Last week we let you know that in partnership with our members the Apollo Alliance supported government intervention to rescue the American auto industry with a $25 billion bridge loan. We reached this conclusion knowing of the industry’s long-time recalcitrance on fuel mileage, climate safeguards, product lines, and the imperious behavior of its chief executives, who in case you don’t know by now, flew to Washington last week on corporate jets and without any clear plan for how they would use the money.
Nevertheless, we note the call in our New Apollo Program for government investment to help the auto industry develop clean, efficient, American made next generation vehicles. We wrote, “there is too much opportunity in fuel-efficient design and technology to allow American car manufacturers to melt away. And there are too many family-supporting jobs – including nearly half a million in Michigan alone – to allow the companies to fail.”
The New York Times, in an editorial over the weekend, essentially agreed. “Michigan’s three car manufacturers have said that they would go bankrupt this year without an infusion of taxpayers’ money,” the paper said on Saturday. “Failing to provide it would be a truly irresponsible act that could obliterate one or more companies, potentially causing other bankruptcies and costing many hundreds of thousands of jobs. Unpalatable as it seems to underwrite the proven record of failure of Detroit’s automakers, Congress must provide sufficient money to shore them up until the Obama administration takes office.”
Our readers, though, were not of a single mind on the question of the automakers’ worthiness of a taxpayer financed rescue, as you’ll see below:
Really?
From your most recent email: “Our senior staff and board members are working with influential lawmakers, among them Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, to make the case that the American auto industry has vastly improved its vehicle lineup, quality, and energy efficiency. There is too much opportunity in fuel-efficient design and technology to allow American car manufacturers to melt away.” I agree with the second sentence but the first made me shake my head. It doesn’t sound like Apollo and it doesn’t sound true — or at least it’s a big exaggeration. What about tying the $25 billion to energy efficiency? And maybe employee health care?
Laura O’Shea
Support Big Three
I am glad to see Apollo Alliance supporting the Big Three auto industry. No one in my household is union, nor have we anything to do with the auto industry at all. However, at 67 I know that we have lost far, far too much of our manufacturing industries in this country to lose another to foreigners. Michael Moore was on Larry King this past week and hit it on the head with how to get them up and running again.
First, take over the auto industry like FDR did in the 40′s, fire the CEO’s, with no bonuses or parachutes on leaving (in other words, don’t reward them for a job badly done. They’ve gotten paid enough for that already. And their boards, who ran the industry into the ground by refusing to be competitive in design and mpg and safety with competitors abroad. Insist on oversight by a panel of outside engineers. Refit the plants to make not only better cars, but vehicles for mass transit, which are needed all across the country to meet the fossil fuel shortages of the future. And this, in turn, will not only keep those employees now on the job, along with those laid off, it will add more workers who have a very desperate need for jobs because of the economic downturn in the country.
Next, pay no dividends to stockholders until the taxpayers are paid for their investment, and keep upper management and CEO salaries, bonuses and parachutes capped until a consistent profit over a period of years shows they are on the right track. In their contract, have it that those will end or be lowered if that profit falls. All materials and manufacturing should be relocated inside the United States.
The unions earned their money and only produced what they were instructed to produce by upper management and the CEOs, According to government records, their production levels increased even as their salaries stayed level. I have no problem with the unions in this industry downfall.
There are so many other businesses that depend on the workers in the auto industry, that it would create even more closed small businesses and more joblessness if these major industries fail. With unemployment on the rise, and likely to go higher within the next year, there must be a sensible and well thought out plan to keep this industry alive. If it is allowed to go into bankruptcy who would buy cars from them if there was any doubt that warranties and parts could disappear? I wouldn’t, nor would most, I’d wager.
But just shelling out money to poor planners to do the same thing they’ve done in the past or who won’t modify the plants asap is a losing game as well.
Anne Sherwood
Kansas City
Down The Drain
It should not happen without iron clad agreements that:
1) There will be no layoffs.
2) There will be no demands for union concessions for current employees or retirees.
3) That plants will be retooled to build buses, electric buses and trolley cars (light rail).
4) Remaining automobile production will achieve CAFE 50 by 2012.
5) Executive compensation is limited to no more than 10x the highest paid production worker.
6) Recycled content standards for metal parts are established and enforced.
