http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/071102nj1.htm
NSA Sought Data Before 9/11
By Shane Harris, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Nov. 2, 2007
Beginning in February 2001, almost seven months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the government's top electronic eavesdropping organization, the National Security Agency, asked a major U.S. telecommunications carrier for information about its customers and the flow of electronic traffic across its network, according to sources familiar with the request. The carrier, Qwest Communications, refused, believing that the request was illegal unless accompanied by a court order.
The National Security Agency may have sought help from Qwest Communications as early as 1997.
After terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, the NSA again asked Qwest, as well as other telecom companies, for similar information to help the agency track suspects with the aim of preventing future attacks, current and former officials have said. The companies responded in various ways, with Qwest being the most reluctant to cooperate. However, in February 2001, the NSA's primary purpose in seeking access to Qwest's network apparently was not to search for terrorists but to watch for computer hackers and foreign-government forces trying to penetrate and compromise U.S. government information systems, particularly within the Defense Department, sources said. Government officials have long feared a "digital Pearl Harbor" if intruders were to seize control of these systems or other key U.S. infrastructures through the Internet.
A former White House official, who at the time was involved in network defense and other intelligence programs, said that the early 2001 NSA proposal to Qwest was, "Can you build a private version of Echelon and tell us what you see?" Echelon refers to a signals intelligence network operated by the NSA and its official counterparts in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
The NSA realized that it was blind to many of the new online threats and to who was using the privately owned telecom networks, and it thought that Qwest was in a position to help. The agency needed better intelligence in the face of a burgeoning Internet, and Qwest was then building a high-speed network for phone and Internet traffic that had caught the attention of senior intelligence officials. The NSA, in effect, wanted Qwest to be the agency's online eyes and ears.
Another source said that the NSA wanted to analyze the calls, e-mails, and other transmissions crossing Qwest's lines, to detect patterns of suspicious activity. Telecom carriers routinely monitor their networks for fraudulent activity, the former White House official noted, and so the companies "have an enormous amount of intelligence-gathering" capability. They don't have to target individual customers to "look for wacky behavior," or "groups communicating with each other in strange patterns." That information could augment intelligence that the NSA and other agencies were gathering from other sources, the former official said.
Qwest's then-chief executive officer, Joseph Nacchio, rejected the NSA's request. "He didn't want to go along with that," and his refusal was not greeted warmly in the intelligence community, the former White House official said. Another source, a former high-ranking intelligence official, said that other companies, both before and after 9/11, had less of a problem complying with government requests if they were accompanied by a legal order. The ex-official added that some companies were willing to offer data and to assist the government "as necessary" on a voluntary basis, without a court order.
Nacchio has said publicly that the NSA asked Qwest for customer records after the 2001 terrorist attacks. But the nature of the agency's request before 9/11 has not been disclosed previously. Sources familiar with the activities spoke to National Journal on the condition of anonymity, because the work is still classified.
By early 2001, the NSA was aware of the growing threat of terrorism and was monitoring communications among Al Qaeda members overseas. But the agency, the Defense Department, and the White House also feared Internet-based attacks on U.S. government installations, and they believed that other countries were increasingly interested in cyberspace as a battlefield.
At the same time, the NSA was hesitant to conduct any surveillance activities that might violate long-standing prohibitions on domestic intelligence-gathering without court orders. One way to get the information that the agency and others deemed necessary for network defense was from the telecom carriers.
Nacchio, it appears, believed that the NSA's pre-9/11 request for access to Qwest's network was illegal. The former White House official said that the intelligence-gathering was not targeted at Qwest's U.S. customers, but he acknowledged that handing over customer information without a lawful order could violate the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a 1986 law that extended wiretapping restrictions on phone calls to include electronic information transmitted by and stored in a computer.
After 9/11, that law was amended by the USA PATRIOT Act, and it became easier for the government to obtain certain private communications. When reports surfaced last year that telecom carriers were participating in a post-9/11 NSA program to analyze customer calling patterns for terrorism indicators, Nacchio's attorney stated publicly that Qwest had refused "to make private telephone records of Qwest customers available to the NSA immediately following [enactment of] the Patriot Act." Nacchio had concluded that the NSA's requests violated the privacy requirements of another law, the Telecommunications Act, his attorney said.
The question of Qwest's involvement with the NSA before 9/11 has surfaced in recent weeks because of Nacchio's appeal of his criminal conviction on 19 counts of insider trading. Nacchio was sentenced to six years in prison in July, but he remains free pending his appeal. He contends that the NSA retaliated against Qwest for not complying with its request by denying the company work under a multibillion-dollar program called Groundbreaker, which outsourced the NSA's unclassified information-technology systems. Federal prosecutors deny that allegation, noting that Qwest was a member of the team that ultimately won the Groundbreaker deal in August 2001.
Nacchio wasn't allowed to use his retaliation argument at his trial. But details of Qwest's interactions with the NSA, as well as years of work that the company performed for the Defense Department and the intelligence community, are contained in legal documents filed by his defense team and made public three weeks ago. Although the documents are partially redacted, they reveal that Qwest aggressively pursued business with the NSA while trying to put off officials' entreaties for more access to the company's network, requests that persisted for years.
The documents state that Nacchio and another senior Qwest executive met with NSA officials at their headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., on February 27, 2001. At this meeting, the agency proposed Qwest's participation in certain activities whose details are redacted from the court documents.
"Nacchio said it was a legal issue, and they should not do something their general counsel told them not to do," according to federal investigators who interviewed the former head of Qwest's government business unit, James F.X. Payne. "Nacchio projected that he might do it if they could find a way to do it legally."
Payne told investigators that the NSA requests came up "in meetings after meetings." Investigators quoted Payne as saying, "There was a feeling also that the NSA acted as agents for other government agencies." Payne could not be reached for comment.
Although the NSA's specific request for an Echelon-like program may have worried Qwest's attorneys, it appears that the company was sharing other kinds of proprietary information about its network with the Pentagon in the months before 9/11.
In May 2001, then-Commerce Secretary Donald Evans told the Senate Appropriations Committee that his department had helped to persuade Qwest to "share proprietary information with the Defense Department to evaluate the vulnerability of its network." (The Commerce Department includes an agency that is responsible for telecom policy.) Qwest, Evans noted, was the largest carrier in the Rocky Mountain corridor. That area is home to some of the military's most important command-and-control facilities, including the U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees nuclear weapons.
By the time the NSA asked for Qwest's assistance in February 2001, the company had become a darling of the Internet Age. Founded in 1988 by Philip Anschutz, who owned the Southern Pacific Railroad, Qwest built the first all-digital, fiber-optic network by laying lines alongside railroad tracks, then linking to terminals in key locations to provide high-speed Internet and data connections.
The Defense Department operates its own classified networks, which are more resistant to attack, but Qwest's network was faster, more expansive, and more technologically advanced. Nacchio's legal documents show that from the late 1990s and into the new century, Qwest was chasing at least two lucrative deals to build private, secure networks for defense and intelligence agencies.
Qwest's first high-level contact with the NSA may have occurred as early as 1997. Late that year, according to Nacchio's legal briefs, Qwest was informed that a military "general officer wanted to meet with Mr. Nacchio." Two weeks later, a three-star (lieutenant) general and his aide showed up at Nacchio's Denver office and told him that they had "heard about Qwest's new network." Nacchio described the operation and "talked about his background at AT&T, with which they were already familiar," the documents state. Nacchio had spent more than a quarter-century with AT&T before taking over at Qwest in 1997.
At some point, the general -- whose name and affiliation are omitted from the documents -- asked to speak privately with Dean Wandry, who led Qwest's government business unit at the time. "The general told Mr. Wandry that he ran the largest telecom operation in the world, he had looked at Qwest's network, and he wanted to use it for government purposes," the documents state. By law, the head of the NSA must be at least a three-star general or a vice admiral. In 1997, Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minihan was the director. He was replaced in 1999 by Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, who is now a four-star general and the director of the CIA. Hayden declined to be interviewed for this story. An assistant to Minihan, who is now a managing director with Paladin Capital Group, a private equity firm in Washington, said he was unavailable for comment.
A number of former intelligence officials said that the description of a three-star general running the "largest telecom operation in the world" seemed to fit the NSA. In 1997, the Defense Information Systems Agency, which manages a large telecom enterprise, was also run by a lieutenant general. But that agency's operations are smaller than the NSA's. Also, Qwest's first contact with DISA occurred after the 1997 meeting with the unnamed military officer, according to Nacchio's legal filings. Qwest has done unclassified work for DISA, and it received a large contract from the agency as recently as last year.
After the Denver meeting, Wandry told Nacchio "that there was a big opportunity here for Qwest," the court filings state. Nacchio received a security clearance "a short time later." Qwest then received a contract from the agency, which Nacchio wanted to announce publicly. He was "refused permission," the briefs state, but he "understood at the time this was the beginning of a relationship which had enormous potential for future work. This proved increasingly true as time went on."
Qwest certainly worked for the NSA beginning at least in 1999. A search of Internet number registration files shows that the company allocated a portion of its network that year to the Maryland Procurement Office at Fort Meade, which is the NSA's contracting unit. An e-mail from employees in Qwest's government business group, sent in December 1999, requested a meeting with senior executives "to discuss the potential opportunity with the Maryland customer." (DISA, it should be noted, is headquartered in Virginia.) By 2001, the company was pursuing the NSA's Groundbreaker contract. And in March of that year, Payne, who by then was running the company's federal business, wrote in an e-mail to colleagues that Qwest was already a "provider" of telecom services to the NSA through existing contracts.
Meanwhile, concern was rising at the NSA that the proliferating global Internet might become a weapon for U.S. adversaries. As early as June 1998, then-NSA Director Minihan testified before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee about "a wide array of malicious actors -- including hackers, terrorists, and nation-states," all of whom threatened "users of networked information systems."
Minihan singled out Russia and China; the latter, he said, had already incorporated cyber-warfare into its military training. He also pointed to the emergence of "transnational security challenges," including terrorism, drug trafficking, and international organized crime. "These opportunists, enabled by the explosion of technology and the availability of inexpensive, secure means of communication, pose a significant threat to the interests of the United States and its allies," Minihan said.
A former senior NSA official said that the agency also worried that because these groups understood privacy laws so well, they knew how to avoid detection and could predict what the NSA would, and wouldn't, do to track them. "There was such a nuanced understanding of how to tie us in knots and use American law against us, that there were certainly pockets of people saying, 'We've got to be assertive; we've got to be more aggressive on this,' " the former official said.
Hayden, who ran the NSA from 1999 to 2005, was well known for his willingness to push operations to the legal edge. "We're pretty aggressive within the law," Hayden said in public remarks after 9/11. "As a professional, I'm troubled if I'm not using the full authority allowed by law."
Hayden has repeated that refrain since the attacks. But former intelligence officials doubted that he would have authorized any request to Qwest, or other companies, that he believed violated the law. They noted, however, that many in the agency had long thought that monitoring "metadata," such as a phone number, the length of a call, or a series of calls placed from a particular phone, didn't implicate privacy because such information didn't constitute the "content" of a message -- its written or spoken words.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Fun and Fuel Efficient
http://autos.aol.com/article/hybrid/v2/_a/fun-and-fuel-efficient/20071102121809990001
Fun and Fuel Efficient
Eight fun-to-drive cars that get up to 30 mpg
By SHERYLL ALEXANDER, AOL AUTOS
Gas is getting more expensive and yet you still want a fun drive, right? For some car buyers, a genuinely fast ride with excellent handling, braking, tech and entertainment makes for a big fun-to-drive factor.
In the past, these types of cars were commonly the more expensive sporty variety, which weren't usually the best on fuel efficiency. Fortunately, car manufacturers have taken note and provided car buyers of late with some great fun-to-drive vehicles that can truly save you big bucks on gas.
We rounded up eight fun and fuel efficient picks that got at least 30 mpg during our road tests. You no longer need to be bored while saving gas!
MINI COOPER S
Likes: Lightning fast acceleration, perfect transmission, excellent handling and braking, cool retro interior
Dislikes: Too small for large people, big dogs or growing families
MSRP: $21,200-$25,400
Fuel Economy Range: 36 mpg hwy, 29 mpg city
The idea for this fun-to-drive-yet-fuel-efficient story came to mind when a bright red MINI Cooper S with white stripes down the oh-so-cute bonnet showed up in my driveway. I really wasn't expecting to hail this MINI Cooper S as the "most fun car to drive ever." Ironically, I pulled a shoulder muscle pretty badly after four days of happily racing around town in this supercharged 1.6 liter, 16-valve inline, four-cylinder midget.
What's so hot about the MINI? The thing hauls ass and stops on a dime, to say it quite frankly. Despite its tiny body and boxy design, the MINI's tight suspension, light weight and superior balance let this tiny racer take curves with ease, respond quickly to your every move and go warp speeds down straightaways. For even more fun, the six-speed manual Geltrag transmission seems to propel the MINI along effortlessly with both parts race car and genteel British ride.
Think the MINI is only for college kids and chase scenes in action movies? Not so. I found the MINI's funky and fab retro interior to be both functional and more roomy than my expectations (and I'm pretty tall for a woman at 5 ft. 8 inches). Happily, the MINI's Harmon-Kardon sound system really bumped, especially when bobbing and weaving like the wind down Southern California's sunny freeways in this sexy convertible model.
NISSAN ALTIMA HYBRID
Likes: Sleek exterior, fast gas-electric engine, techy interior, power everything
Dislikes: Groans and gurgle noises from hybrid engine
MSRP: $25,070 - $30,500
Fuel Economy Range: 42 mpg hwy, 36 mpg city
The Nissan Altima has always been known as a fun car to drive, but what about fuel efficiency? Though Nissan's new hybrid model doesn't get 60 mpg like the Toyota Prius, people buying the Altima hybrid are getting 42 mpg highway, a striking exterior design and great performance.
The bright red 2007 Nissan Altima Hybrid model that I drove was certainly flashy with its curvy backside, sleek windows and overall modern look. The 2.5-liter, 16-valve, four-cylinder gas-electric engine practically drives itself with its smooth-shifting manual transmission as well as the latest handling systems, such as ABS brake, stability and traction control systems.
I was also quite pleased at how the Nissan Altima Hybrid engine doesn't moan and gurgle quite so much as Toyota's hybrid engines, especially the noisy Prius. The Nissan Altima Hybrid certainly does make some rather odd sounds, but overall the sound engineering is quite excellent.
Nissan engineering and design also shine in the Altima's super techy and racy interior. The blue-and-red neon lights inside the gauges make you feel like a race car driver and all of the buttons and power controls seems to be configured for deft ease of use. The Altima also has lots of controls built into the steering wheel as well as a host of luxury and tech-laden features with its connection package, which includes amenities such as leather seats, Bluetooth system, XM satellite radio and automatic headlamps.
HONDA CIVIC Si
Likes: Trendy sleek design and sloping hood, sporty interior
Dislikes: Not enough guts going into third and fourth gears
MSRP: $21,310 to $23,060
Fuel Economy Range: 32 mpg hwy, 23 mpg city
I was surprised at the subtle exterior shape of the four-door Honda Civic Si. I mean, from one angle it looks like your typical family sedan, but then you glance again and the Honda Civic shows its true colors as a truly trendy ride. The glossy black model I road tested recently prompted lots of looks, mostly from college-aged guys, with this Civic's sexy sloping hood and overall modern look.
With all of the Honda Civic's good looks, there's also the fuel efficient 2.0-liter, 16-valve, four-cylinder engine, which garners 32 mpg highway and 23 mpg city, even while producing a strong 197 hp at a high-revving 7800 rpm. One of the gripes I had was how the transmission in the Honda Civic Si did not respond smoothly when shifting into third and fourth gears -- something that is surprising as Honda is known for smooth-shifting manual transmissions.
Inside, I enjoyed the Honda Civic's minimalist interior. The bubble-like information center in the dash just above the steering wheel is actually rather soothing and not at all distracting. The steering wheel has loads of built-in features and the overall interior design is pleasing and comfortable.
As always, I am not excited by Honda's navigation and entertainment system. While Honda's GPS system offers great functionality, I've used systems with better interface and graphics.
TOYOTA PRIUS
Likes: Zippy drive, good for commuter traffic, lots of top-notch technology
Dislikes: Over-the-top modern exterior design looks funky
MSRP: $20,950-$23,220
Fuel Economy Range: 51 mpg hwy. 60 mpg city
Toyota Prius, the No. 1-selling hybrid vehicle in the U.S. market, is certainly a fuel efficient car at an almost unbelievable 60 mpg city, but is it fun to drive? Absolutely.
Even with its engine's groans, squeaks and gurgling noises, the Prius still delivers exceptional acceleration and handling. The model I drove last spring had a 1.5-liter, four-cylinder, 16-valve hybrid synergy drive engine under its rather funny-looking hood.
Inside, the cabin of the Toyota Pruis is cozy and roomy with a high-tech information system on the dash and what I consider the auto industry's best in-dash, push-button multimedia system. What could be more fun than a way-cool multimedia system, right?
Now that's saving money and giving you more time for the pursuit of personal happiness.
MAZDA 3
Likes: Zoom-zoom drive, stylish interior, excellent gas mileage, affordable
Dislikes: Not much to dislike for the price
MSRP: $16,255
Fuel Economy Range: 32 mpg hwy, 24 mpg city
We recently chose Mazda3 as our top pick in a "Cheap New Cars" lineup. Starting at just $14,000, the Mazda3 has it all: a great drive, a stylish look, a small price tag -- and it gets a whopping 34 mpg hwy and 26 mpg city.
The silver 2008 Mazda3 i Sport 4-door we tested definitely had Mazda's trademark "zoom-zoom" drive with tight handling and suspension as well as above average acceleration and braking. And, this Mazda3 i Sport has just the right amount of straight lines and curves outside to make it stand out among all the Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas.
Far from looking cheap, the all-black interior on the 2008 Mazda3 i Sport 4-door reminded us of more expensive Audi interiors with three-dimensional gauges, nice quality plastics and soft touch materials, and red backlit controls and buttons. Burnished chrome accents also gave the interior an upscale, classy, sporty feel. A nice surprise was the addition of audio and cruise control buttons built into the steering wheel which is something usually found on more expensive vehicles.
CHEVY COBALT
Likes: Sporty good looks, great gas mileage
Dislikes: Sponge-like feel to manual transmission
MSRP: $13,710-$18,910
Fuel Economy Range: 34 mpg hwy, 25 mpg city
GM claims it has more models that get at least 30 mpg than any other manufacturer (23 models in 2007). And with Chevy's 2008 Cobalt getting 34 mpg hwy, GM now sports a refined small car at a good price with excellent gas mileage.
Even better, Chevy's 2008 Cobalt has a broad range of models offering everything from a cheap bare-bones version to more sporty and accessories-laden choices. We got lots of looks from college-aged guys when we rolled up in our Cobalt with its rear spoiler and overall stylish exterior in an eye-popping copper orange metallic color.
The Cobalt's 2.2-liter, four-cylinder, 145 hp engine is lackluster for speed demons with its rather slow acceleration, although this inexpensive ride still makes for a good get-around-town car.
The interior is definitely where the 2008 Chevy Cobalt shines as the inside is certainly comfortable, looks upscale and was designed with ease of use in mind. The white-faced gauges give the looks a more racy edge, which contrasts well with GM's signature minimalist and eye-pleasing central console.
FORD FOCUS
Likes: SYNC info-tainment system links your digital phone and/or music player to the car using voice commands, sporty interior package
Dislikes: Rather soft manual transmission
MSRP: $14,075-$16,375
Fuel Economy Range: 35 mpg hwy, 24 mpg city
The 2008 Ford Focus is highly fuel efficient at 35 mpg hwy, is pretty fun to drive and has some of the best new in-car tech toys in its SYNC info-tainment system. Going beyond just providing a digital auxiliary jack, Ford's SYNC has taken in-car technology to the next level. We tried it out with my teenager's iPhone and, within just a few minutes, we had uploaded her entire digital music collection and had figured out how to "sync" her iPhone using Sync's simple voice commands to control the music and phone, including her address book and ring tones.
