Saturday, November 20, 2010

Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Nov. 20 & 21, 2010


Me too, Bob... me too...
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13 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20101120/NEWS/11200326/-1/SITE_MAP/Culver-OKs-state-pay-raises

[Iowa's Democratic] Gov. Chet Culver's administration agreed Friday to offer pay increases for state employees that will cost taxpayers more than $100 million, despite Republican requests that the decisions be delayed until Terry Branstad becomes governor in January.

* WHAT A PIECE OF SHIT, HUH? I MEAN, IF THIS DOESN'T TELL YOU WHAT THE DEMS ARE ALL ABOUT... NOTHING WILL.

A Branstad spokesman called the deal "reckless," and House Republican Leader Kraig Paulsen said it would likely lead to layoffs.

* BUT WHAT THE HELL DOES CULVER CARE... HE'LL BE LIVING THE GOOD LIFE AS A RETIRED GOVERNOR.

A review last year by The Des Moines Register showed that Iowa is one of only six states to offer free health insurance to state government employees and their families.

* FREE... TOTALLY FREE... (*SMIRK*)... FOR THE EMPLOYEE (& FAMILY) THAT IS! FOR THE TAXPAYERS... (*SIGH*)

The wage hike plan would give members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, better known as AFSCME, a 2 percent across-the-board increase for the fiscal year that begins July 1 and another 1 percent raise the following calendar year on Jan. 1, which is what the group had requested. This 2- and 1- percent increase, under the contract, would be given in each of the next two contract years.

In addition, many union members who are not at the top of their pay grade would receive an additional 4.5% raise, known as a step increase, for certain professional milestones or for job longevity and other career advancements.

(*SMIRK*) RAISES ON TOP OF RAISES; CUTE.

[In addition to having their health insurance premiums totally paid for,] Iowa's state employees also pay substantially lower out-of-pocket health costs, such as deductibles and office co-payments, than private-sector workers, according to an independent study of nearly 900 businesses and government employers conducted this year by David P. Lind & Associates of Clive.

"Taxpayers are the losers in this backroom deal," said Jeff Boeyink, Branstad's chief of staff. "Governor Culver's decision to rush through a collective bargaining deal with state employee unions before he leaves office is reckless and irresponsible. This will cost Iowa taxpayers $103.5 million the first year alone, and hundreds of millions in subsequent fiscal years."

Paulsen, the House Republican leader, said that in some cases, some state employees would receive a roughly 15% salary increase over the next two years, largely because of step increases.

* YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF TOTAL DISREGARD FOR FISCAL REALITY.

* I CAN'T SPEAK WITH CERTAINLY OF ALL DEMOCRATS, BUT IT CERTAINLY APPEARS - UNLESS YOU BELIEVE DEMOCRATS SIMPLY CAN'T DO MATH - THAT DEMOCRATS ARE DELIBERATELY TRYING TO "BREAK" THE CAPITALIST FREE-MARKET ECONOMY.

November 20, 2010 at 11:46 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/critics-slam-obama-administration-hiding-massive-saudi-arms/story?id=12192558

The Obama administration has quietly forged ahead with its proposal to sell $60 billion worth of fighter jets and attack helicopters to Saudi Arabia unhampered by Congress, despite questions raised in legislative inquiries and in an internal congressional report about the wisdom of the deal.

* WELL, LIBS...??? ANY THOUGHTS...??? I MEAN... (*SMIRK*)... I THOUGHT IT WAS GEORGE W. BUSH WHO WAS IN LEAGUE WITH THE SAUDIS...?!?!

The massive arms deal would be the single largest sale of weapons to a foreign nation in the history of the U.S., outfitting Saudi Arabia with a fully modernized, potent new air force.

"Our six-decade-long security relationship with Saudi Arabia is a primary security pillar in the region," Defense Sec. Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote in a Nov. 16 letter to congress. "This package continues that tradition."

