Okay, this is... odd.

WTF?! My cats would rip me a new one if I tried this with them. Wow!

-- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin

A more detailed look...

Update: This started as a comment on Dr. Dave's blog, then I reposted it here and expanded it when I realized, "No way would he ever post it there, it has too many actual facts in it to refute his scare-mongering!" Guess what: I WAS RIGHT! This, friends, is why we're winning: Our opponents are cowards who are scared of the truth, who piss their pants upon demand of their Party commissars and repeat any idiotic easily-disproven lie that they're told by their Party commissars, and who believe that actual, like, facts, are "liberal" and thus can be ignored (wow, Stephen Colbert nails it!). Brave free men will *always* win out over cowards in the end. Well, unless there are a *lot* of the cowards, but the 27%'ers aren't going to overwhelm us like the English overwhelmed the Scots -- as I pointed out previously, the MAJORITY of Americans want singlepayer health insurance. All the 27%'ers have is fear, not facts, not courage. That is why they fail.

Now back to our show...

I snarked at Dr. Dave, but there's actually good refutations of his scare-mongering. Okay, here's the deal: the statistics I mention below can be easily verified and are from the OECD, from the CBO, or other reliable source (i.e., *not* pulled out of ass). I have numbers for all of them. I don't publish all the references here because I'm out of time (I need to sleep sometimes!), but they're available either from other posts on my blog or by going to the actual source and looking them up for yourself (I recommend the latter

1) Medicare's current financial problems are because the Medicare drug benefit was poorly conceived. Allow Medicare to negotiate preferred prices with drug companies, and the financial problems disappear. And that ain't no bull. That's the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, in a report written back when REPUBLICANS controlled Congress (but not released until the Democrats came into control). Not to mention that the problems are nowhere near as bad as the tighty righties claim.

2) My grandmother is actually dead now, she died pneumonia in her sleep after being diagnosed with cancer of the throat, but while she was living she never encountered a single instance of a government official telling her what kind of care she could get. None. Zero. It was between her and her physician. Meanwhile, my HMO's accountants decidedly tell me what kind of care I can get. My doctors don't decide, the beancounters decide. I much prefer my grandmother's experience under Medicare to my current nightmare under the U.S. "managed care" industry. Your notion that the government would "tell doctors what kind of care to provide" just doesn't pass the laugh and giggle test, it doesn't happen with Medicare today, there's no reason it would happen with Medicare For All.

3. Government currently provides pays for 55% of the healthcare in the United States, between Medicare, Medicaid, VA, Tricare, state and county hospital districts, etc (statistic courtesy of the OECD). Health care currently consumes 16% of the U.S. GDP (statistic courtesy of the OECD). So *worst case* is that an 8% increase in the Medicare payroll tax (4% paid by employer, 4% by employee) would pay for Medicare for *all* Americans. But wait, there's the fact that Medicare has 3% administrative overhead and private health insurance has a 33% administrative overhead. What that means is that it'd actually be 30% less -- i.e., 3% paid by employer, 3% by employee. And that, in addition to the taxes *currently* being paid to fund health care, would suffice to provide Medicare for all Americans, not just wrinkly old prune-Americans. That's how the numbers work.

4. I notice you don't mention overcrowded emergency rooms. You should. Multiple times over the past five years, *EVERY* emergency room in the Phoenix metropolitan area has been on diversion. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. Leaving ambulances with nothing to do but go around in circles hoping that the patient they're carrying doesn't die before a slot opens up at one of the area emergency rooms. The point, the point... we're already providing health care to the people you claim would clog waiting rooms, except we're doing it through emergency rooms, the most dangerous and inefficient way of doing it. If I get scraped off the road in an auto accident I want to be seen by an ER doctor right away, not after he has to see five hundred children with the sniffles who showed up at the ER because they have no health insurance. THE CURRENT SYSTEM ENDANGERS THE HEALTH OF EMERGENCY VICTIMS EVERY DAY BY OVERCLOGGING ER'S WITH PEOPLE WHO SHOULD NOT BE THERE. And that ain't no bull.

