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Brooks at full tilt: Peters ‘is a phony’ (the Michigan View.com 10.07.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 7, 2010
If Democratic Rep. Gary Peters’ gutter-ball personal attacks on Rocky Raczkowski have taken the 2010 race for the Congressional 10th to new lows, they have inspired new heights of wicked commentary from Rocky’s Oakland County fraternity brother, Brooks Patterson.
While Raczkowski has responded to Peters’ with stern press releases, the county exec – and the state GOP’s most charismatic pol – has launched an entertaining arsenal of searing poetry and video volleys at Peters in Metro Detroit media.
The theme? Peters is a mud-slinging phony – a Pelosi poodle who is attempting an Extreme Makeover after selling Michigan down the river with Obama’s far-Left agenda. In his Detroit News “Brooks Blog” this week, Patterson waxes poetic in “An Ode to Gary Peters”:
If Peters would run on his record
His campaign would be a big dud
That’s why he has gone so negative
And has been busily slinging mud
Oakland County voters aren’t stupid
We’re smarter than the average bear
We still remember Peters voted for
The Stimulus, Cap & Trade and Obamacare
On Monday, September 27, Patterson does his imitation of the lead singer for “The Platters”:
Ooh ooh, yes, I’m the great pretender
(ooh ooh) Just laughing and gay like a clown (ooh ooh)
I seem to be what I’m not you see…
I’m dedicating this classic song to Congressman Gary Peters. Why? Because he is pretending to be something he’s not you see. There’s a word for that: phony. The Great Pretender can claim to be a friend to small business in his campaign ads, but his 98 percent vote in lockstep with Pelosi and Reid’s programs sings a different tune.
Ooh ooh, I seem to be what I’m not you see. . . .
In a September 30 blog, Brooks accuses Peters of being “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” On October 4, Peters is “running from his record.” Then Brooks puts it all together in a video tour-de-force for The Oakland Press. Like a fighter weaving in an out of Peters’ reach, Peterson jabs his finger at the camera and challenges Peters to explain his smears on Rocky’s business record.
“Are you listening here, Congressman Peters?! It’s not his partner (who is suing Rocky). His promoter is suing six vendors. This is what I mean. He’s a phony. He’s really starting to tick me off.”
Slam, wham, bang. This is better than “Detroit 1-8-7.” Keep it up, Brooks, and Lansing will throw you a 40 percent film tax break.
Trickle-up economics: Bernero robs Main Street to pay Wall Street (The Michigan View.com 10.06.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 6, 2010
Virg Bernero likes to say his campaign is “about Main Street, not Wall Street.” But the dirty little secret about the Democratic model of market socialism is that it marshaling the biggest transfer of wealth from the middle to upper classes in modern times. Berneronomics, like Obamanomics, is trickle-up economics where the rich and connected get the spoils of a system where government controls the purse.
Governor Granholm’s attempt — back by Bernero — to move Michigan to an alternative energy marketplace is a perfect example of Wall Street-friendly economics.
When Big Government makes economic decisions — such as Governor Granholm’s goal that Michigan become a center of the new Green Economy — government access is at a premium. More government control means more lobbyists, more campaign contributions, more opportunities for the well-connected. It favors Big Business over small business. Wall Street over Main Street. Not surprisingly, a new book by Fox Business Channel’s Charlie Gasperino finds that Wall Street has given 35 percent more money to Democrats than Republicans during the Obama years.
As Granholm pushes Michigan to go green, she and Obama are funneling billions in taxpayer dollars to Big Utility to pay for smart grids, billions to Big Auto to make expensive electric cars and billions more to America’s rich gentry who buy these expensive products. Much of this money is coming through state and federal tax breaks, but billions more are coming from the U.S stimulus bill.
“Detroit-based DTE Energy Co. and other utilities have been developing a smarter electrical grid to accommodate an expected surge in consumers charging electric vehicles,” reports The Detroit News.
DTE’s development money is coming straight from taxpayer pockets in the form an $83 million stimulus grant by the U.S. Department of Energy to install “green” electronic power meters to remotely monitor residential power use.
In turn, the cars that will draw power from this new “smart grid” are being produced by either giant, taxpayer-funded corporations or millionaire boutique automakers like Elon Musk. Ford has received $5.9 billion to retool plants to make “green” cars, Nissan $1.6 billion, and Musk’s Tesla $465 million to finance its $60,000 Model S luxury electric car.
As the Model S or the $40,000 Chevy Volt indicate, most of the vehicles plugging into the grid will only be owned by wealthy Americans. To entice this Wall Street crowd to buy their favored cars, Democrats have sweetened the offer with $7,500 in tax breaks. And in order to make it easier for these jet setters to charge their cars, Main Street is also financing fancy electric chargers for their homes.
“While charging plug-ins should not affect the overall grid, transformers could overload in neighborhoods where plug-ins are popular. Initially, plug-in vehicle owners are expected to be higher middle-income families, so multiple plug-ins could end up on the same block,” reports The News.
