commentary by Michael L. Bromley
copyright 2007

short takes index:

July 8/2007: Hybrid Alert! (Goreson tests the limits of a Prius (and coolness; Hint: boundaries remain intact) )

Jun 26/2007: Hyperventilating Part I (Al Queda bans immoral liaisons between tomatoes and cucumbers!)

Jun 20/2007: The Luxury Gap
(Jerry Flint on the self-destruction of the American luxury car)

Jun 18/2007: What price a life?

Jun 13/2007: 100 millions now unforgotten (Victims of Communism Memorial)

Jun 7/2007: Some people can't give it a break (Democrats & Autos: more solutions...)

May 27/2007: Relatively Insanity: Michael Moore, Castro, and American Health Care (What an asshole)

May 17/2007: China Commie or not? (geopolitical bartalk)

May 11/2007: following the Apr 5 post: Hybrid-Sanctimony*: Another Sighting (ungodly partners: a Mustang and a Prius)

May 5, 2007: Politicians, Cars & Unwanted News (Governors in road trouble!)

Apr 25/2007: Bromley quoted in Washington Post (Toyota Tops GM by Frank Ahrens and Sholnn Freeman)

Apr 11/2007: Chinglish banned! (From the too-good-to-be-fiction department: China preps for the Olympics)

Apr 5/2007: Hybrid-Sanctimony: A Road sighting (Prius sanctimony sanctioned by the State of VA)

Aug 30/2006: Wal-Good or Bad? Schizophrenia in the Washington Post op-ed pages

Aug 27/2006: Not news, just something that had to be done: McWhorter Defends Young (The Andy spat continues)

Aug 23/2006: Detroit's Sugar Daddy gone away? (Pickups and profits and the government regs behind it all)

Aug 21/2006: Just reportin': another left lane hugger (sanctimony from the left lane)

Aug 21/2006: the Rev Al fallout: NPR's Juan Williams falls over and wakes up sane, too! (another bling bling alert!)

Aug 20/2006: more on alcohol fuel from the Washington Post
Brazil

Aug 18/2006: Andy Young's mouth got ahead of his economics (Korean grocers and Walmart's former spokesman)

Aug 17/2006: Rev. Al catching sanity? Wow! ...and great news for America (bling bling alert!)

Aug 13/2006: Bromley quoted in the Washington Post article (" As the Auto Age Dawned, Gasoline Wasn't King")

short takes
news, notes, and links

** Note: had to restore an old backup from August, 2006 to overcome
internet shenanigans from some Moscow-based website/malware sabateur.
The problem has been solved, and Bromleyisms Short Takes is back up!

Jul 8/2007: Hybrid Alert! Al Goreson tests the limits of a Prius!
(and coolness; Hint: boundaries remain intact)

There's a conspiracy out there folks to find a happy side to the ongoing trials of Al Gore's sad son. The news and blogosphere alike are trying to make something of a hybrid hitting 100, such as in this LA Times story that was picked up by news sources across the country:

How fast? A Prius? A Gore puts hybrid to the test before arrest
As yet another tale of celebrity spawn gone wild, last week's arrest of Albert Gore III -- son of the former vice president -- on suspicion of drug possession was routine except for one rather mind-blowing detail: Gore was clocked in a blue Toyota Prius hybrid traveling in excess of 100 miles per hour. "One hundred and five, actually," the Orange County (Calif.) Sheriff's Office spokesman said. "I think it's slightly downhill there." The Prius, not Gore, was the news.

Next we hear from Toyota, whose spokesman tried his damnedest to add sparkle to an otherwise geeky paint job:

Actually, the Prius -- the unofficial merit badge of the environmentally conscious and officially the most fuel-efficient car on the road -- is capable of going even faster, said Mike Michels, spokesman for Toyota. But the car, which uses an electric booster, is speed-limited to 103 mph to avoid depleting the battery. "It can go 103 mph indefinitely," he said. At least until the gas runs out.

As if every car couldn't go faster if it didn't have a rev limiter or a taller fifth gear. Come on, ya unthinking reporters:

The question remains, why is the Prius such a screaming hot rod?

Uh, "hot rod?"

Some rods are hot, some are fast. Some are just big. The Hummer's is big -- so who gives a damn that it can't break 90 -- that's not what you buy it for. And you don't buy a Prius to break the centennial. The Prius is no rod, no matter how you poke, push or pry it.  And trust me, don't bother googling "Al Gore III" and "girls." The first return has a shot of him at the Oscars. You don't want to go there.