5. You seem to have disdain for the notion that Medicare For Wrinkly Old Prunes could be scaled up to be Medicare For All. The problem is that wrinkly old prunes use an enormous amount of medical services compared to youngsters -- over 32% of all current U.S. medical spending goes towards care for those 65 years of age or older (statistic: U.S. DHHS MEPS system, 2006), despite the fact that the 39 million elderly account for only 13% of the U.S. population. Indeed, this is why private insurance would not cover the Medicare population in the first place, thus necessitating a government program to do so -- because old people are, well, sick a lot. Anyhow, the point is that 1/3rd of healthcare spending is already under the Medicare/Medicaid/Medigap system, and expanding the system to the rest of the population would be much easier than you hypothesized, since the mechanisms for both funding (the Medicare payroll tax) and claims are both established, and enrollment could be automatic for anybody with a Social Security number. This is *much* easier than the billing and administration tasks needed for private insurance -- thus why administrative overhead would be so low.

6. Nobody argues that health care is "free" or that Medicare For All would be free. Please find a better man of straw. (Note: The AARP says the elderly spend approximately 13% of their income on health care, between Medicare and Medigap premiums and co-pays, so it certainly isn't free even for the wrinkly old prunes).

7. The notion that doctors would quit being doctors under Medicare For All is just plain ridiculous. Doctors in France are paid on average HALF of what U.S. doctors are paid. Yet France has TWICE as many doctors per-capita as the U.S. does (statistic courtesy of OECD). Of course, in France doctors don't have multi-hundred-thousand-dollar student loans to pay off (medical school is free in France), which I suspect helps a whole lot, but we could do that here in the US. But of course the AMA *prefers* there to be a doctor shortage, because it drives up doctors' salaries.

8. All of the arguments you mention were used against the original Medicare program in 1968. They did not come true then, and will not come true now. Come on, it's been 40 years since Medicare passed Congress. Come up with some new arguments against it, already!

And finally: 9. Medicare For All would be funded by increasing the Medicare payroll tax, not via taxing the rich. But really, how many people are employed by the rich? Most people are employed by small business owners (who I guarantee you are *not* rich) or by major corporations (which are mostly owned by pension funds, 401k's, overseas Chinese investors, etc., i.e., *not* the rich). And, uhm, you *do* know that the U.S. is the least-taxed of all the major Western economies, right? Last year according to the OECD the U.S. collected roughly 26% of its GDP in taxes. The only other major economy which collected so few taxes was South Korea, at about 27%. There is clearly some number at which taxes hurt an economy, but most of our economic competitors have a combined local-state-national tax as percentage of GDP at around 35% and are, frankly, whupping our rears right now. The only OECD nation that has lower taxes than the USA is... uhm... that wonderful paradise nation is, err... why, it's MEXICO! Which is such a low-tax Paradise that Americans are clamoring, swarming I say, to escape the horrific high-tax USA to escape to Mexico! Uhm, that's not true, you say? My bad!

Anyhow, none of that is really relevant since all I'm proposing to do is shift the current hidden "health care tax" from the one pocket to the next. It really doesn't matter to me who takes that 16% out of my pocket -- whether it's a private insurer or Medicare For All, I still don't have it. A tax is a tax regardless of who takes it out of my pocket -- a private health insurer, or a public one. The only difference is that if Medicare screws up, I can call my Congressman's constituent service office and b*tch about it and it might get fixed, and yes I've seen that happen before, a Congressman's office descending upon the Medicare bureaucracy like the cloud of doom at which point the Medicare bureaucracy swiftly shifts gears and does right. If Blue Cross screws up, well... after five years of appeals of denial of service and lawsuits and yada yada yada, I'm sure my survivors , (since I'll be dead) will love the results of their lovely lawsuit. Of course, I won't care by that time, since I will be, like*dead*, but hey,we gotta preserve those gross profits that the private insurers get out of our pockets, right? Anything else would be, like, UN-AMERICAN!

- Badtux the Snarky Healthcare Penguin

Medicare For All would be, like, a NIGHTMARE!

