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.
This was presented by CNN's Rick Sanchez and if you watch what happened to this KVIA-TV El Paso, Texas reporter and cameraman, you have to agree the police officer was so drunk with power he didn't give them a chance to get in their car. This also happened to Oakland Tribune photojournalist Jane Tyska in Oakland last year. Something has to be done to inform officers to treat journalists better than this.
Susan Boyle, who wowed the World with her performance on Britains' Got Talent over a week ago, is now the target of some news outlets who want to diminish her fame to make room for someone else.
In this case, the media outlet CNN is doing the work of advancing the name of Shaheen Jafargholi, a 12-year-old "Welsh boy" as he's described by CNN.com. I checked his performance on YouTube and this video sums up what I saw:
Now, unlike Susan Boyle, Simon Cowell, one of the judges on Britain's Got Talent (and who recently announced he may leave American Idol) seemed prejudiced toward Jafargholi (photo below), even to the point of ordering a change to a song that better fits his voice.
Jafargholi starts by singing "Valerie" (which has been performed by Amy Winehouse), but then Cowell stops the effort saying "You've got this really wrong," and so Jafargholi sings "Who's Loving You", written by Smokey Robinson and peformed by Michael Jackson when he was but a kid with the Jackson Five!
I have a massive problem with that action by Cowell because it creates an uneven playing field for Susan Boyle. No one helped Ms. Boyle at all - not that she needed it -- so why help someone else?
Am I the only one who has a problem with this?
I feel sorry for Susan Boyle because, look, talented Shaheen is but he's 12 and has a life ahead of him. Susan Boyle is 48, extremely talented, and just getting noticed when it should have happened 10 years ago.
I can't help but wonder if all of this was staged. It seems too perfect an arrangement and logical in it's development.
It makes sense that Cowell would be the one to engineer a great outcome (if he did) for a young teen with talent, and why Cowell would make a scoffing expression toward Boyle -- the kid is "cute" and marketable; Boyle is far outside the "box" Cowell's used to and thus threatening to the standard rules of the entertainment game.
Van Jones, President Obama's new "Special Advisor For Green Jobs Enterprise and Innovation" who I have featured in our "Oakland Focus" blog and videos several times and I last talked to as he closed his account at Gold's Gym in Oakland where he was a member for years, is the guest on CNN's "Larry King" show tonight starting at 6 PM PST, 9 PM EST but CNN runs a "loop" so if you missed Van at 6 PM or 9 PM respectively, you can catch him again later in the evening and the video on CNN.com two days later. (I hope.)
Mr. Jones is the author of the New York Times best-selling book, "The Green Collar Economy" and the co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland. Over his career as activist and author, Jones has tirelessly fought for alternatives to violence and incarceration.
Van Jones has been making waves for over 10 years as a human rights activist. In recent years he tried to point out the environment/human rights connection, but didn’t receive attention from the upper echelons with decision-making power, such as the United States government and the Clinton Global Initiative, until just a few months ago. For decades environmentalism was seen as crunchy, dirty, and based on restriction of everything from fun to taste. But lately there’s been a major shift, bringing green into the mainstream, or, as Van says, “eco-freak” became “eco-chic”.
Van, as they say, has "captured the Zeitgeist" of late, but has managed to remain the same person. Always polite and nice to everyone.
Here's a video interview I conducted with Jones last year as he was introducing his book:
Check out Van on CNN tonight. He deserves all of the good fortune he's received.
I don't know how many times I need to write or say this, but I'm sick and tired of Lou Dobbs. His entire CNN show is based on some outdated conservative idea that even he can't define and his shows have no example of his thinking being challenged. It's nuts. Why CNN has this guy on is unbelievable to me.
On March 24th, I wrote a short post on Economist and NY Times Columnist Paul Krugman and created this video below.
Today, in the wake of Newsweeks' rather unfortunate April Fools Day article on the Princeton Professor (which presented him as a kind of edgy intellectual but lacked real substance in the discussion of why Krugman is wrong about Obama), I decided to offer this expanded blog post. The problem is that Krugman is really angry that the Obama administration is and has ignored him and this emotion has driven a sloppy intellectual approach, paced by the fact that he's not presented a plan for our troubled banks, all the while taking an aim at the President's plan that has the effectiveness of a drunken sailor at an arcade shooting gallery.