While I thought the 2008 Focus we tested had a rather soft transmission but not enough pick up from first to second gears, my husband said he loved the "cushy" ride. Overall, Ford's 2008 Focus is a fun-to-drive sedan with tight handling, exceptional suspension and highly responsive braking.
The 2008 model's exterior definitely took cues from Ford's Fusion to create a more sporty feel to the outside with a new all-chrome grille, more flared wheel arches and a sweeping line toward the more beefy behind.
Inside, our 2-door coupe SE model with the deluxe package truly delivered a sumptuous and sporty feel. We loved the matte chrome and black textures, the white-faced gauges with racy red accents and the techy information bubble at eye level on the dash. The saddle-stitched seats and steering wheel (with lots of built-in control buttons) all bumped up the 2008 Ford Focus to a level of sporty luxury.
PORSCHE CAYMAN
Likes: True sports car engine feel and sound engineering
Dislikes: Too-small cockpit interior and little storage space
MSRP: $43,400-$93,700
Fuel Economy Range: 31 mpg hwy, 23 mpg city
With its rather hefty price tag starting at $43,000, were weren't sure the Porsche Cayman would fit into our fuel efficient cars list. But at 31 mpg highway and 23 mpg city, this two-seater beauty truly gets good gas mileage as well as the joy of its pure sports car heritage.
Like Porsche's Boxster, upon which this roadster was designed, the Cayman's engine is inherently fuel efficient by design with its six-cylinder, 2.7 liter, 245 hp engine and lightweight body technology.
Yes, the Cayman gets good gas mileage, but do you really care? Just looking at its curvy haunches, sexy sloping hood and racing rear spoiler make you want to get in and take it on a long road trip. Although the interior is cramped and there's little storage space, the throaty growl and rapid acceleration of this sexy beast makes your heart thump every time you race at Autobahn-like speeds down highways and freeways.
Think you can't afford a Porsche? The Cayman is actually Porsche's least expensive coupe, starting at just $43,000 or so for a racy ride and standard all-leather black interior. And at 31 mpg highway, the Porsche Cayman rides along for hundreds of miles without stopping for fuel.
Fun and Fuel Efficient
Eight fun-to-drive cars that get up to 30 mpg
By SHERYLL ALEXANDER, AOL AUTOS
Gas is getting more expensive and yet you still want a fun drive, right? For some car buyers, a genuinely fast ride with excellent handling, braking, tech and entertainment makes for a big fun-to-drive factor.
In the past, these types of cars were commonly the more expensive sporty variety, which weren't usually the best on fuel efficiency. Fortunately, car manufacturers have taken note and provided car buyers of late with some great fun-to-drive vehicles that can truly save you big bucks on gas.
We rounded up eight fun and fuel efficient picks that got at least 30 mpg during our road tests. You no longer need to be bored while saving gas!
MINI COOPER S
Likes: Lightning fast acceleration, perfect transmission, excellent handling and braking, cool retro interior
Dislikes: Too small for large people, big dogs or growing families
MSRP: $21,200-$25,400
Fuel Economy Range: 36 mpg hwy, 29 mpg city
The idea for this fun-to-drive-yet-fuel-efficient story came to mind when a bright red MINI Cooper S with white stripes down the oh-so-cute bonnet showed up in my driveway. I really wasn't expecting to hail this MINI Cooper S as the "most fun car to drive ever." Ironically, I pulled a shoulder muscle pretty badly after four days of happily racing around town in this supercharged 1.6 liter, 16-valve inline, four-cylinder midget.
What's so hot about the MINI? The thing hauls ass and stops on a dime, to say it quite frankly. Despite its tiny body and boxy design, the MINI's tight suspension, light weight and superior balance let this tiny racer take curves with ease, respond quickly to your every move and go warp speeds down straightaways. For even more fun, the six-speed manual Geltrag transmission seems to propel the MINI along effortlessly with both parts race car and genteel British ride.
Think the MINI is only for college kids and chase scenes in action movies? Not so. I found the MINI's funky and fab retro interior to be both functional and more roomy than my expectations (and I'm pretty tall for a woman at 5 ft. 8 inches). Happily, the MINI's Harmon-Kardon sound system really bumped, especially when bobbing and weaving like the wind down Southern California's sunny freeways in this sexy convertible model.
NISSAN ALTIMA HYBRID
Likes: Sleek exterior, fast gas-electric engine, techy interior, power everything
Dislikes: Groans and gurgle noises from hybrid engine
MSRP: $25,070 - $30,500
Fuel Economy Range: 42 mpg hwy, 36 mpg city
The Nissan Altima has always been known as a fun car to drive, but what about fuel efficiency? Though Nissan's new hybrid model doesn't get 60 mpg like the Toyota Prius, people buying the Altima hybrid are getting 42 mpg highway, a striking exterior design and great performance.
The bright red 2007 Nissan Altima Hybrid model that I drove was certainly flashy with its curvy backside, sleek windows and overall modern look. The 2.5-liter, 16-valve, four-cylinder gas-electric engine practically drives itself with its smooth-shifting manual transmission as well as the latest handling systems, such as ABS brake, stability and traction control systems.
I was also quite pleased at how the Nissan Altima Hybrid engine doesn't moan and gurgle quite so much as Toyota's hybrid engines, especially the noisy Prius. The Nissan Altima Hybrid certainly does make some rather odd sounds, but overall the sound engineering is quite excellent.
Nissan engineering and design also shine in the Altima's super techy and racy interior. The blue-and-red neon lights inside the gauges make you feel like a race car driver and all of the buttons and power controls seems to be configured for deft ease of use. The Altima also has lots of controls built into the steering wheel as well as a host of luxury and tech-laden features with its connection package, which includes amenities such as leather seats, Bluetooth system, XM satellite radio and automatic headlamps.
HONDA CIVIC Si
Likes: Trendy sleek design and sloping hood, sporty interior
Dislikes: Not enough guts going into third and fourth gears
MSRP: $21,310 to $23,060
Fuel Economy Range: 32 mpg hwy, 23 mpg city
I was surprised at the subtle exterior shape of the four-door Honda Civic Si. I mean, from one angle it looks like your typical family sedan, but then you glance again and the Honda Civic shows its true colors as a truly trendy ride. The glossy black model I road tested recently prompted lots of looks, mostly from college-aged guys, with this Civic's sexy sloping hood and overall modern look.
With all of the Honda Civic's good looks, there's also the fuel efficient 2.0-liter, 16-valve, four-cylinder engine, which garners 32 mpg highway and 23 mpg city, even while producing a strong 197 hp at a high-revving 7800 rpm. One of the gripes I had was how the transmission in the Honda Civic Si did not respond smoothly when shifting into third and fourth gears -- something that is surprising as Honda is known for smooth-shifting manual transmissions.
Inside, I enjoyed the Honda Civic's minimalist interior. The bubble-like information center in the dash just above the steering wheel is actually rather soothing and not at all distracting. The steering wheel has loads of built-in features and the overall interior design is pleasing and comfortable.
As always, I am not excited by Honda's navigation and entertainment system. While Honda's GPS system offers great functionality, I've used systems with better interface and graphics.
TOYOTA PRIUS
Likes: Zippy drive, good for commuter traffic, lots of top-notch technology
Dislikes: Over-the-top modern exterior design looks funky
MSRP: $20,950-$23,220
Fuel Economy Range: 51 mpg hwy. 60 mpg city
Toyota Prius, the No. 1-selling hybrid vehicle in the U.S. market, is certainly a fuel efficient car at an almost unbelievable 60 mpg city, but is it fun to drive? Absolutely.
Even with its engine's groans, squeaks and gurgling noises, the Prius still delivers exceptional acceleration and handling. The model I drove last spring had a 1.5-liter, four-cylinder, 16-valve hybrid synergy drive engine under its rather funny-looking hood.
Inside, the cabin of the Toyota Pruis is cozy and roomy with a high-tech information system on the dash and what I consider the auto industry's best in-dash, push-button multimedia system. What could be more fun than a way-cool multimedia system, right?
Now that's saving money and giving you more time for the pursuit of personal happiness.
MAZDA 3
Likes: Zoom-zoom drive, stylish interior, excellent gas mileage, affordable
Dislikes: Not much to dislike for the price
MSRP: $16,255
Fuel Economy Range: 32 mpg hwy, 24 mpg city
We recently chose Mazda3 as our top pick in a "Cheap New Cars" lineup. Starting at just $14,000, the Mazda3 has it all: a great drive, a stylish look, a small price tag -- and it gets a whopping 34 mpg hwy and 26 mpg city.
The silver 2008 Mazda3 i Sport 4-door we tested definitely had Mazda's trademark "zoom-zoom" drive with tight handling and suspension as well as above average acceleration and braking. And, this Mazda3 i Sport has just the right amount of straight lines and curves outside to make it stand out among all the Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas.
Far from looking cheap, the all-black interior on the 2008 Mazda3 i Sport 4-door reminded us of more expensive Audi interiors with three-dimensional gauges, nice quality plastics and soft touch materials, and red backlit controls and buttons. Burnished chrome accents also gave the interior an upscale, classy, sporty feel. A nice surprise was the addition of audio and cruise control buttons built into the steering wheel which is something usually found on more expensive vehicles.
CHEVY COBALT
Likes: Sporty good looks, great gas mileage
Dislikes: Sponge-like feel to manual transmission
MSRP: $13,710-$18,910
Fuel Economy Range: 34 mpg hwy, 25 mpg city
GM claims it has more models that get at least 30 mpg than any other manufacturer (23 models in 2007). And with Chevy's 2008 Cobalt getting 34 mpg hwy, GM now sports a refined small car at a good price with excellent gas mileage.
Even better, Chevy's 2008 Cobalt has a broad range of models offering everything from a cheap bare-bones version to more sporty and accessories-laden choices. We got lots of looks from college-aged guys when we rolled up in our Cobalt with its rear spoiler and overall stylish exterior in an eye-popping copper orange metallic color.
The Cobalt's 2.2-liter, four-cylinder, 145 hp engine is lackluster for speed demons with its rather slow acceleration, although this inexpensive ride still makes for a good get-around-town car.
The interior is definitely where the 2008 Chevy Cobalt shines as the inside is certainly comfortable, looks upscale and was designed with ease of use in mind. The white-faced gauges give the looks a more racy edge, which contrasts well with GM's signature minimalist and eye-pleasing central console.
FORD FOCUS
Likes: SYNC info-tainment system links your digital phone and/or music player to the car using voice commands, sporty interior package
Dislikes: Rather soft manual transmission
MSRP: $14,075-$16,375
Fuel Economy Range: 35 mpg hwy, 24 mpg city
The 2008 Ford Focus is highly fuel efficient at 35 mpg hwy, is pretty fun to drive and has some of the best new in-car tech toys in its SYNC info-tainment system. Going beyond just providing a digital auxiliary jack, Ford's SYNC has taken in-car technology to the next level. We tried it out with my teenager's iPhone and, within just a few minutes, we had uploaded her entire digital music collection and had figured out how to "sync" her iPhone using Sync's simple voice commands to control the music and phone, including her address book and ring tones.
While I thought the 2008 Focus we tested had a rather soft transmission but not enough pick up from first to second gears, my husband said he loved the "cushy" ride. Overall, Ford's 2008 Focus is a fun-to-drive sedan with tight handling, exceptional suspension and highly responsive braking.
The 2008 model's exterior definitely took cues from Ford's Fusion to create a more sporty feel to the outside with a new all-chrome grille, more flared wheel arches and a sweeping line toward the more beefy behind.
Inside, our 2-door coupe SE model with the deluxe package truly delivered a sumptuous and sporty feel. We loved the matte chrome and black textures, the white-faced gauges with racy red accents and the techy information bubble at eye level on the dash. The saddle-stitched seats and steering wheel (with lots of built-in control buttons) all bumped up the 2008 Ford Focus to a level of sporty luxury.
PORSCHE CAYMAN
Likes: True sports car engine feel and sound engineering
Dislikes: Too-small cockpit interior and little storage space
MSRP: $43,400-$93,700
Fuel Economy Range: 31 mpg hwy, 23 mpg city
With its rather hefty price tag starting at $43,000, were weren't sure the Porsche Cayman would fit into our fuel efficient cars list. But at 31 mpg highway and 23 mpg city, this two-seater beauty truly gets good gas mileage as well as the joy of its pure sports car heritage.
Like Porsche's Boxster, upon which this roadster was designed, the Cayman's engine is inherently fuel efficient by design with its six-cylinder, 2.7 liter, 245 hp engine and lightweight body technology.
Yes, the Cayman gets good gas mileage, but do you really care? Just looking at its curvy haunches, sexy sloping hood and racing rear spoiler make you want to get in and take it on a long road trip. Although the interior is cramped and there's little storage space, the throaty growl and rapid acceleration of this sexy beast makes your heart thump every time you race at Autobahn-like speeds down highways and freeways.
Think you can't afford a Porsche? The Cayman is actually Porsche's least expensive coupe, starting at just $43,000 or so for a racy ride and standard all-leather black interior. And at 31 mpg highway, the Porsche Cayman rides along for hundreds of miles without stopping for fuel.
Great Wall old hat as Beijing eyes Great Wheel
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071105/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_china_greatwheel
Great Wall old hat as Beijing eyes Great Wheel
By Ben Blanchard
Mon Nov 5, 2007
You've climbed the Great Wall of China, now Beijing wants you to "fly" the Great Wheel of China.
Higher than both the London Eye and the Singapore Flyer, which opens in March, the Beijing Great Wheel will tower 208 metres (682 ft) when finished in 2009, executives said on Monday, which would make it the highest and largest in the world.
The giant ferris wheel will have 48 air conditioned observation capsules, each of which can carry up to 40 passengers, and on a good day even the Great Wall is expected to be visible in the mountains to Beijing's north.
"The wheel itself is a nice add-on to the city. It's a new icon for the city," Great Wheel Corp Chief Executive Officer Stephan Matter told Reuters ahead of the ground-breaking ceremony.
The wheel will stand in eastern Beijing's Chaoyang Park, where beach volleyball events will take place at next year's Olympics, and have far greater capacity than the London Eye, Matter said.
"The capsule in London caters for 25. Ours will cater for 40 people. It's like a little bus. It's 18 tonnes heavy. It's like your living room," he added.
Costing a total of around 200 million euros (139 million pounds), tickets will go for about 100 yuan (6 pounds) a head, Matter said, though final prices have yet to be decided.
"The Beijing one will be very affordable," he added.
The experience will be like flying, said chairman Florian Bollen, whose company is also involved in the Singapore wheel.
"It will allow the people of Beijing to rise up and see the city from a completely new perspective," he said. "It is a flight."
Matter brushed off worries Beijing's notorious smog may spoil the party.
"It is an issue, but it's increasingly better," he said. "I believe the Chinese government will improve it further and yes you will have pollution, but the wheel itself is an attraction. From that perspective, I'm not worried at all."
Great Wall old hat as Beijing eyes Great Wheel
By Ben Blanchard
Mon Nov 5, 2007
You've climbed the Great Wall of China, now Beijing wants you to "fly" the Great Wheel of China.
Higher than both the London Eye and the Singapore Flyer, which opens in March, the Beijing Great Wheel will tower 208 metres (682 ft) when finished in 2009, executives said on Monday, which would make it the highest and largest in the world.
The giant ferris wheel will have 48 air conditioned observation capsules, each of which can carry up to 40 passengers, and on a good day even the Great Wall is expected to be visible in the mountains to Beijing's north.
"The wheel itself is a nice add-on to the city. It's a new icon for the city," Great Wheel Corp Chief Executive Officer Stephan Matter told Reuters ahead of the ground-breaking ceremony.
The wheel will stand in eastern Beijing's Chaoyang Park, where beach volleyball events will take place at next year's Olympics, and have far greater capacity than the London Eye, Matter said.
"The capsule in London caters for 25. Ours will cater for 40 people. It's like a little bus. It's 18 tonnes heavy. It's like your living room," he added.
Costing a total of around 200 million euros (139 million pounds), tickets will go for about 100 yuan (6 pounds) a head, Matter said, though final prices have yet to be decided.
"The Beijing one will be very affordable," he added.
The experience will be like flying, said chairman Florian Bollen, whose company is also involved in the Singapore wheel.
"It will allow the people of Beijing to rise up and see the city from a completely new perspective," he said. "It is a flight."
Matter brushed off worries Beijing's notorious smog may spoil the party.
"It is an issue, but it's increasingly better," he said. "I believe the Chinese government will improve it further and yes you will have pollution, but the wheel itself is an attraction. From that perspective, I'm not worried at all."
PetroChina's Value Tops $1 Trillion
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aQyRJI72Kor8&refer=worldwide
PetroChina's Value Tops $1 Trillion, Surpassing Exxon
By Ying Lou
Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- PetroChina Co. almost tripled on its first day of trading in Shanghai, becoming the world's first company to be valued at $1 trillion, more than Exxon Mobil Corp. and General Electric Co. combined.
PetroChina shares rose to 43.96 yuan from the sale price of 16.7 yuan, giving the state-owned oil producer a greater market value than the entire Russian stock market.
The rally makes PetroChina shares four times more expensive than those of Exxon, even though China's biggest oil producer has a quarter of the revenue. China's stock market was valued at less than $1.1 trillion before tripling this year and giving the communist nation four of the world's 10 biggest companies, even after today's 5 percent tumble in Hong Kong stocks.
PetroChina's valuation is ``an indication of China coming of age and also of its stock market bubble,'' said Hugh Young, who oversees $50 billion at Aberdeen Asset Management Asia Ltd. in Singapore.
The oil producer's Shanghai listing pushes China's stock market beyond the U.K. as the world's third-largest. PetroChina trades at 55 times earnings, four times Exxon's ratio of 13 times earnings and near the 58 times for Google Inc., the world's most-used Internet search engine.
In Hong Kong, PetroChina fell 8.2 percent to HK$18. Exxon shares rose 0.7 percent to $87.93, valuing the company at $488 billion on the New York Stock Exchange.
`Sense of Responsibility'
``I feel very excited today and also feel a very strong sense of responsibility,'' Chairman Jiang Jiemin said at the Shanghai Stock Exchange. ``This is PetroChina returning to our investors and society.''
Jiang struck a gong as the market opened at 9:30 a.m., then toasted the start of trading with a glass of red wine.
China's largest oil and gas producer had 20.5 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves in 2006, compared with 22.1 billion for Irving, Texas-based Exxon, data compiled by Bloomberg show. PetroChina has been adding new reserves at an average annual rate of 5 percent for the past three years, a faster pace than Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc, the world's largest oil companies by sales.
The share sale, the world's biggest this year, surpassed the 66.6 billion yuan raised by China Shenhua Energy Co. in September. PetroChina raised 66.8 billion yuan selling 4 billion shares last week as investors applied for more than 3.3 trillion yuan of stock, almost 50 times the amount PetroChina sold.
Record Oil
Those investors were until now prevented from directly buying PetroChina stock, missing out on a 15-fold surge as economic growth turned the nation into the largest oil consumer after the U.S. and as crude prices reached a record $96.24 a barrel in New York.
The CSI 300 Index of shares listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges has increased about 170 percent this year as mainland Chinese investors seek returns on $2.3 trillion of savings, raising investor concerns that the market is too expensive.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. sold its stake in PetroChina this year, reaping an eightfold gain that contributed to a 64 percent increase in third-quarter profit for the Omaha, Nebraska-based company. Berkshire had 2.34 billion shares as of the end of 2006, the largest holding after state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.
