You'd expect an author at CNNMoney.com to understand the relationship between cashflow and business success. You'd expect an editor to send this article back to re-write either for more research or more objectivity. Here was the basis of Peter Valdes-Dapena's misguided assessment:
"...majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com"
So? This isn't news, and it misses the point of the Cash for Clunkers initiative.
Valdes-Dapena and/or his editors may think selling cars sooner rather than later is a valid reason to criticize the program, but as any businessman can tell you: success in business is about cash flow. Any retail operation needs to keep their stock turning over. At a time when the inventory was sitting idle on the lots this program provided a much needed infusion, enabling dealers to pay staff, utilities, creditors, and suppliers.
Did the Cash for Clunkers program solve the economic crisis? Of course not. Nor was it intended to. The goal was simple: turn over inventory in one segment of the industry - to keep dealerships from failing in huge numbers before the manufacturers could recover. Save some jobs and hopefully avert a catastrophic spread of deterioration in the auto industry that would further delay economic recovery.
The article may fool a person with no entrepreneurial experience, but it reflects either a shallow grasp of money and business or a thinly-veiled attack on the government's attempt to avert a breakdown in the delivery mechanism of an industry it was actively seeking to save - without proposing any alternative that might have been even marginally effective.
The public may think "Cash for Clunkers" was as simple as just selling cars, the author obviously wants to, but the reality is much subtler. Edmunds didn't surprise anybody (except maybe CNNMoney.com staff) with the news that one of the primary effects was to accelerate the decisions and purchases:
In business, my friends, timing is everything.
Thomas Hayes is an entrepreneur, journalist, and political analyst who contributes regularly to a host of web sites on topics ranging from economics and politics to culture and community.
After years of ducking complaints about his occasionally offensive coverage, Lou Dobbs, host of CNN's Lou Dobbs show, may finally see either the end of his days of pretty much getting away with whatever "fact" he puts out, or the end of his show altogether. As one who went on a video attack regarding his economic views a while back - see below - I'm glad to see it. But Lou's idiotic views on the economy pale in comparison to his use of story angles from white supremacists groups, even to the point of using websites representing such views as sources. Indeed, one Newsvine blogger SkeeterVT links the current "birther" movement and Dobbs coverage of it to white supremacists groups, but it's not Dobbs first time helping such wingnuts. More after my "Lou Dobbs in an idiot on the economy" video:
Dobbs is friend to white supremacists
Google "Lou Dobbs white supremacist" and one sees over 23,000 results, the vast majority related to his series of stories on illegal aliens. In fact, it was an every day constant drum beat from Lou well through 2008. But Bill Scher of the Huff Post reports that as far back as 2006, Dobbs story source was the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that was pointed to as having a "white supremacy" ideology according to the Anti-Defamation League. What was Dobbs talking about? The supposed "Mexican campaign to recapture the Southwest", an idea that was slammed by many as completely, well, idiotic.
And the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), another anti-racism watchdog group, has pointed specifically to Dobbs for hosting white supremacists as far back as 2004. One of them, Glen Spencer, has spoken at least twice to the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, which has described blacks (like me I guess) as "a retrograde species of humanity." And the SPLC explains that Dobbs never mentioned the affiliation of Spencer or for that matter Joe McCutchen who was famous for writing anti-Semitic "letters to the editor" to various publications.
Virginia Abernathy was another Dobbs guest with ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens, in her case as an editorial adviser according to Commondreams.org and other sources.
CNN offered an explanation for the Dobbs connection to the Council of Conservative Citizens in an email to onepeoplesproject.com as presented by LaLuchaSigue:
A freelance field producer in Los Angeles searched the web for Aztlan maps and grabbed the Council of Conservative Citizens map without knowing the nature of the organization. The graphic was a late inclusion in the script and, regrettably, was missed in the vetting process.
Oh c'mon! Blaming this on one field producer doesn't even touch the question of who booked this cast of characters to be on Dobbs show!
Dobbs, white supremacists and the birther movement
And just when I though Lou had returned to more credible reporting, he sits with white supremacists once again in giving a platform to the birthers. As I explained above, Newsvine's SkeeterVT's blog post today connects Andy Martin, a well-known white supremacist and friend of and guest of Fox News Sean Hannity, is now associated with Dobbs as one who's actions are given credibility by Dobbs' coverage. Forget Alan Keyes, who's a fake conservative searching for votes, attention, and money, people like Martin should be feared and not given a platform, even indirectly, by people like Dobbs.
CNN should be ashamed
CNN is a better organization than the way they're allowing Dobbs to present them. There's a wealth of evidence that Lou Dobbs is providing a home for white supremacist views and opinions. Dobbs even went so far as to go out and by "Obama Waffles" and CNN did nothing. Why? And why has CNN not made an issue of this until now?
Ratings.
When Lou was hammering Mexicans and hosting white supremacists, the ratings were terrific - as much as 816,000 daily viewers in 2006 and a 33 percent increase over 2005 - and CNN came to his defense. But now, Dobbs ratings are down 15 percent as of this writing and during his coverage of the birther movement; its the ratings fall that makes Dobbs suddenly expendable to CNN. While CNN's defended Dobbs recently, there are behind the scenes rumblings that his show may have met its end.
