The Car That Killed Glamour - Tesla and the end of the automobile as an object of desire

THE ATLANTIC:

Just as the smartphone has become a centralized, standardized window onto the world, so soon the automobile might soon do the same. There, fantasy and ideals—even foolish ones wrought by the lure of advertising—become invalid rather than just misguided. Why bother cultivating an identity defined in part around an automobile when the automobile is poised to become a mere appliance, a commodity for conveyance? Better to redirect that energy toward your new Apple Car app or your Uber X flexworker microbusiness or your favorite data-harvestable, Google-operated pastime. Silicon Valley’s dispatch of automotive aspiration doesn’t end aspiration, it just redirects it—back toward Silicon Valley.

It’s no wonder we lust after Italian automotive design...

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Top 10 Greatest American Cars of All Time

7/2/15 - MOTOR TREND:

America may not have invented the automobile. That honor goes to German engineer Karl Benz and his Patent Motorwagen of 1886. But America quickly made the automobile its own. By 1904 the United States led the world in automobile sales and production, and by 1913 80 percent of all the cars made in the world were made right here. American automakers — there were 253 of them active in 1908 alone — were pioneering new technologies and new vehicles at an astonishing rate.

LET THE ARGUMENTS BEGIN

Now there's TWO things I'll never do again...

Hal David (lyrics) - Burt Bacharach (music)

Here's #2!

Energy wake-up call

Excerpts from OUR ENERGY FUTURE by Jeffrey Carter [via InstaPundit]

At the Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business Management Conference Friday, I listened to a panel discussion on energy. It was interesting, primarily because the two panelists didn’t mince words. They offered up some interesting stats. . .

• Running an oil company isn’t cheap and has a lot of fixed costs.


• Energy prices aren’t going lower in the long run and instead of battery powered cars and trucks we should figure out how to make uranium powered cars and trucks.


• Research into green energy isn’t a total waste of money or time since fossil fuels will eventually be gone. However, government subsidies and government money pouring into research seems ill spent.


• Natural gas is a good alternative, but we need to figure out how to develop an ecosystem so that it becomes easy for companies to switch. Natural gas has more energy density than diesel fuel.


• We don’t need CAFE standards to stimulate car companies to create better cars. Economic incentives create them. There is no secret car that gets 90 MPG that car companies are withholding from the market. If they had it, you could buy it on a lot.


• Give up on high speed rail. It’s not going to be possible under the current political environment, or economic environment.

• The US will squander much of it’s storehouse of current energy due to bad policy.


• Things like the Chevy Volt in the current technological environment are not efficient. They are science experiments.

As an angel investor, I don’t see me making investments in green energy that will take years to come to fruition. However, as an angel investor I can make investments into companies like Power2Switch that are in the energy sector, but not in the research and development of it.

The REAL reason we don't get more miles-per-gallon in our cars in the United States

Yes: another thing to be "pissed off" about!

Don't text and drive...

GRAPHIC

Undercover sting operation exposes "Cash for Clunkers" fiasco

'Milk it, baby – It's free money': You won't believe what happens inside Cash for Clunkers operation

Aside from the overflowing toilets, vomit on the floor, and getting paid for doing nothing (your taxpayer money at work though):

She said the vouchers are "rife with idiotic mistakes by Level 1 reviewers who are rejecting them for no reason at all, mostly because they are not paying attention."

"I am amazed at the number of vouchers that have been rejected in the last six weeks," Willey said. "Many have been rejected and returned to dealers three to seven times! And for no good reason. What is happening here is that the Level 1 examiners are so inept and lazy that, rather than take the time to closely examine and review these vouchers the way that they should, they just hit the reject or approve button without a second thought. That, of course, slows down the whole process and the dealers aren't getting paid by the Department of Transportation. The dealers are frustrated and irate, and make no bones about it when they return their documents that are correct and don't need to be revised. When their documents are returned for revision, they have no number to call or person to e-mail."

Willey told WND that auto dealers were often very good about submitting the eight documents required to receive a rebate, but some vouchers were being sent back because Level 1 examiners failed to hit the "next" button to go to the following page of documents.

She said, "I saw that time and time again. Then the dealers would write back and say, 'It's on Page 2.'"

Willey said a single voucher would be passed around to as many as a dozen workers without being processed.

Stung! Undercover celeb exposes Obama fiasco

Cash for Clunkers: Dumbest Program Ever?

From http://www.cato-at-liberty.org with a hat tip to Carpe Diem:

As the Cash for Clunkers program begins to wind down, I nominate it as the dumbest government program ever. Here is what the program will have accomplished:

One of America's best kept secrets

Subject: Hourly Labor Cost of Big Three Unions

According to Forbes: Labor cost per hour, wages and benefits for hourly workers.

Ford: $70.51 ($141,020 per year)

GM: $73.26 ($146,520 per year)

Chrysler: $75.86 ($151,720 per year)

Toyota, Honda, Nissan (in U.S.): $48.00 ($96,000 per year)

According to AAUP and IES, the average annual compensation for a college professor in 2006 was $92,973 (average salary nationally of $73,207 + 27% benefits).

Bottom Line: The average UAW worker with a high school degree earns 57.6% more compensation than the average university professor with a Ph.D., and 52.6% more than the average worker at Toyota, Honda or Nissan.

Many industry analysts say the Detroit Three, must be on par with Toyota and Honda to survive. This year's contract, they say, must be "transformational" in reducing pension and health care costs.

What would "transformational" mean? One way to think about "transformational" would mean that UAW workers, most with a high school diploma, would have to accept compensation equal to that of the average university professor with a PhD.

Then there's the "Job Bank" ... When a D3 (Detroit 3 carmaker) lays an employee off, that employee continues to receive all benefits - medical, retirement, etc., etc., PLUS an hourly wage of $31/hour.

Here's a typical story....

Ken Pool is making good money. On weekdays, he shows up at 7 a.m. at Ford Motor Co.'s Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne, signs in, and then starts working -- on a crossword puzzle. Pool hates the monotony, but the pay is good: more than $31 an hour, plus benefits. "We just go in and play crossword puzzles, watch videos that someone brings in or read the newspaper," he says. "Otherwise, I just sit."

Pool is one of more than 12,000 American autoworkers who, instead of installing windshields or bending sheet metal, spend their days counting the hours in a jobs bank set up by Detroit automakers as demanded by the United Auto Workers Union - UAW - as part of an extraordinary job security agreement.

Now the D3 wants Joe Taxpayer to pick up this tab in a $25 Billion bailout package - soon to be increased to $45 Billion if Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton have their way.

Not a good deal for us.... How about Chapter 11 - and getting rid of these ridiculous union contracts?

DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW A PERSON MAKING $12.00 TO $15.00 AN HOUR CAN PURCHASE A VEHICLE BUILT BY SOMEONE MAKING $70.00+ PER HOUR?

Wanna new car (for free)?

Move to Massachusetts and go on welfare!

Obama's Economic Fairytale

August 24, 2008
By George Will

WASHINGTON --
Conservatives are sometimes justly accused of ascribing magic powers to money and markets: Increase the monetary demand for anything and the supply of it will expand. But it is liberals like Obama who think that any new technological marvel or other social delight can be summoned into existence by a sufficient appropriation. Once they thought "model cities" could be, too.

Where will the electricity for these million cars come from? Not nuclear power (see above). And not anywhere else, if Obama means this: "I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming -- an 80 percent reduction by 2050."

No he won't. Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute notes that in 2050 there will be 420 million Americans -- 40 million more households. So Obama's cap would require reducing per capita carbon emissions to levels probably below even those "in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood."

Excerpted from:
Obama's Economic Fairytale