Buffett said on Oct. 24 that Chinese share prices have risen too fast.
`Carried Away'
``It's easy to be carried away in the stock market when things are going very well,'' he said in the northern Chinese city of Dalian. ``We at Berkshire never buy stocks when we see prices soaring.''
Gains in PetroChina's shares in Shanghai may have more to do with Chinese investors seeking better returns than the outlook for the company's exploration and production operations, or its refining business, known as downstream, said Larry Grace, an oil analyst at Kim Eng Securities Co. in Hong Kong.
``Production is static with limited upside for the next three to four years,'' Grace said. ``As for the downstream, the price controls and overall regulatory trend limit the company's earnings.''
China controls fuel prices to shield consumers in the world's most-populous nation from accelerating inflation. The policy limits the ability of PetroChina and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. to pass on the burden of higher crude oil costs.
The other Chinese companies that rank among the world's 10 largest by market value are China Petroleum, known as Sinopec, China Mobile Ltd., Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp.
``A-share prices don't reflect global benchmarks of value,'' said Lorraine Tan, head of equity research at Standard & Poor's Investment Services in Singapore. ``There should be other measures of a company's position, including revenue and profitability. Market cap is not necessarily accurate.''
PetroChina's share surge means it beat by years a Russian pledge to create the world's largest company.
OAO Gazprom, Russia's natural gas export monopoly, would become the world's largest company by market value and top $1 trillion in ``seven to 10 years,'' Alexander Medvedev, the company's deputy chief executive officer, said in April. Gazprom's market valuation today is $296 billion.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ying Lou in Shanghai at ylou1@bloomberg.net .
PetroChina's Value Tops $1 Trillion, Surpassing Exxon
By Ying Lou
Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- PetroChina Co. almost tripled on its first day of trading in Shanghai, becoming the world's first company to be valued at $1 trillion, more than Exxon Mobil Corp. and General Electric Co. combined.
PetroChina shares rose to 43.96 yuan from the sale price of 16.7 yuan, giving the state-owned oil producer a greater market value than the entire Russian stock market.
The rally makes PetroChina shares four times more expensive than those of Exxon, even though China's biggest oil producer has a quarter of the revenue. China's stock market was valued at less than $1.1 trillion before tripling this year and giving the communist nation four of the world's 10 biggest companies, even after today's 5 percent tumble in Hong Kong stocks.
PetroChina's valuation is ``an indication of China coming of age and also of its stock market bubble,'' said Hugh Young, who oversees $50 billion at Aberdeen Asset Management Asia Ltd. in Singapore.
The oil producer's Shanghai listing pushes China's stock market beyond the U.K. as the world's third-largest. PetroChina trades at 55 times earnings, four times Exxon's ratio of 13 times earnings and near the 58 times for Google Inc., the world's most-used Internet search engine.
In Hong Kong, PetroChina fell 8.2 percent to HK$18. Exxon shares rose 0.7 percent to $87.93, valuing the company at $488 billion on the New York Stock Exchange.
`Sense of Responsibility'
``I feel very excited today and also feel a very strong sense of responsibility,'' Chairman Jiang Jiemin said at the Shanghai Stock Exchange. ``This is PetroChina returning to our investors and society.''
Jiang struck a gong as the market opened at 9:30 a.m., then toasted the start of trading with a glass of red wine.
China's largest oil and gas producer had 20.5 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves in 2006, compared with 22.1 billion for Irving, Texas-based Exxon, data compiled by Bloomberg show. PetroChina has been adding new reserves at an average annual rate of 5 percent for the past three years, a faster pace than Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc, the world's largest oil companies by sales.
The share sale, the world's biggest this year, surpassed the 66.6 billion yuan raised by China Shenhua Energy Co. in September. PetroChina raised 66.8 billion yuan selling 4 billion shares last week as investors applied for more than 3.3 trillion yuan of stock, almost 50 times the amount PetroChina sold.
Record Oil
Those investors were until now prevented from directly buying PetroChina stock, missing out on a 15-fold surge as economic growth turned the nation into the largest oil consumer after the U.S. and as crude prices reached a record $96.24 a barrel in New York.
The CSI 300 Index of shares listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges has increased about 170 percent this year as mainland Chinese investors seek returns on $2.3 trillion of savings, raising investor concerns that the market is too expensive.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. sold its stake in PetroChina this year, reaping an eightfold gain that contributed to a 64 percent increase in third-quarter profit for the Omaha, Nebraska-based company. Berkshire had 2.34 billion shares as of the end of 2006, the largest holding after state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.
Buffett said on Oct. 24 that Chinese share prices have risen too fast.
`Carried Away'
``It's easy to be carried away in the stock market when things are going very well,'' he said in the northern Chinese city of Dalian. ``We at Berkshire never buy stocks when we see prices soaring.''
Gains in PetroChina's shares in Shanghai may have more to do with Chinese investors seeking better returns than the outlook for the company's exploration and production operations, or its refining business, known as downstream, said Larry Grace, an oil analyst at Kim Eng Securities Co. in Hong Kong.
``Production is static with limited upside for the next three to four years,'' Grace said. ``As for the downstream, the price controls and overall regulatory trend limit the company's earnings.''
China controls fuel prices to shield consumers in the world's most-populous nation from accelerating inflation. The policy limits the ability of PetroChina and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. to pass on the burden of higher crude oil costs.
The other Chinese companies that rank among the world's 10 largest by market value are China Petroleum, known as Sinopec, China Mobile Ltd., Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp.
``A-share prices don't reflect global benchmarks of value,'' said Lorraine Tan, head of equity research at Standard & Poor's Investment Services in Singapore. ``There should be other measures of a company's position, including revenue and profitability. Market cap is not necessarily accurate.''
PetroChina's share surge means it beat by years a Russian pledge to create the world's largest company.
OAO Gazprom, Russia's natural gas export monopoly, would become the world's largest company by market value and top $1 trillion in ``seven to 10 years,'' Alexander Medvedev, the company's deputy chief executive officer, said in April. Gazprom's market valuation today is $296 billion.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ying Lou in Shanghai at ylou1@bloomberg.net .
Robin Hood's forest is in trouble
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071104/ap_on_re_eu/shrinking_sherwood
Robin Hood's forest is in trouble
By KATE SCHUMAN, Associated Press Writer
Sun Nov 4, 2007
Robin Hood might have a hard time hiding out in the Sherwood Forest of today.
The forest once covered about 100,000 acres, a big chunk of present-day Nottinghamshire County. Today its core is about 450 acres, with patches spread out through the rest of the county.
Experts say urgent action is needed to regenerate the forest and save the rare and endangered ancient oaks at its heart.
Some 15 organizations have joined forces to draw up a rescue plan, hoping to win a $100 million grant through a TV competition in December.
"If you ask someone to think of something typically English or British, they think of the Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood," said Austin Brady, the regional director of the East Midlands Conservancy Forestry Commission. "They are part of our national identity ... but the Sherwood forest is a real place and the real forest needs help too."
The forest is beloved for its connection to Robin Hood, the legendary 13th century bandit who supposedly hid there from his nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham, in between stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.
One of Sherwood's oldest and most celebrated trees is Major Oak near Edwinstowe, the town where legend has Robin marrying Maid Marion. Historians believe it and other Sherwood oaks could have been saplings back in Robin's time.
Park rangers say the collection of ancient oaks is one of the greatest in Europe. But they see an increase in the trees' rate of decline.
Over the centuries, the forest was carved up for farms, mines, towns and logging. Sherwood timber built medieval ships and even part of London's St. Paul's Cathedral.
Now, the ravages of age — and, some fear, climate change — are taking their toll. On average one veteran oak per year would fall; this year seven have come down and the rate seems to be accelerating, said Izi Banton, the forest's chief ranger.
Currently 997 ancient oaks stand on the 450 acres known as the "beating heart of the forest," Banton said. About 450 are still living, and of those, 250 are good shape, while the other 200 are particularly vulnerable. The remainder are standing deadwood, still valuable to the forest because of the life they support.
Each oak has its own management plan and some even have names, like Medusa, Stumpy and Twister. Rangers monitor them closely, watching for branches that look droopy or stressed, anxious to ensure that each tree lives as long as possible, said Paul Cook, a senior ranger.
"Every time I come up here I think, 'Has that one gotten slightly lower?'" Cook said, looking at one aging oak. "It is a shock every time one comes down."
Ancient oaks survive about 900 years, of which 300 years are spent growing and 300 dying. Of the seven trees already lost this year, four were felled by high winds on one February night.
With fallen trees go the mostly unique kinds of beetles, moths and bats that live in them.
"It's the hidden side of Sherwood — everyone knows about the amazing trees, but they're not aware of life it supports," Banton said. "They're not all cute and fluffy, but they have just as an important role to play."
The oaks and wildlife will become more vulnerable as long as they remain isolated from the rest of the forest, Brady said. The rescue plan would focus on planting 250,000 trees to knit the parts of the forest back together.
Hopes are high that Sherwood Forest will win the grant from BIG Lottery, a branch of the National Lottery that gives out money to good causes. Last year, the lottery launched Living Landmarks, a TV program that encourages communities across Britain to work together to improve quality of life and environment.
The lottery committee has shortlisted Sherwood and four other projects to vie for the $100 million.
"This lottery project is the biggest one that there's ever been," Brady said. "It's almost a once in a lifetime opportunity to get the forest back on track."
Robin Hood's forest is in trouble
By KATE SCHUMAN, Associated Press Writer
Sun Nov 4, 2007
Robin Hood might have a hard time hiding out in the Sherwood Forest of today.
The forest once covered about 100,000 acres, a big chunk of present-day Nottinghamshire County. Today its core is about 450 acres, with patches spread out through the rest of the county.
Experts say urgent action is needed to regenerate the forest and save the rare and endangered ancient oaks at its heart.
Some 15 organizations have joined forces to draw up a rescue plan, hoping to win a $100 million grant through a TV competition in December.
"If you ask someone to think of something typically English or British, they think of the Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood," said Austin Brady, the regional director of the East Midlands Conservancy Forestry Commission. "They are part of our national identity ... but the Sherwood forest is a real place and the real forest needs help too."
The forest is beloved for its connection to Robin Hood, the legendary 13th century bandit who supposedly hid there from his nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham, in between stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.
One of Sherwood's oldest and most celebrated trees is Major Oak near Edwinstowe, the town where legend has Robin marrying Maid Marion. Historians believe it and other Sherwood oaks could have been saplings back in Robin's time.
Park rangers say the collection of ancient oaks is one of the greatest in Europe. But they see an increase in the trees' rate of decline.
Over the centuries, the forest was carved up for farms, mines, towns and logging. Sherwood timber built medieval ships and even part of London's St. Paul's Cathedral.
Now, the ravages of age — and, some fear, climate change — are taking their toll. On average one veteran oak per year would fall; this year seven have come down and the rate seems to be accelerating, said Izi Banton, the forest's chief ranger.
Currently 997 ancient oaks stand on the 450 acres known as the "beating heart of the forest," Banton said. About 450 are still living, and of those, 250 are good shape, while the other 200 are particularly vulnerable. The remainder are standing deadwood, still valuable to the forest because of the life they support.
Each oak has its own management plan and some even have names, like Medusa, Stumpy and Twister. Rangers monitor them closely, watching for branches that look droopy or stressed, anxious to ensure that each tree lives as long as possible, said Paul Cook, a senior ranger.
"Every time I come up here I think, 'Has that one gotten slightly lower?'" Cook said, looking at one aging oak. "It is a shock every time one comes down."
Ancient oaks survive about 900 years, of which 300 years are spent growing and 300 dying. Of the seven trees already lost this year, four were felled by high winds on one February night.
With fallen trees go the mostly unique kinds of beetles, moths and bats that live in them.
"It's the hidden side of Sherwood — everyone knows about the amazing trees, but they're not aware of life it supports," Banton said. "They're not all cute and fluffy, but they have just as an important role to play."
The oaks and wildlife will become more vulnerable as long as they remain isolated from the rest of the forest, Brady said. The rescue plan would focus on planting 250,000 trees to knit the parts of the forest back together.
Hopes are high that Sherwood Forest will win the grant from BIG Lottery, a branch of the National Lottery that gives out money to good causes. Last year, the lottery launched Living Landmarks, a TV program that encourages communities across Britain to work together to improve quality of life and environment.
The lottery committee has shortlisted Sherwood and four other projects to vie for the $100 million.
"This lottery project is the biggest one that there's ever been," Brady said. "It's almost a once in a lifetime opportunity to get the forest back on track."
Abu Dhabi begins work on Ferrari theme park
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071103/lf_afp/uaeitalyautoferrarileisure_071103181816
Abu Dhabi begins work on Ferrari theme park
Sat Nov 3, 2007
Abu Dhabi on Saturday began work on building the world's first Ferrari theme park, another step in the wealthy Gulf emirate's ambition to become a global centre for leisure, sport and culture.
A ceremony was held for the laying of the project's first foundation stone on Yas Island off the coast of the capital of the United Arab Emirates, project developer ALDAR said.
The 250,000-square-metre (62-acre) park is set for completion in 2009.
It will include a motor circuit which is to host the emirate's first F1 Grand Prix in the same year, as well as roller coasters, multi-media theatres and automobile displays, ALDAR said in a statement.
An investment group owned by the government of oil-rich Abu Dhabi in July bought a five percent stake in Ferrari for 114 million dollars.
Warner Brothers announced in September it plans to open its own theme park in Abu Dhabi, which is already developing a satellite Louvre museum and staged its first international film festival earlier this year.
Abu Dhabi is one of seven emirates that make up the UAE, which also includes Dubai.
The booming city-state of Dubai has its own grand cultural aspirations. It already hosts an annual international film festival that is attended by high-profile Hollywood stars.
Earlier this year, Cirque du Soleil announced it would stage a permanent show on a huge artificial island off Dubai, and Universal Studios plans to build a theme park in the emirate at a cost of more than two billion dollars.
Abu Dhabi begins work on Ferrari theme park
Sat Nov 3, 2007
Abu Dhabi on Saturday began work on building the world's first Ferrari theme park, another step in the wealthy Gulf emirate's ambition to become a global centre for leisure, sport and culture.
A ceremony was held for the laying of the project's first foundation stone on Yas Island off the coast of the capital of the United Arab Emirates, project developer ALDAR said.
The 250,000-square-metre (62-acre) park is set for completion in 2009.
It will include a motor circuit which is to host the emirate's first F1 Grand Prix in the same year, as well as roller coasters, multi-media theatres and automobile displays, ALDAR said in a statement.
An investment group owned by the government of oil-rich Abu Dhabi in July bought a five percent stake in Ferrari for 114 million dollars.
Warner Brothers announced in September it plans to open its own theme park in Abu Dhabi, which is already developing a satellite Louvre museum and staged its first international film festival earlier this year.
Abu Dhabi is one of seven emirates that make up the UAE, which also includes Dubai.
The booming city-state of Dubai has its own grand cultural aspirations. It already hosts an annual international film festival that is attended by high-profile Hollywood stars.
Earlier this year, Cirque du Soleil announced it would stage a permanent show on a huge artificial island off Dubai, and Universal Studios plans to build a theme park in the emirate at a cost of more than two billion dollars.
Fox News’ Hannity rails against Halloween
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13447.html
Fox News’ Hannity rails against Halloween, which ‘teaches kids to be liberals’
Posted November 2nd, 2007
Last week, The Onion, which is a satirical publication, ran a very amusing editorial cartoon, mocking right-wing attitudes. The cartoon asked, “Halloween: What is it teaching our kids?” It depicted a kid trick-or-treating with a bag that read, “Something for Nothing,” under the caption, “Everyone deserves hand-outs!”
Proving once again that today’s right is practically impossible to satirize, Fox News’ Sean Hannity actually made the same argument, on the air, in the hopes of labeling Halloween a “liberal holiday.”
On the October 31 edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity claimed that “Halloween is a liberal holiday” and “is teaching our kids to be liberals.” Hannity explained that “we’re teaching kids to knock on other people’s doors and ask for a handout.” Co-host Alan Colmes responded by asking if that meant that Christmas is a “liberal holiday.” Colmes asserted that Halloween represents “the act of giving,” and asked: “Isn’t that a Christian thing, to give, to share with your community?” Hannity replied: “Not to teach your kids to beg for a handout.”
In all sincerity, I thought Media Matters was kidding about this, until I watched the clip. Hannity, apparently in all seriousness, said we shouldn’t teach “our children to beg for something for free.” He concluded, “You’re teaching your kids to beg for a handout.”
In the broader cultural context, I think a sea-change of sorts may be underway. The caricature of late has been that of a politically-correct, liberal intellectual going around denigrating the things “regular people” enjoy. I wonder if Hannity is helping push the pendulum in the other direction — all activities should be measured against a right-wing worldview. If they’re perceived as politically heretical, they should be dismissed.
Hannity, in other words, seems anxious to push conservatism away from the mainstream. If we’re lucky, he’ll keep it up.
Just out of curiosity, I checked out Focus on the Family’s take on Halloween, assuming that if any high-profile conservatives would hate the holiday, it’d be the Dobson crowd.
Here’s the official Focus take on Halloween:
Whereas it can be argued that Christmas is a Christian holiday with Christian origins that has suffered the effects of growing secularism, Halloween can be traced to distinctly pagan sources. It is reasonable, then, that many believers would find some aspects of its celebration disturbing. I agree with them in that regard.
The traditional emphasis upon the occult, witches, devils, death, and evil sends messages to our kids that godly parents can only regard with alarm. There is clearly no place in the Christian community for this “darker side” of Halloween.
Even here, however, there is a place for some harmless fun. Kids love to dress up and pretend. If the Halloween experience is focused on fantasy rather than the occult, I see no harm in it. Make costumes for your children that represent fun characters, such as Mickey Mouse or an elderly grandmother, and then let them go door-to-door asking for treats. This side of Halloween can be thoroughly enjoyable for the little ones.
Congratulations, Hannity, you’re to the right of Focus on the Family on a pagan holiday.
Creature ID'd as coyote, not chupacabra
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071102/ap_on_sc/mythical_chupacabra
Creature ID'd as coyote, not chupacabra
Fri Nov 2, 2007
The results are in: The ugly, big-eared animal found this summer in Cuero is not the mythical bloodsucking chupacabra. It's just a plain old coyote.
Biologists at Texas State University announced Thursday night that they had identified the hairless doglike creature.
San Antonio television station KENS provided a tissue sample from the animal for testing.
"The DNA sequence is a virtually identical match to DNA from the coyote (Canis latrans)," bioligist Mike Forstner said in a written statement. "This is probably the answer a lot of folks thought might be the outcome. I, myself, really thought it was a domestic dog, but the Cuero Chupacabra is a Texas Coyote."
Phylis Canion and some of her neighbors discovered the 40-pound bodies of three of the animals over four days in July outside her ranch in Cuero, 90 miles southeast of San Antonio. Canion said she saved the head of the one she found so she could get to get to the bottom of its ancestry through DNA testing and then mount it for posterity.
Forstner said the testing provided an opportunity to demonstrate how science answers questions.
Chupacabra means "goat sucker" in Spanish, and it is said to have originated in Latin America, specifically Puerto Rico and Mexico.
"This is fun, not scary, but if people are worried about the chupacabra, it is probably even more important that we explain the mystery," he said. "Folks can fear what they don't understand, and a big part of the goal in science is to explain the natural world."
He said additional skin samples have been taken to try to determine the cause of the animal's hair loss.
Creature ID'd as coyote, not chupacabra
Fri Nov 2, 2007
The results are in: The ugly, big-eared animal found this summer in Cuero is not the mythical bloodsucking chupacabra. It's just a plain old coyote.
Biologists at Texas State University announced Thursday night that they had identified the hairless doglike creature.
