Detroit Bailout: Trabant Reborn!

---by Micheal

For those of you who are not car geeks, the Trabant was a small East German car. It was the product of GDR government's auto industry from the late 1950s until 1991.

At the end of WWII, the communists took control over existing automobile factories in eastern Germany. To supply automobiles for their masses, and provide jobs for their laborers, they developed the Trabant in the late 50s. It had room for four (barely) and plastic body panels integrating soviet industrial byproducts, such as cotton fibers, wool or even paper fibers. The Trabi's two-cylinder engine gave it all the power of a medium-sized garden tractor.

It was small, cramped, noisy and weak, but, it was all the people had. That's what their government decided they would get. Even then, people had to wait years, sometimes, to get a Trabi they'd ordered. Used western cars fetched a better price than a new Trabi. When introduced, it was already technologically 10 years behind its times. Engineers proposed improvements and upgrades now and then, but the government controllers turned them down. Keep costs down. Even in the 1980s, the Trabant factories were turning out a car that was little changed from its debut in 1957. Production remained a largely labor-intense affair. Modernizing would hurt jobs.

This, I fear, is what we'll get if the Big Three bailout amounts to government control over Detroit. Not that I think Detroit's 3 have done such a good job on their own. They've basically bungled their way into a deep hole. But would government control be better, or just a different sort of bungling?

I can see the socialist agenda of the new administration thinking that control over Detroit would mean they could dictate what kind of cars should be built for American masses. No more SUVs (not that I like SUVs). Hybrids for Everyone! Maybe they'll dictate a hybrid be produced by their new National Motors factories. But, much like the Trabant was a feeble compromise of conflicting government agenda, a new "green" People's Hybrid will be a similarly feeble, labor intense, set of compromises. When has a government agency been able to produce something simple and efficient?

Maybe the Democrats will make sure we all get our People's Hybrids so we can reduce greenhouse gasses and keep the autoworker's unions happy. What we'll ultimately get, though, is a new Trabant. All the charm of a bread box and all the power of a lawn tractor. And if it follows the Trabant's pattern, our People's Hybrids won't change much for many years. Innovation is not something government committees are good at.

We'd best not complain, though. To want anything else will be deemed unpatriotic.

Ban Cartoon Parents?

---by Micheal

A "watchdog" group in England has spoken out against food company cartoon characters like Tony the Tiger and the Quick bunny. The group (called "Which?" -- that cannot help but remind us of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine) has called Tony and the others "cartoon villains." (click here for the Skynews.com story)

Why? Because they feel these cartoon characters promote childhood obesity. How can a printed tiger on cardboard affect the 3D world, you might wonder. The group says that happy, attractive cartoon characters promote eating the wrong foods and do not promote healthy eating habits in youngsters. The group stops short of demanding an outright ban on Tony and his gang. Instead, they want the food industry to be forced to make Tony promote healthy eating.

This proves that some "watchdog" groups really do not have anything useful to do.

Where in the blazes have the parents been all this time? Are these fat kids buying cereal and chocolate milk mix on their own? Where'd they get the money? What with child labor laws, they can't have jobs. Are these kids selling drugs or stealing to get cereal money? And, as long as I've got a rant going, since when has a product box become a kid's legal guardian? A whole 'nother scary thought is whether we are seeing the dawn of the Food Police Era. "Good" foods are permitted to have pretty packaging, but foods deemed "bad" must wear black or brown paper wrappers, or (in a nod to Hawthorne) a big scarlet "B"?

Now, maybe things have deteriorated to this sorry state in the UK. I don't know. I've not been there. Perhaps in the UK, cereal boxes really have become kids' parents. If this is true, then the UK has much larger problems to solve than fat kids. Oprah should be told. Liberalism needs to create another tax-funded agency or at least hold a benefit rock concert.

But for now, here in the US, parents are still supposed to be in charge -- not the kids, and certainly not the cereal boxes. If a child has an eating problem, such as over eating, look first to the parents. Of the few families I know with overweight kids, the parents also have a problem with food (bad choices and far too much consumed). The kids are not learning to overeat or eat fatty foods from Tony. They're watching what mom and dad eat and how much.

The silly group in the UK might force Kelloggs into drawing Tony with a fork of broccoli and saying, "It's Grrrreat!", or force him to wear the scarlet B, but it will have no effect. The kids are not looking to Tony for diet advice. They never were. Talk to the parents. Junior is not fat because Tony made him eat Frosted Flakes, or six bowls of them. That's mom and dad's doing.

Obama: The B-Movie

--- by Micheal

I've listened to the media's best packaging of Obama. Just why the media are so infatuated with Obama is fodder for a different post. The important upshot is that the media are feeding us only the glossy best of Obama, much as a movie studio puts out trailers. All the best action shots and special effects get into the trailers. Never the slow talky development scenes. These "trailers" for Obama: The Movie show that Obama's handlers have learned a thing or two from 50s B-movie directors. Let audience imagination fill in their blanks.

