-preferred lithium power plants? Cobalt extraction typically goes hand in hand with copper and nickel mining,” writes Robinson in the magazine’s October issue. “About 80 percent of the world’s cobalt supply is believed to be in central Africa’s “copper belt,” a band of ancient, mineral-endowed soil straddling Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). . . . The mining of these minerals takes place amid ‘one of the worst conflict situations in the world,’ says Congo policy analyst Aaron Hall of the Enough Project, a left-wing group funded by Democratic billionaire George Soros.”
“In the DRC’s eastern provinces of North and South Kivu, various rebel factions and the national army conduct mining at gunpoint or extract levies at checkpoints along the roads that fund their fighting. . . . (while the) the open pit mining that produces cobalt is causing serious environmental degradation,” he goes on.
“EVs are touted as clean transportation for socially-responsible types,” write Robinson. “You know these people they’re the ones the ones in the Whole Foods carefully reading the package labels.” Yes, we know the ones. They were the same people that said electrics were the guilt-free solution to the gas engine – the moral choice for a new generation of Americans.
“Does anyone living in our modern consumer paradise care if their vehicle purchase helps pay for murder and environmental ruin in Africa?” concludes the Car & Driver columnist.
We await the “What would Jesus Drive?” protest signs at the green 2011 Detroit auto show.
Backfire: Bernero-backed firm offshores jobs to Asia (The Michigan View 10.13.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 13, 2010
A medical devices firm that Virg Bernero has touted as an example of his success bringing jobs to Lansing has outsourced manufacturing to Southeast Asia and is further expanding its Malaysian operations with 200 employees.
Details of Symmetry Medical’s vast international operations come at the same time The Angry Mayor has made corporate offshoring a cornerstone of his gubernatorial campaign. Bernero has accused his GOP opponent and ex-Gateway CEO Rick Snyder of funding a firm, Discera, that recently opened a five-man office in China, arguing that it robs Michigan of jobs.
But the Bernero-favored Symmetry dwarfs Discera in locating jobs in low-cost Asian nations.
Thanks to special MEDC tax favors, Symmetry is expanding its Lansing operations, but the Penang operation is Symmetry’s fastest-growing facility worldwide. “Development plans for Symmetry Penang’s operations are significant and include . . . instrument and implant manufacturing exclusively for Asian markets,” its CEO Brian Moore told TheEdgeMaylasia.com.
Asked at a Detroit News editorial board interview if Symmetry is engaged in the very same practices — growing sales opportunities in Asia — that he hammered Discera for, the usually glib Bernero was incoherent.
“Does Snyder have the right to expand? Absolutely,” said Bernero before launching into an attack on why Dicsera did not have a right to expand in Asia. He said that Symmetry was growing jobs in Michigan — but so is tiny Discera which has 41 employees, 27 of them stateside.
Indeed, if Discera is a public nuisance, then Symmetry is a serial offender. Discera’s office in China is 300-square-foot with three salespeople, one field applications engineer, and an administrative assistant (the lone engineer Benero found particularly troubling as our The Buzz’s Dan Calabrese reports here).
Meanwhile, Bernero’s pals at New York Stock Exchange-listed Symmetry (Wall Street not Main Street!) have a 50,000 sq. ft. facility where the company outsources manufacture of its implants, instruments and sterilization cases. Its new $15 million facility there will be hiring DOZENS of engineers and other personnel to serve as an international sales centre.
The Symmetry double-standard comes as Bernero — down big points in the polls — flails wildly at his opponent trying to make some impression on his “jobs, jobs, jobs” resume. “We think it’s unconscionable that someone who wants to be Michigan’s governor is helping Chinese companies gain a competitive edge,” says a Bernero campaign spokesman.
Really? By that strained standard, the mayor himself has been integral in helping Chinese companies. He lobbied for the GM bailout – the same GM that has 21,000 employees in China in a minority partnership with Shanghai Motors, a Chinese government company that produces cars for the Chinese market.
