17
Feb

Akio Toyoda - Austrian?

What an Austrian Looks Like?

What an Austrian Looks Like?


The chairman and grandson of the founder of Toyota Motor Company, the largest automaker by sales in the world, had a press conference today in Tokyo to talk about the company’s recent quality woes. Speaking about how Toyota, a company known far and wide for quality first, could have such visible and damaging quality problems, Toyoda had this explanation;
“Up to now, we had been saying that the rapid expansion was in response to customer needs — that it was inevitable. The basic rule of the Toyota Production System is to only build as many cars as there is demand for, and we ourselves broke that rule.” Toyoda said some of the sales during the rapid expansion over the last decade may have been driven artificially by sales financing, and was not based on “real demand”.

(hat tip to the truth about cars, no thanks to NPR which as of 0830 did not have the quote on its website)

16
Feb

Olympic-Sized Default

nodar

(NB: Links to gruesome photos, video, and politics below)

The Majesty and Tragedy of Vancouver’s Winter Games is a sharp conterpoint this week to the parlous financial state Greece finds itself in at the moment.

While Vancouver groans under the weight of broken promises and bad engineering, the Greek government, which had been flush with confidence from being awarded the 2004 Summer Games, proceeded to put itself on a spending path that could not but end this week in a heap at the door of the IMF seeking a massive bailout.

The Modern Olympics has turned from a quirky revival of the ancient Greek ideal of athletic excellence into a ruinous carnival of theft and death. To destroy lives, and whole economies so uncaringly is not a worthwhile price for such a bastardized, commercialized, nationalist spectacle.

It it time, as small numbers of athletes already have, to cut the ties between the Olympics and government. No more national teams, just individual competition. The best in the world, period. The memory of Nodar Kumaritashvili deserves no less.

NOTE: NBC scrubbed the internet (not totally) of the very graphic crash video. They tried to hide the evidence, but failed, again, in the face of the lightning-fast diffusion of information across the internet. Another argument, as if we needed one, against corporatization and copyright.

16
Feb

Things Fall Apart

Warming to the Idea

Warming to the Idea


Temper the urge to gloat, or sulk, depending on your frame of reference;

“Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995″ - UK Daily Mail

Science, like any human endeavor, is imperfect. And humans do have positive as well as negative effects on the environment (in fact, I’m writing a book about exactly that.)

But global climate change was always about the politics, first and foremost, of some very special interests (nuke plant operators, carbon-credit traders).

In other words, as has been said of corrupt tools in another context, the policy came first, and the “facts were being fixed around the policy.”

I hope Dr. Jones has family and friends around him.

25
Jan

Government And Bankers Still Practicing Diversion

I heard a newsreader on the normally reliably socialist BBC this morning commenting approvingly on a proposal by Goldman-Sachs London to limit bonuses to executives of the (technically) failed investment bank to 1 million pounds ($1.6 M) this year. This is being done allegedly to counter “public outcry” over the massive global bailouts of these criminal enterprises.

As we have argued many times, in many places, outrage at bonuses for executives in these failed enterprises (AIG in this case) is COMPLETELY misplaced (letter to Stephan Kinsella re a 3/09 article on Mises.org);

“As I argue with liberals who follow Obama’s lead in decrying the bonuses, I tell them “Look, the bonuses aren’t the problem, the BAILOUT is the problem.”

If the government had simply allowed AIG to go bankrupt, the market would have provided the correct feedback to the managers that had put AIG into such a parlous state.

The company would either be reorganized, and new management brought in, or else it would be liquidated, the managers and traders fired, their assets stripped and sold, they would be driven out into the street by their landlords, many of them would face disgorgement, civil and criminal charges for fraud, etc.

But NO, by bailing out these terribly-run, wealth-destroying companies, our government not only prevented the aforementioned from occurring, it actually VALIDATED EVERYTHING THEY DID.

Thus, from the standpoint of these crooks, they would not be unjustified in claiming “YAY, we saved the company!”

In that sense, those bonuses were not only necessary, they were well-earned. They were equal to the marginal revenue product of their labor.”

10
Jan

The Real Reason We Will Get Cap And Trade

Where's MUSE when you need them?