San Antonio television station KENS provided a tissue sample from the animal for testing.
"The DNA sequence is a virtually identical match to DNA from the coyote (Canis latrans)," bioligist Mike Forstner said in a written statement. "This is probably the answer a lot of folks thought might be the outcome. I, myself, really thought it was a domestic dog, but the Cuero Chupacabra is a Texas Coyote."
Phylis Canion and some of her neighbors discovered the 40-pound bodies of three of the animals over four days in July outside her ranch in Cuero, 90 miles southeast of San Antonio. Canion said she saved the head of the one she found so she could get to get to the bottom of its ancestry through DNA testing and then mount it for posterity.
Forstner said the testing provided an opportunity to demonstrate how science answers questions.
Chupacabra means "goat sucker" in Spanish, and it is said to have originated in Latin America, specifically Puerto Rico and Mexico.
"This is fun, not scary, but if people are worried about the chupacabra, it is probably even more important that we explain the mystery," he said. "Folks can fear what they don't understand, and a big part of the goal in science is to explain the natural world."
He said additional skin samples have been taken to try to determine the cause of the animal's hair loss.
Robert Parry's Lost History
Consortiumnews.com
If you want to know how the neoconservatives got control of the most powerful nation on earth, Robert Parry's Lost History is a must-read.
Drawing on classified documents released during the Iran-Contra scandal, Parry describes how the neocons and their allies in the Reagan administration recognized that modern media and the false reality it can create could be the soft underbelly of the American Republic.
So, the neocons developed the concept of "perception management," the manipulation of the American population by exaggerating foreign threats.
This propaganda theory was tested out in the 1980s by scaring the American people about impoverished Third World countries, most notably Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua. Similar strategies were used to minimize negative information about groups favored by the neocons, like the Nicaraguan contra rebels.
In one key memo, an architect of the strategy explained that in regards to Nicaragua the goal was to "glue" black hats on the Sandinistas and white hats on the contras.
Aided and abetted by Washington's careerist press corps, the neocons achieved remarkable successes in the 1980s. Then, after George W. Bush claimed the White House in 2001, the neocons and their propaganda theories returned in force, achieving their greatest triumph in stampeding the nation into the invasion of Iraq.
So get your copy of Lost History, which is now in its third printing. If you buy it through the publisher's Web site (http://www.neckdeepbook.com/), $5 of each purchase price will be rebated to help pay the bills at the free investigative Web site, Consortiumnews.com. Lost History costs only $19.95 (plus $4 for shipping).
Lost History is also available through Amazon.com.
If you want to know how the neoconservatives got control of the most powerful nation on earth, Robert Parry's Lost History is a must-read.
Drawing on classified documents released during the Iran-Contra scandal, Parry describes how the neocons and their allies in the Reagan administration recognized that modern media and the false reality it can create could be the soft underbelly of the American Republic.
So, the neocons developed the concept of "perception management," the manipulation of the American population by exaggerating foreign threats.
This propaganda theory was tested out in the 1980s by scaring the American people about impoverished Third World countries, most notably Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua. Similar strategies were used to minimize negative information about groups favored by the neocons, like the Nicaraguan contra rebels.
In one key memo, an architect of the strategy explained that in regards to Nicaragua the goal was to "glue" black hats on the Sandinistas and white hats on the contras.
Aided and abetted by Washington's careerist press corps, the neocons achieved remarkable successes in the 1980s. Then, after George W. Bush claimed the White House in 2001, the neocons and their propaganda theories returned in force, achieving their greatest triumph in stampeding the nation into the invasion of Iraq.
So get your copy of Lost History, which is now in its third printing. If you buy it through the publisher's Web site (http://www.neckdeepbook.com/), $5 of each purchase price will be rebated to help pay the bills at the free investigative Web site, Consortiumnews.com. Lost History costs only $19.95 (plus $4 for shipping).
Lost History is also available through Amazon.com.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Future Car Trends
http://autos.aol.com/article/general/v2/_a/future-car-trends/20071029171409990001
Future Car Trends
Upcoming vehicle technology and trends just around the corner.
By JON GROMER, AOL AUTOS
In our lifetime we will witness the age of 100 mile-per gallon cars, lifetime headlights and taillights, streaming entertainment and information content, and cars that drive themselves. Actually, all this will be here a lot sooner than you think -- within the next few years. Here's the stuff of automotive dreams, already on queue for production.
Engines
Diesels are aiming to be the new hybrids. The problem is, diesel's used to be dirty engines and have had a hard time making any progress in the U.S. market. But new emissions technology solves that, giving these oil burners a clean bill of health in all 50 states. The high cost of diesels is also coming down to more affordable levels. Look for these cleaner, more efficient diesel engines in the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Volkswagen Jetta TDI; Mercedes' E320, ML320 and GL320 BLUETEC models, Chevy Silverado/GMC Sierra 2500/3500 HD, Dodge Ram 2500/3500 and the Ford F-250/F-350/F-450. Also on the horizon is a diesel powered Honda Accord, set to debut in 2009, which is apparently capable of 52 mpg.
Hybrids are hot now (who's going to argue with 50 MPG?), but they'll be getting hotter as prices in this segment also come down. J.D. Power predicts 345,000 hybrids will be sold in '07 -- a 35 percent increase over '06. Honda and Hyundai are gunning for the big mileage (and sales) numbers by dropping their smallest engine into their most lightweight chassis (a Honda Fit-sized car and Hyundai Accent respectively). Also look for large models, like the Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid and Saturn's Vue and Aura Green Line models to deliver modest fuel savings at practical prices and stylish packaging.
"Internet reports abound of home-customized Priuses topping the 100 mpg mark with the advantage of enhanced battery packs..."
More exciting than both diesels and hybrids is a technology that has gone from theory to aluminum in the last couple of years because of advances in computer technology. HCCI, or homogeneous charge compression ignition (also see more on HCCI at Autoblog), is a gas engine that acts like a diesel motor. Like a diesel engine, gas inside the cylinder is ignited through compression and the heat generated by the engine itself. No spark plugs. The result? Diesel economy and efficiency at roughly half the weight and materials cost of a conventional gas engine with no need to treat the exhaust. GM demonstrated two vehicles fitted with HCCI engines in August. Mercedes wowed crowds even more recently at the Frankfurt auto show with their DiesOtto implementation that merges HCCI technology with a mild hybrid module to produce 238 hp, 295 lb.-ft. of torque and 39 mpg in a vehicle the size of an S-Class sedan. Mercedes squeezed that performance from a 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine.
All of these technologies are stop-gap solutions until the most efficient answer arrives on our shores -- hydrogen. How soon? FreedomCAR, a partnership of the U.S. Department of Energy and the United States Council for Automotive Research, projects that hydrogen technology will be broadly available to the masses by 2015. On the fuel cell side, Honda has indicated that their new FCX Concept will slide alongside the existing previous-generation FCX already on the road by 2008. GM's Project Driveaway is putting at least 100 fuel-cell powered vehicles in the hands of lucky testers this year, but the hydrogen-powered Equinoxes are not available for sale. As for hydrogen combustion engines, small numbers are popping up as manufacturers like BMW (see the BMW Hydrogen 7 at Autoblog) keep real-world testing and refining concepts, but there are no production plans as of yet. Obviously, both solutions face infrastructure challenges for refueling that are still being worked out.
Until the heady days of hydrogen power are realized, you still have radical alternatives to diesel and conventional hybrids if you want to drive green.
Internet reports abound of home-customized Priuses topping the 100 mpg mark with the advantage of enhanced battery packs and modified software keeping the cars running on electric power far longer than their stock counterparts. Plug-in hybrids hold the potential to dwarf the fuel economy potential of diesels and hybrids, but cheeky price points, mostly from the cost of hefty battery packs, might be what are holding off production announcements from manufacturers. Not even a date can be pegged to the darling of poster boards, Chevrolet's Volt. While plug-ins are being researched and developed by major manufacturers like Toyota, Ford and GM, the impatient can check out a handful of small companies which offer plug-in conversion kits for hybrids, complete with instructions.
Tesla Roadster
Or the impatient can skip the gas motor all together. The smooth exterior lines and booked solid pre-orders of the Tesla proved that the electric car is far from dead ... it's just pretty expensive. Miles Automotive Group aims to change that. Their coming XS500, an electric midsize sedan, will arrive in the states in 2008 with a top speed of 80 mpg and a range of 120 miles. The price: $30,000. The XS500 could be joined by a $45,000 electric sport-utility truck and SUV from Phoenix Motorcars sometime in 2009. The SUV and SUT would start with a 130 mile range, a 0-60 time of 10 seconds and a top speed of 95 mph. Additional models coming to U.S. pavement (or already there) include Zap's intriguing Zap-X, Wrightspeed's blazingly fast Wrightspeed X1, and the very affordable NmG from Myers Motors.
Entertainment
A survey conducted by TRG, Telematics Research Group Inc., reveals that nearly 70% of announced upcoming 2008 vehicles for sale in the U.S. will have a Bluetooth communications system either as optional or standard equipment. Navigation systems will be available in 80% of coming 2008 vehicles, according to the same survey. We're at the point where digital entertainment storage systems like Microsoft/Ford's SYNC (see video of SYNC at Autoblog) and Chrysler's MyGiG (see MyGig at Autoblog) are about to go from super cool to everyday accessories like an iPod thanks to broad introductions that span the luxury segment to value-driven cars like the Ford Focus. What's the next frontier?
Streaming media is one. Supplier interviews conducted by the Center For Automotive Research (CAR) point to 2010 as the year when customized or on-demand content will be streamed to vehicles. That customized content could span the gamut from television programming and movies to important local updates, along with new, far more robust real-time traffic data through two-way communication. Couple this trend with the fact that vehicle-based digital storage (handy for buffering downloads) will increase and drop in price, and you have a done deal. Almost: CAR notes that the challenge isn't displaying the content, but finding the bandwidth and compression necessary to deliver the programming.
HD Radio
A closer star on the horizon of coming entertainment is HD radio, which is popping up in cars by BMW and Ford this year, and will be added to, at least, the Jaguar XJ and Hyundai's Genesis for 2008. Using technology licensed from a company called iBiquity Digital, HD radio promises to deliver AM radio in FM-quality sound and FM channels in CD-quality sound, along with accompanying data that will begin with artist, song and station information. Digital radio gives a broader frequency response to channels, transforms AM radio from mono to stereo, and allows for better stereo separation. Check out iBiquity Digital to hear the difference. Bob Struble, president and CEO of iBiquity sees next-generation HD radios offering users the chance to buy songs and advertised products or even bring TiVo-like qualities to the radio experience. iBiquity estimates that by 2008 more than 90% of the U.S. population will be reached by HD radio broadcasters.
Safety
The Lexus LS 460 is the first vehicle for sale in the U.S. that can park itself. Audi's dynamic steering system adjusts the driver's steering inputs when the vehicle senses that the handling limits have been reached, even making slight corrective inputs on its own when things are getting out of hand. The Lane Departure Prevention System on Infiniti's new EX35 manipulates the brakes at individual wheels to help steer the ute back into its lane when it senses an unintentional drift. Welcome to the brave new world of Active Safety 2.0, where your vehicle humbly offers assistance to keep you out of trouble, in addition to trying to save you when you're in it.
In 2005 General Motors announced that the 2008 Opel Vectra would be the first car to boast Traffic Assist, a system that allows the car to drive itself at speeds up to 60 mph -- even in heavy traffic. The system sees road signs, bends and other vehicles in the road to adjust the car?s trajectory and speed according to everything going on around it. As advanced and capable as the system may be, composed of processors, lasers and a video camera, it won?t be offered for sale in the United States, but in Germany. Why? Two reasons: one, we live in the most litigious nation in the world. Two, we Americans, as a mass of consumers, aren't comfortable paying additional price premiums for the safety technology we crave -- we feel it should be included in the vehicle's price.
One coming revolution we'll definitely see is brake-by-wire technology. A brake-by-wire system replaces the hydraulic hardware of conventional brakes with faster-acting and more environmentally friendly electric motors and relays that should be more reliable and take up less space. We're already seeing conventional hydraulic systems get smarter with radar-based augmentations like Mercedes' Brake Assist Plus and Infiniti's Preview Braking by pressurizing the brake system earlier, allowing for a faster response and shorter braking distance when the driver decides to hit the pedal. A fully electronic braking system should further improve on stopping times and distances. Automotive News predicts brake-by-wire systems will surface in 2011.
Whether or not you purchase a vehicle with any, or all, of these trends one thing is certain ... automotive dreams do come true.
Future Car Trends
Upcoming vehicle technology and trends just around the corner.
By JON GROMER, AOL AUTOS
In our lifetime we will witness the age of 100 mile-per gallon cars, lifetime headlights and taillights, streaming entertainment and information content, and cars that drive themselves. Actually, all this will be here a lot sooner than you think -- within the next few years. Here's the stuff of automotive dreams, already on queue for production.
Engines
Diesels are aiming to be the new hybrids. The problem is, diesel's used to be dirty engines and have had a hard time making any progress in the U.S. market. But new emissions technology solves that, giving these oil burners a clean bill of health in all 50 states. The high cost of diesels is also coming down to more affordable levels. Look for these cleaner, more efficient diesel engines in the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Volkswagen Jetta TDI; Mercedes' E320, ML320 and GL320 BLUETEC models, Chevy Silverado/GMC Sierra 2500/3500 HD, Dodge Ram 2500/3500 and the Ford F-250/F-350/F-450. Also on the horizon is a diesel powered Honda Accord, set to debut in 2009, which is apparently capable of 52 mpg.
Hybrids are hot now (who's going to argue with 50 MPG?), but they'll be getting hotter as prices in this segment also come down. J.D. Power predicts 345,000 hybrids will be sold in '07 -- a 35 percent increase over '06. Honda and Hyundai are gunning for the big mileage (and sales) numbers by dropping their smallest engine into their most lightweight chassis (a Honda Fit-sized car and Hyundai Accent respectively). Also look for large models, like the Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid and Saturn's Vue and Aura Green Line models to deliver modest fuel savings at practical prices and stylish packaging.
"Internet reports abound of home-customized Priuses topping the 100 mpg mark with the advantage of enhanced battery packs..."
More exciting than both diesels and hybrids is a technology that has gone from theory to aluminum in the last couple of years because of advances in computer technology. HCCI, or homogeneous charge compression ignition (also see more on HCCI at Autoblog), is a gas engine that acts like a diesel motor. Like a diesel engine, gas inside the cylinder is ignited through compression and the heat generated by the engine itself. No spark plugs. The result? Diesel economy and efficiency at roughly half the weight and materials cost of a conventional gas engine with no need to treat the exhaust. GM demonstrated two vehicles fitted with HCCI engines in August. Mercedes wowed crowds even more recently at the Frankfurt auto show with their DiesOtto implementation that merges HCCI technology with a mild hybrid module to produce 238 hp, 295 lb.-ft. of torque and 39 mpg in a vehicle the size of an S-Class sedan. Mercedes squeezed that performance from a 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine.
All of these technologies are stop-gap solutions until the most efficient answer arrives on our shores -- hydrogen. How soon? FreedomCAR, a partnership of the U.S. Department of Energy and the United States Council for Automotive Research, projects that hydrogen technology will be broadly available to the masses by 2015. On the fuel cell side, Honda has indicated that their new FCX Concept will slide alongside the existing previous-generation FCX already on the road by 2008. GM's Project Driveaway is putting at least 100 fuel-cell powered vehicles in the hands of lucky testers this year, but the hydrogen-powered Equinoxes are not available for sale. As for hydrogen combustion engines, small numbers are popping up as manufacturers like BMW (see the BMW Hydrogen 7 at Autoblog) keep real-world testing and refining concepts, but there are no production plans as of yet. Obviously, both solutions face infrastructure challenges for refueling that are still being worked out.
Until the heady days of hydrogen power are realized, you still have radical alternatives to diesel and conventional hybrids if you want to drive green.
Internet reports abound of home-customized Priuses topping the 100 mpg mark with the advantage of enhanced battery packs and modified software keeping the cars running on electric power far longer than their stock counterparts. Plug-in hybrids hold the potential to dwarf the fuel economy potential of diesels and hybrids, but cheeky price points, mostly from the cost of hefty battery packs, might be what are holding off production announcements from manufacturers. Not even a date can be pegged to the darling of poster boards, Chevrolet's Volt. While plug-ins are being researched and developed by major manufacturers like Toyota, Ford and GM, the impatient can check out a handful of small companies which offer plug-in conversion kits for hybrids, complete with instructions.
Tesla Roadster
Or the impatient can skip the gas motor all together. The smooth exterior lines and booked solid pre-orders of the Tesla proved that the electric car is far from dead ... it's just pretty expensive. Miles Automotive Group aims to change that. Their coming XS500, an electric midsize sedan, will arrive in the states in 2008 with a top speed of 80 mpg and a range of 120 miles. The price: $30,000. The XS500 could be joined by a $45,000 electric sport-utility truck and SUV from Phoenix Motorcars sometime in 2009. The SUV and SUT would start with a 130 mile range, a 0-60 time of 10 seconds and a top speed of 95 mph. Additional models coming to U.S. pavement (or already there) include Zap's intriguing Zap-X, Wrightspeed's blazingly fast Wrightspeed X1, and the very affordable NmG from Myers Motors.
Entertainment
A survey conducted by TRG, Telematics Research Group Inc., reveals that nearly 70% of announced upcoming 2008 vehicles for sale in the U.S. will have a Bluetooth communications system either as optional or standard equipment. Navigation systems will be available in 80% of coming 2008 vehicles, according to the same survey. We're at the point where digital entertainment storage systems like Microsoft/Ford's SYNC (see video of SYNC at Autoblog) and Chrysler's MyGiG (see MyGig at Autoblog) are about to go from super cool to everyday accessories like an iPod thanks to broad introductions that span the luxury segment to value-driven cars like the Ford Focus. What's the next frontier?
Streaming media is one. Supplier interviews conducted by the Center For Automotive Research (CAR) point to 2010 as the year when customized or on-demand content will be streamed to vehicles. That customized content could span the gamut from television programming and movies to important local updates, along with new, far more robust real-time traffic data through two-way communication. Couple this trend with the fact that vehicle-based digital storage (handy for buffering downloads) will increase and drop in price, and you have a done deal. Almost: CAR notes that the challenge isn't displaying the content, but finding the bandwidth and compression necessary to deliver the programming.
HD Radio
A closer star on the horizon of coming entertainment is HD radio, which is popping up in cars by BMW and Ford this year, and will be added to, at least, the Jaguar XJ and Hyundai's Genesis for 2008. Using technology licensed from a company called iBiquity Digital, HD radio promises to deliver AM radio in FM-quality sound and FM channels in CD-quality sound, along with accompanying data that will begin with artist, song and station information. Digital radio gives a broader frequency response to channels, transforms AM radio from mono to stereo, and allows for better stereo separation. Check out iBiquity Digital to hear the difference. Bob Struble, president and CEO of iBiquity sees next-generation HD radios offering users the chance to buy songs and advertised products or even bring TiVo-like qualities to the radio experience. iBiquity estimates that by 2008 more than 90% of the U.S. population will be reached by HD radio broadcasters.
Safety
The Lexus LS 460 is the first vehicle for sale in the U.S. that can park itself. Audi's dynamic steering system adjusts the driver's steering inputs when the vehicle senses that the handling limits have been reached, even making slight corrective inputs on its own when things are getting out of hand. The Lane Departure Prevention System on Infiniti's new EX35 manipulates the brakes at individual wheels to help steer the ute back into its lane when it senses an unintentional drift. Welcome to the brave new world of Active Safety 2.0, where your vehicle humbly offers assistance to keep you out of trouble, in addition to trying to save you when you're in it.