Sorry, LA Times, and sorry Toyota, but this one ain't puttin' the sexy into the Prius. There's no room in there between all the AA's.
 

Jun 26/2007: Hyperventilating, Part I

Independent journalist Michael Yon reports from the frontlines that Al Queda types are pushing morality laws on Iraqis wherever they can bully them. We've seen reports of attacking barbers who shave beards, or upon women who venture head-bare in public.

But this one, reported by Yon, is just the best!

Drilling for Justice
.... Other AQI edicts included beatings for men who refused to grow beards, and corporal punishments for obscene sexual suggestiveness, defined by such “loose” behavior as carrying tomatoes and cucumbers in the same bag.

Gotta "keep 'em separated!"
 

Jun 20/2007: The Luxury Gap

Forbes mag's Jerry Flint blames Detroit for the pathetic sales of American luxury cars:

They'll Buy Anything We Build

The reference is to what Flint says was Detroit's attitude towards consumers that assumed client loyalty regardless of product. However, there's more to it, far more, than that. First, though, let's look at the numbers Flint gives us. Truly shocking:

The sales numbers tell the tale. Mercedes' total car and light truck sales are 99,000 for the first five months of this year; BMW (not counting Mini) 119,000; Lexus, 131,000; and Nissan's (nasdaq: NSANY - news - people ) Infiniti division, 53,000. Contrast those figures with Cadillac's sales of 81,000 and Lincoln's 61,000.

Most of the best-selling foreign passenger cars are not oversized vehicles, but compact and intermediate models, such as the Mercedes C Class, the Lexus ES and the BMW 3 series. While some of these cars list for $30,000, it does not take much in the way of options to push window stickers into the $40,000 or even $50,000 range. What's more, some of the foreign cars have full lineups, including 4-door sedans, coupes, wagons and convertibles, which increases their appeal to a wider range of buyers. Every American entry that I can think of in this price range comes in only one body style.

He's absolutely right that the range of body styles of American offerings are pathetic. But he's all wrong on the cause. Luxury builders, including Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, etc. -- and those early American supercar builders, Duesenberg, Marmon, Cadillac (maker of the great Sixteen), and others, all started with legitimate cause for such status. That is, they didn't build crap, and their excellence was proven..

Flint forgets that every luxury/ supercar make must start as either a legitimate street or track car with proven performance. It's far easier to lose luxury status than to build it. Rather than competing upscale, Cadillac needs to compete on value. Until consumers believe that they are getting more car per dollar from Cadillac than Lexus, Lexus is gonna sell more cars.
 

* Note: Flint sees the turn to trucks as part of the demise of American luxury cars: "Money was not an issue in the ‘60s and ‘70s and even in the ‘90s. Then the market turned toward trucks and that is where all of Detroit's efforts went." I should like to remind Flint that the truck -- the SUV, that is, was a product of government regulations and not of Detroit's own making. See my essay, Hating Life (and the SUV)
 

Jun 18/2007: What price a life?

Atlantic Monthly's James Fallows, whom I alternatively love and hate, has another cover piece this month, now on Chinese factories:

China Makes, The World Takes

Read it if you like. Fallows explains how China has followed the Taiwanese model of small, versatile factories rather than the Japanese or Korean system of conglomerates. He leads the reader from the click on a computer in the U.S. to the factory in China to delivery of the item within two days at the buyer's doorstep. Pretty interesting stuff, especially if you dig logistics. And it's a good read for understanding what China has accomplished industrially and why.

One thing I'd add to the article is that modern China is not the product of the U.S. consumer. The Chinese export machine started well before Walmart showed up. Even without Americans buying cheap Chinese consumer goods, China was pawning the crap to the rest of the world, especially the Third World. More on this soon. Back to the price of a life, from Fallows:

Life in the factories is obviously hard, and in the heavy- industry works it is very dangerous. In the same week that 32 people were murdered at Virginia Tech, 32 Chinese workers at a steel plant in the north were scalded to death when a ladleful of molten steel was accidentally dumped on them. Even in Chinese papers, that story got less play than the U.S. shooting—and fatal coal-mine disasters are so common that they are reported as if they were traffic deaths.

Fallows goes on to say that workplace conditions in China aren't really so bad. But that's not my purpose here.

Imagine 32 dead at a steel plant. Or, do you remember the recent media hysteria over the trapped coal miners? Not long ago, that was no news. It was like this: people die in coal mines. So what? My, things have changed!

Now what of 3500 Americans dead in Iraq? OMG! The world has ended!  And of those 43,300 dead on the great American road last year?