Where's MUSE when you need them?

Is that it will make amoral scumbags a LOT of money;

“There’s nothing that’s going to drive Exelon’s profit in the next couple of years wildly. It just isn’t going to happen.”

Except, of course, carbon legislation. And because of that, the company views spending on lobbying for legislation almost like a capital expense. William Von Hoene, a cowboy-boot-wearing former criminal defender who heads the finance and legal departments for Exelon and is a possible successor to Rowe, thinks of carbon legislation as Exelon’s big growth opportunity. “It’s an investment we are making that will result in substantial shareholder value,” he says.”

NICE. You can’t make money in an already completely regulated quasi-monopoly, so what do you, as an executive of low ethical stature do? You lobby the feds to put your competitors at your mercy, and out of business;

“Exelon also invented a scheme (included in the House bill) that softens the financial blow to ratepayers by giving the utility industry’s portion of free emission allowances to electricity retailers instead of generators. State public utilities commissions would then ensure that the retailers pass on savings from the sale of those allowances (electricity retailers aren’t emitters) to their customers. Exelon’s retail subsidiaries, ComEd and Peco, would get allowances, but Exelon’s power generation subsidiary wouldn’t get any. Exelon would still benefit, though indirectly. Competitors with big fossil fuel fleets would have to raise electricity prices to cover the cost of emissions permits. Exelon would benefit from higher power prices without having to buy permits.”

Also, NICE. Note the plausible deniability - electricity retailers are not “emitters” - and self-dealing that they put into the bill too - that’s a great big light-up bonus!

And exactly how does such a transparently corrupt, mercantilistic scheme get anywhere near being passed into law? Well, it helps to have friends;

“Exelon has very deep ties to the Obama Administration. Frank M. Clark, who runs ComEd, helped advise Obama before he ran for President and is one of Obama’s largest fundraisers. Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, worked as a consultant to Exelon. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, helped create Exelon. Emanuel was hired by Rowe to help broker the $8.2 billion deal between Unicom and Peco when Emanuel was at the investment bank Wasserstein Perella (now Dresdner Kleinwort). In his two-year career there Emanuel earned $16.2 million, according to congressional disclosures. His biggest deal was the Exelon merger.

Emanuel e-mailed Rowe on the eve of the House vote on global warming legislation and asked that he reach out to some uncommitted Democrats. “We are proud to be the President’s utility,” says Elizabeth Moler, Exelon’s chief lobbyist. “It’s nice for John to be able to go to the White House and they know his name.”"

Like we said about Dianne Feinstein, they don’t even bother to hide it anymore.

(MUSE was a loose coalition of musicians who opposed nuclear power and did a series of concerts in late 1979, later released as a movie. The movie ended with a singalong, as did the movement. Strangely, many of the name musicians who lent their names, personas, and time to the cause now in fact support many of the people and policies above. Huh.)

(photo from legal planet)

08
Dec

On Life, and Living

Please Put the Phone Down

Please Put the Phone Down

watch?v=e6-cZstYgCU

One of my oldest and dearest friends is getting married.

After his bachelor dinner, tonight, I heard this song;

Please Put the Phone Down
Broken bottles in the doorway
And I’ve been thinking have it your way
Take the night train right to Jersey
I’ll leave you broken, I’ll leave you wealthy
Oh these eyes

Oh please put the phone down, put the phone down
Lie with me tonight
x2
Oh please put the phone down oh please put the phone down

Beneath the violence when it’s raining
Your words just stare cold and do my head in
Take the fast lane, chase the dream down
Tonight the motorway is like a ghost town
Oh these eyes

Oh please put the phone down, put the phone down
Lie with me tonight
x2
Like you know you should
x4
Oh please put the phone down

I won’t forget you, won’t forget you
See these troubled eyes that smile
This city is a graveyard, it’s a graveyard
Streetlights show us cold and hard
Oh these eyes

Oh please put the phone down, put the phone down
Lie with me tonight
x4
Like you know you should
x4

Oh please put the phone down

(image - the warrioronline.com)

02
Dec

“Climategate” Reveals More About The Politics Than The Science

Er, no.