Otherwise, this is simply more money down the drain.
Jerry Silberman
Kidding?
You have got to be kidding. The goals of the Apollo alliance cannot be reached through propping up the current Detroit automakers. All signs point to the opposite – a depleting of resources needed to accomplish the goals of the program, a loss of momentum, and a delaying of the inevitable death that is actually needed for the rebirth you normally promote. Think crop rotation.
If Detroit is to receive federal money – our money – then this should be the opportunity to turn them on their ear – radical change – without displacing all of the workers. We could stipulate that the money can only go to production of all-electric cars — they can fund the hybrid compromise themselves. It doesn’t get us there fast enough, though the companies are allowed to keep making gas guzzlers through their existing operating infrastructure and P&L. They would be getting a free key to the future and if they use it right, it can help prop up their legacy works while moving them forward. If they don’t use it right, as indicated by existing patterns, then they didn’t deserve the money in the first place. But at least we as taxpayers would inherit a partially complete infrastructure of the future, not a complete dead weight.
Why is nobody talking about Neil Young’s solution? Is it really not feasible? They have proven it, after all, even if only on a small scale. Why can’t a plan similar to this be explored?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-young/how-to-save-a-major-autom_b_143749.html
Kevin Taylor
Moment
Sounds like this is the moment. Can you get on Bill Moyer’s PBS program? And can you persuade auto execs to be more socially responsible in terms of the spread between high executive pay and lowest wages.
Sara Bhakti, Ph.D.
Kirkland WA
Dumb
Offering to rescue Detroit is as dumb as paying oil companies billions each year to find more American oil, and do it for 30 years with no end. Ooops we already do that along with giving subsidies to fossil fuel, nuclear and hydrogen. Please help make more people aware and get Congress to smarten up. Most people just don’t know or see the facts.
Jim Stack
Legions
You should know that there are legions of us who won’t buy Detroit’s automobiles regardless of their offerings. We’ve been burned by the Big Three. We’ve lived through their shoddy products, their refusal to stand behind their warranties, and their general disregard for the customer. No way do we support taxpayer money for Detroit.
Donald Hermanson
Support Workers
I fully support ensuring that the UAW’s workers deserve the support of the rest of America. An important fact to remember is that if the big three file for bankruptcy, and the government bails them out after they file, the American taxpayer achieves some protection and control of our investment.
Colin Ramsay
Conditions
I agree with your position on the loan to the auto industry. But, as we perhaps failed to do, it should be made with detailed conditions, especially regarding standards of fuel efficiency, and even better, conditions on developing non-fossil fuel powered vehicles. Bring back the electric car!
Scott McCaughey
$5,000 Suits
We can’t lose an industry like the automakers. However, they’ve left a bad taste in people’s mouths when they showed up in DC in their stretch limos and individual jets, sporting $5000 suits. It’s hard to take when you see the guys who represent the industry, rather than the hard-working workers. Any financial assistance, including loans, should be conditional: Dump top management and their school chums and hire auto pros even if you have to go to line workers. Get rid of their ridiculously high salaries and perks and get down to the nitty-gritty. Start by selling those jets and limos and condos and club memberships etc. If they won’t play our game, let them crash.
Having said this, Congress should have said the same thing to Henry Paulson and his reckless and ridiculous request for insurance company and banking bailouts. He has charge of more than $700 billion of our money and he still can’t give us a report on how it was distributed — at least the $300 plus billion he’s spread around to his rich friends. Average people like me are very very upset that these ponzi players and scam artists are getting away with our money in broad daylight.
Hopefully Apollo Alliance will be one of the crescendo of voices demanding that accountability and serious belt-tightening — and not at the expense of workers as it usually is — and strings be attached to any response to this emergency.
Alicia O’Neill
Autos in U.S.
I would like to see some auto production in the USA,but I truly do not believe the Big Three as currently structured can accomplish this. The CEOs going to Washington in their corporate jets was really ridiculous and shows these guys are arrogant and have no clue. They need to be replaced and without a golden parachute. I really can not fault labor, but I feel bankruptcy is the only option. Labor is only asking for a decent wage and health care. And because of the national failure on health care this is not too much to ask. They are competing against company’s who are based in countries with a good national health care policy.