Uh....

I guess we like our cars the way we used to really like war and coal mining: indispensable -- at any cost.
 

Jun 15/2007: a couple updates:

* On xx I noted a WashPost article on the demise of the pickup truck. The NY Times xx, notes that "truck" sales are down

* alcyhol:

price of corn up!

Jun 13/2007: 100 millions now unforgotten

As noted in the politics entry of June 12, the President assisted at the dedication of the latest monument in Washington, DC, the Victims of Communism memorial.

It's an ongoing battle, this recognition of communism's mass murder and ongoing dehumanization. President Bush is to be applauded for attending and publicizing the event. That statement is no small thing, and one wonders if another President would have cared.
 

Jun 7/2007: Some people can't give it a break

Democrats, Auto Chiefs Clash Over Industry's Direction
By Sholnn Freeman
Senate Democrats lashed out at the three leading U.S. auto executives yesterday for fighting legislation to force improvements in vehicle gas mileage, warning that lawmakers are losing patience with the industry.

Sen. Thomas R. Carper of Delaware said Congress is tiring of the industry's argument that tougher fuel-economy rules would lead to plant closings and layoffs. Carper, whose state is losing a big Chrysler sport-utility vehicle plant, noted that the Big Three Detroit automakers have downsized significantly in the past two years.

"For the better part of 20 years, you've lost market share. There have been plant closings, and you've lost money," Carper told the auto executives. "Just keep in mind: For 20 years, we've been patient."

Oh, for God's sake, can we not appoint an Automotive History Czar who can shake up the fools and make 'em realize that regulation is precisely what started the whole mess, and that more regulation will only make it worse?

Can I at least yell a piece at Sholnn Freeman one more time? Get with it! You're covering a sad cabal here, a self-serving, circle-jerk of government, business, and labor that went sterile long ago. It's a dry hump now, and all they've got left is the bitching.

Sorry, I've gone vulgar again. What else can I do?

Let 'em fail, Senator Carper, but don't whine that they haven't failed enough. 'Cuz you'll get precisely what you're asking for if you really want it.

Hello Made in USA! (Goodbye Owned in USA!)
 

May 27/2007: Relatively Insanity: Michael Moore, Castro, and American Health Care

What an asshole:
Michael Moore says that American health care is a disgrace
when compared to Cuba's. As quoted in the New York Times,
"Michael Moore's Math: ‘Sicko,’ Castro and the ‘120 Years Club’",
Moore believes that life expectancy is a sole indicator of national physical
--  and political -- health:

“There’s a reason Cubans live on average longer than we do,” he told Time magazine. “I’m not trumpeting Castro or his regime. I just want to say to fellow Americans, ‘C’mon, we’re the United States. If they can do this, we can do it.’”

The Times reporter, Anthony DePalma does his relative best to balance views, concluding that, well, maybe Moore's comparison is simplistic. Well, yes. So why the wasted time even considering it? Or listening to this KoolAide:

“I know Americans tend to be skeptical,” [longevity specialist Dr. Robert N. Butler] said, “but health and education are two achievements of the Cuban revolution, and they deserve some credit despite the government’s poor record on human rights.”

Yeah, yeah, the stats tell some stories that you admit, such as that Cubans have fewer lives cut short by auto accidents because there are so few cars there, or that for the same reason Cubans get more exercise (weak causality analysis). But to excuse Fidel for supposedly good health care is intellectual retardation.

Try comparing Cuba to Belgium, instead. Belgium has a more comparable ten million inhabitants. The U.S. has more immigrants, legal and otherwise, than either Cuba or Belgium have people. Sure, America has more poor than the total populations of Cuba and Belgium combined -- but unlike Cuba, those poor are far from the majority; and unlike Cuba those poor are hardly Cuban poor. As the Times article notes, the poor of America suffer from the luxury of too much food -- which may well contribute to lower life-expectancy.

But that's just technical. The real game is that all those poor, all those immigrants, all seek a share of American success. Belgium doesn't have 35 million 1st and 2nd generation equal partners in American opportunity whose ancestors were denied those opportunities for 400 years and are now joining it freely. Belgium doesn't have tens of millions of formerly poor, formerly uneducated who came there to escape problems around the world. Belgium doesn't have opportunity and challenge and success and failure like the U.S.

Let 'em live longer in Belgium or Cuba so long as they live freer in the U.S.