Medicare For All would result in 900% taxes, waiting lists out the door, government making decisions about your healthcare, doctors won't work for Medicare rates, and Medicare will cause injured people to be thrown out of emergency room doors.

Wow, I didn't know that my grandmother was receiving such horrifying care from Medicare! Thank you, Dr. Dave, for letting me know just how horrible Medicare is. Those old people, 97% of whom say they're satisfied with Medicare? Obviously suffering from dementia because all us right-thing people (get it? "right"-thinking?) know that Medicare is a horrible nightmare because, well, we just *know*, don't bother our minds with facts okay? I mean, okay, so Medicare only has 3% overhead rather than 33% overhead like private insurance, but look, you would deny medical claims processors their 30% contribution to the economy caused by denying care, handling appeals, re-filling paperwork with a slightly different code set to get re-imbursed, etc.? Heresy! Why, these claims processors are entitled, ENTITLED I say, to their cushy insurance company jobs and anybody who would take their jobs away and make them, like, actually have to *work* for a living is UN-AMERICAN! F*** Yeah U S A U S A U S A!

So thank you for letting us all know about the nightmare that is Medicare. Now I can go tell my Granny that we should ban Medicare. Thing is, last time someone told her that, she beat that person over the head with her walking cane. Uhm, could I ask you a small favor? Could *you* go tell my granny that, like, Medicare is a nightmare and should be banned? Please? 'Cause I'm scared! (Whimper!).

- Badtux the Sarcastically Snarky Penguin

Israel is a "trusted ally"?

Really? Can anybody name a single thing that Israel has *ever* done for the United States? C'mon, surely Israel has contributed at least ONE soldier to some U.S.-led peacekeeping operation, right? And basing rights... surely there is at least ONE U.S. base in Israel, right? Can anybody name it?

I mean, c'mon. "Ally" implies that Israel does something for the US in exchange for the US doing lots of things for Israel (over $4 billion lots of things a year, to start with). So what is it that the US gets for its $4 billion lots of things a year that it does for Israel? Other than a lot of headaches from Arabs upset about it? Anybody?

-- Badtux the Ally Penguin

Time to re-read "The Grapes of Wrath"

A reminder to the morons saying that fiscal stimulus is a zero-sum game because it takes away from private investment:

1) The government possesses this bold new technology called the PRINTING PRESS. Go Google it. The government can -- and should -- print money to finance the deficit as long as short-term Treasury interest rates remain at 0% and wages remain in a deflationary spiral (and wages *are* in a deflationary spiral right now, you should look at wages, not at the CPI, to determine whether we're in deflation -- hint, we are, with over 16% unemployment or underemployment all of those people are making much less money than they did before).

2) The whole "live within your means" meme is *stupid*. There are two ways to live within your means -- cut your expenses, or increase your income. When my father's income got cut in half during the 1973 recession no amount of reducing our expenses would have kept the lights on and food on our table, providing the basics simply requires a specific amount of income, period. We had enough to cover the mortgage on the house, and fuel and maintenance on the car to get to work, and that's about it. But he didn't say, "Sorry boys, we don't have enough money for food this month so you'll have to go scrounge food out of dumpsters." He didn't say, "sorry boys, we don't have enough money for electricity this month, so you'll have to just shiver in the dark at night." No. He went out and found a second job and increased his income enough to provide for our family. It's called "manning up", and it's as true for We The People as it is for households. Governments need to "man up" and do what it takes to provide the basic services that their constituents voted them into office to provide -- i.e., highways, public safety, and so forth -- even if that requires increasing taxes. As long as it is the *right* taxes -- i.e., *not* consumption taxes (sales taxes or etc.). A special property tax on million-dollar homes, a hike in income tax rates on incomes over $250,000, etc. will not decrease consumption but will pull money out from under (virtual) mattresses and put it back to use in the economy. Bringing up:

3) In a time of deflationary expectations, people are shoving money under mattresses (or, rather, into banks, which due to their own deflationary expectations are shoving it under virtual mattresses at the Federal Reserve) rather than spending money. This is because they expect the money to be worth more in the future (when they don't have a job, when interest rates go up, whatever) than it is today. Money under mattresses (i.e. not being used as backing for loans in the banking system or on the bond market, and not being used for investing in the real economy) does nothing -- nada, zero -- to create economic activity. Money not being used for economic activity is, for the purposes of money as a unit of exchange in the economy, useless. It's just lumpy mattress stuffing, pieces of green toilet paper with pictures of dead people on it. IT IS A VALID AND VALUABLE THING TO TAX "MATTRESS MONEY" AND GET IT BACK INTO THE ECONOMY. It will not reduce economic activity to do this, because mattress money *ALREADY* is not contributing to economic activity.