Southeast Asia is the world’s biggest, fastest-growing market. Bernero’s threats to discourage Michigan firms there is suicidal.
The Volt Rolls Out to a Media Goregasm (National Review 10.12.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 12, 2010
Imagine the U.S. government offering $7,500 to well-off buyers of a BMW 3-series convertible, and an additional $2,000 to buy fuel. Imagine the outrage. There you have the problem with the Chevy Volt.
In the midst of a slow economy and voter anxiety, the U.S. government is preparing to roll out its green electric-car program starring Chevy’s plug-in hybrid. While GM has offered the car for media drives, the collective Goregasm from the press hides the fact that the high tech, silent, undoubtedly cool electronic gizmo is a $41,000 plaything for the blue coast jet set.
“I drove a pre-production Volt,” writes one reviewer with the Boston Herald, “(and it) proved to be a far better vehicle than I was expecting, an undeniable engineering coup for GM. The biggest surprise may be how well the Volt handles. The T-shaped battery pack is placed very low in the chassis, and the lower the extra weight is, the better.”
The trouble with pressie car reviewers is the cars are free. Sure, the Volt handles better than the $17,000 Chevy Cruze with which it shares a platform — but if it’s handling you want, you’ll drop your $40 grand on a BMW. Or an Audi A5. Or any number of vastly superior vehicles in that price range.
And that gets to the nub of the issue. The Volt — and its expensive electric stable mates — are rich niche cars for DiCaprio & Co. Which is why the Toyota Prius–dominated hybrid market has never eclipsed 3 percent of cars sold. Which is why the U.S. government is desperately offering a $7,500 tax credit to buy it and another $2 grand for a fast-charging station.
“The Volt strikes us as the closest in concept to the winning formula of the Prius,” writes Car & Driver, which — unlike their media brethren — has managed to maintain some perspective. “This is without a doubt the most important new car since the advent of hybrids in the late ’90s, and GM has nailed it. Is this the handing off of the Prius’s very illustrious torch?”
The Volt is evolution, not revolution. That is, it’s the new green fashion statement. It’s the new Prius.
Debate: Nerd survives Angry Mayor (The Michigan View 10.11.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 11, 2010
Wixom – The Angry Mayor threw the kitchen sink (actually the outhouse toilet) at The Tough Nerd.
In the only debate of the 2010 governor’s race, Virg Bernero’s challenge was to try and drag Rick Snyder off his white horse – the legendary, iconic white horse of a successful entrepreneur rising to the people’s rescue in difficult times – and into the muck. Once there, Bernero might have a fighting chance. “The Chief Executive Outsourcer,” said Bernero, dropping his bombshell, had not only outsourced Gateway’s jobs to China but was vested in a company called Discera “that had shipped jobs to China.”
“Mr. Snyder,” said the Angry Mayor in his angriest smolder, “how could you?”
Snyder might have answered that Symmetry – a company that Bernero credits himself with bringing to Lansing – has outsourced hundreds of jobs to the Far East to make its medical devices. He might have pointed out that Discera is a small startup of 41 employees that has opened a tiny, 5-man office in Shenzhen to serve customers there. Or he might have laughed at Bernero’s flat-earth protectionism, pointing out that, were it not for General Motor’s massively profitable investment with Chinese government-owned Shanghai Motors, the Detroit Company would not be able to finance UAW pensions.
But Snyder stayed firm in his saddle. He said Discera was an Ann Arbor-based company that “does not have an operation in China” and that the Center for Michigan’s “Truth Squad” had found Snyder’s ad claims of Gateway outsourcing “simply untrue.” Then he returned to his tested, positive platitudes that “I am the only job creator in this race.”
The refusal to jump into the mud and beat some sense into Bernero’s empty head will disappoint those (like me) who crave these teachable moments. But by staying the high road, Snyder won this debate and locked up the election.
