General Motors GM
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uber1 national city lines red car streetcar scandal
trump announced ventilator done deal but then fell apart?
who killed electric car below
see butler biz coup
merri ok
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11 25 COP 13 NEWSOM
GM BAD CALL
ALL COUNTRIES HERE, EVEN CHINA NOT US
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an 10 25
An Ohio battery planned owned byGeneral Motors that President Donald Trump promised to save just confirmed they will be cutting 550 jobs and laying off another 850 employees, Newsweek reports.
The cuts come amid a slump in demand for electric vehicles. The plant in Lordstown, Ohio is a joint venture with Ultium Cells, which is in turn a joint venture between General Motors and LG Energy Solution which mass-produces battery cells for electric vehicles.
“In response to slower near-term EV adoption and an evolving regulatory environment, General Motors is realigning EV capacity,” the company said in a statement, saying it “remains committed to our U.S. manufacturing footprint.”
Newsweek notes that the recent elimination of the $7,500 consumer tax credits implemented during Joe Biden’s presidency as part of the Inflation Reduction Act has significantly impacted demand for electric vehicles, forcing companies to reassess production plans while considering further reductions in their workforce and facility footprint.
Trump held a 2017 rally near the Lordstown facility, promising residents that jobs would soon be returning to the region following years of decline.
“They’re all coming back. They’re coming back,” Trump told the crowd. “Don’t move. Don’t sell your house.”
After GM announced the closure of the plant in 2018 as it transitioned toward more fuel-efficient vehicles, Trump brushed it off, telling Fox News, “It doesn’t really matter because Ohio is under my leadership from a national standpoint."
Industry insiders are reeling from the Lordstown layoffs.
“Today, we received some devastating news that weighs heavily in our hearts and our community. This is an incredibly challenging time for our local union and our membership, especially given the painful history of our former assembly plant shutting its doors," said George Goranitis, local chapter president of the United Auto Workers union.
AN 9 24
alternet-no lnx
Inside the billionaire's trick to keep people from voting
Thom Hartmann
September 23, 2024
Outside of Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan (and a hedge fund guy), just about all American billionaires are white. And while their white privilege helped most of them to become billionaires in the first place, for the politically active billionaires on the right, it’s their money that they care about the most.
Fred Koch, the founding patriarch of the Koch family, was an early supporter of the John Birch Society (JBS), which vigorously opposed any efforts to reduce the powers of the very wealthy white people or elevate the wealth or political power of poor or working-class people. Their most public positions in the 1950s and 1960s were against racial integration and communism— the ultimate method for leveling the fortunes of the rich. The JBS opposed virtually all “welfare” legislation, from Social Security to Medicare to unemployment insurance, calling it socialism and equating it with a softer version of communism. Around that same time, a Russian immigrant who’d fled the Soviet Union (her father had lost his pharmacy shop to the Bolshevik Revolution) came to America with dreams of becoming a great author or actress. Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum chose the stage and pen name of Ayn Rand, and in the 1950s she wrote a rather simplistic novel celebrating inherited wealth.
In Atlas Shrugged, a young woman and her hapless brother inherit a railroad from their father and try to grow it strong over opposition from the unions, which want a safe workplace and reasonable pay. As George Monbiot wrote:
In a notorious passage, she argues that all the passengers in a train filled with poisoned fumes deserved their fate. One, for instance, was a teacher who taught children to be team players; one was a mother married to a civil servant, who cared for her children; one was a housewife “who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing.”35
It means nothing, in other words, if average people are ground into the dirt. But when people who inherited wealth face challenges, particularly those from average working families, they should be able to utterly destroy them.
ALSO READ: Trump has a brand new front in the Haitian conspiracy push
In a subsequent novel, The Fountainhead, one of the “producers” of her mythology rapes a woman, but it’s all good because the woman decides that she enjoys it mid-rape. Monbiot boils it down simply: “Rand’s is the philosophy of the psychopath, a misanthropic fantasy of cruelty, revenge, and greed.”
While Fred Koch was helping the JBS in its fight against taxes and regulation, his sons were apparently reading Ayn Rand and taking her philosophy of radical selfishness to heart. They were also, by the 1970s, running the Koch oil operation and having constant struggles with regulators, particularly during the Carter administration.
Looking for political juice, David Koch joined and then largely took over the Libertarian Party in the late 1970s.
That political party had been created by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), a lobbying group formed in 1946 that represented the Big Three carmakers, the top three US oil companies, Monsanto, DuPont, GE, Merrill Lynch, Eli Lilly, and both US Steel and Republic Steel. Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, was on its board of directors, as were United Fruit president Herb Cornuelle; National Association of Manufacturers director and DuPont and GM board member Donaldson Brown; and Leonard Read, a longtime US Chamber of Commerce executive.
insert
endit
The mission of the new libertarian movement was straightforward: to lobby for the interests of big business and the uber-wealthy people that such business had created.
The same year that the FEE was created and they began the rollout of libertarianism, Congress busted an obscure University of Chicago economist named Milton Friedman for illegally shilling for the real estate industry.
As Mark Ames wrote:
The purpose of the FEE—and libertarianism, as it was originally created—was to supplement big business lobbying with a pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-economics rationale to back up its policy and legislative attacks on labor and government regulations.
This background is important in the Milton Friedman story because Friedman is a founder of libertarianism and neoliberalism, and because the corrupt lobbying deal he was busted playing a part in was arranged through the Foundation for Economic Education.36
Friedman was later implicated in the aftermath of the brutal and violent takedown of democracy in Chile, and his acolytes helped privatize the state-owned properties of the Soviet Union, creating the kleptocratic and oligarchic government that now runs Russia and many of the former Soviet states. Libertarianism, it turns out, has had real-world impacts, which include the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
No country has ever successfully established a libertarian form of economy or governance; it was, after all, a scam set up to front for the very rich, and the corporations that made them that way. But that hasn’t stopped libertarian and corporatist ideologues from trying.
While Chile and Russia are well-known examples, few Americans seem to remember how George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld simply stood on the sidelines watching as the treasures of Iraq were looted after the United States took down their government.
It was to be a Grand Experiment: they’d finally prove that without government interference in a nation’s economy or social systems, an utopia would emerge. L. Paul Bremer was their front man, arriving in Iraq on May 2, 2003, to begin the process of “freeing” the country’s economy so that the world’s corporations would flood in and create a paradise....
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/ohio-just-ordered-gm-to-repay-28-million-in-tax-breaks-for-closing-lordstown-auto-plant/
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who killed wiki:
reminder:
CA CARB) passed the zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate in 1990 which required the seven major automobile suppliers in the United States to offer electric vehicles in order to continue sales of their gasoline powered vehicles in California. Nearly 5000 electric cars were designed and manufactured by Chrysler, the Ford Motor Company, General Motors (GM), Honda, Nissan, and Toyota; and then later destroyed or donated to museums and educational institutions...The film details the California Air Resources Board's reversal of the mandate after relentless pressure and suits from automobile manufacturers, continual pressure from the oil industry, orchestrated hype over a future hydrogen car, and finally the George W. Bush administration.
A portion of the film details GM's efforts to demonstrate to California that there was no consumer demand for their product, and then to take back every EV1 and destroy them...
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https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-june-15-2020/
https://www.risingupwithsonali.com/2019/07/17/swindlers-all-a-brief-history-of-government-business-frauds-from-alexander-hamilton-to-aig/
MICHAEL POWELSON – Presidents throughout American history have enabled corporate excess even at the expense of public welfare. And yet they promise to uphold the Constitution and the rights of all Americans. Making the case that our economic and political system are inherently geared toward corruption, my next guest has written a history book about it.
Dr. Michael Powelson, teaches at LA Valley College and Cal State University Channel Islands. His new book is Swindlers All, a Brief History of Government Business Frauds from Alexander Hamilton to AIG.
could have bought GM for 3 bill$, instead gave 149b, cost us 11b never get back, Geitner; GS and AIG will never pay back
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/robert-reich-breaks-down-the-sham-of-corporate-social-responsibility
last August, the Business Roundtable – an association of CEOs of America’s biggest corporations – announced with great fanfare a “fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders” and not just their shareholders.
They said “investing in employees, delivering value to customers, and supporting outside communities“ is now at the forefront of their business goals — not maximizing profits.
Baloney. Corporate social responsibility is a sham.
One Business Roundtable director is Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. Just weeks after making the Roundtable commitment, and despite GM’s hefty profits and large tax breaks, Barra rejected workers’ demands that GM raise their wages and stop outsourcing their jobs. Earlier in the year GM shut its giant assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio.
Nearly 50,000 GM workers then staged the longest auto strike in 50 years. They won a few wage gains but didn’t save any jobs. Barra was paid $22 million last year. How’s that for corporate social responsibility?