Er, no.

I work for a full-service commercial laboratory. We are currently undergoing our fourth lab-wide audit in as many months, this time by a private accreditation organization. A team of uber lab geeks picks every nit, examines every tittle, and probes every jot of our practices and procedures to ensure that we do only that which is rigidly scientifically defensible. It’s the ultimate in peer-review - outsiders, some of whom work for our closest rivals, spending a week thumbing through our documents and grilling our staff, and we not only tolerate it, we relish it. Why?

Because it benefits us to pass such an independent examination, immeasurably increasing our ability to get and hold business. The imprimatur of the laboratory-accrediting organization is not only gratefully and graciously accepted, like a badge of courage (white, black, and teal, in this case) we wear it proudly on every marketing piece we do. While our proprietary data (and that of our customers) is kept in confidence, our procedures and policies are essentially on display for all to see.

So, if transparency is good enough for commercial laboratories, where there are very real risks to competitiveness at stake, why are the “scientists” who keep the data on global climate change so secretive? Why do they, when they think no one is looking, heap scorn on their critics, and plot to suppress or alter data which does not fit their political agenda? And most importantly, how can they claim that their work is “peer-reviewed”, when the small clique that runs the whole enterprise simply reviews each others’ massaged data, and that of others who scientifically and politically agree with them and their goals?

I’m too polite to say it.

F**K it, no I’m not. They’re crooks.

01
Dec

Thirty Thousand More Paid Killers For Afghanistan

An Apt Symbol - An Empty, Bloody Hand

An Apt Symbol - An Empty, Bloody Hand


Surely there isn’t anyone out there who could not see this coming, right? My question is, where did President Obama receive his training in military strategy - the University of Chicago? Harvard? Seriously, exactly how does our peace prize-winning leader go from implicit accusations of insubordination over McChrystal’s insistance that many more troops were needed, to doing the sales pitch on prime-time TV?
More importantly, when is America going to wake up? It is past time for all of us, but particularly the left, to wake up and realize that, just like LBJ, Obama is holding out his empty promises of universal everything for everyone with blood-soaked fingers.

(image from headwrapping school)

19
Nov

A Blog Commenter Tips The Greens’ Hand On Global Warming

Unrelated Catfight Content

Unrelated Catfight Content


Unrelated Catfight Content
James Delingpole’s article about a Green-themed catfight between the distaff editors of two leading architecture jounals in Britain prompted a rather interesting response from a commenter calling himself “coldplay”;

“What the so called self named Climate Scientists do is rubbish Geologist and other professionals who have more knowledge in respect of the earths processes.

Journalist ignore the views of their readers and what Amanda Baillieu is doing, which is correct is questioning the group think.

There is no question that protecting the environment and uses the resources of the planet economically for the use and convenience of mankind is correct.”

What “coldplay”’s comment (emphasis mine) shows is that the real reason for government-facilitated green hysteria isn’t that we humans are not reasonably careful stewards of the earth, all things considered, but that individual freedom and free markets simply cannot be allowed, in the Greens’ view to allocate resources in an environmentally equitable way.

The assertion is baseless, least of all because we haven’t had anything like laissez-faire for at least a hundred years. And they don’t even acknowledge it.

According to their model, complete government control of all industry in the developed world, RIGHT NOW, is the only way forward. And anyone who questions this manifestly parochial and bizzarre assertion is an heretic, whose reputation at the very least must be burned at the stake.

Wither, science?

(HT to lewrockwell.com)

18
Nov

The Miracle of 1955

This is an incredible video. It was produced in 1955 and shows what an economic powerhouse Philadelphia was 10 years after the end of World War II. Entrepreneurs flourished as did everyone in the area who wanted a job. This was a time before taxpayers funded stadiums for billionaire team owners, the welfare state and its myriad fiefdoms that promote it and labor’s powerful stranglehold over commerce. Indeed, the narrator goes on to describe Philadelphia’s bustling port:

“… with less man-hours lost because of labor disputes than any other port in the country.”

Philadelphia, in a time before ruthless politicians destroyed it, was truly an example of what capitalism had to offer. It’s very sad to see what it has become.