You think differently, you don't believe in freedom. If so, consider this: why are there millions migrating to the U.S. and none to Cuba, and so few to Belgium? (The U.S. has three times the migrate rate as Belgium, and that's a statistic that ignores illegal migration in the U.S.).

The whole "health care" crisis is built upon the idea that "health care" is a right: when it is a right it will become both scarce and expensive, or just inferior as DePalma finally gets around to admitting while describing Fidel's own Cuban health care fiasco. As a privilege, health makes itself available to those who really want and need it. The rest will get it when they need it, thus insuring that it costs more for all of us. The solution is more people who take on the privilege, and fewer who need it as an entitlement. Make it a right and you have no more privilege. Take away privilege and you have destroyed the foundation of core rights. What we want in this world is more privilege and less entitlement.

Or do you believe that we should all be equally poor? If so,
bienvenidos Comrade!.

PS I was among the self-employed self-insured. I was also among the unemployed uninsured. Did I sit on my ass and whine to Michael Moore or the New York Times?

Sorry, they'd just have sent me to Cuba.
 

May 17/2007: China Commie or not?

About eight years ago I fell into a bar conversation with some CIA China-desk analyst who maintained that China would stay forever communist, that market reforms would adapt to communism and the communism would adapt to the market.  was not then and have not since been convinced.

Since then I have learned a bit about Chinese history, and I am convinced that communism is hardly an aberration upon the flow of order to chaos upon which historical China is built. From the harsh to the free-thinking rule of China's past, that nation's history is but an endless track for order, one that spirals into episodes of extreme order that explode into chaos before the rebirth of some new form of unity and smothering control.  Communism makes sense in this paradigm, and so does its ultimate fall to the free market

The larger question, then, is if market reform will bring not chaos, as has other Chinese episodes of convulsion and division. Here's the latest

China Urges U.S. Not to Punish All Food Exporters
SHANGHAI, May 16 — China has urged the United States not to take punitive action against this country’s exporters of agricultural goods even though Chinese officials have determined that two Chinese companies intentionally contaminated American pet food ingredients with an industrial chemical.

You see, the market has its own devices. It seeks order like any other human system. The difference is that the market regulates itself, something of a yin-yang that actually works. Too much government is too much yin.

Maybe there's hope for a free China. Break the cycle, dudes!

May 11/2007: following the Apr 5 post: Hybrid-Sanctimony*: Another Sighting

Wish I had the camera, but this one was a classic: a two-car driveway stuck in a tragically deep pit of illogic from which no car -- or couple -- could ever climb: side-by-side were a Prius and a Ford Mustang GT.

Neighbors give the newlyweds no more than a month...
 

* Hybrid sanctimony: the Call of the Prius:

I'm saving the world. What are YOU doing?

May 5, 2007: Politicians, Cars & Unwanted News

As per the Bromleyisms autos entry, New Jersey governors have had a long mal-association with automobiles, going well before John Corzine and James McGreevey (his SUV ran into another car in 2004). Here's an article with a summary of Governors and car crashes over the last ten years:

A look at auto accidents involving governors' official cars

I'm sure there's other stuff out there, such as this, from the Washington Post, that lists Governors and speeding, crashing, or otherwise making the wrong kind of public impression (after hitting 110mph -- nice! -- New Mexico governor and Prez-wannabe Bill Richardson apologized for his misguided, triple-digit highway leadership; Guv clocked Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell of PA regularly flew his limousine at over a hundred).

So I'll just fill you in on some early history of politicians and cars:

- Feb 7, 1909: Bryan is Injured in Auto Accident
- Dec 21, 1910: Aldrich in an auto smash: Machine wrecked as he sped for a train
- Jun 11, 1911: Gov. Tener an Auto Speeder
- Sept 4, 1911: Deneen's Leg Broken in auto accident: Illinois Governor thrown from machine while trying to avoid a team of horses
- May 26, 1912: Roosevelt guard dies: Maj. Robinson run over by Colonel's car, succumbs to injuries
- July 27, 1912: "Gov. Dix Caught Speeding"
- Nov 11, 1912: Gov. Wilson's Head Cut in Auto Shake-Up: Limousine Hits Bump in the Road and the Governor Strikes a Ceiling Iron

And I won't even bring in William Howard Taft and his family. Taft was regularly admonished in the news and editorials for running his White House cars too fast. Here's my favorite headline on his love for speed, from a New York Times editorial of May 3, 1910:

Setting a Bad Example

Et tu, Gov. Corzine? (Wear your seatbelt next time!)