Another prominent CEO who made the phony Business Roundtable commitment was AT&T’s Randall Stephenson, who promised to use the billions in savings from the Trump tax cut to invest in the company’s broadband network and create at least 7,000 new jobs.
Instead, even before the coronavirus pandemic, AT&T cut more than 23,000 jobs and demanded that employees train lower-wage foreign workers to replace them.
Let’s not forget Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and its Whole Foods subsidiary. Just weeks after Bezos made the Business Roundtable commitment, Whole Foods announced it would be cutting medical benefits for its entire part-time workforce.
The annual saving to Amazon from this cost-cutting move is roughly what Bezos – whose net worth is $117 billion – makes in a few hours. Bezos’ wealth grows so quickly, this number has gone up since you started watching this video.
GE’s CEO Larry Culp is also a member of the Business Roundtable. Two months after he made the commitment to all his stakeholders, General Electric froze the pensions of 20,000 workers in order to cut costs. So much for investing in employees.
Dennis Muilenburg, the former CEO of Boeing, also committed to the phony Business Roundtable pledge. Shortly after making the commitment to “deliver value to customers,” Muilenburg was fired for failing to act to address the safety problems that caused the 737 Max crashes that killed 346 people. After the crashes, he didn’t issue a meaningful apology or even express remorse to the victims’ families and downplayed the severity of the fallout to investors, regulators, airlines, and the public. He was rewarded with a $62 million farewell gift from Boeing on his way out.
Oh, and the chairman of the Business Roundtable is Jamie Dimon, CEO of Wall Street’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase. Dimon lobbied Congress personally and intensively for the biggest corporate tax cut in history, and got the Business Roundtable to join him. JPMorgan raked in $3.7 billion from the tax cut. Dimon alone made $31 million in 2018.
That tax cut increased the federal debt by almost $2 trillion. This was before Congress spent almost $3 trillion fighting the pandemic – and delivering a hefty portion as bailouts to the biggest corporations, many of whom signed the Business Roundtable pledge.
As usual, almost nothing has trickled down to America’s working class and poor.
The truth is, American corporations are sacrificing workers and communities as never before in order to further boost runaway profits and unprecedented CEO pay. And not even a tragic pandemic is changing that.
Americans know this. A record 76 percent of U.S. adults believe major corporations have too much power.
The only way to make corporations socially responsible is through laws requiring them to be – for example, giving workers a bigger voice in corporate decision making, requiring that corporations pay severance to communities they abandon, raising corporate taxes, busting up monopolies, and preventing dangerous products (including faulty airplanes) from ever reaching the light of day.
If the CEOs of the Business Roundtable and other corporations were truly socially responsible, they’d support such laws, not make phony promises they clearly have no intention of keeping. Don’t hold your breath.
The only way to get such laws enacted is by reducing corporate power and getting big money out of our politics.
The first step is to see corporate social responsibility for the sham it is. The next step is to emerge from this pandemic and economic crisis more resolved than ever to rein in corporate power, and make the economy work for all.
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/07/toyota-gm-side-trump-clean-car-rollbacks
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
...The film deals with the history of the electric car, its modern development, and commercialization. The film focuses primarily on the General Motors EV1, which was made available for lease mainly in Southern California, after the California Air Resources Board (CARB) passed the zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate in 1990 which required the seven major automobile suppliers in the United States to offer electric vehicles in order to continue sales of their gasoline powered vehicles in California. Nearly 5000 electric cars were designed and manufactured by Chrysler, the Ford Motor Company, General Motors (GM), Honda, Nissan, and Toyota; and then later destroyed or donated to museums and educational institutions. Also discussed are the implications of the events depicted for air pollution, oil dependency, Middle East politics, and global warming.
The film details the California Air Resources Board's reversal of the mandate after relentless pressure and suits from automobile manufacturers, continual pressure from the oil industry, orchestrated hype over a future hydrogen car, and finally the George W. Bush administration.
A portion of the film details GM's efforts to demonstrate to California that there was no consumer demand for their product, and then to take back every EV1 and destroy them. A few were disabled and given to museums and universities, but almost all were found to have been crushed. GM never responded to the EV drivers' offer to pay the residual lease value; $1.9 million was offered for the remaining 78 cars in Burbank, California before they were crushed. Several activists, including actresses Alexandra Paul and Colette Divine, were arrested in the protest that attempted to block the GM car carriers taking the remaining EV1s off to be crushed.
The film explores some of the motives that may have pushed the auto and oil industries to kill off the electric car. Wally Rippel offers, for example, that the oil companies were afraid of losing their monopoly on transportation fuel over the coming decades; while the auto companies feared short-term costs for EV development and long-term revenue loss because EVs require little maintenance and no tuneups. Others explained the killing differently. GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss argued it was lack of consumer interest due to the maximum range of 80–100 miles per charge, and the relatively high price.
The film also showed the failed attempts by electric car enthusiasts trying to combat auto industry moves, and save the surviving vehicles. Towards the end of the film, a deactivated EV1 car #99 is found in the garage of Petersen Automotive Museum, with former EV sales representative, Chelsea Sexton, invited for a visit.
The film also explores the future of automobile technologies including a deeply critical look at hydrogen vehicles, an upbeat discussion of plug-in hybrids, and examples of other developing EV technologies such as the Tesla Roadster (2008), released on the market two years after the film.
...
The suspects[
Hollywood Forever Cemetery as a protest to General Motors' decision to terminate all EV1 leases and crush the electric cars.
The later portion of the film is organized around the following hypothesized culprits in the downfall of the electric car:
American consumers[
While few American consumers never heard of the electric cars in California, those who did were not necessarily critical mass for this new technology. Thanks to lower gas prices and infatuation with sport utility vehicles (SUVs), few people sought out this new technology. While some were fans (as chronicled in the film), many more needed time to consider the advantages and disadvantages of these new cars; whether freedom from oil or with the perceived limitations of a city car with a 100-mile range. Although allegations are made about consumers by industry representatives in the film, perhaps explaining the film's "guilty" verdict, the actual consumers interviewed in the film were either unaware that an electric car was ever available to try, or dismayed that they could no longer obtain one.
Batteries[
In a bit of an unexpected turn, the film's sole "not-guilty" suspect is batteries, one of the chief culprits if one were to ask the oil or auto industries. At the time GM's EV1 came to market, it came with a lead acid battery with a range of 60 miles. The film suggests that since the average driving distance of Americans in a day is 30 miles or less, for 90% of Americans, electric cars would work as a daily commute car or second car.
The second generation EV1 (and those released by Honda, Toyota, and others) from 1998 to the end of the program, featured nickel-metal-hydride or even lithium-ion (Nissan) batteries with a range of 100 or more miles. The film documents that the company which had supplied batteries for EV1, Ovonics, had been suppressed from announcing improved batteries, with double the range, lest CARB be convinced that batteries were improving. Later, General Motors sold the supplier's majority control share to the Chevron Corporation and Cobasys.
As part of the not-guilty verdict, the famed engineer Alan Cocconi explains that with laptop computer lithium ion batteries, the EV1 could have been upgraded to a range of 300 miles per charge. He makes this point in front of his T-Zero prototype, the car that inspired the Tesla Roadster (2008).
Oil companies[
The oil industry, through its major lobby group the Western States Petroleum Association, is brought to task for financing campaigns to kill utility efforts to build public car charging stations. Through astroturfing groups like "Californians Against Utility Abuse" they posed as consumers instead of the industry interests they actually represented.
Mobil and other oil companies are also shown to be advertising directly against electric cars in national publications, even when electric cars seem to have little to do with their core business. At the end of the film, Chevron bought patents and controlling interest in Ovonics, the advanced battery company featured in the film, ostensibly to prevent modern NiMH batteries from being used in non-hybrid electric cars.
The documentary also refers to manipulation of oil prices by overseas suppliers in the 1980s as an example of the industry working to kill competition and keep customers from moving toward alternatives to oil.
Car companies:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:
EV1s in a junk yard are shown in the film
With GM as its primary example, the film documents that car makers engaged in both positive and negative marketing of the electric car as its intentions toward the car and California legislation changed. In earlier days, GM ran Super Bowl commercials produced by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) for the EV1. In later days it ran "award winning" doomsday-style advertising featuring the EV1 and ran customer surveys which emphasized drawbacks to electronic vehicle technology which were not actually present in the EV1.[4] (As a side note, CARB officials were quoted claiming that they removed their zero emission vehicle quotas in part because they gave weight to such surveys purportedly showing no demand existing for the EV1s.) Other charges raised on GM included sabotaging their own product program, failing to produce cars to meet existing demand, and refusing to sell cars directly (it only leased them).
The film also describes the history of automaker efforts to destroy competing technologies, such as their destruction through front companies of public transit systems in the United States in the early 20th century. In addition to EV1, the film also depicted how Toyota RAV4 EV, and Honda EV Plus were being cancelled by their respective car companies. The crushing of Honda EV Plus only gained attention after appearing quite by accident on an episode of PBS's California's Gold with Huell Howser.