* BARAK OBAMA. BOB GATES. HILLARY CLINTON. NAH... NO AMERICAN OLIGARCHY HERE... JUST GO BACK TO YOUR HOMES FOLKS - NOTHING TO SEE HERE. (*SMIRK*)

But some critics are questioning the deal, and the stealthy effort by the Obama administration to avoid a more probing congressional review by notifying Congress last month, just as members were headed home for the November elections. Congress had 30 days to raise objections - a review period that concludes Saturday.

With most members leaving Washington today, any significant effort to block the deal appears dead for now, officials said.

* HEY... CALL ME CRAZY... BUT PERHAPS OUR HONORABLE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS MIGHT CONSIDER STICKING AROUND TILL WEDNESDAY. (YOU KNOW... WORK MONDAY, TUESDAY, AND WEDNESDAY LIKE MOST OTHER AMERICANS WILL BE DOING...)

Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat, submitted a resolution this week to try and block the deal, and was among those who objected to the way the administration approached the required congressional review.

"Hiding this in a recess announcement is a sign of how unpopular it is," he said. "It's bad policy that now is further tainted by shameful process."

November 20, 2010 at 12:00 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703440004575548320163094444.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

When Richard Miller told his colleagues that he was leaving his tenured position as dean of the University of Iowa's engineering school, a number of them asked if he was smoking dope. Mr. Miller was stepping down to become the first president of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts - and Olin, which opened its doors 10 years ago, does not offer tenure to its faculty.

(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

Having tenure is like being placed in "golden handcuffs," [Miller says.] "There are more important things than permanent employment" - like offering students a fulfilling education.

(*STANDING OVATION*)

Olin is showing what's possible when a school sheds tenure, one of the most antiquated and counterproductive employment policies in the American economy. Instituted at a time when people in most professions remained in the same job for life, tenure today is an economic anomaly. The policy protects laziness and incompetence - and rewards often obscure research rather than good teaching.

F.W. Olin was an engineer and industrialist who amassed a fortune from a variety of manufacturing enterprises in the early 20th century. In 1938, he transferred much of his wealth to a foundation that bore his name, and, for the next 50 years or so, the foundation supported higher education on more than 50 campuses across the country. [B[y the 1990s, the trustees were frustrated with their inability to promote change - particularly in the field of engineering. Engineering, a commission of the National Science Foundation concluded a number of years ago, had become too specialized and wasn't giving young engineers the skills to compete globally.

Little came of the commission's work. And so the Olin board of trustees decided to start over. Along with a $200 million founding gift, the trustees laid out their idea for a college, which included creating a "culture of innovation" and thus deciding not to offer faculty tenure.

* To be continued...

November 20, 2010 at 1:57 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

This creative culture is apparent to any campus visitor. Unlike students in most engineering programs, who spend their first three years taking physics and math before they work on designing an actual structure, Olin students begin to design things on the first day. I watched as one professor gave his mechanical engineering students instructions to build a bridge spanning two tables. They would be judged on how much weight it could bear, its aesthetic appeal and its cost efficiency.

* FRIGG'N AWESOME!

Olin students - a significant number of whom turn down more prestigious schools like MIT, Stanford and Berkeley partly because of Olin's significantly lower tuition—take a variety of liberal arts courses as part of their general curriculum, as well as courses at Babson College, a business school adjacent to their own. During senior year, they work with a local company as consultants for an engineering project. Some have worked on products like a photovoltaic system to power greenhouses. Others have helped develop advanced robotic devices and medical instruments that will result in less invasive surgeries. Their school is ranked 8th in undergraduate engineering by U.S. News and World Report.

Mr. Miller says that promoting a culture of entrepreneurship has been especially important. Like entrepreneurs, "engineers are people who envision things that have never been and do whatever it takes to make them happen," he says.

Olin's trustees put some structures in place to keep that entrepreneurial culture strong. In addition to the lack of tenure, the entire curriculum must be re-evaluated every seven years. There are no formal departments.