Who is Paul Krugman?
Professor Krugman is a decorated International Economist, who recently - in 2008 - won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his solid theory on two-country trade. Here Krugman attacked the standard idea of two-country trade by explaining with some heft that a country like the United States that makes a Cadillac sports sedan will see that car purchased to some degree in Germany, which just happens to produce the competitor BMW 5-series. In other words, rich countries trade like goods more often than poor country to rich country or vie versa. This idea was path-breaking in that the economies of scale were not included in traditional models of trade, so pretty much any country could trade with another one in this immmaginary World. Krugman's theory explained the real World.
Now, why do I have an interest in this? Because my background is in urban economics and I focused on it at both Texas-Arlingron and Cal-Berkeley, but fell in love with a kind of way of modeling relationships called System Dynamics which causes one to see the World as a set of feedback and control connections. And that's where I break with Krugman. As a traditional economist, he does not see beyond a set "straw-person example" and into the more complex World around him -- the political aspect of economics (the political economy as its called) is lost on him, which is why the Obama Administration does not embrace him.
The Obama plan for bank troubled assets, using Troubled Asset Relief Program money to finance non-recourse loans to encourage investors to buy the "junk" is one example (called the "Public-Private Investment Program for Legacy Assets"). Krugman attacks this plan around the idea that we're giving taxpayer money away to create this market, then sets the idea that it will not work without emprically showing why it will not do so in detail or offering an alternative plan.
What Krugman missed is a read of the political landscape such that Obama's TARP plan is not only one the market asked for, and for months, but was needed to take the bad debts off the banks books. And that's what Krugman misses. He rants on about the plan's possible failure from within its own system, but says nothing -- zip -- about getting the assets off the banks books, which is the real success. Then Paul makes a real intellectual error by writing that the Obama administration sees the bank financial system as sound, which it does not, otherwise this plan would not exist.
He then writes as if the plan uses all of the TARP money, rather than the truth, which is that it uses a small portion of it, thus leaving enough left over for other plans.
As I have stated again and again, the plan lacks a payment to American taxpayers under $100,000 of $3,500 each -- or about $380 Billion -- to essentially help banks and to a degree stimulate spending. Why? The vast majority of Americans don't have massive debt problems asmany don't carry credit card debt and for those who do the average level of credit card debt is about $10,000, so this plan helps reduce that by one-third. But people aren't going to leave the money under a matress, they will put it in banks, thus helping both Wall Street and Main Street. Remember the unemployment program, designed for those who were laid off from large companies in the past, does not help the apprentice plumber who has a decade-long resume of customers that suddenly dried up.
See, my idea is a supplement that I introduced a while back in a talk with CNN's Ali Velshi, who agreed it could help. But it fits within the economic and political reality of what we need to do to fix America's economy in a way that Krugman's plan does not do.
Oh. I forgot. He doesn't have a plan.
In closing, I do not embrace crits of this post that are based on the "You're not an economist" view or juvenile name-calling, which is common online but not allowed here in my space, but I do like a good debate on rigor and detail. Bring it.
I created this video at the specific request of Tyson Chandler at CNN's iReport. The idea is to give viewers a look at the secret places in your town, so I made this one for Oakland:
For me this was a ton of fun to do. But it's even better when someone takes time to let folks know you did a great job. Such was the case with the CNN iReport and CNN.com, who contacted me regarding my question for CNN's Ali Velshi on what he thought of giving $3,500 to each American taxpayer under $100,000.
Would you go head-to-head with CNN's top economic expert on an economic stimulus plan? How about live on the air?
Fearless iReport superstar Zennie Abraham did. After submitting an iReport suggesting a taxpayer stimulus package, he discussed his plan with CNN chief business correspondent Ali Velshi on CNN.com/live. Velshi said the plan -- which calls for a $3,500 stimulus check to those making less than $100,000 a year -- was not targeted enough to work. But Zennie courageously defended his idea.