A moment's digression to explain: The 50s was a hot market for movies -- any movie. Production of low-budget "B" movies was a thriving market. Monster movies and sci-fi were popular. B-movie producers could not afford an impressive monster costume or elaborate alien robot props. One good long look would reveal that "it" was just a hairy suit and rubber mask, or spray-painted cardboard. A shrewd B-movie director would avoid giving his audience a good look at his budget monster. Instead, he'd use shadows, or a quick glimpse of a claw, etc. Let the audience imagine what the monster was like. Their imagination could cook up a far more impressive monster than his B-budget could ever hope to create.

Listening to the media's chosen Obama bits reminds me of the clever B-movie director. I've been shown very little, really. They're counting on my imagination to conjure up whatever amazing image appeals to me. "Change!" Obama says. Some cheer, imagining between the empty lines whatever change they desire. There are as many utopias as there are dreamers. Since Obama never actually specifies what would change, he's never on any specific hooks to deliver on any of those utopias. Just getting elected would qualify as having made a change. Big deal.

His new slogan "Change we need," is the same B-movie monster shadow trick. There are as many needs as there are needy. By leaving things empty (again), he's left people to imagine that their need is the one he'll address. Given that many of our collected needs are mutually contradictory, someone -- a lot of someones -- are going to be disappointed. The Democratic Party has too many conflicting interests. Someone is going to get hosed, they just don't know it yet.

Hey, I don't begrudge any politician from making empty promises. That's hardly a surprise. What does concern me are the varied Obama acolytes who dreamily imagine that he will grant their wish. Call me a wet blanket, but he won't. He can't.

If you're envisioning Obama calling down from heaven your vision of a shining New America with streets of gold, etc., you're sadly naive. Worse, you're being used.

Playing It (too) Safe?

--- by Micheal

Is our culture going to hell in a hand basket -- a nice safe hand basket? I got to wondering that. Is America deteriorating due to an overactive sense of safety? We see a symptom of this "disease" as the common foundation of litigation over someone getting hurt. Whatever it was that caused their injury, it's someone else's fault, never the person. You put scalding hot liquid between your legs and get scaled, it's the restaurant's fault. You drive like an moron and flip over your SUV, it's Suzuki's fault. Whatever environment we find ourselves in, the prevailing presumption is that it will be 100% totally safe. If it isn't, someone else's must pay! Big time.

This came back to my attention recently when working on a new playground design for a zoo. There are tons of rules, standards and regulations governing what a "proper" playground must be. Tire swings must be far enough away from their support poles that a kid can't bang himself into one. There must be bumpers beneath teeter totters to cushion the landing and prevent a leg from getting trapped under there. There must be protective surfacing in front and back of a swing twice however high it is.

What sent me into a curmudgeonly rant was seeing the chart for what qualified as "protective surfacing". Grass does not qualify. For a swing, it needs to be 9 inches of shredded rubber or wood chips, etc. to protect the child from a fall from 10 feet up. What? I shouted to myself. What is a kid doing falling from 10 feet up? If he's up on top of the swing set horsing around and falls, why is this the playground owner's fault?

I know, I know, every curmudgeon out there usually begins his rant with, "When I was a kid..." But I'm going to do it anyway. When I was a kid in grade school, there was nothing beneath the teeter-totter but hard packed soil. There was nothing beneath the swings but more hard soil and the stray tuft or two of grass which we hadn't yet trampled to death. Beneath the monkey bars was more hard soil with maybe a skiff of sand. That was just how it was. We could all see it. We knew the risks.

If I jumped out of my swing, I landed on hard dirt. I could skin up my hands if I landed badly. I knew that going in. If a kid was goofing around on the monkey bars -- "Hey lookie what I can do!" -- and fell, he got the wind knocked out of him. I'd seen that plenty of times. What all that did was teach me some respect for the physical world. I learned some important lessons on that playground. (1) The ground is hard. (2) If you do stupid stuff, you can get hurt.

What do kids nowadays learn? (1) Falling should never hurt. (2) Nothing they do is stupid.

If they do get hurt, it's someone else's fault. Mommy will sue the school system or McDonalds or whoever was fool enough to let them in. I'm certainly not suggesting that playgrounds be made of broken glass and jagged rusty steel. It should not hurt to swing or climb the monkey bars. I also feel badly when a child gets hurt, but kids get hurt. Is it ALWAYS someone else's fault?

We're training our new generation to be habitual victims. They won't fail to get hurt at some point. The "world" they are growing up in is designed to protect them from a 10 foot fall. It makes 10 foot falls expected. Trouble is, the rest of the world -- the REAL world -- is not covered with protective surfacing. It's hard.

Isn't this what we're seeing now in the financial markets? Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, they were all goofing around at the top of the financial monkey bars and fell off. Instead of having the wind knocked out of them, like it would anybody else, they're bellyaching that their falls shouldn't hurt. Someone should be providing "protective surfacing" for them.

Our culture is going to hell in a hand basket -- a nice soft, round-cornered hand basket.