Students are also engaged in a constant process of evaluating their education: They are asked for extensive feedback about each course, and alumni are surveyed routinely. When I asked senior Theresa Edmonds how these policies affect her education, she said her professors are very "responsive" to the concerns of students.

Though Olin doesn't offer lifetime employment, the school's vision has been appealing enough to attract an average of 140 applicants for every faculty position. In all but three cases, Olin got its top choice to fill each teaching slot.

November 20, 2010 at 1:58 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704312504575618852339002996.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

President Obama famously declared in 2009 that under his Administration the "days of science taking a backseat to ideology are over." Except, apparently, when the Administration wanted to justify its Gulf of Mexico drilling ban this summer.

(*SNORT*) (*SMIRK*)

[L]ast week...the Department of Interior's acting inspector general, Mary Kendall, issued her findings on the moratorium's controversial beginnings. Lackluster though her investigation was, the report confirms that the moratorium never had any basis in science or safety. It was pure politics.

(*SMIRK*)

The Inspecor General's findings include no evidence the decision to shut down an entire industry - at a huge cost to jobs and long-term drilling safety - was done with input from engineers, scientists, economists or anyone with day-to-day oversight of U.S. drilling.

White House aides knew a moratorium was unjustifiable, and they didn't want to disclose their plans to peer-reviewers whom they knew would object. The Administration was by late May already taking political heat for its handling of the spill and perhaps it felt a moratorium would help make it look tough on the oil industry.

In other words, thousands of Gulf Coast jobs [were] sacrificed as a way to deflect political blame from the White House and onto [the oil] industry.

November 20, 2010 at 1:59 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-19/senate-approves-4-6-billion-for-claims-by-black-farmers-american-indians.html

The U.S. Senate yesterday approved spending $4.6 billion to settle two lawsuits: one by black farmers who alleged racial discrimination by government lenders and the other by 300,000 American Indians who said they had been cheated out of land royalties dating to 1887.

* THIS SHOULD MAKE YOU SICK TO YOUR STOMACHS, PEOPLE. HERE'S WHY: IF "GOVERNMENT LENDERS" WERE DISCRIMINATING AGAINST BLACK AMERICANS, SHOULDN'T WE BE READING OF "GOVERNMENT LENDERS" GOING TO JAIL...?!?!

* AS TO THE INDIANS... THAT'S A SEPARATE MATTER GOING BACK TO 1887. BUT, HEY... IF ANYONE RESPONSIBLE IS STILL ALIVE... WHY AREN'T WE READING ABOUT ARRESTS... TRIALS... CONVICTIONS... JAIL SENTENCES...? HMM...???

The farmers’ 1997 class-action lawsuit alleged discrimination by the Agriculture Department’s lending programs. Under a negotiated settlement announced in February, qualified farmers can collect as much as $50,000, plus debt relief. Others may collect monetary damages up to $250,000.

* SAME QUESTION: INSTEAD OF PUNISHING INNOCENT TAXPAYERS (OR, HELL... EVEN "IN ADDITION" TO REACHING INTO THE POCKETS OF INNOCENT TAXPAYERS WHO HAVE TO FUND THIS "SETTLEMENT") WHY NOT PUNISH THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS DISCRIMINATION THAT PRESIDENT OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS INSIST TOOK PLACE...? HMM...???

November 20, 2010 at 1:59 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704170404575625040718803272.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLEThird

At the end of 2007 America began its economic decline. It started in the Bush administration, continued in the Obama administration, and is likely to be with us many months or even years longer. The federal deficit soared to $1.3 million from $161 billion in 2007. Unemployment in the same period rose to 9.6% from 5%.

* NOT TO NIT-PICK, BUT I'D SAY AMERICA'S DECLINE BEGAN IN THE LATE '60's AND EARLY '70's.

But the good news is that as the American people began to see the decline, they began to do something about it. In November of 2009 they threw out the Democratic incumbent governor in New Jersey and in Virginia elected a Republican to take over. Governors Chris Christie (R-NJ) and Bob McDonnell (R-VA) began to improve their states.