In the end, this was a debate played on Snyder’s terms. Recognizing that this is an election about job creation in Michigan’s worst economy in a generation, Bernero has made this a contest of who can create more jobs. Yet despite reading from the GOP playbook on job creation, low taxes, and balanced budgets, The Angry Mayor cannot win this game. Snyder’s American success story of growing tiny Gateway Computer to a 10,000-employee behemoth in the 1990s is his trump card.
Bernero has tried to puncture that resume by caricaturing his opponent with a pampered-rich-guy-who doesn’t-care-about-you-but-loves-foreigners campaign.
But the rich guy charge is ridiculous on its face: Why would a multimillionaire take a $172,000 public employee job if he didn’t care about Michigan? And Snyder is no trust-baby, but a self-made man who “grew up in a 900-foot square home in Battle Creek” as Snyder reminded the TV audience.
And the foreigner bashing? Tasteless. Consider: Bernero himself is the son of Italian immigrants. If his father were Chinese he would have to disown him.
What a difference four years makes. In 2006, Jennifer Granholm – another silver-tongued Democrat – wiped the debate floor with Dick Devos, a job-creating businessman trailing in the polls and challenging her Big Government ways. Granholm bashed him on sending jobs to China, and selling out Michigan women on abortion and other social issues.
But this is “a different economy, a different environment,” says Saul Anuzis, who was Michigan GOP Chief in 2006. “This year, 56 percent of voters rate jobs the #1 issue. The next closest issue ge ts only nine percent.”
In tonight’s debate, social issues merited just one question 50 minutes into the hour-long debate. Tonight, Michigan’s unemployment rate has swelled from 7 percent in 2006 to 15 percent. Tonight, the businessman who created jobs is up 20 point in the polls.
He’s on his white horse and Michigan prays he has a plan.
CO2 Reductions? Developing-world Auto Sales Explode (National Review 10.11.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 11, 2010
While Obama’s EPA continues to reduce consumer choice and strangle automakers with a proposed 62 mpg mandate by 2025 in the name of fighting the mirage of global warming, vehicle growth in the developing world continues to explode – more than negating any CO2 reductions claimed by the EPA and its new rule.
China has already outstripped U.S. auto sales (about 11 million annually) on its way to an estimated 30 million by 2025. And this week brought news that the Philippines saw September sales volumes rise 28 percent “to new record highs” reports just-auto.com. These aren’t expensive electric chariots, but affordable, gas combustion-engine cars.
While a small island nation, the Philippines is a typical example of a developing world that shares none of Washington Democrats’ guilt for growth and will defy any Kyoto-like treaties that limit CO2 emissions.
LaHood: “I don’t want people talking on phones” (National Review 10.10.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 10, 2010
From the Nanny-in-Chief on down, Big Brother reigns in Washington as every department from Health and Human Services to EPA to Transportation seek ways to tighten their grip on American choice.
A day after a federal court judge in Detroit ruled that forcing Americans to buy health insurance is constitutional, transportation secretary Ray LaHood let it be known that Detroit auto manufacturers might have to abandon in-car connectivity systems that they have spent millions developing. Nanny LaHood, reports the Automotive News, “believes motorists are distracted by any use of mobile phones while driving, including hands-free calls.”
Not content to enforce existing distracted-driver laws, LaHood has been building a case for a non-permissive standard where drivers must be mute, two-hands-on-the-steering-wheel autobots.
“I don’t want people talking on phones, having them up to their ear or texting while they’re driving,” LaHood said this week calling for research on hands-free systems. Hands-free phone conversations are a “cognitive distraction,” he says. And eat your broccoli!
The potential restrictions have meant the auto industry has had to arm itself with more lobbyists to make their case for in-car communications systems. Ford’s SYNC and GM’s OnStar system, with about 5.7 million subscribers, are testing applications that would let users make audio updates to their Facebook pages and have messages from the social-media site read to them while driving.