It annoys and irritates me that people keep pretending that government has no printing presses, that mattress money contributes to economic activity, and that increasing your income when you run into financial problems is not a valid way to handle financial problems. People, this is Economics 101 for cryin' out loud. I realize that the dishonest hacks on the right wing (the so-called "Chicago School") keep writing printing presses out of existence and deny the existence of mattress money, but even their founder Uncle Milt (Milton Friedman) knew better for cryin' out loud. I swear, people are just bound and determined to do the exact same friggin' mistakes that the government made in 1930-1931 that put the economy into outright collapse in 1932, even though we know from history that their recipe -- cut government spending -- just DOES NOT WORK for keeping a recession from turning into a depression.

Gotta go, time to re-read John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath". Since we seem so bound and determined as a nation to commit the EXACT SAME FRIGGIN' MISTAKES, I might as well get a heads up on how things will be. Sigh!

-- Badtux the Economics Penguin

Yet more uses for duct tape...

Okay, so I was hiking in my sandals today because I have a busted toe. This isn't as bad as it sounds, Chacos have a Vibram (i.e. very sticky) lugged sole and are made for hiking, and they worked pretty well (note that I have the older heavy-duty Chacos, not the wimpy new ones). Unfortunately there was one place on the strap on both feet that started rubbing a hole in my skin. So I duct-taped my skin, then duct-taped the strap. Problem solved.

I was doing a fair amount of uphill and downhill action, and managed to get a blister on one of my toes too. And the blister burst. Ouch! So I cleaned it as best as I could on the trail (used a baby wipe from my daypack, intended for, err, nether end use, but just as good for any other cleansing task), and then... well. You guessed it. Duct-taped that sucker. Problem (mostly) solved.

Duct tape. Good for more than ducks. :-).

Now, you might wonder, what was I doing wearing sandals without socks? Because surely socks would have padded against the straps at least, right? Well, the problem is that socks allow my feet to slip around inside the sandals too much. So I end up with blisters on all my toes because they're sliding back and forth, and blisters on the arches of my feet because they're sliding up and down the arch support. Sad to say, my feet blister if you sneeze at them, the closest I've gone without a blister was last week when I was wearing the trail runners, and even there I had sore toes at the end. So I'll just continue to be a duct tape messiah and now that I know where the sandal straps rub, I can pre-duct-tape them there and be done with it.

-- Badtux the Hiking Penguin

Cat myth, or fact?

There is a myth that if a cat can get his head through an opening, he can get his entire body through the opening. That, however, does not apply to a fat cat. Or does it?

Harumph!

-- Badtux the Amused Penguin

How to create a Charlie Manson

1. Take a troubled 10 year old kid
2. Put him in juvenile jail for years with older kids who sodomize him and brutalize him.
3. Success!

Well, if that's what you're trying to do, it's success anyhow... and we're doing it again. Because, apparently, giving a youngster the help he needs -- or at least an appropriate environment to protect society from him -- is just too much trouble. I'd do something but, hey, look, I can't be bothered with that, American Idle is on! And what about that Susan Boyle, eh? A penguin has to have his priorities straight!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

On options and mandates

Okay, two things are going on right now, talking about the "public option" -- a public health insurance program modeled on Medicare that individuals could buy into -- and "mandates" -- forcing everybody to buy health insurance. There's two main problems with this whole discussion:

1. Most of us have no choice in what health insurance we receive, our employer decides and then says, "this is what you get." So what will happen is that the only employees offered this "public option" will be employees of small businesses who cannot get affordable health insurance from insurance companies that only want to sell via big businesses or which "cherry pick" small businesses to accept only the ones with the youngest/healthiest workforce. What this means is that the most expensive/unhealthiest businesses will get shoved into the "public option" (and remember, the current private health insurance system is a scam that already regularly defrauds their patients, so telling them "don't cherry pick!" would be like telling a cat "don't chase a string!", it just won't work because of the nature of the beast). And thus the "public option" really *won't* be an option. And trusting the private insurance industry to not cherry-pick the healthiest and shove the unhealthiest onto the "public option"... bwhahahaha!
2. The reason so many Americans already lack health insurance is not because they don't want health insurance. It's because they cannot afford health insurance. The "mandate" system basically will deal with this by forcing them into Medicaid or into the "public option" with a subsidy from a fund created by taxing employers who do not provide health insurance to their employees, with a portion of worker's income taken away to pay into the Medicaid or "public option" fund. This will just worsen the problems of the current Medicaid system, which is already underfunded and provides woefully inadequate care that often kills people because as a "separate but equal" segregation of a despised and reviled population (and the poor ARE hated, despised, and reviled in the United States, all you have to do is read the propaganda "newspaper" or watch the propaganda "news" where you find out that all poor people are lazy, drug users / dealers, or criminals), the notion of providing equal resources to that population simply doesn't pass the laugh and giggle test.

In the end, the combination of the "public option" and mandates would create a "Separate but Equal" healthcare system in America -- one for the upper middle class and wealthy that provides the best healthcare in the world at the cost of being woefully inefficient, and one for the lower middle class and poor that would provide healthcare more similar to a dismal 3rd world hellhole like Haiti. And I'm not joking there. Infant mortality rates in some inner-city neighborhoods of the United States look a lot more like Haiti than like any advanced modern nation. The "public option" and mandates expand that failed system even further to create a "Separate but Equal" system just as immoral, just as wrong, as "Separate but Equal" was in education. And it will not save money either -- it will instead create an all-new government bureaucracy to enforce the mandates, and an all-new government bureaucracy implementing the "public option", further adding inefficiency to the healthcare system.

The only system that will both fix the horrifically wrong separate-but-equal system and the horrific inefficient multiplicity of bureaucracies problem is to extend Medicare to ALL Americans, using the existing Medicare payroll tax (pumped up by 4% apiece on employer and employee side) to pay for it and the existing Medicare processing system to process the claims. This is the only system that will eliminate bureaucracies, not create new ones, and will ensure equal care to all Americans, not just the wealthy and upper middle class. Single-payer Medicare For All is our last, best chance for assuring adequate healthcare to all Americans. When we all have the same insurance system, when we all have a stake in whether it works or not, I have confidence that we as a people in a democracy will make sure that it works. Separate But Equal -- just say *NO*. It was wrong for education, and it is wrong for healthcare too.

-- Badtux the Healthcare Penguin

Guitarists always get the pussy

Happy Caturday!

--Badtux the Music Cat-owned Penguin

Friday Cat Blogging

Does the red glow mean that The Mighty Fang is possessed by a demon? Could that explain why he clawed holes in my brand new rain jacket last night?

-- Badtux the Frightened Penguin

Private health insurance is a scam

Medical bills cause over 60% of U.S. personal bankruptcies, researchers found. And more than 75% of these people had health insurance.

What this means is that the promise of health insurance -- that if you get sick, the health insurance company will pay for your medical expenses -- is a scam. A fraud. A lie. The insurance companies will pay your medical expenses only if they see future profit from doing so. If the expenses are high enough that they see no way to recoup the expenses from your future insurance payments, they'll defraud you as surely as a cat chases a string. It's just the nature of a for-profit entity, it lacks any morality -- BY LAW -- other than maximizing the amount of money it can make. If they can make more money by depriving you of the insurance that you paid for than they could make the other way around, they will do so. Of course, you can sue them. Your survivors might win the lawsuit -- years after you're dead. But that isn't likely to help you any since when you're dead you're well, dead, and your survivors will likely have to declare bankruptcy when the doctors and hospitals come after your family for the care you did receive (but that the insurance company refused to pay for).