Thank God!
Making money off race hate may have worked in the pre-Obama America, but in an America with its first African American President Obama and first Latino treasurer in Rosie Rios, to offer but two examples of our ever diversifying USA, the racist media party is over.
You know it's a special day when your T-Mobile cell phone allows you to make "Emergency Calls only", you know you paid the bill, and you can't even call customer service. I've seen a lot of days and a gaggle of events, but nothing like this. If you didn't know Michael Jackson passed way, today, you do now.
This memorial is incredible: Stevie Wonder just gave a terrific performance. Now, former LA Lakers great Ervin "Magic" Johnson is giving a really personal, funny, ("I didn't know Michael Jackson liked Kentucky Fried Chicken!") and touching speech. And now, Jennifer Hudson's taking the stage. It's simply amazing this was asssembled so quickly and yet so well. It's moving.
Unfortunately, in death, Michael Jackson is more powerful than in life. His power was always to make us happy, if just for one moment in time, feel carefree and joyful. Sadness today, yes, but also clapping, singing, laughter, and joy, and for me, awe. What an amazing power to have, that ability to bring a smile to someone's face. To change the world through the creative act of making a sound. A tune. A song. And how great to take that power and then give back with the money from it. Michael Jackson has given more to foundations and causes than any pop star in history. Michael cared.
For me, this feels like a weird kind of cultural flashback. Reverend Al Sharpton's talking about the 1970 PUSH Convention held in Chicago, at the Chicago Amphatheater, and I was there. From growing up on the south side of Chicago, and knowing people who at least claimed to know the Jacksons, who lived in Gary, Indiana, then coming out here to Oakland, then to Texas for college, and Berkeley for grad school, and everything else, there was Michael Jackson. Always a part of my life. And now, Brooke Shields is fighting back tears to explain a very personal relationship she had with MJ, but I feel like I've grown up with her too. There all of this is, my life in front of me. Maybe yours too.
And now Michael's gone.
But while he's gone, to Heaven, it's not just his music that lives on, but this message: make other people happy, if for one moment. If you have to write something, make it nice, not mean. Sharpton said it best a moment ago and to his kids: "There was nothing strange about your daddy, but what your daddy had to deal with." He's not kidding. Michael Jackson, from the time of his birth to childhood, to adult , to know, was an extraordinary, misunderstood genius of a man who just wanted to be happy, and spread happiness.
I hope and pray we take up his soul and do the same.
Ok we've had a lot of deaths over the past week, from Ed McMahon to Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson and Billy Mays, and on Monday, the comedian Fred Travelina. All of these great people taken from us in so short a period of time is heartbreaking. But what's all the more upsetting are the fake reports of the deaths of Jeff Goldblum and Natalie Portman last week and George Clooney and Rick Astley this week.
Who's Rick Astley? He's a crooner who's song "Never Gonna Give You Up" sparked a kind of online link trick called "Rick Rolled" where you would click on a link thinking you were going to see, say, the Economist magazine, and instead you got the YouTube video of Astley singing "Never Gonna Give You Up". But the news reports are fake, someone on the CNN iReport used their platform to create a false AP news story that Astley was dead. That was sad and really not nice at all.
What's going on here with these fake reports?
Some idiots out there think these acts, which have ran Twitter crazy, are funny. They're not. Suppose someone did that to your Mom and dad; put their names out there and have them subject to a negative hashtag reporting their deaths? Let's say your cell phone battery went out and you could not confirm the caller? You'd be pretty upset yourself.
So if that upsets you, imagine how the other people feel.
charmedguy18 @liviarierref Do you know which reporter, representing what news agency was shot dead minutes ago? #iranelection #helpiran #tehran
It's difficult to get more reliable information on this tweet as the information flow is really too fast to deal with. And while that was happening, there were reports of others being shot as well. Meanwhile there are some writing "not to trust" Twitter, and undoubtedly agents of the Iranian Government. But it's clear that today is not a good day to be a reporter or a blogger in Iran:
RadoxTheGreen RT @dcb23: 23 bloggers/reporters known arrested in #Iran http://tr.im/peVi #Neda #IranElection #Tehran #gr88
CNN iReport a good source too
While everyone raves about Twitter, and rightly so, CNN's iReport website's also a great source of video and photo news and I don't write that because I'm an iReporter. The idea of the program has been and is to give people on the scene who have camera a camcorders a fast way to report the news as they see it and many are doing so in Iran. While the flow of content to the iReport has been slow of late due to the Iranian Government's crack down on all things Internet, there's still material, like this video posted just five hours ago as of this writing:
And this photo shows police actually smashing a car! You'd think they'd not even consider such actions, but this pict proves otherwise.
There are other videos, including many too ugly to post here; you understand the story by now, I think.
success in business is about cash flow. Any retail operation needs to keep their stock turning over. At a time when the inventory was sitting idle on the lots this program provided a much needed infusion, enabling dealers to pay staff, utilities, creditors, and suppliers.