In an interview with retired GM board member Tom Everhart, the film points out that GM killed the EV1 to focus on more immediately profitable enterprises such as its Hummerand truck brands, instead of preparing for future challenges. Ralph Nader, in a brief appearance, points out that auto makers usually only respond to government regulation when it comes to important advances whether seat belts, airbags, catalytic converters, mileage requirements or, by implication, hybrid/electric cars. The film suggests Toyota supported the production of Toyota Prius hybrid in part as a response to Bill Clinton's Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles and other U.S. Government pressure that was later dropped.
Though GM cited cost as a deterrent to continuing with the EV1, the film interviewed critics contending that the cost of batteries and electric vehicles would have been reduced significantly if mass production began, due to economies of scale. There is also discussion about electric cars threatening dealer profits since they have so few service requirements—no tuneups, no oil changes, and less frequent brake jobs because of regenerative braking.
U.S. government[
While not overtly political, the film documents that the federal government of the United States under the Presidency of George W. Bush joined the auto-industry suit against California in 2002. This pushed California to abandon its ZEV mandate regulation. The film notes that Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card had recently been head of the American Automobile Manufacturers Alliance in California and then joined the White House with Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and other federal officials who were former executives or board members of oil and auto companies. By failing to increase mileage standards in a meaningful way since the 1970s and now interfering in California, the federal government had again served short-term industry interests at the expense of long-range leadership on issues of oil dependency and cleaner cars.
California Air Resources Board[
In 2003, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), headed by Democrat Alan Lloyd, finally caved to industry pressure and drastically scaled back the ZEV mandate. CARB had previously defended the regulation for more than 12 years.
While championing CARB's efforts on behalf of California's with its 1990 mandate (and other regulations over the years), the film suggests Lloyd may have had a conflict of interest, as the director of the California Fuel Cell Partnership. The ZEV change allowed a marginal amount of hydrogen fuel cell cars to be produced in the future, versus the immediate continued growth of its electric car requirement. Footage shot in the meetings showed Lloyd shutting down battery electric car proponents while giving the car makers all the time they wanted to make their points.
Hydrogen fuel cell:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:
The hydrogen fuel cell was presented by the film as an alternative that distracts attention from the real and immediate potential of electric vehicles to an unlikely future possibility embraced by auto makers, oil companies and a pro-business administration in order to buy time and profits for the status quo. The film corroborates the claim that hydrogen vehicles are a mere distraction by stating that "A fuel cell car powered by hydrogen made with electricity uses three to four times more energy than a car powered by batteries" and by interviewing Joseph J. Romm, the author of The Hype about Hydrogen, who lists five problems he sees with hydrogen vehicles: High cost, limits on driving range due to current materials, high costs of hydrogen fuel, the need for entirely new fueling compounds, and competition from other technologies in the marketplace, such as hybrids.
The price of hydrogen has since come down to $4–6/kg (without carbon sequestering) due to reduction in the price of natural gas as a feedstock for steam reforming owing to the proliferation of hydraulic fracturing of shales.[5] A kilo of hydrogen has the same energy yield as a gallon of gasoline although production currently creates 12.5 kg CO2, 39% more than the 8.91 kg CO2 from a gasoline gallon.[5]
Response from General Motors[
General Motors (GM) responded in a 2006 blog post titled "Who Ignored the Facts About the Electric Car?"[6] written by Dave Barthmuss of GM's communications department. In his June 15, 2006 post—published 13 days before the film was released in the U.S.—Barthmuss claims not to have seen the film, but believes "there may be some information that the movie did not tell its viewers." He repeats GM's claims that, "despite the substantial investment of money and the enthusiastic fervor of a relatively small number of EV1 drivers — including the filmmaker — the EV1 proved far from a viable commercial success."
He submits it is "good news for electric car enthusiasts" that electric vehicle technology since the EV1 was still being used. It was used in two-mode hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and fuel cell vehicle programs.
Barthmuss also cites "GM's leadership" in flex-fuel vehicles development, hydrogen fuel cell technology, and their new "active fuel management" system which improve fuel economy, as reasons they feel they are "doing more than any other automaker to address the issues of oil dependence, fuel economy and emissions from vehicles."
Responding to the film's harsh criticisms for discontinuing the EV1, Barthmuss outlines GM's reasons for doing so, implying that GM did so due to inadequate support from parts suppliers, as well as poor consumer demand despite "significant sums (spent) on marketing and incentives to develop a mass market for it." Barthmuss claimed he personally regretted the way the decision not to sell the EV1s was handled, but stated it was because GM would no longer be able to repair it or "guarantee it could be operated safely over the long term," with lack of available parts making "future repair and safety of the vehicles difficult to nearly impossible." He also claimed that "no other major automotive manufacturer is producing a pure electric vehicle for use on public roads and highways."
In March 2009, however, outgoing CEO of GM Rick Wagoner said the biggest mistake he ever made as chief executive was killing the EV1 car and failing to direct more resources to electrics and hybrids after such an early lead in this technology.[7] GM has since championed its electric-car expertise as a key factor in development of its 2010 Chevrolet Volt, Chevy Spark EV, and the Chevrolet Bolt.
Reception...
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420 COVID FAIL
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/how-the-pandemic-pulled-back-the-curtain-on-the-flawed-global-economic-system/
no lnx
How the pandemic pulled back the curtain on the flawed global economic system
Written by Marshall Auerback, Jan Ritch-Frel April 2, 2020
When the wealthiest country in the world is unable to produce basic medical gear to cope with a rampaging pandemic, it is dealing with a strategic vulnerability by depending on multinational supply chains to produce manufactured goods. Absent sufficient redundancies and physical reserves of resources, “just-in-time” lean supply systems can’t cope with sudden disruptions. The global pandemic of 2020 is a case in point.
This pandemic continues to unfold, but it will serve as the D-Day equivalent of a new predominating economic model for the world, and which in many ways was beginning to take shape before COVID-19. At its core, developed and mixed market economies will factor in the health risk and growing military cost of sustaining international supply chains against investing in high-tech production closer to their markets, and increasingly export their goods to the rest of the world.
Dozens of economies that developed in the past 50 years by enmeshing themselves in the international supply chain on the basis of their labor price advantage will find themselves increasingly cut out of the new process. The contest for global power will increasingly pivot to the extraction and refinement of minerals and component materials that are critical to sustaining the high-tech economy model, away from carbon energy resources. We will be hearing much more about “national stockpiling” and “strategic reserves” beyond oil in the months and years ahead.
Not only has COVID-19 exposed potential health risks and costs involved (as globalized trade routes become vectors of contagion), but the champions of the offshoring phenomenon increasingly resort to myths and misconceptions that are irrelevant to a 21st-century economy. They are as obsolete as spending trillions annually on managing the supply and price of Middle East oil, which American foreign policy figures, including Martin Indyk, are beginning to openly say “isn’t worth it.”
Before we get into the details on thefuture economy, let’s quickly review how the U.S. saw a massive decline in its industrial capacity. Bad ideas and pernicious orthodoxies grew like barnacles over the decades on what was once the world’s leading manufacturer. First was the idea that offshoring is essential to preserving profitability. Often this assertion has been more apparent than real. As far as profitability goes, many companies have made choices to move manufacturing offshore despite continuing domestic profits on home shores. For example,the five North American plants that General Motors (GM) shut down in 2019 were still profitable, but the company, which had received a government bailout in 2009, chose to refocus on the higher-margin operations in China.
Of course, capitalism controlled by bankers and speculators gives free rein to companies to make profits on how they see fit.The consequences are that for decades, Detroit’s “Big Three” automakers have consistently underperformed their German and Japanese counterparts because of their decision to embrace a Wall Street-driven culture that has prioritized short-term quarterly earnings, massive dividend payouts and unprecedented spending on stock repurchases over productive investment in innovation. And as GM’s 2019 experience illustrates, the resultant profits did not go to spur domestic reinvestment, which in turn creates domestic employment, but abroad to expand China’s manufacturing base. GM is but one example of the hundreds of major corporate actors that have denuded the country’s industrial ecosystem, creating gaps in the U.S. workforce and shortages of vital skilled labor.
There are also multiple examples of companies acquiring smaller innovative companies “solely to discontinue the target’s innovation projects and preempt future competition,” according to researchers Colleen Cunningham, from London Business School, and Florian Ederer and Song Ma, both from Yale. A particularly poignant example of these “killer acquisitions,” given today’s ongoing ventilator shortage, is Covidien’s attempted 2012 purchase of California-based Newport Medical Instruments, a smaller competing medical device company that had secured a contract from the federal government in 2010 to produce up to40,000 mobile ventilators.But as David Dayen of The American Prospect observed, the purported rationale for the acquisition was bogus: It had nothing to do with expanding Covidien’s product base and everything to do with destroying a competitor whose product “could cut into its existing profits.”
