What ever happened to GE?

I think the reporter is asleep at the switch. What happen to GE? Wake up from your long sleep or sucking up to Obama got you with brain dust. The reason this stock is in the toliet is the CEO of GE and the slime net work he is in charge of with slime bags like CRIS MATTHEWS AND OLBERMANN, and those queens on MSNBC withe the long noses and large boobs trying to fool the folks that they know what the hell their talking about, reading of a telpromter, give me a break. And jokers like Crammer who has been suckering folks to buy stock for years.

Nick,
Who let you in here? This site has standards.

Here is what I sent to my representatives in Congress:

So the latest “scoop” is that GM and Ford are now “bidding” for a share of the Great Bailout of 2008. We suddenly hear that GM WILL RUN OUT OF OPERATING CASH sometime next year. And were it to actually go BANKRUPT, that would cost about 2.9 MILLION JOBS overall. My, my.

Moreover, all the accompanying HUMAN misery of mere real PEOPLE actually losing their LIVELIHOODS aside, the cost to "the GOVERNMENT" in “LOST” Income Tax / FICA “revenue” would be about $60 BILLION A YEAR in all! (And THEN how would "Government" be able to provide for the care and feeding of even yea that many MORE NON-productive people here at home and yet somehow STILL manage to sustain the continuing expense of buying off all those Sunni militias over in Iraq, so that "we" can continue to "secure access" to OTHER peoples' OIL, so that "we" can keep things "rolling along", ad infinitum and ad nauseam, as they "always" have. Hmmm...) So GM and Ford MUST now (inevitably) be “bailed out”. Surprise, surprise.

A couple of weeks ago, GM mounted something of a PUBLIC RELATIONS “offensive” of a really VERY POSITIVE nature, but which struck me then as probably being indicative of some pretty serious trouble. PBS discussion-show-host Charlie Rose and his crew were graciously invited into the GM “Back Labs” up in Detroit for what would by normal standards be a really utterly UNTHINKABLE exposition of what GM has been doing (I submit quite BELATEDLY, but at least it IS finally actually doing SOMETHING!) to actually, seriously advance the next generation of automotive technology. Their contribution to that worthy cause is the Chevy VOLT. Rose spent TWO DAYS’ WORTH OF BROADCASTS interviewing Rick Wagoner, the CEO of GM, and Bob Lutz, the reknowned automotive engineer who is heading up the program to bring the VOLT to the public market (which is surely a much more CONSTRUCTIVE endeavor than his earlier activities “pioneering” the HUMMER!).

It is VERY interesting to consider the basic concept of what is being billed as innovative “new” technology, as contrasted ro the long history of NON-innovation that has been observed for so many years. The VOLT is an ELECTRIC car, powered by a Lithium-ion battery pack that would carry it about FORTY miles. But wait --- that is only the BEGINNING of the story. After that point, once the battery runs down a GASOLINE-POWERED INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE “kicks in”. That motor is, however, NOT coupled directly to the drive wheels (which are powered only by ELECTRIC motors). Instead, it DRIVES AN ELECTRIC GENERATOR, which keeps the drive motors supplied once the battery has “run down”.

Now the thing is, statistics show that fully 75% of all automobile usage involves “short haul” runs that would “fit” within the 40-mile “power budget” afforded by the battery --- so that most of the time THE GASOLINE ENGINE WOULD NEVER OPERATE! The battery would be charged up by plugging the car into the power grid (or maybe better yet, eventually your own photovoltaic array or wind-powered-generator low-voltage auxiliary system) overnight and/or whenever the vehicle is not in use. Absent FREE power, about 80 cents worth of "grid" power would “fill the tank”. Beyond that, gasoline consumption would depend on how the vehicle is used, but for ordinary usage the internal combustion engine WOULD BE ONLY MINIMALLY ACTIVE. (Now THERE is FOREIGN OIL INDEPENDENCE for you!)

Even in its I.C.E. mode, though, the operation is substantially more efficient than the “conventional” gasoline engine / transmission / drive train arrangement to which people are universally inured --- because the engine can run at a much more nearly CONSTANT speed and load, instead of having to perpetually VARY its speed, being perpetually geared up and down and disengaged / re-engaged, to instantantaneously “match” the stop-and-go, inherently highly VARIABLE load presented by the car. So now --- ici voila! NO ELABORATE TRANSMISSION to ever fail! (Not to worry, though, that there is NOT ENOUGH LITHIUM IN THE WORLD to apply THAT particular battery technology MASSIVELY to HUGE automotive fleets --- we'll have to burn THAT bridge when we COME to it!)

More fundamentally, though, it is instructive to actually THINK about WHY this whole concept comes across to MOST people as some kind of “revolutionary” idea. For THAT is ITSELF an indicator that exposes the HUGE TECHNOLOGICAL IGNORANCE of most(!) people, very few of whom seem to recognize herein what are really VERY OLD(!) concepts --- which no doubt COULD have been adapted MUCH EARLIER --- if the erstwhile general MISguided MIS”leadership” of “our” society had RESPONSIBLY pursued the technological counterpart of BIODIVERSITY, and had ACTUALLY been CONSERVATIVE (of FINITE REAL RESOURCES!) instead of being single-mindedly FIXATED on ARTIFICIALLY-conjured, often MISbegotten, merely “economic” MISmeasures of things!

The fact is that "we" have had "ELECTRIC cars" going back to the earliest days of the automobile! And as for the "other half" of the VOLT initiative, what is being done here is simply an adaptation to the SMALL scale of the AUTOMOBILE of a paradigm that has been worked out and implemented ABOUT FIFTY YEARS AGO (!) NOW ALREADY in OTHER, MUCH BIGGER-SCALE domains: on the RAILROADS, in the form of the DIESEL-ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE, which going way back to the 1950s now already has been hauling MASSIVE, 100-car freight trains, and also in THE LARGEST SHIPS!