Apr 25/2007: Bromley quoted in Washington Post

Toyota Tops GM
by Frank Ahrens and Sholnn Freeman
Wednesday, April 25, 2007; Page D01

Bromley comments on the event in the Washington Post. I spoke at length with Frank Ahrens, who was most inquisitive, enjoyable, and insightful. The core idea of our discussion lay in the concept of "value," which the article discusses:

GM now finds itself in the same position as Ford in the 1930s, when GM wrested the sales lead by building what consumers saw as a "value car," meaning an automobile that consumers would buy even though it cost more than its rivals, auto historian Michael L. Bromley said.

As did the Model T, did GM in the 1920's -- not the 1930s (sigh), and now has done Toyota: give the consumers more for their money and they'll use their money wisely. When the Model T came out, it's price was the lowest per horsepower of any car. By the mid-1920s, the dollars-per-horsepower advantage of the T was gone, as well as other acutely important values, such as comfort, size, and prestige -- all of which if measured per dollar were found more in a GM than a Model T.

As I researched for an article on the 1970s, I realized that the original rise of Toyota, Honda, and other Japanese makes came just as the VW Bug and Detroit, generally, were declining in the value they gave to consumers. The "Bug" was old and no longer a competitive car in terms of value. It's sales were built upon nostalgia and counter-culture; but even that couldn't sustain an outdated, inefficient, and dangerous car. It's demise was evident by the time it hit its sales peak in 1969-1970.  Detroit, meanwhile, got smacked by new Federal safety rules, the EPA and the gas crisis, and those American makers couldn't figure out what kind of car to make or sell. They designed economy cars to compete with the obsolete and dying competitor in the VW Bug; they downsized the rest of their cars to find an impossible balance between economy, safety, and comfort. The end result was less value per dollar for consumers.

The Japanese, meanwhile, offered cars that were progressively better every year, giving more horsepower, more economy, more safety, and more comfort -- more value. From there, it's a matter of ups and downs in the products that Detroit offered, all of which were weighed down by new Federal regs, new import quotas (protection that offered immediate satisfaction and long-term hurt), more UAW giveaways, more white collar stock options and retirement packages, and so, on.

So, yes, the Post article was dead on to quote me with this one:

"I just wrote an article on autos in the '70s and how the industry collapsed on itself," Bromley said. "It broke my heart to write that article."
 

Apr 11/2007: Chinglish banned!

From the too-good-to-be-fiction department:

Organizers of 2008 Beijing Olympics Seek to Ban 'Chinglish'
AP BEIJING — Along with spitting, run-down housing and bad manners, add unintelligible English to the list of things organizers of the 2008 Beijing Olympics want to ban. Municipal officials promised Wednesday to crack down on awkward, Chinese-inflected English, known as "Chinglish," and asked the public to help police bad grammar and faulty syntax.

Throughout the city, examples abound. A store selling tobacco products advertises: "An Excellent Winding Smoke." On the floor at Beijing's Capital Airport, a sign reads: "Careful Landslip Attention Security." On a billboard this mysterious message: "Shangri-La is in you mind, but your Buffalo is not."

Meanwhile, check out this fabulous website, dedicated to really odd translations from Asian languages to English: engrish.com

Ya gotta see that website!

Apr 5/2007: Hybrid-Sanctimony: A Road sighting

Spied a classic on the G.W. Parkway: a Prius with VA license tag:

HOVEXMPT

Magnificent righteousness! And the beauty of it is that in my little old Mazda making probably 28 mpg was pulling half again or more fuel efficiency than that Prius as our smug little Mr. Sanctimonious went along by himself using a gallon of precious fuel for every 40 passenger miles. Between us my passenger and I were getting upwards 60 miles traveled per gallon.

The HOV exemption for hybrids destroys the very premise for HOV lanes: supposedly, it's not the mileage of the vehicle that matters (think bus here), it's the number of people moved per gallon of fuel consumed.

Doh!

Aug 30/2006: Wal-Good or Bad? Schizophrenia in the Washington Post op-ed pages

Amazing how a single news page can go from...

Devaluing Labor
By Harold Meyerson (WashPost)
Labor Day is almost upon us, and like some of my fellow graybeards, I can, if I concentrate, actually remember what it was that this holiday once celebrated. Something about America being the land of broadly shared prosperity. Something about America being the first nation in human history that had a middle-class majority, where parents had every reason to think their children would fare even better than they had.

.... But finger a corporation for exploiting its workers and you're trafficking in class warfare. Of late a number of my fellow pundits have charged that Democratic politicians concerned about the further expansion of Wal-Mart are simply pandering to unions. Wal-Mart offers low prices and jobs to economically depressed communities, they argue. What's wrong with that?