For years, the political economist Seymour Melman argued that companies that embraced the soft option of downsizing/offshoring labor would ultimately create grave production weaknesses in the U.S. economy and stifle innovation. Higher domestic wages, by contrast, would induce competent managers to compensate by using and investing in more and better machinery, which in turn would lead to a virtuous cycle of production: higher profits, which can lead to higher wages, leading to better machinery and organization of work.
While American companies may think they are improving their individual competitiveness in the short term by shifting operations to low-cost labor economies, the current pandemic illustrates that they collectively undermined America’s (and their own) competitiveness over the long haul.
Intuitively, Melman’s forecasts make sense. A modern manufacturing “ecosystem” makes it much easier to redeploy and pivot to new priorities when there are shortages in vital areas. China, for example, has a sufficiently deep and robust industrial infrastructure to adjust production lines quickly, even as the U.S. continues to struggle with ventilator shortages. And in Germany, a flagship company likeSiemens, for example, announced that it is “making its Additive Manufacturing (AM) Network along with its 3D printers, available to the global medical community to speed design and production of medical components … to enable faster and less complicated production of spare parts for machines like ventilators.”
The Next Economy
A combination of existing technologies and capacities that are already in business application and on the rise will enable the new era of production and global economic overhaul and develop in motion with Melman’s thinking. These include artificial intelligence computing, automated manufacturing and increasingly universal and portable manufacturing equipment, innovations in energy production and storage, high-speed data transfer, and nanotechnology. Some of these technologies are mature, profitable and business-ready. Others are still in an early phase but will be seen as more economically viable or worthy of state investment and subsidy in light of a growing awareness among policy planners that the consequences of running global supply chains are potentially more expensive.
All of these technologies are revolutionary. Their concomitant rise will create a new economic era dominated by the countries that fully integrate them into their economies:
AI computing has the capacity to introduce game-changing efficiencies in the production process, quality control in terms of production and blueprints for new models of production and consumption. It can handle huge volumes of administration and management of automated systems. This industry is estimated to be growing at an annual rate of over 45 percent.
Automated manufacturing can be expensive and requires skilled labor to maintain, but it can produce goods at precision levels beyond what people can make, as well as at increasing volumes. 3D manufacturing is a universalizing process: one machine capable of producing a dizzying number of products that already competes with some products from global supply chains. Many companies are locating back in deindustrialized New York and other U.S. cities on the back of 3D manufacturing.
Recent major advances in energy production—from solar and wind to geothermal and energy storage—are the holy grail of non-carbon energy sources, permitting solar and wind industries to compete on a 24-hour basis with carbon-based fuels, giving more weight for policy planners to minimize fuel imports and revisit dormant energy alternatives.
High-speed data transfer—enabled through satellites and huge server farms—is necessary for the multi-location management and logistical coordination of the segments of the new supply chain: the means of information transfer and the capacity of one hand to know what the other is doing.
The rise of nanotechnology—the capacity to engage in precision design and manufacture at a molecular scale—presents humanity with a new frontier of materials and products that have capabilities beyond what we currently know in terms of materials, products, medicines and much more. Products ranging from glass to suntan lotion are already vastly enhanced by nanotechnology production. Qualities of human-made materials such as those designed for fireproofing, bulletproofing, insulation and space travel are in the midst of being revolutionized. Medicines can be deployed through nanotechnology at the molecular level, vastly improving their effectiveness.
The collective strength of these technologies will diminish the appeal of finding cheaper labor outside a country’s borders or common market—and the costs they entail. Countries that are advanced along these lines and have access to the minerals required to engage in this form of production will prosper, plugging into their existing consumer market and building up a head of steam that will eventually lead to a new chain of international exports and imports. These trend lines will accelerate the decline of brick-and-mortar retail and service industries.
Export-led economies that grew on the back of a labor price advantage will find themselves in a role reversal of having the option of importing better goods from the markets they once exported to or paying intellectual property (IP) licensing fees to produce them domestically. The geopolitical advantages that went with offering a developing country a labor role in a global supply chain will be replaced with discounts on IP licenses or imports.
The past phases of industrialization saw an ongoing contest among wealthy countries for control of petroleum, minerals and shipping lanes, using all their available powers to obtain them. The historical pattern is that residents of the resource-rich and undeveloped countries suffer far more than prosper in the mineral extraction and export process to wealthy markets. Barring a major shift in attitudes to wealth distribution or successful political resistance to exploitation, the pattern will likely continue, with the wealthy countries’ preoccupations pivoting increasingly from carbon energy resources to the components of the new economy: cobalt, lithium and rare metals. Resources that sustain the present and future economies, like iron, copper and gold, will continue to retain their strategic value.
Much of Europe and Asian countries like China, South Korea and Japan are poised for the transition. Based on their traditions of rigid state-driven capitalism, these nations instinctively grasp how state capacity and direction can help drive further industrial development. It remains to be seen if the U.S. is fully capable of it. That is unlikely, if the prevailing neoliberal ideology persists, limiting the role of the U.S. government to be, at best, a neutral umpire that sustains efficient, rent-free markets able to supervise the delivery of an increasingly narrow set of public goods (as opposed to an active participant in industrial policy).
The U.S., with thousands of advanced research institutions, is certainly capable of the next stage of economic development. It has a developed market and a partial manufacturing base. But it also has a long history of wage-avoidance for its workforces and an utterly dysfunctional political process. You need nation-state competence and highly skilled labor in this new world, as well as a willingness to expand ownership and dividend models to workers and the governments that funded the research for this advanced economy.
The coronavirus pandemic will force the U.S. and other countries to stop making distinctions between low-tech business (supposedly fine to offshore) versus high value-added industry. Not only can production lines be altered to cope with shortages (as China is doing), but there is often a continuum in the industrial ecosystem.
Consider the case of surgical masks. Even though their production is ostensibly a low-tech commodified business, the critical inner filtration layer of a mask, which allows the wearer to breathe while reducing the inflow of possible infectious particles, is a high-end business: Costing “upward of [$4.23 million] apiece, the machine that creates this fabric melts down plastic material and blows it out in strands, like cotton candy, into flat sheets of melt-blown fabric for face masks and other filtration products. A similar line of machines can create a related kind of fabric, called spun-bond fabric, also used in face masks and in medical protection suits worn by health-care workers,” according to a report carried by National Public Radio.
The point is that there is a continuum. One creates the demand for the other. Eliminate one industry and another potentially dies, much like a biological ecosystem. We now know that when forests are cut down, at some point if the surviving forest is too small, the whole ecosystem collapses. The ecosystem has to be large enough to encompass all of the niches that make it work.
If the machine tool industry is allocated in one country, the textile industry in another, the steel industry in another, the whole thing becomes much more delicate and inefficient, depending on a greater range of variables to succeed. Crucially, the speed with which innovations can ricochet around the system decreases significantly. When Japanese auto manufacturers have access to Japanese machine tool makers, they can get at the machine tool advances before GM and Ford. Proximity becomes a competitive advantage.
All of which helps to explain why the distinction between offshoring hardware while retaining software is not only fatuous but damaging to long-term economic welfare.
Offshoring left the U.S. unprepared for COVID-19. It has also occasioned a widespread reassessment of globalization: What was once seen as the heretical refuge of economic nationalists has now become respectable again. Even without this pandemic, the foundations of America’s economic model were failing and becoming rapidly obsolete.
The question is: As the world moves to a post-carbon future, can the U.S. economy take away the primacy of rent-extracting sectors like finance, insurance and real estate; Hollywood films, smartphone apps, or increasingly irrelevant sectors like oil and natural gas exports, and join the leaders of the pack? Or is coronavirus merely the pandemic that presages a more terminal disease?
Marshall Auerback is a market analyst and commentator. Jan Ritch-Frel is the executive director of the Independent Media Institute.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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https://www.alternet.org/general-motors-laying-thousands-workers-and-closing-two-us-plants-michigan-and-ohio
General Motors has made an announcement that is going to bring considerable pain in the Rust Belt. The automotive giant will be slashing 14,700 jobs, many of them in Michigan and Ohio—and a plant closing is expected in Ontario, Canada as well.
This is the biggest restructuring at GM in a decade, with 15% of its workforce being eliminated in North America. According to GM CEO Mary Barra, these job cuts reflect changing tastes in the automotive market and will bring a greater emphasis on electric and autonomous vehicles. Models expected to be discontinued include the Cadillac CT6, the Chevrolet Cruze and the Buick LaCrosse.
According to GM, tariffs on imported steel—which were imposed by the Trump Administration earlier this year—have cost the company $1 billion. And in late October, GM offered buyouts to 50,000 salaried workers in North America.
The decline of traditional passenger cars in favor of larger SUVs and pickup trucks has been a major factor in GM’s evolution. In 2012, traditional passenger cars comprised over 50% of vehicle sales in the U.S., but during the first nine months of 2018, that number decreased to 31%. This year, SUV and pickup truck sales have increased by about 31%.