In 2005 General Motors announced that the 2008 Opel Vectra would be the first car to boast Traffic Assist, a system that allows the car to drive itself at speeds up to 60 mph -- even in heavy traffic. The system sees road signs, bends and other vehicles in the road to adjust the car?s trajectory and speed according to everything going on around it. As advanced and capable as the system may be, composed of processors, lasers and a video camera, it won?t be offered for sale in the United States, but in Germany. Why? Two reasons: one, we live in the most litigious nation in the world. Two, we Americans, as a mass of consumers, aren't comfortable paying additional price premiums for the safety technology we crave -- we feel it should be included in the vehicle's price.
One coming revolution we'll definitely see is brake-by-wire technology. A brake-by-wire system replaces the hydraulic hardware of conventional brakes with faster-acting and more environmentally friendly electric motors and relays that should be more reliable and take up less space. We're already seeing conventional hydraulic systems get smarter with radar-based augmentations like Mercedes' Brake Assist Plus and Infiniti's Preview Braking by pressurizing the brake system earlier, allowing for a faster response and shorter braking distance when the driver decides to hit the pedal. A fully electronic braking system should further improve on stopping times and distances. Automotive News predicts brake-by-wire systems will surface in 2011.
Whether or not you purchase a vehicle with any, or all, of these trends one thing is certain ... automotive dreams do come true.
Mike Davis, Who Really Set the California Fires?
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174857/mike_davis_who_really_set_the_california_fires_
Tom Dispatch
posted 2007-11-01
Tomgram: Mike Davis, Who Really Set the California Fires?
You can't have too much of a good thing, so let me just quote Mike Davis from 1998 to introduce Mike Davis 2007 on the California fires. In Ecology of Fear, his 1998 book on southern California, he wrote just about everything you'd ever need to know if you didn't want to be surprised by the raging Santa Ana-driven wildfires of 2003 or 2007. After all, there's nothing new about the burning phenomenon on what Davis then dubbed "the fire coast." "A great Malibu firestorm," he wrote, "could generate the heat of three million barrels of burning oil at a temperature of 2,000 degrees." No wonder Cold War era researchers used those California fires to model the behavior of nuclear firestorms.
What remains eternally new (and yet utterly predictable, once you've read Davis) is the increasing amount of tinder we put in the way of such fires in "the suburban-chaparral border zone where wildfire is king" -- and then the fierce fire-suppression campaigns that new, wealthy homeowners in their privatized, gated communities, McMansions, and McCastles demand, which only build further the fuel for the fires that, even in the 1990s, were "becoming ever more apocalyptic." Oh yes, and another thoroughly predictable thing: After hundreds, or thousands, of houses burn, the search for villains begins not among the politicians and developers, pushing human habitation ever deeper into the lands of the firestorm, but for arsonists, "although probably not more than one in eight blazes is caused by arson." The shape of the shape-shifting arsonist has changed over the years: more or less in historical order, according to Davis, they have been Indians, sheepherders, tramps, Wobblies, Okies, "Axis saboteurs," and, in our own time, environmentalists, (indirectly) endangered and protected species, gays, and terrorists. The search for arsonists is, of course, on again -- and one has so far been identified, a boy, possibly only 10 years old, playing with matches whose case is now being turned over to the district attorney for possible prosecution.
And finally, it's predictable that "the essential land-use issue, the rampant, uncontrolled proliferation of firebelt suburbs," is ignored; while, in the rush to fight the ensuing fires, vast sums of taxpayer money are functionally spent on luxury enclaves and gated hilltop suburbs. As Davis concluded back in 1998, but might as well have written last night, "Needless to say, there is no comparable investment in the fire, toxic, or earthquake safety of inner-city communities. Instead, as in so many things, we tolerate two systems of hazard prevention, separate and unequal."
And the worst of it is that "fire itself accelerates gentrification" in those former wildlands. Charred hillside? All the better to build, my dear…
The fate of prophets is, of course, to be ignored. Nobody raises statues to them. Tom
San Diego Builds a Statue to an Arsonist
Developers with Matches
By Mike Davis
This August, just as the first Santa Ana winds bent the boughs of the eucalyptus trees in Balboa Park, 500 wealthy business people and Republican Party donors raised their champagne glasses to salute "Mr. San Diego," Pete Wilson, as he unveiled a bronze statue of himself in downtown's Horton Plaza. Wilson, of course, was the controversial, immigrant-baiting governor of California during the nineties; but the statue specifically apotheosizes his role as the political catalyst for San Diego's "downtown renaissance" during his earlier three terms as mayor of the city (1971-1983).
The 74-year-old Wilson, whose preppy appearance leads strangers to mistake him for an aging member of the Kingston Trio, recalled the bad old days -- before million-dollar condos and billionaire developers took over downtown -- when the nearby "Gaslight District" was a "haven for saloons and tattoo parlors." He praised the memory of his friend and crucial ally in remaking downtown, developer Ernest Hahn, whose statue adjoins his. But it was difficult to make out his words since, across the plaza, several hundred demonstrators, an inspiring coalition of young Latinos and gays, were beating drums, blowing whistles, and chanting "racist!" Some of Wilson's admirers blistered, but Mr. San Diego was characteristically gracious about free speech: "Horses asses," he laughed.
He was cheered by a small group of counter-protestors belonging to one of the Minutemen sects. Although far too scruffy to be invited to join the champagne drinkers, they nonetheless idolize the former governor as the Paul Revere of the Brown Peril (especially for his notorious television reelection ad: "They keep coming…"), as well as the chief megaphone for the passage of Proposition 187 in 1994 which -- had it not been stopped in the courts -- would have expelled immigrant kids from their kindergartens and kicked their mothers out of maternity wards.
It is unclear, however, whether either the immigrant-rights activists or their Minutemen opponents were aware that what they were protesting or applauding was actually self-deification. As the San Diego Union-Tribune (the Copley franchise that has had a total monopoly of the city's daily newspaper market since 1938) reported the next day: "The land under the Wilson and Horton statues is owned by the Irvine Co., the Orange County real estate giant that bought the property recently. Wilson is a member of the company's board of directors."
Most of my friends dream of the day when we can give that statue the same shove that brought down the Colonne de Vendôme in Paris in 1871 or Saddam Hussein's statue in Firdos Square in Baghdad in 2003, but I demur. I think we should simply chisel the word "arsonist" in large letters at the base of the Bronze Pete.
No, I am not suggesting that the ex-governor was seen lurking in the shadow of Palomar or hiding behind an oak at Witch Creek as the fires began to burn -- although who knows what he does with his time when he isn't recruiting for Rudy Giuliani? But, as the protestors rightly won't let the world forget, he deliberately ignited California's nativist underbrush in the early 1990s and started a conflagration of immigrants' rights that now engulfs Latino communities across the United States.
With unctuous arrogance, he mainstreamed Mexican-bashing and opened a Pandora 's Box of California's vigilante past. The Minutemen are one bastard legacy of his; another is public gullibility in the face of absurd rumors and bogus "CNN" press releases ("Mexicans with Molotov cocktails" and the like) that are currently being blogged back and forth across dirty cyberspace. And we should not forget that Wilson was personal trainer, sage, and guru to Schwarzenegger in those early days of 2003 and 2004 when Arnie was praising the Minutemen as "heroes." (The Gubernator, of course, has since been reprogrammed to the political center by Maria Shriver and her technicians.)
But the Wilson legacy also includes an important, if more complex, responsibility for the pattern of urban growth in the San Diego region that now collides so catastrophically with wildfire. As a so-called liberal Republican, even "green" San Diego mayor during the 1970s and early 1980s, he was the chief architect of an enduring system of trade-offs, elite alliances, and sleights of hand that has simultaneously gentrified the downtown area at the expense of the poor and overrun much of San Diego's countryside with pyrophiliac gated suburbs and elite estates -- all the while winning accolades for state-of-the-art "growth management."
In the wake of the auto-da-fé of the city's old guard in the early 1970s (including the arrest and conviction of its two most powerful business figures), Wilson -- initially allied with wealthy Democrats -- skillfully overhauled a geriatric City Hall and soothed the alienation of angry neighborhood homeowners. He slowed piecemeal growth at the urban periphery, which impressed the Sierra Club and environmental voters, although the real logic behind these moves was to transfer control over metropolitan growth from smaller developers to giant companies with the financial resources to undertake the phased construction of upscale suburbs and edge cities.
Wilson's 1976 masterstroke, however, was to horse-trade development rights along the city's northern flanks for new investment in the downtown's faltering redevelopment scheme. Thus, he bartered the beautiful mesas across Interstate 5 from the University of California, San Diego, to (fellow statue) Ernest Hahn (who promptly constructed "University City") in exchange for the latter's agreement to redevelop Horton Plaza downtown. A similar quid pro quo was negotiated for the development of an adjacent "protected" open space as the Pardee Company's "North City West."
These were not just a set of ad hoc deals but a consistent template for an unmatched fusion of real estate and politics. The typical American big-city pattern is chronic competition and political friction between downtown interests and edge developers; in San Diego, by contrast, Wilson brought the suburban builders downtown and so created a unitary and powerful growth machine which, in turn, has greased his wheels and those of his many protégés and successors. (Indeed, Wilson's reputation as the "strongest mayor in San Diego history" is attested by the continued zeal with which all white, male Republicans, including the present mayor and his predecessor, profess loyalty to his achievements.)
This hypertrophying of developer power, which Wilson institutionalized and willed to future generations, has easily survived small popular insurrections against the impact of sprawl and congestion, just as it has surmounted unremitting scandal and corruption in local politics. Pete Wilson's successors have specialized in giving away one priceless city asset after another -- the former Naval Training Center, the Broadway pier, the Fairbanks Ranch, Petco Park, among many others) to the same small elite of billionaires. They are even discussing privatizing the management of San Diego's incomparable Balboa Park.
The imbalance of power is greater yet at the county scale. In the wake of the last round of firestorms in 2003, a grassroots alliance of environmentalists and old-time rural residents tried to slow the subdivision and trophy-home juggernaut by limiting residential density to one home per 100 acres: an initiative inspired by the famous precedent of Oregon's Willamette Valley. They were, however, utterly crushed at the polls (65% to 35%) by a flood of developer money, which disguised itself in ads on television as the voice of embattled "small farmers."
More recently, on the very eve of the new firestorms, county supervisors endorsed a so-called "shelter in place" strategy that will permit developers to build in the rugged, high-fire-risk backcountry without having to provide the secondary roads needed to ensure safe evacuation. Instead residents would be encouraged to stay in their "fire resistant" homes while fire-fighters defended the perimeter of their cul-de-sac. As scores of fire experts and survivors have pointed out in angry op-ed columns and blogs, this is a lunatic, if not homicidal, scheme that elevates developers' bottom-lines over human life. Those who have actually confronted 100-foot-high firestorms, driven by hurricane-velocity winds, know that the developer slogan -- "It's not where you build, but how you build" -- is a deadly deception.
Meanwhile, the new fire cataclysm seems to be rewarding the very insiders most responsible for the uncontrolled building and underfunded fire protection that helped give the Santa Ana winds their real tinder. While conservative ideologues now celebrate San Diego's most recent tragedy as a "triumph" of middle-class values and suburban solidarity, the business community openly gloats over the coming reconstruction boom and the revival of a building industry badly shaken by the mortgage crisis. And the Union-Tribune -- like London papers after the slaughter that was the battle of the Somme in 1915 -- eulogizes the very generalship (all Republicans, of course) that led us into disaster. I suppose these heroes already envision their statues in Horton Plaza.
Mike Davis, who teaches urban history at U.C. Irvine, grew up in the now incinerated backcountry of San Diego County. His other articles about the recent Southern California fires will soon be published in the Nation and the London Review of Books. His most recent book is In Praise of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire (Haymarket 2007).
Tom Dispatch
posted 2007-11-01
Tomgram: Mike Davis, Who Really Set the California Fires?
You can't have too much of a good thing, so let me just quote Mike Davis from 1998 to introduce Mike Davis 2007 on the California fires. In Ecology of Fear, his 1998 book on southern California, he wrote just about everything you'd ever need to know if you didn't want to be surprised by the raging Santa Ana-driven wildfires of 2003 or 2007. After all, there's nothing new about the burning phenomenon on what Davis then dubbed "the fire coast." "A great Malibu firestorm," he wrote, "could generate the heat of three million barrels of burning oil at a temperature of 2,000 degrees." No wonder Cold War era researchers used those California fires to model the behavior of nuclear firestorms.
What remains eternally new (and yet utterly predictable, once you've read Davis) is the increasing amount of tinder we put in the way of such fires in "the suburban-chaparral border zone where wildfire is king" -- and then the fierce fire-suppression campaigns that new, wealthy homeowners in their privatized, gated communities, McMansions, and McCastles demand, which only build further the fuel for the fires that, even in the 1990s, were "becoming ever more apocalyptic." Oh yes, and another thoroughly predictable thing: After hundreds, or thousands, of houses burn, the search for villains begins not among the politicians and developers, pushing human habitation ever deeper into the lands of the firestorm, but for arsonists, "although probably not more than one in eight blazes is caused by arson." The shape of the shape-shifting arsonist has changed over the years: more or less in historical order, according to Davis, they have been Indians, sheepherders, tramps, Wobblies, Okies, "Axis saboteurs," and, in our own time, environmentalists, (indirectly) endangered and protected species, gays, and terrorists. The search for arsonists is, of course, on again -- and one has so far been identified, a boy, possibly only 10 years old, playing with matches whose case is now being turned over to the district attorney for possible prosecution.
And finally, it's predictable that "the essential land-use issue, the rampant, uncontrolled proliferation of firebelt suburbs," is ignored; while, in the rush to fight the ensuing fires, vast sums of taxpayer money are functionally spent on luxury enclaves and gated hilltop suburbs. As Davis concluded back in 1998, but might as well have written last night, "Needless to say, there is no comparable investment in the fire, toxic, or earthquake safety of inner-city communities. Instead, as in so many things, we tolerate two systems of hazard prevention, separate and unequal."
And the worst of it is that "fire itself accelerates gentrification" in those former wildlands. Charred hillside? All the better to build, my dear…
The fate of prophets is, of course, to be ignored. Nobody raises statues to them. Tom
San Diego Builds a Statue to an Arsonist
Developers with Matches
By Mike Davis
This August, just as the first Santa Ana winds bent the boughs of the eucalyptus trees in Balboa Park, 500 wealthy business people and Republican Party donors raised their champagne glasses to salute "Mr. San Diego," Pete Wilson, as he unveiled a bronze statue of himself in downtown's Horton Plaza. Wilson, of course, was the controversial, immigrant-baiting governor of California during the nineties; but the statue specifically apotheosizes his role as the political catalyst for San Diego's "downtown renaissance" during his earlier three terms as mayor of the city (1971-1983).
The 74-year-old Wilson, whose preppy appearance leads strangers to mistake him for an aging member of the Kingston Trio, recalled the bad old days -- before million-dollar condos and billionaire developers took over downtown -- when the nearby "Gaslight District" was a "haven for saloons and tattoo parlors." He praised the memory of his friend and crucial ally in remaking downtown, developer Ernest Hahn, whose statue adjoins his. But it was difficult to make out his words since, across the plaza, several hundred demonstrators, an inspiring coalition of young Latinos and gays, were beating drums, blowing whistles, and chanting "racist!" Some of Wilson's admirers blistered, but Mr. San Diego was characteristically gracious about free speech: "Horses asses," he laughed.
He was cheered by a small group of counter-protestors belonging to one of the Minutemen sects. Although far too scruffy to be invited to join the champagne drinkers, they nonetheless idolize the former governor as the Paul Revere of the Brown Peril (especially for his notorious television reelection ad: "They keep coming…"), as well as the chief megaphone for the passage of Proposition 187 in 1994 which -- had it not been stopped in the courts -- would have expelled immigrant kids from their kindergartens and kicked their mothers out of maternity wards.
It is unclear, however, whether either the immigrant-rights activists or their Minutemen opponents were aware that what they were protesting or applauding was actually self-deification. As the San Diego Union-Tribune (the Copley franchise that has had a total monopoly of the city's daily newspaper market since 1938) reported the next day: "The land under the Wilson and Horton statues is owned by the Irvine Co., the Orange County real estate giant that bought the property recently. Wilson is a member of the company's board of directors."
Most of my friends dream of the day when we can give that statue the same shove that brought down the Colonne de Vendôme in Paris in 1871 or Saddam Hussein's statue in Firdos Square in Baghdad in 2003, but I demur. I think we should simply chisel the word "arsonist" in large letters at the base of the Bronze Pete.
No, I am not suggesting that the ex-governor was seen lurking in the shadow of Palomar or hiding behind an oak at Witch Creek as the fires began to burn -- although who knows what he does with his time when he isn't recruiting for Rudy Giuliani? But, as the protestors rightly won't let the world forget, he deliberately ignited California's nativist underbrush in the early 1990s and started a conflagration of immigrants' rights that now engulfs Latino communities across the United States.
With unctuous arrogance, he mainstreamed Mexican-bashing and opened a Pandora 's Box of California's vigilante past. The Minutemen are one bastard legacy of his; another is public gullibility in the face of absurd rumors and bogus "CNN" press releases ("Mexicans with Molotov cocktails" and the like) that are currently being blogged back and forth across dirty cyberspace. And we should not forget that Wilson was personal trainer, sage, and guru to Schwarzenegger in those early days of 2003 and 2004 when Arnie was praising the Minutemen as "heroes." (The Gubernator, of course, has since been reprogrammed to the political center by Maria Shriver and her technicians.)
But the Wilson legacy also includes an important, if more complex, responsibility for the pattern of urban growth in the San Diego region that now collides so catastrophically with wildfire. As a so-called liberal Republican, even "green" San Diego mayor during the 1970s and early 1980s, he was the chief architect of an enduring system of trade-offs, elite alliances, and sleights of hand that has simultaneously gentrified the downtown area at the expense of the poor and overrun much of San Diego's countryside with pyrophiliac gated suburbs and elite estates -- all the while winning accolades for state-of-the-art "growth management."
In the wake of the auto-da-fé of the city's old guard in the early 1970s (including the arrest and conviction of its two most powerful business figures), Wilson -- initially allied with wealthy Democrats -- skillfully overhauled a geriatric City Hall and soothed the alienation of angry neighborhood homeowners. He slowed piecemeal growth at the urban periphery, which impressed the Sierra Club and environmental voters, although the real logic behind these moves was to transfer control over metropolitan growth from smaller developers to giant companies with the financial resources to undertake the phased construction of upscale suburbs and edge cities.
Wilson's 1976 masterstroke, however, was to horse-trade development rights along the city's northern flanks for new investment in the downtown's faltering redevelopment scheme. Thus, he bartered the beautiful mesas across Interstate 5 from the University of California, San Diego, to (fellow statue) Ernest Hahn (who promptly constructed "University City") in exchange for the latter's agreement to redevelop Horton Plaza downtown. A similar quid pro quo was negotiated for the development of an adjacent "protected" open space as the Pardee Company's "North City West."
These were not just a set of ad hoc deals but a consistent template for an unmatched fusion of real estate and politics. The typical American big-city pattern is chronic competition and political friction between downtown interests and edge developers; in San Diego, by contrast, Wilson brought the suburban builders downtown and so created a unitary and powerful growth machine which, in turn, has greased his wheels and those of his many protégés and successors. (Indeed, Wilson's reputation as the "strongest mayor in San Diego history" is attested by the continued zeal with which all white, male Republicans, including the present mayor and his predecessor, profess loyalty to his achievements.)