Were that all that Wal-Mart did, of course, the answer would be "nothing." But as business writer Barry Lynn demonstrated in a brilliant essay in the July issue of Harper's, Wal-Mart also exploits its position as the biggest retailer in human history -- 20 percent of all retail transactions in the United States take place at Wal-Marts, Lynn wrote -- to drive down wages and benefits all across the economy. The living standards of supermarket workers have been diminished in the process, but Wal-Mart's reach extends into manufacturing and shipping as well. Thousands of workers have been let go at Kraft, Lynn shows, due to the economies that Wal-Mart forced on the company. Of Wal-Mart's 10 top suppliers in 1994, four have filed bankruptcies.

...to this...

Wal-Mart as Red Herring
By Robert J. Samuelson (WashPost)
It's not surprising that, as the New York Times reports, leading Democratic politicians have latched on to bashing Wal-Mart as a "new rallying cry" that "could prove powerful in the midterm elections and in 2008." America's political culture routinely demands at least one hideous corporate villain. In recent decades that role has fallen to General Motors, IBM, Exxon Mobil and Microsoft; now Wal-Mart has assumed the mantle. But these wishy-washy politicians have missed the obvious solution to the Wal-Mart problem: nationalization.

Congress should just buy the company and then legislate good behavior. Wal-Mart executives "talk about paying [workers] $10 an hour," Sen. Joseph Biden told a rally in Iowa, according to the Times. "How can you live a middle-class life on that?" Well, if $10 is too little, the government could order the Department of Wal-Mart to pay more. How about $15 or $20? Similarly, if Wal-Mart's health insurance is inadequate, Congress could command more coverage. (I asked Wal-Mart for coverage figures, which it declined to provide. All a spokesperson said is that more than half of its 1.3 million U.S. employees are full-time, enjoying higher coverage rates, and that 75 percent of all workers have some coverage through the company, the government or spouses' plans.)

Meyerson is vapid, as usual. And good for Samuelson! The Post.com featured Meyerson's article well above Samuelsons'. Guess who the editors agree with? Quite amazing that Samuelson still remains in print over there. I doubt it's that he's a token realist so much as he probably gives the best investment advice on 15th Street.

Aug 27/2006: Not news, just something that had to be done:
McWhorter Defends Young

In Defense of Andrew Young
By John H. McWhorter (Wash Post Op-Ed)
Andrew Young unwittingly ended his brief tenure as Wal-Mart's ambassador to U.S. cities this month with his remarks about the nation's urban mom and pop shops:

"Those are the people who have been overcharging us -- selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables," he told the Los Angeles Sentinel, an African American weekly. "First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs," he added. "Very few black folks own these stores."

Young was hammered so quickly in the national media -- the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page even suggested that he qualified for a Mel Gibson Sensitivity Prize -- that he immediately stepped down from Wal-Mart and issued mea culpas to the New York Times, CNN and the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.

None surprised that McWhorter came out as he did, and in the Washington Post. I'm glad for it, although the entire episode was, as ever, silly, from Young's comments to the faux outrage that followed. I was surprised by the angle McWhorter went after, however. Never, ever, underestimate McWhorter:

The mainstream media have ignored (or remain unaware of) an interesting point concerning Young's allegedly racist comments: His views are in fact common coin among inner-city black people -- the very people the hate-speech patrol so ardently hopes to protect. The notion that non-black owners of corner stores are "interlopers" in African American communities is a staple of black nationalist politics and black talk radio. Young's statement played right into the Sentinel's motto: "The Voice of Our Community Speaking for Itself."

Well stated. But McWhorter does leave open the problem of why prices are high in urban black areas in the first place. For this, see my entry below on how Andy Young's mouth got ahead of his economics (8/18/06).
 

Aug 23/2006: Detroit's Sugar Daddy gone away?

Slowing pickup truck sales hurt profits
By Tom Krisher (AP)
Tom Wright's dark-blue GMC Sierra Extended Cab pickup is 12 years old, but so far he's dismissed any thought of replacing it. Although it has 165,000 miles on it, Wright says times are a little too slow in the carpentry business to replace the truck, which he uses for work and to haul around his family.

Much to the detriment of Detroit's Big Three, people like Wright are delaying truck purchases, cutting into profits and forcing Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group to idle some assembly lines. Pickup sales overall are off 15.7 percent in the first seven months of the year from the same time last year.