This, in the end, is why Obama's "Public Option" is ridiculous and unsustainable. His public health insurance company will actually provide the care you pay for, which means its rates will have to be higher than the scam insurance companies that don't actually provide the care you pay for. And the notion that the "Public Option" will somehow provide a "choice" to the general public is ridiculous. The general public doesn't buy health insurance. Businesses do. And the health insurance that businesses buy is the cheapest they can find. Which is why every single for-profit health insurance company in America today is a scam -- businesses simply won't pay higher rates to purchase non-scam health insurance for their employees. So this "Public Option" will turn into a dumping ground for businesses and individuals that the insurance companies don't want to insure, and will slowly fade away and then be used to forever discredit the notion of government-run insurance -- even though its sole problem was providing the contracted-for health insurance, unlike the scammers and liars who run private health insurers.

My point: There cannot be a "public option" as long as there are for-profit insurance companies. Profiting by killing (too expensive) people is simply too lucrative a business for an honest public option to compete. At the very least for the "public option" to work, all insurance companies must be required to be non-profit so that they do not have an incentive to arbitrarily deny service and kill people. This was once the case in most states -- for-profit health insurance was actually illegal in most states before the 1970's when That Bastard Nixon overrode state laws with federal law. But anyhow, given that the for-profits are NOT going to voluntarily go back to being non-profit mutual companies without being forcibly regulated out of business, we might as well just go straight to singlepayer -- Medicare For All -- and be done with it. At least Medicare isn't a scam...

-- Badtux the Healthcare Penguin

Update June 6: Paul Krugman's healthcare rules: 1) Don't trust the insurance companies. 2) Don't trust the insurance companies. Indeed. Though I don't agree with his notion that the "public option" will work, see above.

Massive job losses continue

ADP reports 532,000 job losses in May. So that's over 2.5 million jobs lost this year alone, or roughly 4% of the U.S. workforce.

No amount of money printed could ever turn these people back into consumers unless that money went directly to them instead of via intermediaries such as banks. They need jobs. All that cranking up the printing presses even more than they're already cranked will do is make mattresses plumper and the Fed's electronic vaults creak under the weight of all those zeros, because in a time of deflationary expectations where people believe their money will be worth more in the future than it is now (because they expect their income to be lower in the future), they save, they don't spend. And that applies to banks too -- no matter how much money you pump into the banks today, they won't lend, they'll just stash it into the Federal Reserve's vaults, both because people aren't borrowing due to deflationary expectations, and because they see interest rates as being higher in the future than they are today so will wait until interest rates go up again before they start lending again.

In other words, printing money is a NECESSARY but not SUFFICIENT condition for economic recovery, just as a working financial system is necessary, but not sufficient. Capital is necessary in order to lubricate commerce, but capital is not enough. You have to pay people to produce things in the economy, things that require consumption, things that require the money to actually move in the economy rather than just plump up a mattress, because money that is plumping up a mattress is just mattress stuffing and worthless as a medium of exchange in the economy. Now, according to Auto Nation, 45% of the people who would have gotten auto loans last year can't get them this year. Which, it turns out, corresponds roughly to the drop in auto sales. How about a BigThreeMae like Fannie Mae except providing cheap guaranteed auto loans to qualifying buyers of Big Three autos? That would create jobs that rippled through the economy, as auto makers ramped up their production lines, suppliers hired and did the same, their upstream resource providers did the same, etc. How about printing massive amounts of money via selling Treasuries directly to the Federal Reserve, and using that for vast infrastructure projects to employ these millions of unemployed Americans either directly or indirectly via the supply chain for these infrastructure projects? Just handing money to banks has failed, they just stuff it under mattresses. Just handing money to ordinary Americans via tax cuts failed, they just stuffed it under mattresses. But if we get these funds flowing towards something that *creates jobs*, we might -- just might -- keep the entire world from sliding into a new Great Depression that would make the old one look like child's play.

-- Badtux the Economics Penguin

And the future is now...