GM announced that it will also be closing two plants outside of North America by the end of 2019.
Ohio politicians, including Rep. Tim Ryan and Sen. Sherrod Brown ripped the company's decision.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15102018/automakers-gm-ford-pickup-suv-electric-vehicle-emissions-standards-climate-change-industry-bailout
no lnx many
U.S. Automakers Double Down on Trucks & SUVs, Despite Talk of a Cleaner Future
The automakers say they’re headed for an all-electric future and they want fuel economy standards, but their assembly lines tell a different story.
By Marianne Lavelle
OCT 15, 2018
A year ago, General Motors laid out a bold vision for a transition to a zero-emissions future. It announced plans for 20 new electric vehicle models by 2023, and CEO Mary Barra wrote: "Our generation has the ambition, the talent and the technology to realize the safer, better and more sustainable world we want."
But in the U.S. market, GM was aggressively transforming its product line for something else—it was scaling back on cars and doubling down on higher-emissions pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.
SUVs and other light trucks now make up more than three-quarters of GM's passenger vehicle sales in the U.S., up from less than 60 percent five years ago. The majority of the 20 planned electric car models are destined for China, where the government has new EV mandates. The company has announced no plans for electric versions of any of the big vehicles that are its best sellers in the U.S.
"We have ... successfully transitioned to a crossover- and truck-focused business," Kurt McNeil, U.S. vice president of Sales Operations said in a statement to investors early this year.
GM is not alone. All of the Big Three automakers—GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler—have shifted toward big, heavy vehicles that drink more fuel per mile. In fact, they were in last place for fuel economy among the 13 automakers selling in the U.S. market, according to the EPA's most recent annual fuel economy trends report.
It's an ominous development for climate change, since gasoline is the largest contributor to carbon emissions in transportation—the nation's biggest source of planet-warming greenhouse gases.
It also helps explains why automakers sought President Donald Trump's help in easing the fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards that they had agreed to as part of a 2009 economic bailout. Trump went farther than the automakers had in mind, however, and he now plans to freeze the standards and abandon the goal of a more than 50 mpg average for the U.S. vehicle fleet, undoing what would be one of the largest steps any nation has taken on climate change.
General Motors CEO Mary Barra, along with the chief executives of Ford and Fiat Chrysler, met with President Trump at the White House in January 2017 to discuss U.S. auto emissions standards. Credit: Saul Loeb/Getty Images
General Motors CEO Mary Barra, along with the chief executives of Ford and Fiat Chrysler, met with President Trump at the White House in January 2017 to discuss U.S. auto emissions standards. The automakers want more flexibility but say they don't support freezing the standards. Credit: Saul Loeb/Getty Images
Relatively low gas prices have helped drive the trend, as consumers are less concerned about the cost of gas guzzlers when fuel prices are low.
But automakers, who make higher profits on pickup trucks and SUVs, have also stoked those sales with marketing muscle and retooled line-ups. The manufacturers' all-important quarterly earnings have been bolstered as a result.
Advocates of tougher fuel economy standards argue that U.S. automakers are careening down the same risky road they have driven in the past—relying too heavily on vehicles that will be less attractive to consumers when gas prices are high again.
"The American manufacturers haven't figured out how to make money on cars," said Daniel Becker, executive director of the Safe Climate Campaign. "They only make money on pickup trucks and SUVs. So they are seizing on temporarily low gas prices and ... politicians like Trump to shift production to the most profitable vehicles they make."
"The number one problem with that is climate," he said. "But it also will result in the downfall of the American auto industry in a few years when gas prices go back up and they will have gotten out of the business of making cars."
Chart: GM Shifts from Cars to Trucks and SUVs
GM's corporate communications director, Patrick Morrissey, said the company is moving forward with its commitment to an all-electric portfolio.
But he said GM also aims to steadily boost fuel economy across its fleet with more efficient engines, better aerodynamics and lighter-weight materials, among other advances. For example, one of the options consumers can select on the 2019 model of GM's best-selling Silverado pickup truck is a smaller turbocharged engine, which at 20 mpg city fuel economy is 13 percent more efficient than the larger engine it is replacing.
The automakers say they do want national standards that continue to increase efficiency, but they want greater flexibility.
"The pathway to our vision for a zero emissions future includes continually improving fuel economy of our current vehicles," Morrissey said in an email.
The Wake-Up Call that Quickly Faded
The 2008 financial crisis and the surge of gas prices to an all-time high was a wake-up call for automakers and policymakers alike. Although many factors triggered Detroit's auto industry collapse, part of the problem was that it wasn't ready for consumer demand to quickly shift to more efficient vehicles.
As part of the $80 billion auto industry bailout deal, the federal government brought its fuel economy regulations in line with a groundbreaking program developed by California. For the first time, the goals were set in terms of grams of carbon emissions per mile, gradually increasing to the equivalent of more than 50 mpg by 2025.
After the bailout, GM made profound changes to its operations, shedding unprofitable businesses and focusing on technical advancement. One important shift was the company positioning itself as a serious player in the electric vehicle future.
GM had become notorious for "killing" the electric car—discontinuing the EV1 it produced for the California market between 1996 and 2001. Now, the company was joining the race again, more than a decade behind Toyota, which had introduced its hybrid gas-electric Prius in 1997. The vehicle that became emblematic of that effort was the Chevy Volt.
Chevy Volts come off an assembly line in Michigan. Credit: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
The Chevy Volt, which GM first introduced in 2011, is the highest selling plug-in vehicle on the market, but its sales pale in comparison to GM's pickups and SUVs Credit: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
"It was a lot of long hours," recalls Greg Kempf, a retired GM engineer who spent much of his nearly 40-year career trying to improve transmissions for fuel economy. "GM was going bankrupt, and we had full overtime. It was a very important program."
But it did not lead to electrification across GM's portfolio.
The hybrid system Kempf's team developed was deployed in 2009 in GM's Cadillac Escalade SUV and some other high-end SUVs and pickup trucks. The so-called "strong" hybrid systems could run entirely on electric power up to 30 mph, unlike the Prius, which was all-electric only up to 15 mph. But GM's dalliance with the strong hybrid system was brief, and limited to customers willing to pay top dollar for modest fuel savings. The hybrid Escalade, with a starting price of more than $74,000, could achieve 20 to 21 mpg, compared to 15 to 16 mpg for the standard version. Citing poor sales, GM discontinued its high-end hybrid SUVs in 2013.
Across the industry, EV technology—the only current pathway to zero emissions—accounted for just $9.8 billion of the $119.5 billion in investments automakers made in North America from 2009 to 2017, according to the industry-funded Center for Automotive Research.
Kempf was disappointed to see the shelving of technology he believed had so much promise. "It was intended to be the first one of several generations—each one with the cost coming down and becoming more reliable," he said. "It could have been done with more speeds for added fuel economy, and there's no reason it couldn't have been in smaller vehicles."
Bigger Vehicles, Bigger Profit Margins
The U.S. automakers' shift toward focusing more on bigger vehicles and less on fuel economy became pronounced after 2014, when gas prices fell more than 40 percent.
U.S. passenger vehicle production, which was 65 percent cars in 2013, dropped to 55 percent by 2016, according to EPA. GM's sales tipped from 60 percent light trucks to 70 percent by 2016. That included an increasing number of so-called "crossover" SUVs, like the Chevy Traverse (fuel economy 20 mpg) and Trax (28 mpg), most of which are categorized by EPA as light trucks, meaning they have a less stringent fuel economy standard to meet than vehicles categorized as cars.
One advantage of the shift to bigger vehicles for the automakers: higher profits.
Carmakers jealously guard the numbers for particular vehicle models, but the Center for Automotive Research says manufacturers make profits of $10,000 per vehicle or more on light trucks, and as little as a few hundred dollars on some models of cars.
Detroit News' auto critic recently quoted anonymous insiders saying that GM earned $35,000 profit on every Escalade SUV it sold. In contrast, when GM rolled out its all-electric Bolt in December 2016, a company source told Bloomberg that GM stood to lose as much as $9,000 on every one it sold at a retail price of $36,650.
The view from inside the latest model of the Chevy Silverado. Credit: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
The Center for Automotive Research says manufacturers make profits of $10,000 per vehicle or more on light trucks and SUVs, and as little as a few hundred dollars on some models of cars. Credit: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
"It is not a coincidence," the Center for Automotive Research said, "that the shift to [cross-overs], SUVs, and pickups coincides with a period of increased profitability for nearly every automaker that sells vehicles in the U.S. market." GM's profits soared to a record $12.5 billion in 2016. Even in 2017, when sales slid and the company posted a loss due to a business write-down, GM set new records for sales of pickups and crossovers, as well as record average transaction prices.
GM executives repeatedly confirm the importance of light trucks to the bottom line when they talk to Wall Street investors and analysts.