So Big Utility is working to “anticipate where clustering of potential” electric vehicle owners might occur. That is, in the ritzy Michigan zip codes of Bloomfield Township or Okemos or Gross Pointe. You know, “Wall Street” addresses. Virg Bernero’s kind of folks.
Survey: ‘Social Statement’ Cars Aren’t Selling ( National Review 10.05.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 5, 2010
Bad timing for Barack Obama’s socially conscious auto agenda.
“Buying a car is no longer about making a statement but about making a monthly payment,” observes the Detroit News’s Scott Burgess today.
Budget-minded consumers these days are taking a more metered and practical approach to buying cars and trucks.
A recent Kelley Blue Book survey indicates a fundamental shift in the way Americans are buying vehicles. Price and durability are the top concerns, and a majority are shopping for cars with a price tag below $25,000.
“I think the time of a vehicle being just a social statement is gone,” says James Bell, a Kelley Blue Book analyst.
The market shift comes at a time when Washington is pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into the development of expensive “social statement” cars like the $40K Chevy Volt and the $60K Fisker Karma electric car.
“This is not for average Americans,” Leslie Paige, a spokeswoman for anti-tax group Citizens Against Government Waste told the Wall Street Journal. “This is for people to put something in their driveway that is a conversation piece. It’s status symbol thing.”
Automakers this fall are flooding the market to meet Obama’s mandates with upscale electrics at a time when electric-hybrid sales are already tanking in part due to low gas prices and the “new frugality.”
Americans Want Econoboxes? SUVs Back Over 50 Percent of Vehicle Sales (National Review 10.04.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 4, 2010
For the first time in more than two years, SUV sales account for more than half of the U.S. auto market. This will come as no surprise to readers of this blog, as we have charted the growing rebound of light truck sales as the U.S. economy has (albeit slowly) rebounded and gas prices remain under $3 a gallon.
The trend comes even as Washington issued a new edict that vehicles average an absurd 62 mpg by 2025. The current absurd standard — 35 mpg by 2015 — has forced manufacturers to invest billions in new small-car development.
Today, manufacturers are in defiance of their own customers — their marketing departments churning out small-car ads touting their new green products. This puts automakers in a tough spot: Continue to make cars for the government, or listen to their customers.
For now, manufacturers are sticking with the government, telling the Detroit News that “with a slew of new cars coming out, such as the Chevrolet Cruze, the Ford Fiesta and a new Ford Focus early next year, car sales are likely to outpace truck sales in the coming months.”
Maybe. But it would contradict this year’s clear market trend in precisely the opposite direction.
Peanuts, Cracker Jacks . . . and Elitist Green Transportation? (National Review 10.01.10)
Posted by hpayne on October 1, 2010
Detroit – Underscoring the perils of government ownership, GM will launch the new electric plug-in Chevy Volt with an ad buy during this month’s World Series.
That is, in the middle of the American past time’s premier event, Government Motors will use taxpayer money to buy premium ad time to pitch a money-losing, taxpayer-subsidized, Washington-approved, green automobile to America’s upper-class green snobs.
Rather than applause for good ol’ American know-how that GM anticipates, the public might well see the Volt as a symbol of government excess, more a federal-spending flop rather than the rebirth of a “high-tech” GM.
The ad buy may also endanger the Chevy brand. While the spots will trumpet Chevrolet’s 100-year heritage and a place in American culture next to baseball, that place is occupied by middle-American Chevy buyers. The Volt is priced for the BMW class and its elite tastes.
Will such consumers want a Chevy?
UAW Won’t Take Pay Cut, Plant Closes (National Review 09.30.10)
Posted by hpayne on September 30, 2010
The perverse incentives of UAW wage contracts is shuttering a GM plant in Indianapolis, Indiana, straining the city’s tax base and cratering surrounding property values. The new UAW sounds a lot like the old UAW.
By a vote of five to one, UAW workers rejected a plan by JD Norman Industries to keep a GM metal plant open by reducing wages from an uncompetitive $29 an hour to $15.50 (in line with America’s average manufacturing wage).
But didn’t workers just vote to eliminate 650 union jobs?
Not by the logic of Big Labor’s national contract with GM. By rejecting the Norman offer, workers now get the option under the larger GM labor contract to transfer to another GM factory at $29-an-hour when jobs become available. By this logic, the $15.50 wage was not only a cut in pay, but would have set precedent threatening the $29 wage in future national talks.
Instead, they voted to devastate a riverfront community. The Indianapolis plant that will be stripped of its equipment and rendered a non-taxpaying shell. Marion County receives nearly $2 million-a-year in property taxes from the facility, and local businesses will be devastated by the loss of $40 million in plant wages.
“We are withdrawing from pursuing the plant any further,” JD Norman Industries announced after the vote. The company was the only bidder interested in keeping open the 80-year-old plant after GM abandoned it to shed excess capacity.
Local officials were outraged after ponying up state and local incentives to encourage JD Norman’s purchase. “After having the U.S taxpayer bail out these workers, [they] turned their back on the next generation of Indiana workers in a way that is very frustrating,” said Indiana Commerce Secretary Mitch Roob.