For those kinds of HEAVY applications, the ELECTRIC drive has always been ESSENTIAL ---because of the fact that one can design ELECTRIC motors that will deliver HUGE torques ALL THE WAY DOWN TO ZERO RPM. To get heavy loads moving INITIALLY, if one were to try to connect an internal combustion engine DIRECTLY to the drive train (however much it might be "geared down"), any conceivable CLUTCH would burn out in about five minutes! So the "electric drive" alternative WAS developed --- A VERY LONG TIME AGO NOW ALREADY!

Of course, ordinarily such serious research and development would be “kept under very tight wraps”. Concerns about competition and “industrial espionage” would dictate keeping cameras OUT, and giving “NO COMMENT” or only very VAGUE responses to questions about the state of development efforts. But here for once the design/build “establishment” was being remarkably forthright in "laying out its cards", and just exactly where things stand. I suspected (and said so at the time) that what they were doing HAD to amount to some kind of “Hail Mary pass" attempt to cast GM in a favorable light. And it appears that the suspicion I had then is indeed being borne out.

For now (inevitably), GM is going to have to be "bailed out" --- in the sort of manner that was actually pioneered many years ago now by the Chrysler "precedent", and of course much more concurrently by another whole slew of other "financial" institutional entities of various kinds. And never mind the logical proposition that is IMPLICIT in the whole debacle that "our" "free enterprise" mythology is thereby at best quite embarassingly COMPROMISED, and at worst pretty much thoroughly DEBUNKED! For THE "UNTHINKABLE" HAS HAPPENED. Suddenly the supposedly "rock solid" socio-economic "order" of this supposedly "erudite, enlightened, progressive, 'superior'" society STANDS EXPOSED as NOT actually living up to the lofty, propagandistic image many "Conservative" Jingo types among us endlessly exhort "us" to perpetually CONJURE to others, to each other, and to "our"selves ---and the "Socialistic" model extant elsewhere in the world seems rather less unappealing than it "always" had!

But my purpose here really is NOT merely to rub salt into the wounds of others. Rather, it is to bluntly articulate a fundamental point that is EQUALLY obviously going to HAVE to ALSO be faced squarely, sooner or later, and generally acknowledged (HOWEVER unpalatable it may be to many among us).

I submit that if "Government" is going to HAVE to shore up the sagging fortunes of such "bulwarks of free enterprise" as GM and Ford (as I, for one, agree that it MUST and SHOULD), then it is VITALLY important that "our" "assistance" be PRECISELY TARGETED in such a way as to ACTUALLY ULTIMATELY PAY BACK "We the People" for the wealth that is now inevitably to be diverted AWAY from "US" for an indefinite period! The "support" rendered needs to be VERY SPECIFICALLY FOCUSED on initiatives that will ACTUALLY BENEFIT "US" IN THE LONG RUN --- and should include PARTIAL OWNERSHIP INTERESTS in the "finished product" BY THE GENERAL PUBLIC.

And THAT is where the potential PROMISE of an INDEPENDENT, UNBEHOLDEN Obama --- in contrast to the supposedly greater, "tried and tested" "experience" that would have been “provided” by his much older, well-"wired-in", "establishment" opponent --- should HOPEFULLY come into play and ACTUALLY prove USEFUL!

In the case of GM, it would be appropriate for "Government" to fund and subsidize (at ONLY SLIGHTLY above "subsistence levels"!) ONLY those "life functions" of the moribund "patient" that TRULY, QUICKLY COMPEL evolutionary progress AWAY from the currently FAILING "business model"! The support needs to be quite SPECIFIC, and directed PURPOSEFULLY toward the ACTUAL IMPLEMENTATION, the BRINGING INTO ACTUAL PRODUCTION, and more generally the PUBLIC POPULARIZATION (through EDUCATION and tax-forbearance SUBSIDIZATION!), of such initiatives as the aforementioned Chevy VOLT --- and ALSO, more broadly, of such OTHER "outside-the-box" alternatives as the Toyota / Hyundai / Ford pioneering of REGENERATIVE-BRAKING automotive ENERGY CONSERVATION technology!

Moreover, it is ALSO going to have to begin to dawn on people that it will ultimately prove advantageous to MARRY THE "ALTERNATIVE" REGENERATIVE-BRAKING-CONCEPT AND THE "ELECTRIC CAR" TECHNOLOGIES. (Doing so would probably about DOUBLE the RANGE of any battery-powered system, just as it about doubles the efficiency and range of the all-gasoline-powered Toyota Prius --- which has a 22.5 miles-per-gallon-rated engine that ends up achieving around 45 mpg!) So maybe THAT initiative is what CHRYSLER should be "funded" to focus upon. (A little good-old-fashioned COMPETITION could be a VERY GOOD THING!)

Now SUCH are the sorts of initiatives that would be needed to ACTUALLY IGNITE the sort of "GREEN-COLLAR ECONOMIC REVOLUTION" which, if generally embraced, could gradually INTELLIGENTLY and CONSTRUCTIVELY restore the economic health of this society (and would SURELY be preferable to any cockamamie WAR, like the one whereby "we" "escaped" the so-called "Great" Depression!).

And if the sorts of ideas I am suggesting come across to many as "heretical", well then so be it. But you DON'T successfully treat a patient who is DYING OF LUNG CANCER by BUYING HIM OR HER MORE CIGARETTES! (I SURE hope the OBAMA crowd is smart enough to "get" that! Evidently their PREDECESSORS were NOT!)