Sales of Ford's F-series pickups, the highest-selling vehicles in the nation, are down 12.3 percent. The No. 2 seller, the Chevrolet Silverado, is off 20.1 percent as the company changes production to a new model. Dodge's Ram line is down 11.7 percent. ... So the Big Three, which rely more on trucks for profits than their foreign competitors, are likely to face more hard times as truck demand softens even further in the second half of the year, analysts say. Nearly 32 percent of Ford's sales came from pickup trucks through July of this year, the highest percentage in the industry, according to Autodata Corp. GM's was 25 percent, while Toyota's was at 11.5 percent.

... Ben Poore, marketing manager of Ford's truck group, said the market already is starting to stabilize, even though it has lost some buyers who don't need pickups for work. "As people get used to and re-calibrate to the gas price, they tend to come back into the pickup market," he said. If gasoline stays high, manufacturers who rely on pickups and SUVs will continue to suffer, said Ken Bernhardt, professor of marketing at Georgia State University in Atlanta. "Let's say I'd rather be Honda and Toyota than Ford and GM if gas prices stay at $3 or higher," he said.

My question: will Ford and GM abandon the full size truck, or ride out the high price of gasoline? I like what the Ford marketing guy is saying, and I don't think it's bull: consumers will soon be over the pump price shock, either from submission or lower prices (which I see coming). And then they'll be back to buying big engines and heavy cars.

The other scenario can only come from Washington. If new light-truck CAFE rules hit truck fleets, then it's all over. If they mandate it's death, then it's done. Consumers, though, will always want it. Will their representatives in DC let 'em have it? Those same idiots killed the big sedan in the 1970s. Fingers are crossed for today.
 

Aug 21/2006: Just reportin': another left lane hugger

This one is worth the historical notation: 

Left lane, fifty mph, small back-rear spare utility tire.

Place and time: I-495, between Rockville Pike and Connecticut Avenue, 8:35 a.m. For the record, I did 85 gettin' around the twit.
Sue me, but that jerk was the more dangerous.

Just for the record.
 

Aug 21/2006: the Rev Al fallout: NPR's Juan Williams falls over and wakes up sane, too!

See entry 8/17/06 for Rev. Al's epiphany. Here's Juan's visit with reality:

Banish The Bling
A Culture of Failure Taints Black America
by Juan Williams (Washington Post)
Have we taken our eyes off the prize? The civil rights movement continues, but the struggle today is not so much in the streets as in the home -- and with our children. If systemic racism remains a reality, there is also a far more sinister obstacle facing African American young people today: a culture steeped in bitterness and nihilism, a culture that is a virtual blueprint for failure.

The emphasis on young people in today's civil rights struggle is rooted in demographics. America's black, Hispanic and immigrant population is far younger than its white population. Those young people of color live in the big cities and rely on big-city public schools.

With 50 percent of Hispanic children and nearly 70 percent of black children born to single women today these young people too often come from fractured families where there is little time for parenting. Their search for identity and a sense of direction is undermined by a twisted popular culture that focuses on the "bling-bling" of fast money associated with famous basketball players, rap artists, drug dealers and the idea that women are at their best when flaunting their sexuality and having babies.
 

Aug 20/2006: more on alcohol fuel from the Washington Post

Brazil's Road to Energy Independence
Alternative-Fuel Strategy, Rooted in Ethanol From Sugar Cane, Seen as Model
(by Monte Reel, Washington Post)
SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Record oil prices have made the world's energy landscape a darkly foreboding place this year, inhospitable to optimism and celebration. Except in Brazil .... The government predicts that for the first time in its history, Brazil will achieve energy equilibrium, exporting as much oil as it imports. The production of sugar cane-based ethanol is expected to reach an all-time high. And just three years after the introduction here of flex-fuel vehicles -- cars that run on either ethanol or gasoline -- several major automakers predict that such vehicles will represent 100 percent of their production by the end of the year, eliminating gas-only models.

.... Ethanol is not solely responsible for Brazil's newfound energy independence -- domestic oil exploration has exploded in recent years -- but it has replaced about 40 percent of the country's gasoline consumption, according to Caio Carvalhal, an analyst with Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Rio de Janeiro. "It's amazing how sharply the level of interest in our experience here has jumped in recent months," said Eduardo Pereira de Carvalho, president of Sao Paulo's sugar cane producers union.... "...They know that Brazil's ethanol program exists, but beyond that, most of them have very little information about our actual experience."