"I disagree, with all due respect," he said to Velshi. "$3,500, particularly for college students or their parents, can help pay for their housing. For a person who's older, that could help pay their mortgage. ...You have to have time for the other aspects of President Obama's programs to work. The idea with this proposal is to buy time for those programs to kick in. I'm not saying that this is a cure-all. It works as part of a package."
And, after hearing the explanation, Velshi started to agree.
"In that context, I can understand that. If we are creating jobs, and we are helping people out with their mortgages, as an added extra, that could work," he said.
Nicely done, Zennie! You really held your own
.
Thanks Rachel! It was a lot of fun and I hope I get the chance to do something like that, again.
I had the pleasure of sharing my iReport story with CNN's anchor Richard Lui who's a fellow Cal Berkeley graduate like myself. The original video on CNN is below and I told my story live today at CNN Headquarters. Thanks to Henry Hanks of the CNN iReport team and to the producers at CNN. Original video:
More at CNN.com - Dec. 22, 2008: “NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Japanese auto giant Toyota said Monday that it would suffer an operating loss due to plummeting auto sales and a strong local currency.
About 30 minutes after the market closed in Tokyo, Toyota said it expected to lose approximately $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion this fiscal year. Toyota reports earnings on a fiscal calendar beginning in April.
This would be Toyota's first operating loss since 1950, Toyota spokesman Steve Curtis said.
Despite the likely operating loss, Toyota expects to post a $557 million net profit for the fiscal year. The profit stems, in large part, from joint ventures whose revenues are not included in the automakers' accounting for its operating profits.”
--- This should show others that it's not just American car companies that are hurt by this economy.
People often ask why I left CNN…..I didn’t like management. I liked my colleagues in the news gathering but the corporate culture that seized management when AOL came in (Steve Case and Gerry Levin) was disgusting. Everything changed. Don’t get me wrong - I like corporate organization and a corporation should make money - what I don’t like is a mean spirited selfish management that, despite not doing its job of efficiently running the company, lines it pockets. And then the topper? because the management didn’t run the company well, CNN fires loyal people to meet some bottom line the management failed to meet. Blame the little guy not the way the company is run? Go figure! Well….CNN management did not disappoint me yesterday…meaning, it met my low expectations.”
--- This is a crass move by CNN management. It's the timing. Why the holidays?
CNN's Rick Sanchez is thankfully focusing on a story in Atlanta where a slave grave site is planned to be moved to make way for a landfill site for trash.
I'm not kidding.
And Sanchez is right that this happens more in the South than anywhere else. For example, I uncovered this story in Baltimore as far back as 1996:
The Sun - Baltimore, Md.
Author:
Sherrie Ruhl
Date:
Feb 11, 1996
Start Page:
2.B
Section:
METRO
Text Word Count:
715
Abstract (Document Summary)
A landfill, with the accompanying rattle of dump trucks, and dust, dirt and debris, would bring the end of the church, Mrs. [Violet Hopkins-Tann] said. "Who is going to want to attend this church or live in this community if there's a landfill here?"
The cemetery is adjacent to a 100-foot gravel pit that would be part of the Maryland Reclamation landfill, running west along Gravel Hill from Earlton Road near Havre de Grace.
Mrs. Tann said she believes Maryland Reclamation proposed a landfill at the site in part because much of the community is African-American and poor. "They think if they wait long enough, we'll give up. Well, that's not going to happen," she said.
Why this happens in the South is anyone's guess. But it certainly must stop.
I asked Microsoft Founder Bill Gates this question which was selected to be used in Wolf Blitzer's inteview with Gates on CNN's The Situation Room today: The Huffington Post, a website, was valued at $100 million, more than many newspapers. What should newspapers do to survive in the 21st Century?
This is both disturbing and amusing because it seems to show how unpopular President Bush is. On the other hand, he's not shaking hands either. Regardless, the video speaks volumes about the U.S. reputation around the World under Bush II.
UPDATE: According to CNN's Jeannie Moost, the Bush White House says that the President already shook all of the hands of the leaders twice.
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.