“I’m absolutely opposed to all of that,” said King LaHood.
What’s next? A ban on small children in cars? Tethers to force both hands on the wheel? No passengers in the front seat?
Shock poll: Dingell trails Steele (The Michigan View 10.08.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 8, 2010
Well, he had good reason to be nervous. David leads Goliath.
John Dingell partisans pooh-poohed talk the Democrat icon was in trouble last month when a Detroit News poll showed Congress’ longest-serving dinosaur up 20 points over GOP challenger, Doc Rob Steele. But it was Dingell – in a fund-raising letter to supporters begging for war-chest money (disclosed by the liberal Politico) – that had set off the alarm bells.
As our Dan Calabrese first reported in the Campaign Buzz , Dingell set off alarm bells again yesterday by preemptively pooh-poohing a poll showing Big John trailing the suddenly Bigger Rob.
Well, the poll has been released. Read it and weep.
Disclosed late Thursday by the independent Rossman Group, the numbers show Dingell trailing Steele by a staggering 4 points, 44-40, with 11 percent undecided, reports the very same Detroit News.
“Dingell, the House’s longest-serving member, is trailing the Ann Arbor cardiologist 39.5 to 43.8 with 11 percent undecided, signaling a statistical tie in a race that was once considered safe territory for Democrats,” reports The News. “The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.6 percent.”
As a long-time supporter of socialized medicine, Dingell was paraded by giddy Democrats on their shoulders to the White House last March for the signing of Obamacare’s government takeover of health care. But the hugely unpopular bill has become an anchor around Democrats in the months since, and Dingell has become its poster child.
“The Dean of the House will be tough to beat, but these numbers show that at this point, even The Dean is not immune to the anger that is brewing with the electorate,” Rossman-McKinney said in a statement. Dingell’s campaign dismissed the results as “a GOP poll conducted by a firm with GOP ties masquerading as an independent poll.”
Now that’s desperation. The Rossman Group is hardly a GOP shop, with a reputation for leaning slightly left given its founder’s (Kelly Rossman-McKinney) Democratic ties. “We are strictly a nonpartisan group,” says Rossman-McKinney. “We don’t do any work for any candidates, never have, never will.”
Green Pretender Obama Gives Up His Hybrid SUV ( The National Review 10.07.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 7, 2010
President Obama has ditched his hybrid Ford Escape SUV.
Obama bought the car in a panic in the summer of 2007 immediately after a Detroit Economic Club speech in which he dressed down Detroit automakers for destroying the planet by building big V-8s and not hybrids. The then-presidential candidate admitted after the speech that he himself drove one of those V-8s — a gas-guzzling, Hemi-powered Chrysler 300.
Red-faced, Obama quickly swapped the cool Chrysler for the prudish Escape at an Illinois dealer.
Ironically, his former Chrysler 300 is for sale again. The Detroit News’s Dave Shepardson reports that its current owner tried to cash in on the car’s celebrity pedigree by asking $1 million in 2009 on eBay. It didn’t sell, though it is still available at www.Obamas300c.com.
No doubt the car’s celebrity value has plummeted along with its famous owner’s poll numbers. Indeed, the very cynical politics and ideological hypocrisy that surround Obama’s sale of the 300C exemplify why the public has lost trust in this president.
Obama rarely drove the hybrid Escape after 2007, using it mainly as a political prop. “My most recent car was a Ford. I had one of those Ford Escapes, and that was a spiffy car,” Obama told Ford workers at a plant this August. The SUV sold quietly after the president’s lease ran out. “As a result,” reports the News’ Shepardson, “it’s very likely that somebody is driving around in thepresident’s former ride without even knowing it. ‘It could be anywhere,’ (the dealer) says.”
Today, our green president tools around in a giant gas-guzzling, armor-plated Caddy limo — dubbed “The Beast” by the Secret Service — that gets an estimated 10 mpg. Like many Americans, he’s found green takes a back seat to practical.