"I think about it as what we are trying to do is fish with fish, or do business where the money is," GM President Dan Amman told investors at Deutsche Bank's Global Auto Industry Conference in January, as the carmaker unveiled its plans for the 2019 Silverado.
Automakers argue that the shift to pickups and SUVs is simply a reflection of what customers want.
GM's Chevy Volt, introduced in 2011, is the highest selling plug-in vehicle on the market, but the 139,000 Volts (and 35,000 Chevy Bolt EVs) sold in seven years are dwarfed by the trucks and SUVs that make up the growing share of the 3 million passenger vehicles GM sells annually in the U.S. Among the 485 passenger vehicle models in the U.S. market, the more than 50 models of battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles accounted for only 1 percent of the 17 million cars sold in 2017.
The carmakers "are already building highly fuel efficient vehicles around the world and in this country," said Gloria Bergquist, vice president for public affairs at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents 12 carmakers accounting for 70 percent of U.S. vehicle sales. "If consumers bought more of them, then we could reach higher fuel economy standards."
A street in Sacramento, California. The photographer labeled the photo: Driving in the land of giants. Credit: Robert Course-Baker/CC-BY-2.0
If consumers bought more fuel-efficient vehicles, "then we could reach higher fuel economy standards," said Gloria Bergquist, vice president for public affairs at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Credit: Robert Couse-Baker/CC-BY-2.0
Polls may show that the overwhelming majority of Americans value fuel economy in the next vehicle they purchase. But Bergquist says that that preference does not show up in actual sales. "It's something consumers say they value, but they won't spend more money for it," she said.
"We think there's going to be a tipping point where people start buying more of them and so that's why we're investing in them," Bergquist said. But if consumers aren't buying enough of the high-efficiency vehicles, "we're caught between government regulations and the marketplace," she said.
The National Academies of Science, the International Council on Clean Transportation, and the Obama administration all produced studies detailing how the automakers could meet the Obama fuel economy goals without much consumer uptake of electric vehicles. It would require deploying technologies like 8-speed transmissions, turbocharging, smaller engines and lighter materials.
Bergquist notes that the automakers do sell more fuel efficient vehicles in other countries, where gasoline prices are higher and smaller cars are the big sellers. But a close look at those overseas markets provides a hint of why automakers may like the U.S. market as it is. GM's best-selling vehicle in Europe was the Opel/Vauxhall Corsa, with fuel economy of 50 mpg or more, but GM lost money in Europe every year since 1999, and decided to exit the European market entirely last year. GM sells more cars in China than it does in the U.S., but it pulls in only a fraction of its profits there.
Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, whose term in office spanned Detroit's 2008 collapse and the start of its recovery, looks at the carmakers' current truck-heavy vehicle mix in context of the profound transformation ahead for the industry: "That's the money they are investing in new technology."
Preparing for an All-Electric Future?
Analysts at the Center for Automotive Research argue that carmakers are in a pivotal period, caught in a "great divide" between the industry's present and future. They must invest in the next-generation efficient technology, while continuing to develop and sell the vehicles that make a profit today. Complicating matters is the possibility that autonomous vehicles, networked fleets and increased ridesharing could mean that people won't need as many of the vehicles they sell.
GM sought to position itself for this uncertain future under Barra, who took over as CEO in 2014, and it has coupled its strategy for electrification with its efforts to advance self-driving vehicles.
"Our commitment to an all-electric, zero-emissions future is unwavering, regardless of any modifications to future fuel economy standards," Barra said at the energy industry conference in Houston last spring. But she had no firm answer when asked how long the transition from gasoline to emissions-free EVs would take. "Less than decades," she said. Barra also avoided setting deadlines in a LinkedIn post last month to mark the one-year anniversary of her "zero emissions" vision statement. "It won't happen overnight," she wrote.
Luke Tonachel, director of the clean vehicles and fuels project at Natural Resources Defense Council, praised GM's work on technological advances like the Volt and Bolt. But he said the imperative of addressing climate change will require a fleetwide transformation for GM and other automakers.
"GM can talk about this vision of zero emissions, congestion, and fatalities, but when will that dream become reality?" Tonachel said. "If you don't have a real deadline and an immediate plan to make progress, what's the value of that commitment?"
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Hummer was a brand of trucks and SUVs, first marketed in 1992 when AM General began selling a civilian version of the M998 Humvee.[1] In 1998, General Motors (GM) purchased the brand name from AM General and marketed three vehicles: the original Hummer H1, based on the military Humvee, as well as the new H2 and H3 models that were based on smaller, civilian-market GM platforms.
By 2008, Hummer's viability in the economic downturn was being questioned, and it was placed under review by GM management. Rather than being transferred to the Motors Liquidation Company as part of the GM bankruptcy in 2009, the brand was retained by GM, in order to investigate its sale.
In 2009, a Chinese manufacturer, Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company, announced that it would acquire Hummer, pending government approvals, but later withdrew its bid.[2] On February 24, 2010, Reuters reported that the Chinese ministry of commerce had prevented the deal,[3] although a ministry spokesperson denied rejecting the application, which had been stalled for eight months.[4] At the end of February, General Motors announced it would begin dismantling the Hummer brand.[5]
Although the automaker announced two days later that it had been approached with new offers,[6] by April 2010, any sale became unlikely, as inventory was depleted and Hummer dealerships began shutting down.[7] After filling a rental-car fleet order, the last Hummer H3 rolled off the line at Shreveport on May 24, 2010.[8]
The original maker of Hummer, AM General, lost their bid to build the HMMWV's replacement for the U.S. military in 2015.
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The original Hummers were designed by AM General Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary American Motors Corporation (AMC), and they were built in its Mishawaka, Indiana, assembly plant.[9] The Humvee replaced the military Jeeps that were produced by AMC until 1982.[10]
In 1979, the United States Army was seeking contractors for a new "High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle" which could follow the tracks and ruts of full size army trucks (HMMWV).[11] At that time, General Dynamics, Teledyne, and Chrysler Defense had HMMWV designs under development.[12][13] Among the four competitors for the contract, AM General designed an entirely new vehicle to meet the Army's requirements.[11] In less than one year, it was the first to deliver a prototype vehicle. Initial production versions were delivered to the Army's proving grounds in April 1982.[11]
After testing was completed AM General was awarded the contract to supply its HMMWV to the United States armed forces. The first models were built in a variety of military-based equipment and versions. The first contract was in 1983, worth US$1.2 billion to produce 55,000 "Humvees" by 1985.[14] The first production vehicle was assembled by AM General on January 2, 1985.[11] The contract was later increased for an additional 15,000 units.[11]
AM General had planned to sell a civilian version of the Humvee as far back as the late 1980s. Having the same structure and most mechanical components, the civilian Hummers were finished in automotive gloss paint, adding passenger car enhancements such as air conditioning, sound insulation, upgraded upholstery, stereo systems, wood trim, and convenience packages.[15]The civilian model began in part because of the persistence of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who saw an Army convoy while filming a movie.[16]
In 1992, AM General began selling a civilian version of the M998 Humvee vehicle to the public under the brand name "Hummer".[14]
From left:Hummer H3, H1, and H2
GM purchase
In December 1999, AM General sold the brand name to General Motors, but continued to manufacture the vehicles.[14] GM was responsible for the marketing and distribution of all Hummers produced by AM General. Shortly thereafter, GM introduced two of its own design models, the H2 and H3, and renamed the original vehicle H1. AM General continued to build the H1 until it was discontinued in 2006,[17] and was contracted by GM to produce the H2. The H3 was built in Shreveport, LA alongside the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon pickups, with which it shared the GMT-355 platform (modified and designated GMT-345).Hummer dealership buildings featured an oversized half Quonset Hut style roof, themed to the Hummer brand's military origins.[18]
By 2006, the Hummer began to be exported and sold through importers and distributors in 33 countries.[19] On October 10, 2006, GM began producing the Hummer H3 at its Port Elizabeth plant in South Africa for international markets.[19] The Hummers built there at first were only left-hand drive, but right-hand drive versions were added and exported to Australia and other markets.
The H2 was also assembled in Kaliningrad, Russia, by Avtotor, starting in 2006 and ending in 2009.[20] The plant produced a few hundred vehicles annually, and its output was limited to local consumption with five dealers in Russia.
On June 3, 2008, one day prior to GM's annual shareholder meeting, Rick Wagoner, GM's CEO at that time, said the brand was being reviewed, and had the possibility of either being sold, having the production line completely redesigned, or being discontinued.[21] This was due to the decreasing demand for large SUVs as a result of higher oil prices. Almost immediately after the announcement, a pair of Indian automakers, including Mahindra & Mahindra, expressed interest in purchasing all or part of Hummer.[22]
In April 2009, GM President Fritz Henderson stated several interested parties had approached GM regarding the Hummer business.[23]
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http://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/396365659/how-one-nation-didnt-become-under-god-until-the-50s-religious-revival
The New Deal, they argue, violates this natural order. In fact, they argue that the New Deal and the regulatory state violate the Ten Commandments. It makes a false idol of the federal government and encourages Americans to worship it rather than the Almighty. It encourages Americans to covet what the wealthy have; it encourages them to steal from the wealthy in the forms of taxation; and, most importantly, it bears false witness against the wealthy by telling lies about them. So they argue that the New Deal is not a manifestation of God's will, but rather, a form of pagan stateism and is inherently sinful.