This hypertrophying of developer power, which Wilson institutionalized and willed to future generations, has easily survived small popular insurrections against the impact of sprawl and congestion, just as it has surmounted unremitting scandal and corruption in local politics. Pete Wilson's successors have specialized in giving away one priceless city asset after another -- the former Naval Training Center, the Broadway pier, the Fairbanks Ranch, Petco Park, among many others) to the same small elite of billionaires. They are even discussing privatizing the management of San Diego's incomparable Balboa Park.
The imbalance of power is greater yet at the county scale. In the wake of the last round of firestorms in 2003, a grassroots alliance of environmentalists and old-time rural residents tried to slow the subdivision and trophy-home juggernaut by limiting residential density to one home per 100 acres: an initiative inspired by the famous precedent of Oregon's Willamette Valley. They were, however, utterly crushed at the polls (65% to 35%) by a flood of developer money, which disguised itself in ads on television as the voice of embattled "small farmers."
More recently, on the very eve of the new firestorms, county supervisors endorsed a so-called "shelter in place" strategy that will permit developers to build in the rugged, high-fire-risk backcountry without having to provide the secondary roads needed to ensure safe evacuation. Instead residents would be encouraged to stay in their "fire resistant" homes while fire-fighters defended the perimeter of their cul-de-sac. As scores of fire experts and survivors have pointed out in angry op-ed columns and blogs, this is a lunatic, if not homicidal, scheme that elevates developers' bottom-lines over human life. Those who have actually confronted 100-foot-high firestorms, driven by hurricane-velocity winds, know that the developer slogan -- "It's not where you build, but how you build" -- is a deadly deception.
Meanwhile, the new fire cataclysm seems to be rewarding the very insiders most responsible for the uncontrolled building and underfunded fire protection that helped give the Santa Ana winds their real tinder. While conservative ideologues now celebrate San Diego's most recent tragedy as a "triumph" of middle-class values and suburban solidarity, the business community openly gloats over the coming reconstruction boom and the revival of a building industry badly shaken by the mortgage crisis. And the Union-Tribune -- like London papers after the slaughter that was the battle of the Somme in 1915 -- eulogizes the very generalship (all Republicans, of course) that led us into disaster. I suppose these heroes already envision their statues in Horton Plaza.
Mike Davis, who teaches urban history at U.C. Irvine, grew up in the now incinerated backcountry of San Diego County. His other articles about the recent Southern California fires will soon be published in the Nation and the London Review of Books. His most recent book is In Praise of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire (Haymarket 2007).
Cerberus boss in the spotlight
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article2651556.ece
From The Sunday Times
October 14, 2007
Cerberus boss in the spotlight
Stephen Feinberg found himself in the public eye last week – and there may be more to comeDominic Rushe in New York
FOR six-and-a-half hours last week, Stephen Feinberg faced the toughest, most high-profile test of his glittering career.
Feinberg, the boss of Cerberus, a New York-based private-equity firm (with the emphasis on private), was fighting shy of the limelight and refusing to take calls from the press.
But as workers at Cerberus-owned Chrysler walked out on strike, it briefly looked like Feinberg and his firm would be making headlines for weeks to come.
So the fiercely private financier was the most relieved man in Manhattan when the strike was called off.
However, now Cerberus has been linked with Northern Rock, he may find himself quickly back in the public eye.
Over 15 years Feinberg has built Cerberus into a global powerhouse that owns companies across the world, generating revenues in excess of $60 billion (£29.4 billion).
In the recent bull market boom, other private-equity firms and their bosses - like Henry Kravis at KKR and Stephen Schwarzman at Blackstone - have, for better or worse, become famous names. It would be a fair bet that few Chrysler workers had heard of Cerberus before it swooped on the car firm in May. But this is Cerberus’s moment in the glare of the media spotlight.
Named after the three-headed hound that in Greek mythology guards the gates of Hades, Cerberus specialises in snapping up “distressed assets”.
With the credit-market turmoil still reverberating around the world, it’s a dog-eat-dog world - and cash-rich Cerberus is emerging at the head of the pack. The firm has long been making quiet inroads in Europe. Now it is reported to be slavering over Northern Rock, another high-profile and troubled asset.
Not that the company believes it is any more secretive than its rivals. According to John Snow, Cerberus chairman and former US Treasury secretary, it’s not a reputation Cerberus deserves.
“I chuckle when I hear it,” he told The Sunday Times. “I just got back last night from addressing 2,000 people at a private-equity conference in Las Vegas. The prior week I was in Turkey.”
He said the “secrecy” label arose from Feinberg’s desire to remain a private individual and concentrate on business.
Unlike Schwarzman, whose lavish 60th birthday party earlier this year was a gossip columnist’s dream, Feinberg does not flaunt his wealth. The son of a steel salesman, he describes himself as “blue-collar” and lives in a relatively modest Manhattan apartment. He prefers hunting and motorbikes to golf and polo. Even the company’s Park Avenue offices are low-key, their coffee-stained carpets and cheap prints a world away from the glamorous headquarters of KKR and Blackstone.
“He’s from upstate New York, he did history at Princeton, rather than maths or finance, and played sport - he was a jock,” said one associate.
Another said: “Steve is very down to earth. He still drives a pickup truck, likes his comforts but isn’t flashy. But he is fiercely ambitious for Cerberus.”
But as Cerberus grows it is being forced to think about its public image and tone down its tough reputation.
Last week’s deal between Chrysler and the unions showed a willingness to compromise. The company reversed plans to spin off its Mopar parts division and its transport operation, giving in on a sensitive union issue.
There will be more pain to come at Chrysler. The company has said its labour costs are equivalent to $75.86 an hour a worker, compared with $47.60 at Toyota.
But Cerberus is keen to emphasise that it sees its investments as long term, not strip and flip.
“We are not interested in a quick turnround. We have to be patient,” said Snow. “Ours is not a financial engineering model. We focus on the internal operations and a belief that the company we have bought has the potential to perform a lot better than it has been doing.”
In Britain, Cerberus recently bought Focus, the DIY group that had been held up as an example of the excesses of the private-equity industry.
Former owners Apax and Duke loaded the company with debt and took the proceeds out for themselves, leaving Focus with crippling interest payments which brought it close to collapse.
Focus changed hands in June for just £1 after Cerberus agreed to pay off £174m of the debt. The Focus debt peaked at £280m, but is now below £100m.
Cerberus employs a deep bench of former chief executives and big political names including Dan Quayle, the former US vice-president, and Jonathan Bloomer, the ex-Prudential chief executive, to advise on new acquisitions.
Snow said that this management expertise allowed the firm to see opportunities others miss. And he expects there will be plenty more in the months to come.
“We are seeing a lot of companies with distress on their balance sheet,” said Snow.
He said changing cycles in the credit market were still having a profound effect on companies across the world. There were still assets in the system whose price was at best “cloudy”. “Some are calling it a virus,” said Snow. “It’s not simply a US problem.”
The globalisation of financial markets means that companies across the world have investments tied up in financial products such as collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) - made up of portfolios of mortgages - whose true value is now under question.
“This presents a great opportunity for private-equity firms who know what they are doing - but you have got to know what you are doing,” he said.
One such opportunity is Northern Rock, the troubled British lender now being pursued by Virgin, Cerberus and a raft of other would-be buyers.
Snow said he would not comment on specific deals the company may or may not be interested in, “but obviously that is a very visible example of the broader problems in the market”, he said.
A problem that is giving Cerberus plenty to chew on.
From The Sunday Times
October 14, 2007
Cerberus boss in the spotlight
Stephen Feinberg found himself in the public eye last week – and there may be more to comeDominic Rushe in New York
FOR six-and-a-half hours last week, Stephen Feinberg faced the toughest, most high-profile test of his glittering career.
Feinberg, the boss of Cerberus, a New York-based private-equity firm (with the emphasis on private), was fighting shy of the limelight and refusing to take calls from the press.
But as workers at Cerberus-owned Chrysler walked out on strike, it briefly looked like Feinberg and his firm would be making headlines for weeks to come.
So the fiercely private financier was the most relieved man in Manhattan when the strike was called off.
However, now Cerberus has been linked with Northern Rock, he may find himself quickly back in the public eye.
Over 15 years Feinberg has built Cerberus into a global powerhouse that owns companies across the world, generating revenues in excess of $60 billion (£29.4 billion).
In the recent bull market boom, other private-equity firms and their bosses - like Henry Kravis at KKR and Stephen Schwarzman at Blackstone - have, for better or worse, become famous names. It would be a fair bet that few Chrysler workers had heard of Cerberus before it swooped on the car firm in May. But this is Cerberus’s moment in the glare of the media spotlight.
Named after the three-headed hound that in Greek mythology guards the gates of Hades, Cerberus specialises in snapping up “distressed assets”.
With the credit-market turmoil still reverberating around the world, it’s a dog-eat-dog world - and cash-rich Cerberus is emerging at the head of the pack. The firm has long been making quiet inroads in Europe. Now it is reported to be slavering over Northern Rock, another high-profile and troubled asset.
Not that the company believes it is any more secretive than its rivals. According to John Snow, Cerberus chairman and former US Treasury secretary, it’s not a reputation Cerberus deserves.
“I chuckle when I hear it,” he told The Sunday Times. “I just got back last night from addressing 2,000 people at a private-equity conference in Las Vegas. The prior week I was in Turkey.”
He said the “secrecy” label arose from Feinberg’s desire to remain a private individual and concentrate on business.
Unlike Schwarzman, whose lavish 60th birthday party earlier this year was a gossip columnist’s dream, Feinberg does not flaunt his wealth. The son of a steel salesman, he describes himself as “blue-collar” and lives in a relatively modest Manhattan apartment. He prefers hunting and motorbikes to golf and polo. Even the company’s Park Avenue offices are low-key, their coffee-stained carpets and cheap prints a world away from the glamorous headquarters of KKR and Blackstone.
“He’s from upstate New York, he did history at Princeton, rather than maths or finance, and played sport - he was a jock,” said one associate.
Another said: “Steve is very down to earth. He still drives a pickup truck, likes his comforts but isn’t flashy. But he is fiercely ambitious for Cerberus.”
But as Cerberus grows it is being forced to think about its public image and tone down its tough reputation.
Last week’s deal between Chrysler and the unions showed a willingness to compromise. The company reversed plans to spin off its Mopar parts division and its transport operation, giving in on a sensitive union issue.
There will be more pain to come at Chrysler. The company has said its labour costs are equivalent to $75.86 an hour a worker, compared with $47.60 at Toyota.
But Cerberus is keen to emphasise that it sees its investments as long term, not strip and flip.
“We are not interested in a quick turnround. We have to be patient,” said Snow. “Ours is not a financial engineering model. We focus on the internal operations and a belief that the company we have bought has the potential to perform a lot better than it has been doing.”
In Britain, Cerberus recently bought Focus, the DIY group that had been held up as an example of the excesses of the private-equity industry.
Former owners Apax and Duke loaded the company with debt and took the proceeds out for themselves, leaving Focus with crippling interest payments which brought it close to collapse.
Focus changed hands in June for just £1 after Cerberus agreed to pay off £174m of the debt. The Focus debt peaked at £280m, but is now below £100m.
Cerberus employs a deep bench of former chief executives and big political names including Dan Quayle, the former US vice-president, and Jonathan Bloomer, the ex-Prudential chief executive, to advise on new acquisitions.
Snow said that this management expertise allowed the firm to see opportunities others miss. And he expects there will be plenty more in the months to come.
“We are seeing a lot of companies with distress on their balance sheet,” said Snow.
He said changing cycles in the credit market were still having a profound effect on companies across the world. There were still assets in the system whose price was at best “cloudy”. “Some are calling it a virus,” said Snow. “It’s not simply a US problem.”
The globalisation of financial markets means that companies across the world have investments tied up in financial products such as collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) - made up of portfolios of mortgages - whose true value is now under question.
“This presents a great opportunity for private-equity firms who know what they are doing - but you have got to know what you are doing,” he said.
One such opportunity is Northern Rock, the troubled British lender now being pursued by Virgin, Cerberus and a raft of other would-be buyers.
Snow said he would not comment on specific deals the company may or may not be interested in, “but obviously that is a very visible example of the broader problems in the market”, he said.
A problem that is giving Cerberus plenty to chew on.
Chrysler Follows the Strip-and-Flip Playbook
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2007/11/01/chrysler-follows-the-strip-and-flip-playbook?addComment=true
Nov 1 2007
Chrysler Follows the Strip-and-Flip Playbook
The Private Equity Council has what might seem to be a very tough job: persuading lawmakers that private equity principals shouldn't pay income tax on their income. In reality, however, the job is easier than that – all they need to do is donate enormous sums of money to both political parties, and then come up with a fig-leaf talking point or two that the politicians can use to justify their pusillanimity. Foremost among these talking points is that private equity, far from following the strip-and-flip playbook, actually creates employment.
Well, it's lucky that the idea of taxing private equity principals seems to have fallen into abeyance at this point, because Cerberus has just announced another 10,000 or so job cuts, on top of the 13,000 layoffs it announced in February. Worse, it's done so while maxmizing corporatespeak:
"We have to move now to adjust the way our company looks and acts to reflect a smaller market," said Chrysler President Tom LaSorda on Thursday. "That means a cost base that is right-sized and an appropriate level of plant utilization."
A cost base that is right-sized? Does LaSorda seriously believe that talking like this will get him any brownie points with his employees or the general public? (His shareholders don't care in the slightest about what he says, only about what he achieves.)
If Stephen Feinberg makes hundreds of millions of dollars on this Chrysler deal as a result of slashing jobs ("right-sizing") his cost base, it's going to be very hard for him to make the case that he's contributing so much to the greater good that he shouldn't have to pay much in the way of tax on his profits. Still, I'm sure that his buddies at the Private Equity Council will do their best to try.
Nov 1 2007
Chrysler Follows the Strip-and-Flip Playbook
The Private Equity Council has what might seem to be a very tough job: persuading lawmakers that private equity principals shouldn't pay income tax on their income. In reality, however, the job is easier than that – all they need to do is donate enormous sums of money to both political parties, and then come up with a fig-leaf talking point or two that the politicians can use to justify their pusillanimity. Foremost among these talking points is that private equity, far from following the strip-and-flip playbook, actually creates employment.
Well, it's lucky that the idea of taxing private equity principals seems to have fallen into abeyance at this point, because Cerberus has just announced another 10,000 or so job cuts, on top of the 13,000 layoffs it announced in February. Worse, it's done so while maxmizing corporatespeak:
"We have to move now to adjust the way our company looks and acts to reflect a smaller market," said Chrysler President Tom LaSorda on Thursday. "That means a cost base that is right-sized and an appropriate level of plant utilization."
A cost base that is right-sized? Does LaSorda seriously believe that talking like this will get him any brownie points with his employees or the general public? (His shareholders don't care in the slightest about what he says, only about what he achieves.)
If Stephen Feinberg makes hundreds of millions of dollars on this Chrysler deal as a result of slashing jobs ("right-sizing") his cost base, it's going to be very hard for him to make the case that he's contributing so much to the greater good that he shouldn't have to pay much in the way of tax on his profits. Still, I'm sure that his buddies at the Private Equity Council will do their best to try.
Chrysler and the Fallibility of Private Equity
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/chrysler-and-the-fallibility-of-private-equity/
Chrysler and the Fallibility of Private Equity
November 1, 2007
Chrysler’s statement Thursday that it would cut 11,000 jobs — on top of the 13,000 layoffs it announced in February — came as a surprise to many industry watchers. “The market situation has changed dramatically,” Chrysler’s chief executive, Robert L. Nardelli, said.
It also raises a few questions: Why didn’t Chrysler’s owner, the buyout firm Cerberus Capital Management, foresee this when it bought the auto maker just five months ago? After all, haven’t private equity chiefs built their billions on the idea that they are more farsighted than just about anyone else?
Cerberus isn’t the only private equity firm whose crystal ball is looking a bit cracked these days. J.C. Flowers apparently failed to anticipate the passage of a new law reducing government subsidies to student lenders, legislation that it says disproportionately hurts Sallie Mae. The Blackstone Group and Lone Star Funds tried to buy mortgage lenders as that market collapsed, in deals that are or were on the verge of collapsing.
According to The New York Times, auto industry sales in February were running at an annual rate of 17.2 million vehicles. But Mr. Nardelli said Thursday that sales had softened since then, adding that the company expected the slower pace to continue into 2008.
At the outset of his tenure, Mr. Nardelli had said he planned no big changes to Chrysler’s latest turnaround program. ‘’They got it,'’ he said of Chrysler management at the time. ‘’If we can do it faster, if we can do it more efficiently, that’s what we want to do.'’
When Cerberus selected him as Chrysler’s new chief executive, many observers, and Mr. Nardelli himself, noted that he lacked auto-industry expertise. But he was picked for his operational skills and experience, honed during his rise at General Electric. He was also known as a hard-nosed boss, one who routinely took employees to task and was unafraid of making hard decisions.
It is at least a little surprising that Mr. Nardelli and his team, then, didn’t see the market conditions eroding. However, it’s also true that in taking companies private, buyout firms can make the changes they need to away from the public eye, without angry shareholders to drive the stock price down.
Thursday’s additional job cuts could leave egg on the face of the auto unions. As Daimler prepared to sell Chrysler, Buzz Hargrove, the head of the Canadian Auto Workers Union, said that handing the company keys to a buyout firm would be the “worst-case” scenario.
“Our fear is private equity,” Mr. Hargrove told The Washington Post in March. “They are not out to build cars. It could mean throwing a lot of people out of work and then reselling” the company.”
Yet the unions were brought round to Cerberus as a new owner. In a statement announcing the Chrysler sale, the United Automobile Workers’ president, Ron Gettelfinger, said the deal “was in the best interests of our U.A.W. members, the Chrysler Group and Daimler.”
On Thursday, Mr. Hargrove of the Canadian union said at a news conference: “This is a huge hit to us.”
Of course, it’s possible that the Cerberus crew did see this coming — but decided to wait until now to announce the extra layoffs to ease the blow.
Chrysler and the Fallibility of Private Equity
November 1, 2007
Chrysler’s statement Thursday that it would cut 11,000 jobs — on top of the 13,000 layoffs it announced in February — came as a surprise to many industry watchers. “The market situation has changed dramatically,” Chrysler’s chief executive, Robert L. Nardelli, said.
It also raises a few questions: Why didn’t Chrysler’s owner, the buyout firm Cerberus Capital Management, foresee this when it bought the auto maker just five months ago? After all, haven’t private equity chiefs built their billions on the idea that they are more farsighted than just about anyone else?
Cerberus isn’t the only private equity firm whose crystal ball is looking a bit cracked these days. J.C. Flowers apparently failed to anticipate the passage of a new law reducing government subsidies to student lenders, legislation that it says disproportionately hurts Sallie Mae. The Blackstone Group and Lone Star Funds tried to buy mortgage lenders as that market collapsed, in deals that are or were on the verge of collapsing.
According to The New York Times, auto industry sales in February were running at an annual rate of 17.2 million vehicles. But Mr. Nardelli said Thursday that sales had softened since then, adding that the company expected the slower pace to continue into 2008.
At the outset of his tenure, Mr. Nardelli had said he planned no big changes to Chrysler’s latest turnaround program. ‘’They got it,'’ he said of Chrysler management at the time. ‘’If we can do it faster, if we can do it more efficiently, that’s what we want to do.'’
When Cerberus selected him as Chrysler’s new chief executive, many observers, and Mr. Nardelli himself, noted that he lacked auto-industry expertise. But he was picked for his operational skills and experience, honed during his rise at General Electric. He was also known as a hard-nosed boss, one who routinely took employees to task and was unafraid of making hard decisions.
It is at least a little surprising that Mr. Nardelli and his team, then, didn’t see the market conditions eroding. However, it’s also true that in taking companies private, buyout firms can make the changes they need to away from the public eye, without angry shareholders to drive the stock price down.