The Big Three have blocked and torpedoed fuel efficient products for years and really do not have a case that we should bail them out unless a major restructuring takes place and current management is replaced with people who get it. The Big Three are really multinational corporations although they were started in the USA. They have not shown that they have the long range success and interests of the USA in mind. So why not ask Japan or Germany to bail them out? They are just greedy co-cousins of the Wall Street people who got us into this mess. So why bail them out? So the can continue to produce crappy inefficient cars that people do not want to buy? Then we waste taxpayer money that could be spent to support the companies who are already producing the cars of the future. Toyota. Honda. Start-ups like Tesla and others.
Chris Hurst
No Bailout
Sorry, I can’t support the idea of a bailout for the automotive companies. If they go under, they can always work through chapter 11 on an individual basis. There is too much flinging around of money to solve problems caused by the bailees themselves or by the flouting of regulations by the Bush and previous administrations. I’m taking a pass on this one.
CE Camenzind
Salem, OR
No Support
I’ve supported Apollo Alliance and its goals. I’ve never equated the American auto industry with clean, renewable energy and I wouldn’t expect the Apollo Alliance to be working on its behalf. They are pathetic, and have only briefly (think EV-1) ever produced an auto that you all should be supporting. And I won’t mention that they stole all those back from their lease-holders and crushed them just to emphasize how stupid and backward, and bought off they are. If ever there was a corporation that deserved to fail in our free market economy the Big Three automakers are it. Let them fail, lest they take a whole stack of our tax dollars and continue to try to sell us more useless junk that is ruining the planet.
I cannot stress enough how important I think this is. If you continue to lobby for their bailout, I’ll never support you again.
Rick Kehret
Elk Grove, California
Study This One
First, a serious analysis of the American auto industry should be conducted to determine if it is still salvageable and, if so, is worth saving in its current form. Neither of these pre-conditions is a given. If the answer to both pre-conditions is yes, the only way in which the necessary reorganizations of management, of labor contracts, of pension plans, of the channels of distribution, dealer networks, supply chains, planning process, an entirely new business model, etc. can legallly be done is by declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The government is then also in a position to demand oversight on a day-by-day basis of the workout process, and set minimum goals in exchange for providing the bridge funds. It is highly doubtful the existing management, which is responsible for the current crisis, has the capability to develop such a program on their own without being forced and managed into doing so. If the existing management, as often turns out to be the case, proves not up to the task, the government is then in a legal position to step in and appoint new management.
Bill Butler
Public Stockholders
Here’s my wish, that the public becomes stockholders in the companies we bail out and receive future dividends and value for the duration. These companies had ample time to plan and build for the future years ago and because of greed and short-sightedness and even perhaps a belief that worse case scenario, we would bail them out. They did nothing to compete with foreign car makers, nothing to ready this country for the future which is now! They deserve to go under and the people who get screwed can go after the CEOs and other disproportionately rich and powerful people who are not going to lose a thing. Their profits should be divided and given as severance to unemployed car workers. Basically they are thieves, legal thieves along with hedge fund managers, bank and insurance company CEOs and the lot.
I am tired of acting stupid and impotent. Slaps on the hand and no punishments, no consequences for the white collar crime that has always been acceptable while the poor blacks and petty criminals spend their lives in prison for heisting a 7/11 for $20.
Harvey Rabichow
Don’t Believe It
I can’t believe Apollo Alliance supports saving Detroit. Private auto use is the most unsustainable transit known to mankind. Instead of bailing out Detroit you should be supporting public transit, especially transit in the form of high speed intercity train travel, and improved urban public transit. Both moves would reduce airplane and auto’s significant carbon footprint, and model our transit options to those of Europe and Japan. If your “save Detroit” stance is indicative of Apollo alliance’s values, I want no part of Apollo Alliance. Active transit in Chicago gets my support for a truly visionary, environmentally friendly solution, not you.
Nancy Sreenan
Disappointed
I am extremely disapointed to hear that the Apollo Alliance and its state and metropolitan affiliates support the bridge loan. I had expected to read otherwise prior to opening up this email. However, I have learned about the Alliance from your stand on this issue. The US auto industry, by its clear undisputable actions has not “vastly improved its vehicle lineup, quality, and energy efficiency.” Quite the contrary. How you can make a case that they have is beyond belief.
