Friday, April 25, 2008


Where is John McCain's Hand?

The picture is from michaelmoore.com.


This picture of John McCain was brought to you by the new hit movie, It's Raining 300 Men.

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

All Eyes are on Indiana

So, here's the deal: Indiana, for the first time in 40 years, has a significant presidential primary. The New York Times reporters come to Kokomo, Indiana, UAW haven though it is, to interview everyday folks. What do they see?

Here's a link to the Nyt slideshow.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Wesley Snipes Conspiracy Theory

Actor Wesley Snipes was sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion. I think this is a federal government conspiracy against Snipes, since he accomplished more in the fight against terrorism in the movie Passenger 57 than the Bush administration has accomplished in seven years. I wouldn't want to be one of the guards that leads him to his cell. Check out this video from Youtube:

Ford Reports Quarterly Profit

Well, slap me and call me Edsel! Ford Motor Company reported a $100 million dollar profit for the 1st quarter of 2008. Not only that, but Ford reported the profit despite sales that were down 8% from last year. If Ford can keep this up, it looks Like the Blue Oval will be the first of the FB3 to make a comeback.

Unlike Chrysler, and to a lesser extent, GM, Ford has some near term new products that may actually help North American sales. In the Fall, Ford will bring out its redesigned F-150 pick-up, which is still the #1 selling vehicle in the United States. The Fusion and Milan get a freshening that includes a more powerful and efficient 4-cylinder engine and 6-speed transmission. The B-Class Ford Fiesta brings the style and verve of the Verve showcar to the masses. Ford has a new line of fuel-efficient low-displacement turbocharged engines and a new diesel to help its MPG across the board. The touched-up Focus is a hit, both because of its size and the Sync audio system, and the fancy tunes box come to more models for '09. The Flex family truckster will come out as well. That Boeing guy must know what he's doing.

Monday, April 21, 2008

For 3357 Members:
And Now A Message from the President


I asked Michael Forbes, the president of our local (Afscme
3357), to comment on contract negotiations and, the talk of the town,
what happened with the support staff's union. Here's what Mike has to
say:

The attorneys represented by the AFSCME
Local 3357 are scheduled to begin negotiations on a new Collective
Bargaining Agreement on May 31, 2008. The present agreement will expire
on June 30, 2008. Negotiation representatives will include Mike Forbes
(Pres., KY), SteveBeres (VP, Ohio), Heather Rassmussen (Sec., WI) and
Roger White (Grievance Chair, TX). Updated information will be provided
on the web site at http://www.afscme3357.org/.

The UAW Legal
Services support staff have expressed concern over their union's
decision not to proceed with negotiations on a new contract. The
support staff are represented by theOPEIU Local 42. At this time, the
support staff will continue without raises or bonuses. It is possible
that the support staff union will take a "wait and see approach" to
evaluate their positions until after the attorneys' unions have gone
first. The attorneys represented byAFSCME 3357 consider the support
staff valued partners and wish them well.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Al Gore
15 Ways to Save the Planet
(An Inconvenient Truth - the Sequel)


A brand new Al Gore speech is making its way around the web. Here's a link to the new video on ted.com.
For AFSCME Local 3357 Members:
SECRETARIES UNION KEEPS OLD CONTRACT


Though many of you know this already, I wanted to get a mini-blurb out in case anybody missed it. OPEIU Local 42, the union that represents the UAW-LSP secretaries and support staff, has elected not to bargin a new contract this year, and it will continue under the old contract on a year-to-year basis. Don't assume that we will follow their lead. Please check in with our union website at www.afscme3357.org, and feel free to participate in the members-only message boards with your thoughts. Be looking for my commentary in this space in the next few days.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Chrysler and Nissan Sitting in a Tree . . .
Small Car to Chrysler / Truck to Nissan


For years, Nissan has battled for space in the market for its Frontier pick-up truck. With strong, newly revised models from Toyota and General Motors, and new models from Ford and Dodge upcoming, Nissan is looking for a graceful exit from building full-sized pick-ups.

Chrysler, LLC has effectively already left the small car field. Going on two years ago, they stopped building the Neon in favor of the mini-suv Dodge Caliber. With high fuel prices, Chrysler desparately needs a small car.

Apparently both companies recognized room for Pareto gains, so they've struck a deal. Nissan will build a small car for Chrysler in Japan. Chrysler will build full-sized pick-up for Nissan in Mexico. Wait a minute, what happens to the UAW workers? They might see a slight net gain in jobs. To make room in its plant in Saltillo, Mexico for the new Nissan truck, Chrysler will shift Ram production to its plants in the Saint Louis North and Warren Michigan plant. Since Chrysler doesn't build any small cars in the US, technically no jobs are going to Japan to build the small car. Nissan does build its pick-ups in the US (in a non-UAW plant), but Nissan previously announced that that manufacturing space would be eventually allocated to a line of new light and medium duty commercial vehicles.