Thursday’s additional job cuts could leave egg on the face of the auto unions. As Daimler prepared to sell Chrysler, Buzz Hargrove, the head of the Canadian Auto Workers Union, said that handing the company keys to a buyout firm would be the “worst-case” scenario.
“Our fear is private equity,” Mr. Hargrove told The Washington Post in March. “They are not out to build cars. It could mean throwing a lot of people out of work and then reselling” the company.”
Yet the unions were brought round to Cerberus as a new owner. In a statement announcing the Chrysler sale, the United Automobile Workers’ president, Ron Gettelfinger, said the deal “was in the best interests of our U.A.W. members, the Chrysler Group and Daimler.”
On Thursday, Mr. Hargrove of the Canadian union said at a news conference: “This is a huge hit to us.”
Of course, it’s possible that the Cerberus crew did see this coming — but decided to wait until now to announce the extra layoffs to ease the blow.
Chrysler Takes Biggest Steps Yet To Slash Costs
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200711011500DOWJONESDJONLINE001010_FORTUNE5.htm
Chrysler Takes Biggest Steps Yet To Slash Costs
November 01, 2007
By Jeff Bennett
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
DETROIT - (Dow Jones) - Chrysler LLC will cut its North American blue-collar workforce almost in half by 2010 as part of the auto maker's most dramatic attempt yet to slash costs and return to profitability.
The announcement Thursday of as many as 10,000 additional hourly job cuts by the No.3 U.S. auto maker, coming amid planned job cuts by General Motors Corp. ( GM) and auto-parts maker Visteon Corp. (VC), signals that restructuring in the U.S. auto industry is far from over as auto makers face a weakening sales environment. Analysts project U.S. auto sales next year to be flat or lower than the 16 million vehicle sales expected in 2007.
The latest cuts by Chrysler go much deeper than industry experts had expected and also greatly expand on the restructuring plan announced in February, after the company reported a $680 million loss for 2006 and was put up for sale by the former DaimlerChrysler AG. Cerberus Capital Management LP bought an 80.1% stake in the U.S. auto maker in August.
"This raises questions on whether there are more problems at Chrysler than what we previously thought," said George Magliano, director of industry research for North America for Global Insight. "Eventually this will make Chrysler stronger, but it will be a smaller company."
Chrysler Chief Executive Officer Bob Nardelli said the "market situation changed dramatically" since the February plan was released. Nardelli, the former Home Depot CEO who was named to the top spot at Chrysler in August, noted that U.S. car sales have slumped throughout the year, and said the sluggishness is expected to continue into 2008.
Cutting Salaried Jobs, Discontinuing Models
The auto maker will trim shifts at five plants resulting in job cuts of between 8,500 and 10,000 hourly workers in 2008. Those cuts are in addition to the 11,000 hourly workers Chrysler said it would cut by 2010, as part of the plan announced in February. The full reduction will slice Chrysler's unionized North American workforce to about 24,000 from 45,000, a 47% cut.
Under the plan, third-shift operations will be eliminated at the Toledo North assembly plant in Toledo, Ohio, and at assembly plants in Belvidere, Ill., and Brampton, Ontario. Second shift operations will be halted at the Sterling Heights, Mich., plant and the Jefferson North plant in Detroit. The Jefferson North plant is slated to return to two shifts in the first quarter of 2010 and a third shift could be added depending on market demand.
Also, Chrysler said it will cut another 1,000 salaried employees. That follows the auto maker's announcement in February that it planned to cut 2,000 salaried workers.
Rounding out Thursday's job cut announcement, Chrysler will chop 37% of its so-called contract workers and eliminate overtime for all employees.
Chrysler is dumping the Dodge Magnum, the convertible version of the Chrysler PT Cruiser, the Chrysler Pacifica and Chrysler Crossfire. Two new vehicles will be launched in the next 14 months, as well as hybrid versions of the Chrysler Aspen and Dodge Durango.
"These action reflect our new customer-driven philosophy and allow us to focus our resources on new, more profitable and appealing products," Chrysler co- President Jim Press said in a statement.
United Auto Workers spokesman Roger Kerson could not be reached for comment on Thursday's job cut announcement. Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers, called it "devastating news."
"It has to be obvious to everyone that you can't bargain job security," Hargrove said at a press conference. He said cutting a shift at the Brampton plant would eliminate between 1,000 and 1,100 jobs.
Chrysler's announcement comes five days after members of the UAW narrowly approved a new four-year contract with the Auburn Hills, Mich.-based auto maker. Some UAW local presidents voiced opposition to the agreement, claiming the deal didn't provide enough job security. Chrysler said the new contract committed the automaker to spend more than $15 billion on products and plants through 2011.
Part Of Broader Industry Restructuring
The additional cost cuts at Chrysler are part of an ongoing two-year retrenchment in the auto industry and may signal that more restructuring lies ahead.
"The cuts we have seen by the auto makers and parts suppliers over the past two years were generally geared to get structurally in line with the overall industry," said Charles Moore, a managing director of the turnaround firm Conway MacKenzie & Dunleavy based in Birmingham, Mich.
"Now they are at the point where they have to adjust their costs to remain profitable and create a cushion if there is a down sales year," Moore said. "The cuts are difficult but they are necessary."
Visteon, one of the largest U.S. auto parts makers, confirmed Thursday that it will eliminate another 500 salaried workers in North America and Europe. Those cuts start sometime this month and will end by the middle of 2008, spokeswoman Kimberly Goode said in an interview. The Van Buren Township, Mich., company cut 900 salaried workers last year.
Ford Motor Co. (F) is in the midst of evaluating its 2008 budgets and re- examining its economic and cost-cutting assumptions for the next couple of years, people familiar with Ford's deliberations have said. The auto maker hasn't determined whether it will need to increase its job-cutting plans, but may come to that conclusion soon, according to two Ford managers.
Budgets could be squeezed by an additional 10% to 15% in some departments, these executives said.
GM, meantime, recently announced it will phase out a shift at its Lansing, Mich., plant and reduce production at a truck plant resulting in a total job loss of 2,900.
The continued cuts by the auto makers will result in more bankruptcies next year as smaller suppliers, who can't make worker cuts, seek financial relief, Moore said.
-By Jeff Bennett, Dow Jones Newswires; (248) 204-5542; jeff.bennett@dowjones.com
(Terry Kosdrosky and Kevin Kingsbury contributed to this story.)
Chrysler Takes Biggest Steps Yet To Slash Costs
November 01, 2007
By Jeff Bennett
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
DETROIT - (Dow Jones) - Chrysler LLC will cut its North American blue-collar workforce almost in half by 2010 as part of the auto maker's most dramatic attempt yet to slash costs and return to profitability.
The announcement Thursday of as many as 10,000 additional hourly job cuts by the No.3 U.S. auto maker, coming amid planned job cuts by General Motors Corp. ( GM) and auto-parts maker Visteon Corp. (VC), signals that restructuring in the U.S. auto industry is far from over as auto makers face a weakening sales environment. Analysts project U.S. auto sales next year to be flat or lower than the 16 million vehicle sales expected in 2007.
The latest cuts by Chrysler go much deeper than industry experts had expected and also greatly expand on the restructuring plan announced in February, after the company reported a $680 million loss for 2006 and was put up for sale by the former DaimlerChrysler AG. Cerberus Capital Management LP bought an 80.1% stake in the U.S. auto maker in August.
"This raises questions on whether there are more problems at Chrysler than what we previously thought," said George Magliano, director of industry research for North America for Global Insight. "Eventually this will make Chrysler stronger, but it will be a smaller company."
Chrysler Chief Executive Officer Bob Nardelli said the "market situation changed dramatically" since the February plan was released. Nardelli, the former Home Depot CEO who was named to the top spot at Chrysler in August, noted that U.S. car sales have slumped throughout the year, and said the sluggishness is expected to continue into 2008.
Cutting Salaried Jobs, Discontinuing Models
The auto maker will trim shifts at five plants resulting in job cuts of between 8,500 and 10,000 hourly workers in 2008. Those cuts are in addition to the 11,000 hourly workers Chrysler said it would cut by 2010, as part of the plan announced in February. The full reduction will slice Chrysler's unionized North American workforce to about 24,000 from 45,000, a 47% cut.
Under the plan, third-shift operations will be eliminated at the Toledo North assembly plant in Toledo, Ohio, and at assembly plants in Belvidere, Ill., and Brampton, Ontario. Second shift operations will be halted at the Sterling Heights, Mich., plant and the Jefferson North plant in Detroit. The Jefferson North plant is slated to return to two shifts in the first quarter of 2010 and a third shift could be added depending on market demand.
Also, Chrysler said it will cut another 1,000 salaried employees. That follows the auto maker's announcement in February that it planned to cut 2,000 salaried workers.
Rounding out Thursday's job cut announcement, Chrysler will chop 37% of its so-called contract workers and eliminate overtime for all employees.
Chrysler is dumping the Dodge Magnum, the convertible version of the Chrysler PT Cruiser, the Chrysler Pacifica and Chrysler Crossfire. Two new vehicles will be launched in the next 14 months, as well as hybrid versions of the Chrysler Aspen and Dodge Durango.
"These action reflect our new customer-driven philosophy and allow us to focus our resources on new, more profitable and appealing products," Chrysler co- President Jim Press said in a statement.
United Auto Workers spokesman Roger Kerson could not be reached for comment on Thursday's job cut announcement. Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers, called it "devastating news."
"It has to be obvious to everyone that you can't bargain job security," Hargrove said at a press conference. He said cutting a shift at the Brampton plant would eliminate between 1,000 and 1,100 jobs.
Chrysler's announcement comes five days after members of the UAW narrowly approved a new four-year contract with the Auburn Hills, Mich.-based auto maker. Some UAW local presidents voiced opposition to the agreement, claiming the deal didn't provide enough job security. Chrysler said the new contract committed the automaker to spend more than $15 billion on products and plants through 2011.
Part Of Broader Industry Restructuring
The additional cost cuts at Chrysler are part of an ongoing two-year retrenchment in the auto industry and may signal that more restructuring lies ahead.
"The cuts we have seen by the auto makers and parts suppliers over the past two years were generally geared to get structurally in line with the overall industry," said Charles Moore, a managing director of the turnaround firm Conway MacKenzie & Dunleavy based in Birmingham, Mich.
"Now they are at the point where they have to adjust their costs to remain profitable and create a cushion if there is a down sales year," Moore said. "The cuts are difficult but they are necessary."
Visteon, one of the largest U.S. auto parts makers, confirmed Thursday that it will eliminate another 500 salaried workers in North America and Europe. Those cuts start sometime this month and will end by the middle of 2008, spokeswoman Kimberly Goode said in an interview. The Van Buren Township, Mich., company cut 900 salaried workers last year.
Ford Motor Co. (F) is in the midst of evaluating its 2008 budgets and re- examining its economic and cost-cutting assumptions for the next couple of years, people familiar with Ford's deliberations have said. The auto maker hasn't determined whether it will need to increase its job-cutting plans, but may come to that conclusion soon, according to two Ford managers.
Budgets could be squeezed by an additional 10% to 15% in some departments, these executives said.
GM, meantime, recently announced it will phase out a shift at its Lansing, Mich., plant and reduce production at a truck plant resulting in a total job loss of 2,900.
The continued cuts by the auto makers will result in more bankruptcies next year as smaller suppliers, who can't make worker cuts, seek financial relief, Moore said.
-By Jeff Bennett, Dow Jones Newswires; (248) 204-5542; jeff.bennett@dowjones.com
(Terry Kosdrosky and Kevin Kingsbury contributed to this story.)
CLEAR CHANNEL OUT TO KILL MAGIC?
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2007/10/clear-channel-republican-propaganda.html
DownWithTyranny!
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." - Sinclair Lewis
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
CLEAR CHANNEL, REPUBLICAN PROPAGANDA NETWORK, OUT TO KILL SPRINGSTEEN'S MAGIC?
If you look for Springsteen in Google News, you get one rave review of his live sold out tour after another. Last Thursday and Friday he wowed 'em at the Oakland Coliseum. Last night he was in L.A.
At 58, Springsteen certainly can't call himself young any more-- at least not chronologically. Despite the hurricane force he and the E Street Band frequently mustered during their two-hour show, plenty of fans cheering them on no doubt recall the nights of yore when this fabled group was just starting to break a sweat at the two-hour mark.
Still, what this outfit does on stage each night remains fairly daring, and the older they get, the greater the risk of the without-a-net abandon with which they administer the sacrament of rock 'n' roll.
The invigorating thing about the New Jersey bard is the way he and his merry band embrace their coming of age. For all the kudos Springsteen's new Magic album is earning for the joyful rocking it delivers, it's rife with self-doubt, disillusionment, anger and acceptance of the disappointments and compromises life inevitably presents the thinking person.
A couple weeks ago the new album was #1 on the Billboard album chart. Kid Rock's new album knocked it down a peg and this week, Springsteen disposed on Kid Rock and is back at #1. The album is already gold and headed right towards platinum and he's got a great shot to win a Grammy for Best Album of the Year. Magic's reviews virtually everywhere are over the top and the intro to his latest interview in Rolling Stone refers to the album's subject matter as "weighty stuff like the direction of our democracy and party stuff that recalls the days when sparks first flew on E Street more than three decades ago."
Republican radio network Clear Channel, a monopoly in many cities and a dominant player in most of the rest, isn't interested. Is it because Springsteen has been an outspoken campaigner for Democrats and progressives? Clear Channel has taken a political stand with its programming in the past. Just think back to their boycott of the Dixie Chicks. Oh, no... not way back, just back to when they released their most recent album. Despite being one of the top 10 best-selling American albums of the year-- across all genres and demographics-- radio studiously ignored it. There were maybe half a dozen country stations that even played it at all. What Clear Channel did to the Dixie Chicks is a watertight case for the need to break the media companies up into a thousand pieces. (John Sununu disagrees; he's pro-censorship.) I spoke with an old friend who heads a record company and preferred to speak off the record.
"When you have artists like the Dixie Chicks and Bruce Springsteen who have overtly spoken out against this Administration, they are taken to task in spite the clear and undeniable indications from the marketplace that people want to hear their music. What seems to be happening-- if sales are any kind of a barometer of what the marketplace is-- is that these politically-connected radio networks like Clear Channel are not looking to succeed as radio stations as much as pushing forward some political agenda.
Another friend of mine distinctly recalls the Senate hearings on radio consolidation in light of the Dixie Chicks boycott where Barbara Boxer and John McCain heard testimony including an internal Clear Channel memo threatening "Just wait and see what happens if Springsteen tries this." I guess we're seeing that right now.
Of course, Clear Channel hasn't publicly said they are boycotting Springsteen's music. But they are. Fox News, hardly a hotbed of liberal alarmists, reports that "Clear Channel has sent an edict to its classic rock stations not to play tracks from Magic... no new songs by Springsteen, even though it’s likely many radio listeners already own the album and would like to hear it mixed in with the junk offered on radio."
Clear Channel seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that at age 58, Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It’s certainly what’s helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius.
I don't buy it. Clear Channel is a big-time and very consciously right-wing power player with a goal of changing American pop culture. They have done all they could to stifle progressive voices and to dumb down and trivialize the culture. Meaningless, offensive and inoffensive drivel by Fergie, Britney Spears, Nickelback, and Rihanna you'll hear. But not Springsteen. Clear Channel even has its very own rubber stamp Republican congressman to look out for it's interests, the boss' (not The Boss') son-in-law, the overly right-wing Michael McCaul (TX). You want to see Bruce back on the radio? Stop listening to Clear Channel stations-- and stop voting for Republicans. If there was no Clear Channel-- and no Republicans-- this is what would be on the radio instead of Britney Spears:
UPDATE: SOME ADULT-ORIENTED CLEAR CHANNEL STATIONS ARE PLAYING IT
The Fox News report I linked to isn't exactly right. Some Clear Channel stations are indeed playing it, although mostly Clear Channel stations with independent-minded programmers like KBCO in Denver. Overall, Clear Channel isn't giving it the kind of exposure a #1 record would normally get.
UPDATE: CLEAR CHANNEL BUYING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE
In 2006 Clear Channel Communications ponied up almost $800,000 in legal campaign contributions, 65% of which went to Republicans. The two top dogs at the company are long-time Bush family retainers and cronies, Tom Hicks and Lowry Mays. Mays has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates for office over the years. A few: $69,500 for the Republican National Committee, $21,000 for the NRCC, $14,200 for Michael McCaul (TX), $2,500 for James Sensenbrenner (WI), $2,300 for Duncan Hunter (CA), $16,300 for Lamar Smith (TX), $6,500 for Kay Bailey Hutchinson (TX), $3,000 for Tom DeLay (TX), $13,000 for Henry Bonilla (TX), $10,250 for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, $2,500 for Heather Wilson (NM), $6,000 for John Cornyn (TX), and $2,100 for Flip Flop Mitt and grudging grand for Giuliani (NY). And there were tens of thousands more from other family members. Hicks was a similarly huge donator to Republicans: $65,000 to the RNC, $50,000 to the NRSC plus another $300,000 or so scattered around to grateful Republicans who have made it very worthwhile for have been so generous. When people talk about the need for campaign finance reform and public financing of elections, this is exactly what they're talking about.
Labels: Clear Channel, McCaul, media, Springsteen
DownWithTyranny!
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." - Sinclair Lewis
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
CLEAR CHANNEL, REPUBLICAN PROPAGANDA NETWORK, OUT TO KILL SPRINGSTEEN'S MAGIC?
If you look for Springsteen in Google News, you get one rave review of his live sold out tour after another. Last Thursday and Friday he wowed 'em at the Oakland Coliseum. Last night he was in L.A.
At 58, Springsteen certainly can't call himself young any more-- at least not chronologically. Despite the hurricane force he and the E Street Band frequently mustered during their two-hour show, plenty of fans cheering them on no doubt recall the nights of yore when this fabled group was just starting to break a sweat at the two-hour mark.
Still, what this outfit does on stage each night remains fairly daring, and the older they get, the greater the risk of the without-a-net abandon with which they administer the sacrament of rock 'n' roll.
The invigorating thing about the New Jersey bard is the way he and his merry band embrace their coming of age. For all the kudos Springsteen's new Magic album is earning for the joyful rocking it delivers, it's rife with self-doubt, disillusionment, anger and acceptance of the disappointments and compromises life inevitably presents the thinking person.
A couple weeks ago the new album was #1 on the Billboard album chart. Kid Rock's new album knocked it down a peg and this week, Springsteen disposed on Kid Rock and is back at #1. The album is already gold and headed right towards platinum and he's got a great shot to win a Grammy for Best Album of the Year. Magic's reviews virtually everywhere are over the top and the intro to his latest interview in Rolling Stone refers to the album's subject matter as "weighty stuff like the direction of our democracy and party stuff that recalls the days when sparks first flew on E Street more than three decades ago."
Republican radio network Clear Channel, a monopoly in many cities and a dominant player in most of the rest, isn't interested. Is it because Springsteen has been an outspoken campaigner for Democrats and progressives? Clear Channel has taken a political stand with its programming in the past. Just think back to their boycott of the Dixie Chicks. Oh, no... not way back, just back to when they released their most recent album. Despite being one of the top 10 best-selling American albums of the year-- across all genres and demographics-- radio studiously ignored it. There were maybe half a dozen country stations that even played it at all. What Clear Channel did to the Dixie Chicks is a watertight case for the need to break the media companies up into a thousand pieces. (John Sununu disagrees; he's pro-censorship.) I spoke with an old friend who heads a record company and preferred to speak off the record.
"When you have artists like the Dixie Chicks and Bruce Springsteen who have overtly spoken out against this Administration, they are taken to task in spite the clear and undeniable indications from the marketplace that people want to hear their music. What seems to be happening-- if sales are any kind of a barometer of what the marketplace is-- is that these politically-connected radio networks like Clear Channel are not looking to succeed as radio stations as much as pushing forward some political agenda.