Bob Shulock
Deaf Ears
While I appreciate Apollo Alliance efforts to support sustainable investments in our country, your assurances that Detroit is improving, in my case, are falling on deaf ears. I have paid attention while GM trumpeted the Volt – starting 5 years ago – and then never marketed it. Furthermore, when they have produced “green” hybrids, they get 24 mpg and weigh 6,000 lbs. The story of the Volt is particularly disturbing. It is not exactly rocket science to produce a car that runs on batteries that are charged with an on-board generator, gets 100 mpg, and has a range greater than 150 miles. Yet when they announce it, they tell us that it will cost an outrageous $40,000, which to me is more evidence that they have no interest in actually selling such a car to the public.
Here it is, five years down the road, and there is still no Volt to buy. They had no trouble getting the Hummers out the door within a year after conception of the idea. Furthermore my sympathies are not with the UAW. They have fought against the CAFE standards while enriching themselves and their members by building cars that have increased our dependence on foreign oil. These companies have harmed our country. Dingell is gone – good riddance!
To top it all off, you are defending people who just sent three executives to Washington on separate private jets to testify. The arrogance, hubris, and ignorance – not to mention the incompetence – of the people running this industry are unbelievable. Pigs at the trough, as far as I’m concerned. I certainly don’t want to see millions of people on the dole, but I don’t want to see good money thrown away on these companies. Let these automakers go bankrupt, extend unemployment benefits for those laid off, and begin throwing government money at companies that are investing in an energy efficient future.
As far as health insurance for these workers, let’s create a national health care system that will provide health care for everyone, not just auto industry personnel. Use the $25 billion to pay for the health insurance for the millions of Americans who cannot afford health insurance. That will probably be a far better investment in the long run and it will create a great many jobs in the health industry. To be blunt: I do not trust the current management of these companies. A first condition for any discussions of loans to these companies should be the resignation of the entire top management – with no bonuses or golden parachutes.
Len Conly
Berkeley, California
Nuts
You guys are nuts and I do not wish to be a member of your group. You very well know that the auto industry in the US has had decades to develop fuel efficient vehicles and have not done so. Why you think the taxpayers should pay for their mistakes is beyond me. Stupid is as stupid does. The executives have been paying themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in salary. Please take me off your list.
Adrian Akau
Not Agree
I’m sorry but I do not agree that we should provide a “bridge loan” to the auto industry. Any taxpayer money they are given should have a lot of strings attached including tough requirements on CAFE, strict limits on executive compensation, reassessment of union benefits and hourly pay, and reduction of benefits for retirees. My opinion is that the companies should go into Chapter 11 reorganization to effect these changes. I am certain that would emerge much stronger and more competitive.
Steve Rosenblum
Sad
How sad that the Apollo Alliance falls just like a lapdog when BIG LABOR yanks on the leash. Meeting in the UAW Boardroom? Pathetic. The auto industry is in need of serious reform from both the management and labor sides. Please stop sucking up to one of your benefactors and deliver the tough love in terms of reforms – both in practices and products. Reduce executive pay, get real with work rule flexibility, and produce cars that have less power and higher gas mileage.
Tom Armstrong
Jest
Surely you jest! Aren’t those the same companies that wrote laws and paid for them to get on the books in California to kill the local electric car shops in the bud? Isn’t that the same GM that funded global warming denial in collaboration with Exxon? Isn’t that the same industry that marketed SUVs and Hummers when they could have been marketing efficiency? They may lie to you about their plans to go green now, but it’s the same lie they’ve told for decades, and I don’t believe one second. You can make your choice: GM and Ford or the environment, but you can’t have both. Remember the scorpion and the frog?
Scott Peer
Shortsighted
It’s shortsighted to assume that the Midwest would enter a depression should GM, et. al. fail, and failure would be a result of not providing taxpayer money to the automakers. I think it’s in the best interests of the taxpayer and GM, Ford, and Chrysler not to bail them out. If these companies enter bankruptcy, they can restructure their debt. These companies could emerge from bankruptcy in a much more viable position. They need to reduce costs to be competitive with Honda, Toyota, etc. and bankruptcy is the best option. Uncle Sam is much too over extended at this point. There is danger of the United States losing its AAA bond rating because of our national debt and our continuing budget and trade deficits. Throwing money at Wall Street and Detroit is moving us further down the road to perdition.