According to Automotive News, the new Chrysler/Dodge car will be built to a Chrysler design on a Nissan platform, and it will be in addition to, not instead of the previously announced Chrysler/Chery FreeTrademobile. The new Nissan truck will debut in 2011.

What's the big picture in all of this? The first thing that comes to my mind is that Chrysler will have its hands full staying alive during the next two years with its current vehicle line-up. The Nissan deal is one that should have been made 2-3 years ago. Right now, Chysler has no stars, and its cash cow ranks are pretty thin. It seems to me that Renault/Nissan CEO, Carlos Ghosn, is setting up Chrysler for a firesale acquisition and may pick up the company's assets for pennies on the dollar, in much the same way that GM acquired Daewoo a few years ago. There remains a lot of room for combined efficiencies. Chrysler is on the verge of fielding a new dual-clutch transmission. Nissan already has an excellent CVT transmission, one that Chrsyler uses in the Dodge Caliber. Chrysler is on the verge of starting volume production of a new V-6 engine that at best will equal the performance of what Nissan has on the street now. With more cars going to 4-cylinder power, Nissan probably has enough V-6 production capactiy to supply Chrysler's needs as well as its own.

All of these international partnerships are interesting. Chrysler already is planning to sell a relabled Nissan Versa in South America. I always thought it would be good for Chinese automaker Rowe to sell it's own version of the Versa, one with a custom brushed leather interior. Naturally, they would call it the Rowe Versa Suede.

Red Light Cameras Rigged?

Conspiracy
theorists would likely find some satisfaction because before I could
post a link to this release at the National Motorists Association website, the link went dead.
Whether it goes live again or not, we'll see. The gist of it is that
the surveyed the light timing of intersections that include automated
red light cameras and compared them to adjoiningintersessions that
don't have the camera, and they found that in six cities the
camera-armed intersections had shorter yellow light cycles than similar
intersections elsewhere on the road. Save this link UAW-LSP comrades, we'll get calls, just you wait and see.

Of
course, if you are going to use the light timing as an issue in
challenging your ticket, you've got to do more than prove that the
light is short, or even that it is shorter than the lights around it.
You've got to prove that the light is too short to serve it's purpose
of allowing traffic to clear the intersection. That may mean expert
testimony. You're more likely to have success bringing it to the
attention of your local television investigative reporter, and hope
that there's a ratings week before your case comes up.

Here's a link to a local news story from Arizona about the profit motives behind red light cams.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Will Rowling's Suit Womp the Wikis?

Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling, has sued the publisher of The Harry Potter Lexicon, a 400 page reference book written by Steve Vanderark. Vanderark is the force behind the website www.hp-lexicon.org, upon which the litigated book is based. Rowling has stated that the Hp-lexicon infringes upon the territory that she intends to cover in a Harry Potter encyclopedia that she intends to write in the future.

I can understand Ms. Rowling's position, and if you look at the lexicon site, you can tell that this advertising-enhanced site gets substantially all of its content from Ms. Rowling's works. The problem is that much of the same content is available in the standard (nonprofit, noncommercial) Wikipedia encyclopedia. In fact, Wikipedia hosts a special Harry Potter Portal that serves as a gateway to all the Wikipedia potter-related content. Can the New York court reviewing the Rowling case craft a ruling that allows Ms. Rowling to benefit from her work without threatening wikipedia, which is an education resource of unparallelled value? Should the court focus on content or on comercial marketing? The fact of the matter is that on the web, there are many levels of comerciality. Youtube went a long time without posting advertising on its site, and before it generated substantial advertising revenue, it was snapped up by Google for billions of dollars. Today, youtube probably hosts more songs than were ever available on Napster, and many of the moste dedicated youtubers have never bought a CD in their lives. A comprehensive wiki can reduce the value for an author's encyclopedic works even if it is noncommercial. There are several specialized wikis devoted to Potteralia, including the The Harry Potter Wiki at wikia.com. I have no idea how commercial these wikis really are, but they can be pretty comprehensive.

Issues of fair use and derivative works go far beyond encyclopedias and compendiums to all kinds of derivative works. For example, the Potter cult is likely larger than even that of Star Trek or Star Wars. Potter fan fiction fills hundreds of thousands of web pages. Potter-inspired "Wizard Rock" has a home on youtube.com, with over 2,350 separate videos posted under that term. Perhaps the biggest rising star in the potter universe is a young man named Neil Cicierga. Neil is the creator of Potter Puppet Pals, or PPP among afficianados. Potter Puppet Pals is a series of short videos mostly hosted on youtube.com. An episode of Potter Puppet Pals called The Mysterious Ticking Noise won a Youtube Comedy Award, and it has been viewed over 40 million times. Most cable tv shows would kill for 40 million viewers. Each viewer is subjected to an advertisement in the right pane that ads som cha-ching to the Google cash mashine. I'm embedding a link to another Potter Puppet Pal video, called Wizard Swears because I think it's funnier than The Mysterious Ticking Noise. There's no question that somebody is profiting from the Potter characters in Potter Puppet Pals, mostly, it's not J.K. Rowling.