On the Rev. James Fifield
He takes over the pastorate at the First Congregational Church in Los Angeles, an elite church, literally ministering to millionaires in his pews. It's got some of the town's most wealthy citizens — the mayor attends service there, [Hollywood filmmaker] Cecil B. DeMille. He tells these millionaires what they want to hear, which is that their worldly success is a sign of heavenly blessing. He has a very loose approach to the Bible. He says that reading the Bible should be like eating fish: We take out the bones to enjoy the meat; all parts are not of equal value. Accordingly, he disregarded Christ's many injunctions about the dangers of wealth, and instead preached a philosophy that wedded capitalism to Christianity.
On Fifield's "spiritual mobilization"
"Spiritual mobilization" is his effort to recruit other ministers to the cause. So he is serving, in many ways, as a frontman for a number of corporate leaders. His main sponsors are Sun Oil President J. Howard Pew, Alfred Sloan of General Motors, the heads of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, they all heavily fund this organization. But what Fifield sets out to do is recruit other ministers to his cause. Within the span of just a decade's time, he has about 17,000 so-called minister representatives who belong to the organization who are literally preaching sermons on its Christian libertarian message to their congregations, who are competing in sermon contest[s] for cash prizes and they're doing all they can in their local communities to spread this message that the New Deal is essentially evil, it's a manifestation of creeping socialism that is rotting away the country from within. Instead they need to rally around business leaders and make common cause with them to defend what they call "the American way of life."
On Fifield's contribution to the alliance between business and Christian leaders
He helps refine the message considerably. He comes up with the phrase that reduces this Christian libertarian ideology down to a catchy slogan and that slogan is "Freedom Under God," as opposed to the slavery of the state. He popularizes this using the generous funding of his corporate backers ... through a weekly radio program that soon appears on over 800 stations nationwide, through monthly magazines that popularizes the writings of libertarian and conservative authors and most importantly, I think, through a massive Fourth of July ceremony in 1951, a ceremony organized by Cecil B. DeMille, featuring James Stewart as the master of ceremonies, and carried live coast-to-coast over national radio. In that ceremony, as in the magazine and the weekly radio show, he promotes this message that freedom under God is an essential value; that Americans need to cast off the slavery of the state and instead embrace a rugged individualism.
On "In God we trust" appearing on coins and stamps
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Robert Reich: Why Americans Are Screwed and Europeans Are Not
By Robert Reich [1] / Robert Reich's Blog
March 15, 2015
The U.S. economy is picking up steam but most Americans aren’t feeling it. By contrast, most European economies are still in bad shape, but most Europeans are doing relatively well.
What’s behind this? Two big facts.
First, American corporations exert far more political influence in the United States than their counterparts exert in their own countries.
In fact, most Americans have no influence at all. That’s the conclusion of Professors Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, who analyzed [2] 1,799 policy issues — and found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
Instead, American lawmakers respond to the demands of wealthy individuals (typically corporate executives and Wall Street moguls) and of big corporations – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.
The second fact is most big American corporations have no particular allegiance to America. They don’t want Americans to have better wages. Their only allegiance and responsibility is to their shareholders — which often requires lower wages to fuel larger profits and higher share prices.
When GM went public again in 2010, it boasted [3] of making 43 percent of its cars in place where labor is less than $15 an hour, while in North America it could now pay “lower-tiered” wages and benefits for new employees.
American corporations shift their profits around the world wherever they pay the lowest taxes. Some are even morphing into foreign corporations.
As an Apple executive told [4] the New York Times, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.”
I’m not blaming American corporations. They’re in business to make profits and maximize their share prices, not to serve America.
But because of these two basic facts – their dominance on American politics, and their interest in share prices instead of the wellbeing of Americans – it’s folly to count on them to create good American jobs or improve American competitiveness, or represent the interests of the United States in global commerce.
By contrast, big corporations headquartered in other rich nations are more responsible for the wellbeing of the people who live in those nations.
That’s because labor unions there are typically stronger than they are here — able to exert pressure both at the company level and nationally.
VW’s labor unions, for example, have a voice in governing the company, as they do in other big German corporations. Not long ago, VW even welcomed [5] the UAW to its auto plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. (Tennessee’s own politicians nixed it.)
Governments in other rich nations often devise laws through tri-partite bargains involving big corporations and organized labor. This process further binds their corporations to their nations.
Meanwhile, American corporations distribute a smaller share of their earnings to their workers than do European or Canadian-based corporations.
And top U.S. corporate executives make far more money than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.
The typical American worker puts in more hours than Canadians and Europeans, and gets little or no paid vacation or paid family leave. In Europe, the norm [6] is five weeks paid vacation per year and more than three months paid family leave.
And because of the overwhelming clout of American firms on U.S. politics, Americans don’t get nearly as good a deal from their governments as do Canadians and Europeans.
Governments there impose higher taxes on the wealthy and redistribute more of the wealth to middle- and lower-income households. Most of their citizens receive essentially free healthcare and more generous unemployment benefits than do Americans.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that even though U.S. economy is doing better, most Americans are not.
The U.S. middle class is no longer the world’s richest. After considering taxes and transfer payments, middle-class incomes in Canada and much of Western Europe are higher [7] than in the U.S. The poor in Western Europe earn more than do poor Americans.
Finally, when at global negotiating tables – such as the secretive process devising the “Trans Pacific Partnership” trade deal — American corporations don’t represent the interests of Americans. They represent the interests of their executives and shareholders, who are not only wealthier than most Americans but also reside all over the world.
Which is why the pending Partnership protects the intellectual property of American corporations — but not American workers’ health, safety, or wages, and not the environment.
The Obama administration is casting the Partnership as a way to contain Chinese influence in the Pacific region. The agents of America’s interests in the area are assumed to be American corporations.
But that assumption is incorrect. American corporations aren’t set up to represent America’s interests in the Pacific region or anywhere else.
What’s the answer to this basic conundrum? Either we lessen the dominance of big American corporations over American politics, or we increase their allegiance and responsibility to America.
It has to be one or the other. Americans can’t thrive within a political system run largely by big American corporations — organized to boost their share prices but not boost America.
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GM pulls out
GM Discontinues Funding Of Climate-Denial Think Tank Heartland Institute |“General Motors has decided to discontinue funding of the Heartland Institute,” Climate One reports. “GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss confirmed the move today.” The Heartland Institute is a crucial node in the fossil-fueled propaganda campaign to deny the threat of manmade climate change. When first asked about its contributions to the anti-science organization, a GM spokesman called the group “careful and considerate,” which led to an outcry from ten thousand GM owners, including drivers of the innovative Chevy Volt.
One in a series of posts about the Heartland Institute’s inner workings, from internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green. ThinkProgress is among several publications to have published documents attributed to the Heartland Institute and sent to us from an anonymous and then unknown source. The source later revealed himself. Heartland Institute has issued several press releases claiming that one document (“2012 Climate Strategy”) is fake and asserting other claims regarding the other documents. ThinkProgress has taken down the “2012 Climate Strategy” document as it determines the document’s authenticity.
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It’s been a rough few weeks for the Heartland Institute, the “intellectual” nexus of the fossil fuel-powered machine that disparages climate science in the United States. Nineteen corporations have pulled more than $1 million in expected funding for the institute, leading President Joe Bast to ask attendees at the recent Heartland climate-denial conference whether they had a “rich uncle” who could help out. Seriously.
At a time when most news about climate change is bad, Heartland’s decline has been a rare bright spot. How did it come about? In the reductive rendering of the mainstream media, the narrative has become that Heartland simply overplayed its hand by launching a billboard campaign comparing people who believe in global warming to the Unabomber, one of the single dumbest PR moves in recent history. Others have gone deeper, pointing out that Heartland has been painting itself into the crazy corner for a long time, and its lies were bound to catch up with it eventually. In that view, Heartland’s demise was essentially inevitable.
The infamous Unabomber billboard.
While these narratives have elements of truth — the billboards were incredibly stupid, and Heartland has been lying for a long time — neither offers a full explanation because both deemphasize the crucial role of citizen action. Simply put, the post-billboard exodus of Heartland’s corporate donors would have been neither as big nor as fast if not for the actions of thousands of everyday Americans calling those donors to account. Indeed, it might not have happened at all.