Donald Hermanson
Out Of Your Mind?
Sorry, but I can hardly contain myself. Are you out of your mind? In 1976 I spent over a month touring the US in a 1969 Toyota Corolla. This vehicle returned a measured 41.5 mpg while cruising between 70 and 80 mph. That was how many years ago?
I have been pestering Ford for four full years to assist me in purchasing a petrol or diesel powered Ford Ka or a diesel powered Focus, which are available in Europe. These vehicles return between 40 and 50 MPG. I got the corporate brush off. Now that the news media discovered this situation the CEO of Ford explained a few weeks ago to CNN that there is no business case for Ford to sell these cars in the US. The CEO of GM is quoted in the major media as stating words to the effect that “global warming is a bunch of %^$&%”. Lo and behold stand you, crying to funnel my tax dollars to these corporate Neanderthals. You are a disgrace.
Mark Tepper
New York
In 1919, the manufacturing base was spread all across the country and very diverse. It supplied almost all the goods Americans needed or wanted.
http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/33086337nch1.pdf has a listing of them and it will amaze you.
The New York Times Archives article of 1922 is a good read as well.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9D0CE7DC1730E433A25752C3A9649D946395D6CF
Not so today, and we all know it. Walmart started with the slogan “Made in America”….well, look in the tags of the stuff you buy there today…….
If the auto industry is allowed to sink, we’ll be dependent on other countries for autos as well. As for bankruptcy to take care of it-would you buy a car that was likely to loose it’s warranty and parts because it would be made by manufacturer who could fold? I don’t think so. Are we ready to become totally dependent for the majority of our necessary goods on other countries? Hasn’t being dependent on foreign oil taught us anything about dependency?
The Great Depression had many of the same reasons that is causing the economy problems today; deregulation of banks and investment houses and mortgage companies and just plain greed. The Great Depression originated in the United States and had devastating effects in the developed and developing worlds. International trade was deeply affected, as were personal incomes, tax revenues, prices, and profits. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by 40 to 60 percents most often use as a starting date the stock market crash on October 29, 1929. If you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression you’ll see many similarities to today….
On top of that, they had their ecological disaster already happening- the Dust Bowl.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
It started in both Canada and the United States in about 1931 and lasted until 1936, caused by severe drought and decades of bad farming techniques (they didn’t know they were bad!) During the drought of the 1930s, with the grasses destroyed, the soil dried, turned to dust, and blew away eastwards and southwards in large dark clouds. At times the clouds blackened the sky, reaching all the way to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. Much of the soil ended up deposited in the Atlantic Ocean. The Dust Bowl affected 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km2), centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas and spreading out from there. Tent cities sprang up across the country filled by farmers coming into towns and cities from their farms and the jobless in the towns and cities from the bank and stock failures- when they could not find a tent, they used cardboard….Needless to say, food was very scarce, and the food lines were blocks long, everyday, all day. Riots were not uncommon.
We’ve lost manufacturing, and we need to bring it back. That’s going to be the hard part of righting this economic disaster, along with passing legislation to re- regulate the banks, mortgage industries and hedge funds and make that transaction with the bailout transparent and under Congressional control, not the Federal Reserve.
On the bright side, we can use these to prevent the ecological disaster facing us at the same time. Luckily, we aren’t in the position yet of those in the 30′s, and we have the time to fix it, if we act now. Using fed powers like FDR to restructure the auto industry to make not only ecologically safe cars, hybrids, etc, we can also have them make the mass transit so many cities across the country need or are now implementing. Even in WW1, the government took the same route but they took over furniture factories to make the new invention: airplanes, used for the first time in war. Well, we’re at war now- a war to save our economy, our country, our homes and jobs.
This is the 1st time to visit your website and the 1st thing I see is ” WE SUPPORT THE BAILOUT”. I can see now that Apollo Alliance is not for me. Who is in charge of this site, someone named Bush ?
Page 1 of 3
AS CEO OF GENERAL CHRYSFORDCO,
OBAMA CAN USE THE BAILOUT TO
SPEARHEAD RENEWABLE ENERGY AND REBUILD AMERICA
By David Blume
It’s all but a foregone conclusion that a government bailout of the auto industry will happen, to save the millions of direct and indirect jobs generated by the Big Three. But unlike his predecessor who bailed out the banks, the new President ought to make sure that those receiving tax dollars use them in an accountable way to power a viable industry.