20 years ago, Chinese tanks were closing in on Tiananmen Square. Today it's still illegal to talk about the mass murders in China.

Not much more to say there. So I listen to a prophet 15 years ago talking about what the future would be, and now that I'm living in that future, well. So it goes.

-- Badtux the Bloody-minded Penguin

On GM and Hummers

It is fashionable to diss GM. The problem is, GM's cars really aren't that bad technologically speaking. Oh yeah, they're bland and have about as much personality as a blender, with a few exceptions here and there, but they are technically decent cars that suffer only because they've been designed to a cost point. Most of GM's automotive line other than Cadillac is today what Japanese cars were back in the 1970's -- cars that you buy because they're cheap and get good fuel economy, not cars you buy for excitement or high quality fit and finish.

GM's trucks are even better than that. Other than the lamentable Chevy Colorado / GMC Canyon, which has the best fuel economy of any small truck sold in America but the aluminum engine head has been problematic, GM makes the best work trucks in America. Dodge and Ford make go-to-the-mall trucks. But when you want work done, you buy a GM truck, because they have a lower bed, torquier engines, more rugged transmissions, higher load capacities, and heftier towing capacity. They're not stylish like the Dodge mall cruisers, or luxurious like the Ford mall cruisers, but they work.

Of course, GM has their stupidities named Hummer and Saturn. Saturn was a good experiment that GM abandoned to create just another badge-engineered line. Hummer... well. I understand GM is trying to sell Hummer. If John Holmes bought Hummer, would that mean we all get hummers? Sounds... exhausting! (Bada boom, yeah, this whole post was setup for that line :).

So anyhow: GM's biggest problems are solvable:

1. A dealer network incapable of selling GM's fuel-efficient automobiles. They're a buncha good ole' NASCAR boys who are more comfortable selling trucks and Corvettes and big iron than small cars. GM needs to punt most of the dealers and take on dealers who are, like, less than 600 years old and who speak English rather than NASCAR.
2. Too much debt. GM's debt both to its pension fund and to bondholders was managable when GM sold 60% of the cars sold in America. Now it's not. Solvable via bankruptcy.
3. Too high of an expense basis. GM has too many factories for the amount of cars that it sells, and too many of all kinds of employees for the number of cars it sells (other than engineers -- GM doesn't have too many engineers) and leases far too many buildings on long-term leases that it doesn't need anymore but can't dump because breaking the lease would be too expensive outside of bankruptcy. So yeah, bankruptcy solves this one too, since all contracts -- labor, leases, etc. -- can be voided by the bankruptcy judge.
4. Hummer and Saturn. Duh.
5. Dull unadventurous management that approves too many boring cars and that flubs the rare attempt at exciting cars (Pontiac Aztec, anybody?). Okay, so this one isn't going to be solved by bankruptcy. But Toyota proves you can sell boring cars, as long as they're high quality.
6. Poor fit and finish of cars due to engineering to lowest price point possible. Well, this can be solved, but it's going to take a long time before GM can shed their reputation as a bottom feeder manufacturer of cheap shitboxes. But dumping all that overhead ought to allow them to invest some money into this area, so hopefully the bankruptcy will help here too.
7. GMAC. This is now owned by Cerebus Capital, not by GM, and thus GM is no longer able to offer competitive financing. This has to be solved. It's unclear whether bankruptcy will help solve it.
8. The banking industry meltdown in general. It's hard to get a car loan now. People don't buy cars if they can't get a car loan. Toyota is suffering the same problems for the same reason.

So anyhow, I'm not as pessimistic about GM's chances as many people are. Their core technology is sound, their cars are boring but are competitive at the price point they've been engineered to (i.e., they're engineered more to Hyundai price and quality than to Honda price and quality), and their current (new) management is unimaginative but quite capable of running the car company that GM has become -- a car company that makes bargain cars at a price point for people who are interested in basic transportation and don't care that the cars are cheaply built. GM can go on for many years doing that, as long as their expense overhead has been cut down to size. It might disappoint those who remember when GM was the largest car company in the world, but (shrug). Everything ends, nothing lasts forever. The days when GM was a leader in the automotive industry are over, by and large, unless they come up with something game-changing. Which I don't think the Volt will be, alas -- too expensive, too slow, too short-ranged. So it goes.