For those who haven’t been closely following the saga, here is the basic chronology. In February, documents containing a list of Heartland funders were leaked to a number of bloggers by climate scientist Peter Gleick, who risked his professional reputation to expose the sources of Heartland’s support. Two days later, the organization I work for, Forecast the Facts, launched a campaign calling on all corporate funders of Heartland to withdraw their support, with our initial focus on General Motors. Within a week, more than 20,000 people, including 10,000 GM owners, had signed on. After adding their names to the effort, those citizen-activists then called GM, posted hundreds of comments on GM’s Facebook page, uploaded photos of themselves with their GM cars, showed up at events where GM’s CEO was speaking, and generally made it clear that they were extremely upset about GM’s Heartland association. After weeks of pressure, including considerable media coverage, GM pulled its support on March 28 — more than a month before the now infamous billboard went up.
Forecast the Facts isn’t an established player; our ability to influence General Motors was not due to our reputation. It was entirely the result of our active members, who organized around an idea and spoke in a louder voice than any single person or institution could.
Because GM’s pullout happened before Heartland’s Unabomber messaging fiasco — a key point that’s been overlooked by many media outlets — it offers the clearest demonstration of how citizen activism can impact corporations. There is literally nothing more valuable to a public-facing company like General Motors than its brand. And in the wake of the government bailout, GM has a great deal invested in building its environmental identity. Exhibit A: The Chevy Volt. Twenty thousand customers and potential customers pissed off about GM’s ties to climate-change denial represented a real threat to GM’s image makeover. Which is why GM’s CEO agreed to review the matter personally, and eventually decided that the company’s 20-year relationship with Heartland was just not worth the potential brand damage.
In the weeks following GM’s announcement, Forecast the Facts staff, together with partners at Greenpeace, contacted the rest of Heartland’s corporate donors to ask why they were still supporting climate-change denial. In doing so, we made clear that we were speaking on behalf of the 20,000 people who had signed on to the campaign. And our questions sparked conversations within many of those companies about whether the lobbying that Heartland did for them was worth the risk to their brands.
grist
http://thinkprogress.org/green/issue/
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DECEMBER 2, 2011
Wall Street’s Failed 1934 Coup
by MICHAEL DONNELLY
“In the last few weeks of the committee’s official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country…There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”
– Report of the McCormack-Dickstein Committee
A Patriot, not the Traitor they wanted
You know the coup plot they teach all young Americans about in 10th Grade History class? Oh yeah…
In November 1934, famed double Medal of Honor winner Marine Gen. Smedley Butler gave secret testimony before the McCormack-Dickstein committee – a precursor to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In it, Butler told of a plot headed by a group of wealthy businessmen (The American Liberty League) to establish a fascist dictatorship in the United States, complete with concentration camps for “Jews and other undesirables.”
Show Me the Money
Butler had been approached by Gerald P. MacGuire of Wall Street’s Grayson M-P Murphy & Co. MacGuire claimed they would assemble an army of 500,000 mostly unemployed WWI veterans and march on DC. The plutocrats wanted Butler to lead the coup, thinking that, like the Bolsheviks, taking one major city (DC as Petrograd) would lead to the fall of the government. They promised to put up $3 million as starters and dangled a future $300 million as bait. Butler went along with the plot until he could learn the identities of all the schemers. Not a one of them was ever called to testify or was charged with Treason. Virtually all of them were founding members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
The League was headed by the DuPont and J.P Morgan cartels and had major support from Andrew Mellon Associates, Pew (Sun Oil), Rockefeller Associates, E.F. Hutton Associates, U.S. Steel, General Motors, Chase, Standard Oil and Goodyear Tires.
Money was funneled thru the Sen. Prescott Bush-led Union Banking Corporation(yes, those Bushes) and the Prescott Bush-led Brown Brothers Harriman (yes, that Harriman) to the League (and to Hitler, but that’s another story). The plotters bragged about Bush’s Hitler connections and even claimed that Germany had promised Bush that it would provide materiel for the coup.
This claim was entirely believable: a year earlier, Chevrolet president William S. Knudsen (who himself had donated $10,000 to the League) went to Germany and met with Nazi leaders and declared upon his return that Hitler’s Germany was “the miracle of the twentieth century.” At the time, GM’s wholly-owned Adam-Opal Co. had already begun producing the Nazi’s tanks, trucks and bomber engines. James D. Mooney, GM’s vice-president for foreign operations was joined by Henry Ford and IBM chief Tom Watson in receiving the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Hitler for their considerable efforts on behalf of the Third Reich.
The Whitewash
While the Committee found that Gen. Butler was telling the truth, discrediting such a stalwart was problematic for the plotters. Quickly, the corporate press weighed in and sought to raise doubts about the war hero, settling on branding him naive. The discredit Knudsen meme was: “it was all idle cocktail party chatter.” This red herring was trumpeted under the Associated Press headline “The Cocktail Putsch.” New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia dismissed the plot as “someone at the party had suggested the idea to the ex-Marine as a joke.”
From 1934 through 1936, the League got thirty-five pro-League front page stories in the New York Times. TIME ridiculed Butler in a Dec. 3, 1934 cover story, even though Butler’s story was corroborated by VFW head James E. Van Zandt, who also said he was approached to lead the coup. Though, TIME did put a footnote on an early 1935 article stating; “Also last week the House Committee on Un-American Activities purportedto report that a two-month investigation had convinced it that General Butler’s story of a fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true.”
Solely, the Scripps-Howard papers backed FDR and presented the truth.
Whatever Happened to the “Economic Royalists?”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt labeled the plotters “economic royalists” and survived their, thankfully, ham-handed efforts. Jan. 3, 1936, FDR blasted the American Liberty League before a joint session of Congress where he announced the ban on military exports to Italy.
“Our resplendent economic aristocracy does not want to return to that individualism of which they prate, even thought the advantages under that system went to the ruthless and the strong. They realize that in thirty-four months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a people’s government this power is wholesome and proper. But, in the hands of political, puppets of an economic aristocracy, such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people. Give them their way and they will take the course of every aristocracy of the past – power for themselves, enslavement for the public.”
FDR was never able to bring any of the plotters to justice. He wasn’t even able to rein in Prescott Bush until 1942 when the government seized the assets of Bush’s pro-Nazi enterprises – garnering Bush a $1.5 million windfall once the assets were returned in 1951! It’s obvious that the fascist mindset of the “economic royalists” has never gone away and is the driving force behind the modern-day ascent (and the ultimate demise of) of the American Empire, the attacks on worker’s rights and pensions, the attacks on our minimal safety nets, etc.
In its day, the League promoted itself as a bastion of all concerned about “burdensome taxes imposed upon industry for unemployment insurance and old age pension.” The League sought to “combat radicalism” and to “teach respect for the rights of persons and property, and generally to foster free private enterprise.”
J.P. Morgan and Chase are now one. The fortunes of the Mellon, Rockefeller, DuPont, Pitcairn (Pittsburgh Plate Glass) and Pew families have sky-rocketed. Pew and Rockefeller have morphed into a cabal of foundations that fund/neuter progressive grass roots efforts.
1936’s Occupy Movement
William S. Knudsen was the sole inside plotter who turned against the plot, renounced Hitler and is credited with pushing GM into a settlement of the Flint Sit-Down Strike . Underpaid, overworked workers took over and stayed in their plants, starting with Flint’s Fisher Body #3 and fought off attacks by GM-controlled police and hired goons. FDR and Michigan Gov. Frank Murphy called out the National Guard, not to roust the strikers, but to form a cordon between the strikers and the goons. Murphy’s father and grandfather had been hung by the British as Irish revolutionaries and many of the strikers were ethnic Irish laborers, so he as very sympathetic.
After 44 days, Knudsen, now GM vice-president, declared that “Collective Bargaining’s time has come” With his ally, two-time Flint Mayor, life-long civic booster/philanthropist, GM’s top shareholder and fellow board member C. S. Mott assisting; GM settled, leading the way to the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, union organizing rights, pensions, etc. Mott even saw to it that health clinics were set up in the factories for the workers and their families.
Coup plotter/GM President and Chairman Alfred P. Sloan, who had wanted to reclaim the plants with guns blazing stepped partly aside as GM head and Knudsen replaced him as president. GM went on to become the world’s top corporation for 40 years, the country saw the rise of a middle class and wealth disparity was at the lowest levels ever in the US.
It likely was not entirely altruistic of Knudsen, as two years later FDR put Knudsen in charge of the National Defense Advisory Commission. On his watch, some $12 billion in armament contracts were awarded to GM by the U.S. War Production Board, which also was conveniently chaired by Knudsen. At the same time, GM’s Opal factories built most of Hitler’s trucks and bomber engines. This part of the “win-win” did not lead to any charges against Knudsen or GM. Instead, it led to the Danish immigrant Knudsen becoming the first civilian commissioned as a U.S. Army General.
The Lesson...
https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/02/wall-streets-failed-1934-coup/
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