Buried in this debacle are possibly the seeds of a powerful wave that can
regenerate not just the auto industry but the entire nation, from cities to farms. We can learn from, and follow, the example of how another major country saved its economy by transforming its automobile industry.
In the early 1980s, Brazil, like all other developing countries of the day, was
having its economy destroyed by skyrocketing oil prices. Most countries chose to borrow money to buy the oil they needed, but Brazil took a different tack. Its government mandated that General Motors and other companies making cars in Brazil produce vehicles that were to be powered by alcohol-fuel engines. The government’s thinking was that alcohol fuel can be produced domestically and inexpensively, avoiding the crushing
payments for foreign oil.
The auto companies resisted, saying that they would never retool their factories for a pipsqueak developing nation. They were global companies and didn’t make “boutique” engines for anyone. So the Brazilian leaders said, “Read our lips. It’s alcohol engines or leave the country.” Miracle of miracle, six months later, high-compression, high performance alcohol-only vehicles began rolling off every car company’s assembly line.
After all, the changes from gasoline to alcohol engines were simple: longer pistons, a modified carburetor, and different tuning, plus a cheap device to start the cars on cold mornings.
So while the rest of the developing world went into deep depression and debt,
Brazil quietly avoided enslaving itself to U.S. banks and the World Bank, while simultaneously stemming the hemorrhage of capital out of the country to OPEC. Today,due to retaining its capital, Brazil is a powerhouse economy, no longer a developing
country, with 85% of its vehicles running on alcohol. Alcohol is half the price of gasoline
there. New gasoline-only vehicles are a thing of the past; older gas vehicles have to be converted to flex-fuel to have any resale value, and Brazil imports not one single barrel of foreign oil. In other words, they ate our lunch.
When Sweden mandated that most fuel stations in that country carry alcohol at the pump, GM’s Saab division quickly engineered the model 9-5 to be an advanced flexible fuel vehicle which essentially gets the same mileage on alcohol or gas; implementation
Page 2 of 3
involved little more than adding a smart turbocharger, and virtually overnight alcohol
fueling became a reality. Now, GM Sweden is about to manufacture the first post petroleum production vehicle, the Aeon sports car, which only runs on alcohol and gets
something like 400 horsepower from a tiny engine (thanks to alcohol’s 105 octane
characteristics). The Swedish company Scania has been building heavy-duty bus engines that run exclusively on alcohol for nearly 30 years, powering city mass transit all over Scandinavia.
China announced this year that it is now building advanced high-compression
alcohol engines similar to the Scania engines, so as to bypass high-priced diesel
altogether; China recognizes that the U.S. is not going to let it anywhere near Central
Asian oil or even much of the Mideast oil. The engineering for these engines originated
in work done by our own Environmental Protection Agency which attained 22% better
mileage than diesel engines using straight alcohol. So now China is eating our lunch too,using our own bologna.
If the new CEO of General ChrsyFordCo, President Obama, were to mandate, as
part of the bailout, that all U.S. vehicles beginning in [July] 2009 are required to be
flexible fuel, i.e., able to run on both alcohol and gasoline, all it would take is the
reprogramming of vehicle computers. There would be no capital investment costs at all.
As I recommended in my book, Alcohol Can Be A Gas a year ago, predicting this
collapse, our new CEO should also demand that by 2010 all cars sold in the U.S., no
matter who makes them, should be advanced flex-fuel vehicles able to run not just on E-85 (85% alcohol) but also on E-100 (straight alcohol—no gas) with cold start devices
installed. This might add a few hundred dollars to the cost of building a car, but it has
huge implications for the nation’s economy. Chrysler is sitting on a patent using a semiconductor to heat fuel injectors instantly; this would be an elegant and inexpensive way
to cold start an alcohol vehicle down to 50 degrees below zero. It would eliminate the
current flawed approach of including 15% gasoline in E-85 to permit cold starting without devices.
Also, by 2011, all vehicles should be at least as efficient as the current GM-Saab
and get equal mileage on either fuel. By 2012, we should be implementing the same
diesel-like alcohol engines the Chinese are now building, and they should be available for all our car lines, increasing mileage dramatically virtually overnight. None of this
requires any new breakthroughs, and all of it can be implemented in short order.