-- Badtux the Car Penguin

Anti-tax rhetoric fail

"Government should live within its means!"

Well, yes. But there's two ways to do this -- reducing expenses, and increasing income.

In the early 1970's, the economy in the town we lived in took a dive. Major industries left and were not replaced. When one major employer near my father's shop left, he lost over 200 customers. Our family economized as much as possible, but we weren't exactly living a lavish lifestyle to begin with -- our television, for example, was a 19" black-and-white hand-me-down from our grandparents -- so it wasn't as if there was a whole lot that could be cut without cutting into basic services such as food, clothing, water, and electricity.

So, here's the deal: Did he say, "oops, we only have enough money to buy food for two people, you kids are on your own, go scrounge some food out of garbage dumpsters"? Did he say, "oops, we don't have enough money for electricity and water and sewer, you kids are going to just have to freeze in the dark and go to the neighbor's to get water, and take baths while shivering in water hauled from the neighbor's outside faucet in buckets"? Uhm, no. He went out and got more income so we could continue eating. He spent a few dollars on advertising, but when that didn't bring in enough money, he took on a second job -- he increased his income. He might have been tired after he got home late at night from his second job, but we had food and water and electricity.

The notion that he should have just said, "oh well, we only have enough food for four days a week? Guess we'll just starve three days" would have had him slapping you upside the face (he was a fiery little Cajun dude and had a temper), because failing to provide for his family's basic needs that way would have offended him on a fundamental basis. Yet the anti-tax cretins regularly use the same rhetoric to justify government cutting basic services... "government must live within its means!" Well yeah, you cut what you can, but when you're down to the fundamentals of what government is supposed to be doing -- things like transportation, public safety, etc. -- there comes a time when you have to say, "f**k it, it's time to dig in and take a second job to increase our income." Whether a family has 4 people in it like ours did growing up, or 36,000,000 people in it like the State of California, the point remains the same -- when times are hard, you not only cut your expenses as far as possible, but you also increase your income as much as is necessary to keep the lights on and food in your children's mouths and pay for health insurance for your children. It's called, like, manning up. Duh. Not that the tighty righties who shit their pants over the notion of mean darkies would know what being a man is all about anyhow, they're too busy cringing in terror of anybody who's a different color from them to know what being a man is all about...

-- Badtux the Budget Penguin

Sally has a bug!

While hiking yesterday I crossed over a pool of water on a small wooden bridge. I noticed a ripple of motion, and saw this salamander doing his best to snarf down a bug. There was also another salamander in this pool, but I did not get a good photo of that one because it kept to the brush at the far end of the pool.

The knees are only slightly sore this morning, should be good as new by tomorrow. All in all, I feel pretty good for an elderly penguin who did more miles yesterday than was probably wise at this point in my recovery...

-- Badtux the Hiking Penguin

Disgusting

The right-wing terrorists are chortling over the murder of Dr. George Tiller. These are the same terrorists who threaten the lives of judges who rule according to what the law says, rather than according to what their Invisible Sky Demon says. They chortle that their invisible sky demon is happy about the murder.

What a bunch of sick, disgusting terrorists. Who needs al Qaeda to threaten America, when we have our own home-grown terrorists willing to wage Christian jihad just like al Qaeda wants to wage Islamic jihad?

-- Badtux the Disgusted Penguin

Purr...

The Mighty Fang is purring on my lap. He missed me while I was out hiking today. I did a righteous hike in Big Basin State Park, forked over $10 to help pay to keep it open a few weeks longer before the Governator Terminates the parks department, sigh. I chugged right up those hills at a pace that had me blazing past folks who were 20 years younger than me. No problem with the calf muscle. Only problem: Now my knees hurt :-(. Sigh. Time to do more work on the stationary bike, I guess. Blech!

-- Badtux the Gimpy Penguin

Give Peas A Chance

-- Badtux the PETA(*) Penguin
* People Eating Tasty Animals