Another friend of mine distinctly recalls the Senate hearings on radio consolidation in light of the Dixie Chicks boycott where Barbara Boxer and John McCain heard testimony including an internal Clear Channel memo threatening "Just wait and see what happens if Springsteen tries this." I guess we're seeing that right now.
Of course, Clear Channel hasn't publicly said they are boycotting Springsteen's music. But they are. Fox News, hardly a hotbed of liberal alarmists, reports that "Clear Channel has sent an edict to its classic rock stations not to play tracks from Magic... no new songs by Springsteen, even though it’s likely many radio listeners already own the album and would like to hear it mixed in with the junk offered on radio."
Clear Channel seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that at age 58, Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It’s certainly what’s helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius.
I don't buy it. Clear Channel is a big-time and very consciously right-wing power player with a goal of changing American pop culture. They have done all they could to stifle progressive voices and to dumb down and trivialize the culture. Meaningless, offensive and inoffensive drivel by Fergie, Britney Spears, Nickelback, and Rihanna you'll hear. But not Springsteen. Clear Channel even has its very own rubber stamp Republican congressman to look out for it's interests, the boss' (not The Boss') son-in-law, the overly right-wing Michael McCaul (TX). You want to see Bruce back on the radio? Stop listening to Clear Channel stations-- and stop voting for Republicans. If there was no Clear Channel-- and no Republicans-- this is what would be on the radio instead of Britney Spears:
UPDATE: SOME ADULT-ORIENTED CLEAR CHANNEL STATIONS ARE PLAYING IT
The Fox News report I linked to isn't exactly right. Some Clear Channel stations are indeed playing it, although mostly Clear Channel stations with independent-minded programmers like KBCO in Denver. Overall, Clear Channel isn't giving it the kind of exposure a #1 record would normally get.
UPDATE: CLEAR CHANNEL BUYING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE
In 2006 Clear Channel Communications ponied up almost $800,000 in legal campaign contributions, 65% of which went to Republicans. The two top dogs at the company are long-time Bush family retainers and cronies, Tom Hicks and Lowry Mays. Mays has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates for office over the years. A few: $69,500 for the Republican National Committee, $21,000 for the NRCC, $14,200 for Michael McCaul (TX), $2,500 for James Sensenbrenner (WI), $2,300 for Duncan Hunter (CA), $16,300 for Lamar Smith (TX), $6,500 for Kay Bailey Hutchinson (TX), $3,000 for Tom DeLay (TX), $13,000 for Henry Bonilla (TX), $10,250 for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, $2,500 for Heather Wilson (NM), $6,000 for John Cornyn (TX), and $2,100 for Flip Flop Mitt and grudging grand for Giuliani (NY). And there were tens of thousands more from other family members. Hicks was a similarly huge donator to Republicans: $65,000 to the RNC, $50,000 to the NRSC plus another $300,000 or so scattered around to grateful Republicans who have made it very worthwhile for have been so generous. When people talk about the need for campaign finance reform and public financing of elections, this is exactly what they're talking about.
Labels: Clear Channel, McCaul, media, Springsteen
Bruce: Magic Refused Radio Play
Robalini's Note: While Roger Friedman is hands down the best thing about Fox News (and in this case, this isn't meant as a back-handed compliment) he may be missing the real motivation here behind the Clear Channel blacklist of The Boss. Is it really about ageism, or is it about the Bush-backing Clear Channel banning the left-wing populism of Springsteen? Meanwhile, while Bruce is DOA when it comes to korporate radio, wimp "rock artists" such as Fall Out Boy, Maroon Five and John Mayer receive extensive playtime. It's just like The Konformist said earlier this year when we gave Beast of the Month to Nick Lachey and K-Fed: korporate rock wants to turn this generation into mindless metrosexual consumers, who moan even more than Kurt Cobain did (without any of his substance) as they listen to boy band pop, emo whines and dubious "hard rock" like Nickleback and 3 Doors Down.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,306164,00.html
Bruce: Magic Refused Radio Play
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
By Roger Friedman
Bruce Springsteen should be very happy. He has the No. 1 album, a possible Grammy for Best Album of the Year for "Magic," an album full of singles and a sold-out concert tour.
Alas, there’s a hitch: Radio will not play "Magic." In fact, sources tell me that Clear Channel has sent an edict to its classic rock stations not to play tracks from "Magic." But it’s OK to play old Springsteen tracks such as "Dancing in the Dark," "Born to Run" and "Born in the USA."
Just no new songs by Springsteen, even though it’s likely many radio listeners already own the album and would like to hear it mixed in with the junk offered on radio.
Why? One theory, says a longtime rock insider, "is that the audience knows those songs. Of course, they’ll never know these songs if no one plays them."
"Magic," by the way, has sold more than 500,000 copies since its release on Oct. 2 and likely will hit the million mark. That’s not a small achievement these days, and one that should be embraced by Clear Channel.
But what a situation: The No. 1 album is not being played on any radio stations, according to Radio & Records, which monitors such things. Nothing. The rock songs aren’t on rock radio, and the two standout "mellow" tracks — "Magic" and "Devil’s Arcade" — aren’t even on "lite" stations.
The singles-kinda hits, "Radio Nowhere" and "Living in the Future" — which would have been hits no questions asked in the '70s, '80s and maybe even the '90s, also are absent from Top 40.
What to do? Columbia Records is said to be readying a remixed version of "The Girls in their Summer Clothes," a poppy Beach Boys-type track that has such a catchy hook fans were singing along to it at live shows before they had the album. Bruce insiders are hopeful that with a push from Sony, "Girls" will triumph.
I’m not so sure.
Clear Channel seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that at age 58, Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It’s certainly what’s helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius.
It’s not just Springsteen. There is no sign at major radio stations of new albums by John Fogerty or Annie Lennox, either. The same stations that should be playing Santana’s new singles with Chad Kroeger or Tina Turner are avoiding them, too.
Like Springsteen, these "older" artists have been relegated to something called Triple A format stations — i.e. either college radio or small artsy stations such as WFUV in the Bronx, N.Y., which are immune from the Clear Channel virus of pre-programming and where the number of plays per song is a fraction of what it is on commercial radio.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,306164,00.html
Bruce: Magic Refused Radio Play
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
By Roger Friedman
Bruce Springsteen should be very happy. He has the No. 1 album, a possible Grammy for Best Album of the Year for "Magic," an album full of singles and a sold-out concert tour.
Alas, there’s a hitch: Radio will not play "Magic." In fact, sources tell me that Clear Channel has sent an edict to its classic rock stations not to play tracks from "Magic." But it’s OK to play old Springsteen tracks such as "Dancing in the Dark," "Born to Run" and "Born in the USA."
Just no new songs by Springsteen, even though it’s likely many radio listeners already own the album and would like to hear it mixed in with the junk offered on radio.
Why? One theory, says a longtime rock insider, "is that the audience knows those songs. Of course, they’ll never know these songs if no one plays them."
"Magic," by the way, has sold more than 500,000 copies since its release on Oct. 2 and likely will hit the million mark. That’s not a small achievement these days, and one that should be embraced by Clear Channel.
But what a situation: The No. 1 album is not being played on any radio stations, according to Radio & Records, which monitors such things. Nothing. The rock songs aren’t on rock radio, and the two standout "mellow" tracks — "Magic" and "Devil’s Arcade" — aren’t even on "lite" stations.
The singles-kinda hits, "Radio Nowhere" and "Living in the Future" — which would have been hits no questions asked in the '70s, '80s and maybe even the '90s, also are absent from Top 40.
What to do? Columbia Records is said to be readying a remixed version of "The Girls in their Summer Clothes," a poppy Beach Boys-type track that has such a catchy hook fans were singing along to it at live shows before they had the album. Bruce insiders are hopeful that with a push from Sony, "Girls" will triumph.
I’m not so sure.
Clear Channel seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that at age 58, Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It’s certainly what’s helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius.
It’s not just Springsteen. There is no sign at major radio stations of new albums by John Fogerty or Annie Lennox, either. The same stations that should be playing Santana’s new singles with Chad Kroeger or Tina Turner are avoiding them, too.
Like Springsteen, these "older" artists have been relegated to something called Triple A format stations — i.e. either college radio or small artsy stations such as WFUV in the Bronx, N.Y., which are immune from the Clear Channel virus of pre-programming and where the number of plays per song is a fraction of what it is on commercial radio.
Torre is new Dodgers manager
http://www.latimes.com/sports/baseball/mlb/la-sp-dodgers2nov2,1,1753735.story?coll=la-headlines-sports-majorbaseb
Torre is new Dodgers manager
The former Yankees manager signs a three-year deal to replace Grady Little, who resigned Tuesday. News conference is scheduled for Monday.
By Dylan Hernandez
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 2, 2007
It's official: Joe Torre is the new manager of the Dodgers.
Torre and the Dodgers finalized a three-year, $13-million deal today to replace Grady Little, who resigned Tuesday.
"Having grown up in Brooklyn, I have a great understanding of the history of the Dodger organization and I am committed to bringing a world championship back to Los Angeles," Torre said in a statement released by the team. "I consider it an honor to be a part of this organization, which is one of the most storied franchises in all of sports."
Said General Manager Ned Colletti: "Few managers in the history of the game have accomplished what Joe has delivered. Throughout his career he has demonstrated the ability to turn a vision for success into results on the field and we welcome his passion and leadership. We have tremendous fans and they deserve no less."
A news conference has been scheduled for Monday at Dodger Stadium.
Torre became available Oct. 18, when he parted ways with the New York Yankees after turning down an incentive-laden contract with a base salary of $5 million to return for a 13th season. Torre led the Yankees to the playoffs in every season he managed them and won four World Series titles.
Colletti made it clear Wednesday that Torre was the organization's top choice.
"When you look at his resume and what he's done and the market he's done it in, certainly, you have to start from there," Colletti said.
Torre was said to be negotiating for the right to appoint his own coaches, among them Don Mattingly. He also wanted assurance that he would have input on player personnel moves, which could lead to the free-agent pursuit of Alex Rodriguez.
Torre is taking the place of Little, who managed the team for two seasons. The Dodgers won the National League wild card in Little's first season in 2006, but were 82-80 and finished fourth in the NL West last season.
The Dodgers were able to expedite the hiring of Torre by receiving permission from Commissioner Bud Selig's office to skip the mandatory interviews of minority candidates. The exemption was granted because of the Dodgers' hiring record.
Assistant general managers Kim Ng and De Jon Watson are minorities -- Ng is an Asian American woman and Watson is African American -- and Dodgers President Jamie McCourt is the highest-ranking female executive in baseball.
Torre is new Dodgers manager
The former Yankees manager signs a three-year deal to replace Grady Little, who resigned Tuesday. News conference is scheduled for Monday.
By Dylan Hernandez
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 2, 2007
It's official: Joe Torre is the new manager of the Dodgers.
Torre and the Dodgers finalized a three-year, $13-million deal today to replace Grady Little, who resigned Tuesday.
"Having grown up in Brooklyn, I have a great understanding of the history of the Dodger organization and I am committed to bringing a world championship back to Los Angeles," Torre said in a statement released by the team. "I consider it an honor to be a part of this organization, which is one of the most storied franchises in all of sports."
Said General Manager Ned Colletti: "Few managers in the history of the game have accomplished what Joe has delivered. Throughout his career he has demonstrated the ability to turn a vision for success into results on the field and we welcome his passion and leadership. We have tremendous fans and they deserve no less."
A news conference has been scheduled for Monday at Dodger Stadium.
Torre became available Oct. 18, when he parted ways with the New York Yankees after turning down an incentive-laden contract with a base salary of $5 million to return for a 13th season. Torre led the Yankees to the playoffs in every season he managed them and won four World Series titles.
Colletti made it clear Wednesday that Torre was the organization's top choice.
"When you look at his resume and what he's done and the market he's done it in, certainly, you have to start from there," Colletti said.
Torre was said to be negotiating for the right to appoint his own coaches, among them Don Mattingly. He also wanted assurance that he would have input on player personnel moves, which could lead to the free-agent pursuit of Alex Rodriguez.
Torre is taking the place of Little, who managed the team for two seasons. The Dodgers won the National League wild card in Little's first season in 2006, but were 82-80 and finished fourth in the NL West last season.
The Dodgers were able to expedite the hiring of Torre by receiving permission from Commissioner Bud Selig's office to skip the mandatory interviews of minority candidates. The exemption was granted because of the Dodgers' hiring record.
Assistant general managers Kim Ng and De Jon Watson are minorities -- Ng is an Asian American woman and Watson is African American -- and Dodgers President Jamie McCourt is the highest-ranking female executive in baseball.
Channeling Bush’s Inner Sadist
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/227
Channeling Bush’s Inner Sadist: An Insight Into His Obsession with Torture
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Thu, 11/01/2007
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
We were writing a review of a BuzzFlash premium of a collection of Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" cartoons last weekend when we serendipitously came across this tidbit, posted in a 2004 Associated Press article (watch for the end of the excerpt):
Cartoonist Garry Trudeau, who has skewered politicians for decades in his comic strip "Doonesbury," tells Rolling Stone magazine he remembers Yale classmate George W. Bush as "just another sarcastic preppy who gave people nicknames and arranged for keg deliveries."
Trudeau attended Yale University with Bush in the late 1960s and served with him on a dormitory social committee.
"Even then he had clearly awesome social skills," Trudeau said. "He could also make you feel extremely uncomfortable ... He was extremely skilled at controlling people and outcomes in that way. Little bits of perfectly placed humiliation."
…. Trudeau said he penned his very first cartoon to illustrate an article in the Yale Daily News on Bush and allegations that his fraternity, DKE, had hazed incoming pledges by branding them with an iron.
The article in the campus paper prompted The New York Times to interview Bush, who was a senior that year. Trudeau recalled that Bush told the Times "it was just a coat hanger, and ... it didn’t hurt any more than a cigarette burn."
We now vaguely recall the article when it first came out, but at that point Bush’s torture obsession didn’t have the horrific longevity and toll that it has acquired by this point in 2007.
For a boy who allegedly shot BB guns at his brothers and did who knows what to small animals, Bush as recalled by Trudeau offers no small insight into what is clearly a sadistic (and as we have repeatedly said, sociopathic) individual.
Bush has continued to insist that his administration does not conduct torture by merely redefining what torture is, as distinct from how it is outlawed under International law and agreements. You can see how he accomplishes this "redefining" by his claim to The New York Times, while he was at Yale, that branding fraternity pledges was not cruel because "it didn’t hurt any more than a cigarette burn."
The Democrats have long treated the torture issue as though it were a public policy issue and not an outgrowth of a psychological deviancy on the part of Bush (along with the Cheney/Addington "we are accountable to no one" worldview).
As BuzzFlash has long argued, Bush is a model narcissistic sociopath, who is devoid of the ability to empathize. It is the characteristic of such people to have the ability to "appear" to be concerned about others, but that is just for show. The inner heart is empty. You can knock all you want, but you won’t find anyone home in the empathy department when it comes to sociopathic personalities.
The long-ago forgotten recollection of Garry Trudeau, as corroborated in the Yale Daily News and The New York Times, indicates quite clearly Bush’s mindset: inside of the "great hugger" is a "great sadist."
That may explain why Bush's latest appointment for Attorney General has been so brazenly coy in claiming that he has not made up his mind yet on whether or not water boarding is torture. (Not to mention Mukasey’s Stepford-like assertion of the doctrine of "unitary authority" for the executive branch, which is what grants the White House its ability to torture at will.)
The Bush Administration’s obsession with torture is deep-seated and personal. George’s love of it in particular is not so much for what it might do in assisting in the war on terror, as it is a perverse exercise in humiliation and the exercise of absolute power to inflict pain on other people through the use of unaccountable and an all-powerful authority.
What we have been seeing unfold before us since the rendition and Abu Ghraib stories first broke (and there were earlier indications in Afghanistan of mass killings and torture, although not as widely reported) is the elevation of a sadistic fraternity head to the highest office in the land, but his delight at "harmlessly" branding pledges has just progressed to the next level: torture, murder (remember the tortured to death cadavers at Abu Ghraib), and the "disappeared."
Technorati Tags: Analysis Bush Torture Sociopath
Channeling Bush’s Inner Sadist: An Insight Into His Obsession with Torture
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Thu, 11/01/2007
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
We were writing a review of a BuzzFlash premium of a collection of Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" cartoons last weekend when we serendipitously came across this tidbit, posted in a 2004 Associated Press article (watch for the end of the excerpt):
Cartoonist Garry Trudeau, who has skewered politicians for decades in his comic strip "Doonesbury," tells Rolling Stone magazine he remembers Yale classmate George W. Bush as "just another sarcastic preppy who gave people nicknames and arranged for keg deliveries."
Trudeau attended Yale University with Bush in the late 1960s and served with him on a dormitory social committee.
"Even then he had clearly awesome social skills," Trudeau said. "He could also make you feel extremely uncomfortable ... He was extremely skilled at controlling people and outcomes in that way. Little bits of perfectly placed humiliation."
…. Trudeau said he penned his very first cartoon to illustrate an article in the Yale Daily News on Bush and allegations that his fraternity, DKE, had hazed incoming pledges by branding them with an iron.
The article in the campus paper prompted The New York Times to interview Bush, who was a senior that year. Trudeau recalled that Bush told the Times "it was just a coat hanger, and ... it didn’t hurt any more than a cigarette burn."
We now vaguely recall the article when it first came out, but at that point Bush’s torture obsession didn’t have the horrific longevity and toll that it has acquired by this point in 2007.
For a boy who allegedly shot BB guns at his brothers and did who knows what to small animals, Bush as recalled by Trudeau offers no small insight into what is clearly a sadistic (and as we have repeatedly said, sociopathic) individual.
Bush has continued to insist that his administration does not conduct torture by merely redefining what torture is, as distinct from how it is outlawed under International law and agreements. You can see how he accomplishes this "redefining" by his claim to The New York Times, while he was at Yale, that branding fraternity pledges was not cruel because "it didn’t hurt any more than a cigarette burn."
The Democrats have long treated the torture issue as though it were a public policy issue and not an outgrowth of a psychological deviancy on the part of Bush (along with the Cheney/Addington "we are accountable to no one" worldview).
As BuzzFlash has long argued, Bush is a model narcissistic sociopath, who is devoid of the ability to empathize. It is the characteristic of such people to have the ability to "appear" to be concerned about others, but that is just for show. The inner heart is empty. You can knock all you want, but you won’t find anyone home in the empathy department when it comes to sociopathic personalities.
The long-ago forgotten recollection of Garry Trudeau, as corroborated in the Yale Daily News and The New York Times, indicates quite clearly Bush’s mindset: inside of the "great hugger" is a "great sadist."
That may explain why Bush's latest appointment for Attorney General has been so brazenly coy in claiming that he has not made up his mind yet on whether or not water boarding is torture. (Not to mention Mukasey’s Stepford-like assertion of the doctrine of "unitary authority" for the executive branch, which is what grants the White House its ability to torture at will.)
The Bush Administration’s obsession with torture is deep-seated and personal. George’s love of it in particular is not so much for what it might do in assisting in the war on terror, as it is a perverse exercise in humiliation and the exercise of absolute power to inflict pain on other people through the use of unaccountable and an all-powerful authority.
What we have been seeing unfold before us since the rendition and Abu Ghraib stories first broke (and there were earlier indications in Afghanistan of mass killings and torture, although not as widely reported) is the elevation of a sadistic fraternity head to the highest office in the land, but his delight at "harmlessly" branding pledges has just progressed to the next level: torture, murder (remember the tortured to death cadavers at Abu Ghraib), and the "disappeared."
Technorati Tags: Analysis Bush Torture Sociopath
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