Almost 15 years ago, the United States Supreme Court carved out a niche for derivative works of parody in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. You might remember this as the 2 Live Crew, "Pretty Woman" case. Against all odds, 2 Live Crew won that case, and later settled with Rose Acuff music. In true youtube style, here's a link to a video that's derivative of 2 Live Crew's derivation of Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman. That's the second derivative, and the second derivative is when my head exploded in Calculus class. So that's where I'll stop.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Chrysler Debt sold at $.61 on the dollar

According to Autonews.com (free registration required), the financial syndicate that loaned $7 billion to Cerberus to buy Chrysler, is selling some of the Chrysler LLC commercial paper at 61 cents on the dollar. Combined with a facial or "coupon" rate of 6.71%, the the implied interest demanded by the investors is about 20%. This shows that financial markets do not have a lot of confidence in the future of Chrysler. It also shows that Chrysler's cost of capital is very high. Also noted by Autonews is the change in the market for Chrysler's debt in recent months. In November 2007, Chrysler tried to unload the debt at 97% on the dollar, and in March, the target price was 74-76% of face value. That's a trend line that you don't want to extrapolate. (I just wanted to use the word extrapolate in a sentence.)
Chrysler Debt sold at $.61 on the dollar

According to Autonews.com (free registration required), the financial syndicate that loaned $7 billion to Cerberus to buy Chrysler, is selling some of the Chrysler LLC commercial paper at 61 cents on the dollar. Combined with a facial or "coupon" rate of 6.71%, the the implied interest demanded by the investors is about 20%. This shows that financial markets do not have a lot of confidence in the future of Chrysler. It also shows that Chrysler's cost of capital is very high. Also noted by Autonews is the change in the market for Chrysler's debt in recent months. In November 2007, Chrysler tried to unload the debt at 97% on the dollar, and in March, the target price was 74-76% of face value. That's a trend line that you don't want to extrapolate. (I just wanted to use the word extrapolate in a sentence.)

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

The Terminelvis

If you ever doubted that sooner or later we're all going to be replaced by robots, here's a youtube video of an Elvis robot - sans face. Hasta la viva Las Vegas baby.

Monday, April 07, 2008

2008 Chevrolet Cobalt SS

I was feeling kind of guilty about referring to the Chevrolet Cobalt and the Pontiac G5 as the "dogs of Lordstown" in the blog last week. So in an act of penance, I thought I'd post a blog entry about a positive road test on the Cobalt SS by Autoweek magazine, posted at autoweek.com. It's a positive, almost glowing, review. This is an under $25,000 compact car with 260 horsepower, that will do 0-60 in 5.8 seconds. It also delivered 25 MPG in the Autoweek test. Finally, it's built in Lordstown, Ohio, so we can drive it to work.

At least we can this year. The 2009 Cobalt was recently unveiled, with its first comprehensive restyling since the car debuted in 2004, but according to Wikipedia, production of the Cobalt will be moved to Mexico for model year 2009, so it will almost certainly fall off the UAW-approved list, leaving us with even less choice when it comes to cars that we can drive to work.

Congratulations Purdue SPE Rube Goldberg Winners

Congratulations to the Society of Professional Engineers Team from Purdue University for winning the 2008 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest National Championship. The championship match was held this weekend, and the Purdue SPE team won for the third time in the past 4 years. This year's task was to make a hamburger in no less than 20 steps. I'm embedding a link to a video of the winning machine.

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Delphi Needs a ReFi
Appaloosa says Nay Nay (Neigh Neigh, never mind)


Appaloosa Management LP, the lead invester in Delphi's bankruptcy reoganization, has pulled out of Delphi's bankruptcy exit financing plan. By doing so, Appaloosa not only yanked its $2.5 billion in exit capital, it completely killed Delphi's current plan of reorganization. Things get complicated, but as I understand it, Appaloosa didn't like General Motor's extra clout because GM increased its participation covering the lion's share of Delphi's bankruptcy debts. Also, there was supposed to be $6 billion in additional financing that didn't exist to Appaloosa's satisfaction.

In parting, Appaloosa asked for $62.5 million in breakup fees from Delphi. So, in other words, it looks like the Delphi bankruptcy is the song that never ends. Hence the tenuously linked video of the day.