That experience has been a sometimes painful 30-year evolution, marked by plenty of foresight and numerous false starts. It was born of a uniquely Brazilian political and economic environment, but industry analysts say it nevertheless provides lessons for a fledgling U.S. ethanol program that is already on pace to dethrone Brazil's as the largest in the world.

The real story is gasoline's resiliency despite a thirty-year effort to replace it. Worse, the petroleum equilibrium the article lauds resulted from new offshore drilling, not from reduced consumption. Gasoline just won't go away.

Some think diesel is the answer:

Ricardo plans clean diesel
(Aug 18/06, from Verdict on Cars)
Ricardo, the British engineering consultancy, is working on a diesel engine that will meet the most stringent American exhaust standards.
 

Aug 18/2006: Andy Young's mouth got ahead of his economics

Wal-Mart Image-Builder Resigns
New York Times
The civil rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired by Wal-Mart to improve its public image, resigned from that post last night after telling an African-American newspaper that Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners had “ripped off” urban communities for years, “selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables.”

In the interview, published yesterday in The Los Angeles Sentinel, a weekly, Mr. Young said that Wal-Mart “should” displace mom-and-pop stores in urban neighborhoods. “You see those are the people who have been overcharging us,” he said of the owners of the small stores, “and they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs.”

Right concept, bad conclusion. Young's right that retailers in high-risk areas sell at higher prices. Of course they do, but not because of racism or greed, but because of economics. It's less competition, smaller stores, poor marketing and merchandising, and higher risks of all kinds all add up to higher prices in poor and high-crime areas, precisely because they are operating in risky environment with fewer returns than other places.

I'd guess that small urban stores have smaller gross profit with or without higher per-item markups. The fix, Andy, is in the customers, not the retailers. Maybe they can work together, which is what you were doing with Walmart, but it has to be with the common goal of cleaning up city neighborhoods.

Aug 17/2006: Rev. Al catching sanity? Wow! ...and great news for America

Sharpton: 'Gangsterism' Harming Blacks
(AP)
... "We have got to get out of this gangster mentality, acting as if gangsterism and blackness are synonymous," he said. "I think that challenge has to be given to Hollywood and the record industry. I think we've allowed a whole generation of young people to feel that if they're focused, they're not black enough. If they speak well and act well, they're acting white, and there's nothing more racist than that."

Bill Cosby isn't yet vindicated, but what a change, this, coming from Rev Al. Whatever "black" or "white' culture are, there are norms and ways that lead to individual success and happiness. Gangstaism ain't one of them. And its bad effects go way beyond urban black culture, having spread through all classes and races. It is most damaging, of course, to those the most vulnerable to its symptoms of instant gratification, sex, drugs, violence, and anti-establishmentarianism.

Aug 13/2006: Bromley quoted in the Washington Post article

As the Auto Age Dawned, Gasoline Wasn't King
By Steven Levingston
Washington Post
D.H. Killeffer had a dire warning for gasoline-greedy Americans. The chemical engineer had crunched the numbers -- he compared the country's production of crude oil with its thirst for gasoline. "Estimates based on the most complete data now available place the end of our gasoline supply between ten and twenty years, with the odds in favor of ten rather than twenty," Killeffer, secretary of the New York division of the American Chemical Society, wrote in the New York Times.

The year was 1925.

The author seems to have picked up on the Bromleyisms blog of June 5, Why the world needs automotive historians (gasoline, steam -- or corn?, which set out to correct the notion out in the press that with automobiles gasoline didn't have to be, that there might have been an alternative that was squashed by some vested interest in it.

So he sought me out, and I assisted with the article, but not so as to correct some of the problems in it. Nevertheless, the writer was earnest and honest, and it's a fine article. It shows, however, how quick looks at history can be misleading. He came up with the idea for the article after discovering in the historical newspaper databases a 1925 pronouncement of the coming end of petroleum fields. Not knowing the context of 1925, he made some poor assumptions. In 1924, for example, the government announced that national oil production was down from the previous year. This alarmed many into thinking the oil had run out, whereas the real cause was lower prices following the 1920 depression and the introduction of cheap CA oil, both of which suppressed extraction in the East and Midwest.

As for why gasoline, the Post writer set it straight with this, coming from me:

"Against competing technologies, gasoline ultimately won because it was inherently a more useful form of storing energy," said Michael L. Bromley, a automobile historian in Bethesda.
 

* Update, 8/20/06: I posted the article here on FreeRepublic.com, and, as ever there, some interesting discussion developed (amidst the usual nonsense), in this case regarding the role and future of diesel engines in passenger cars. I remain unconvinced.