Since the Big Oil propaganda about food versus fuel has now been proven to be
demonstrably false, alcohol fuel production is exploding all around the world. By joining
up, the U.S. would not only be saving itself nearly a trillion dollars a year in oil imports
but would reestablish itself as an exporter of vehicles rather than a major importer.
But that’s the tip of the iceberg. By having such a huge new market for alcohol
fuel, entrepreneurs in the U.S. would rise to the occasion by producing lower-cost alcoholfuel from all sorts of non-corn sources. In Alcohol Can Be A Gas, I cite Department of Energy studies which conclude that such a conversion would generate at least 26 million
Page 3 of 3
new, permanent, non-exportable American jobs. That’s a lot more than all the jobs Bush
destroyed during the disastrous last eight years. The cost to do all this, including building enough alcohol fuel production plants to power the entire country, would be less than $200 billion. This figure even includes building alcohol fueling stations independent of the current oil-company-owned stations. A year ago, that might have seemed like a lot of money, but compared with the recent bank bailouts and the $700 billion dollars we have militarily spent to secure Iraq’s oil for US companies, it would be the bargain of the century. So, properly leveraged, a couple of dozen billions to bail out the auto industry
could end our dependence on foreign oil (saving trillions over time), end unemployment
in the U.S. for the foreseeable future, and reverse global warming by eliminating fossil
fuels from transportation. All CEO Obama has to do is to make the bailout contingent on
General ChrysFordCo committing to be the spearhead of his renewable energy program.
Requiring this simple, currently available alcohol-fuel technology, to be part of all
American vehicles would generate a cascade of commerce that would rebuild both urban
and rural America, permanently, sustainably, and economically.
—David Blume
November 21, 2008
###
Read more at http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com
Contact: Tom Harvey
Phone: 530-257-3533
Email: thecommunications@publicist.com
These bailouts are the antithesis of a capitalistic society, and points to the fundamental problem of humanity – greed. Greed is the cause of all our problems as wealth remains contained in the hands of the few, and the few are becoming increasingly corrupt.
What I want to know is, where is the oil industry, which has set Detroit’s agenda for 100 years? They are complicit in the transportation industry’s problems, so shouldn’t Detroit be going to them? They have hundreds of billions of dollars in profit (and yet my energy portfolio has lost 40% – more corruption!). It’s time we stop deluding ourselves and get these criminals out of the C-level ranks of business, finance, and the politicians they are in bed with.
And let’s stop using the term ‘Auto Czar’ lest we morph into communism from within. How about ‘Auto Policy Champion’ or some other positive phrase? Jesus Christ, America! Wake up.
What happened to the American Dream?!
We were wrong to bailout the banks and we will be wrong to bailout Detroit. I remember growing up in a country where people believed in themselves and their fellow citizens. People took risks, and they also bore the responsibilities of their actions.
This is America–we don’t prop up failing businesses. Did anyone bailout the small family farmer when they faced competition from agro-business and cheap migrant labor? Who saved the REAL mainstreets when Walmart rode into our towns with lower prices fueled by goods manufactured in China? Yet when Wallstreet executives fear that they may have to sell a few of their vacation homes or terminate the lease on the company jet, our so-called ‘representatives’ write a blank check for $500 billion in no time at all.
The big three auto companies are no more ‘American’ than any other multinational corporation. While their origins are certainly American and I have no doubt that their mid-level and factory employees are true Americans, their executives owe allegiance to the nation of Profit. Their determined reluctance to recognize the responsible market and take positive steps toward it at the expense of some profit have proven where their loyalties lie.
The question is not if we ‘should allow them to fail.’ Their failure rests squarely on the shoulders of their leaders (both their labor leaders and corporate leaders). In the America I remember, one where individualism is valued, it is understood that if you fail to remain competitive then you will fail to remain. Why certain companies feel that they are simply ‘too big’ to fail and deserve to have their risks supported by the taxpayer while their profits are not equally shared, is beyond my comprehension.
The demise of the big three will not be the end of American automobile manufacturers. However, it may be the opening that innovative, forward thinking, socially and environmentally responsible entrepeneurs have been waiting for. Let them go.