* AMEN! GOD BLESS CHRIS CHRISTIE!

On November 2nd voters spoke even more forcefully, continuing to voice their belief that the current government was doing badly. Republicans added six senators, over 60 congressmen and at least 675 state legislators. The North Carolina state senate became Republican for the first time since the 1870s and the Alabama chambers swung to the GOP for the first time since Reconstruction. Republican gained more than 100 seats in the New Hampshire House and flipped the Michigan House from 64-42 Democratic to 63-47 Republican. In Iowa the House Republicans went from a 12 seat deficit to a 20 seat majority.

* YEAH... BUT I LIVE IN NEW YORK... (*RUEFUL SMILE*)

* OH... AND DON'T FORGET CALIFORNIA... (*FROWN*) (*SIGH*)

Republicans now hold 29 of the governorships and 53% of all state legislative seats. They will control 54 of the 99 state legislative chambers, their largest number since 1952. They will fully control congressional redistricting in 15 states including Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

In 2012 there will be 23 Senate Democrats (including the 2 independents) up for election, but only 10 Republicans. The Republican seats - Arizona, Indiana, Utah, Tennessee and Texas, for example - seem likely to remain Republican, and many of the Democratic ones - Florida, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin - may be won by Republicans too. Additionally, Nancy Pelosi's continued leadership in the House will allow Republicans to argue that the Democrats have not learned anything from the November elections.

Our biggest challenge is to get the economy moving again. From the end of World War II to 2000 America's GDP grew at an average annual rate of 3.5 percent. Since 2000 it has grown at an average of just 1.8 percent per year. House Republicans must encourage job growth, reduce government spending and extend the Bush tax cuts. We must also reduce corporate tax rates to become globally competitive, eliminate farm and ethanol subsidies, adjust Social Security and end earmarks. All of this must somehow be done with a Republican House, a Democratic Senate and some cooperation with the current President who won't like any of it.

What our nation needs is a sincere debate about the proper role of the federal government in modern America and how to expand our economy, add jobs and increase our prosperity.

November 20, 2010 at 2:22 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704648604575620570967082954.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

GM is not exactly the same company it was before the subprime crisis, but neither is it all that different.

With the auto maker's IPO this week, the Dow Jones is roughly back where it was at the start of the housing meltdown. And the new GM's stock? Once you account for the debt wiped out in bankruptcy, it's arguably selling at a surprising discount to where the old GM was selling in late 2007.

In October 2007, just as the housing troubles came into view, GM, though weighed down with all its legacy issues, was valued at nearly $25 billion.

The "reborn" GM yesterday was valued at $51 billion - after $80 billion in liabilities were whisked away in Chapter 11, including $27 billion in bond debt.

(*SMIRK*)

What would the pre-crash GM have been worth if relieved of $80 billion in IOUs? Assume a 5% yield on GM debt and nine-to-one price-earnings ratio on the stock. The answer (for sake of argument) is $61 billion.

The main achievement of bankruptcy was a redistribution of rights from GM's creditors to a worrisome and conflicted new set of equity owners, namely the U.S. and Canadian governments and the United Auto Workers.

(*SMIRK*)

[Assuming] saving GM with taxpayer money was necessary [in the first place], the deed could have been done with an equity infusion or bridge loan. Bankruptcy is the private solution for a company that can't pay its bills. The government-orchestrated bankruptcy of GM didn't even try to simulate a private solution - in retrospect, it wasn't much more than a government-orchestrated stripping of creditors for the benefit of organized labor.

* YEP!

The giant semi-privatized auto maker may be out of the woods financially, but it's not out of the woods politically. That's what the stock price is telling us.

November 20, 2010 at 2:22 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704104104575622840256881122.html?mod=ITP_pageone_0#articleTabs%3Darticle

Two years ago, the U.S. military warned that the Mexican government was "weak and failing" and could lose control of the country to drug traffickers.

[Today] some parts of Mexico are caught in the grip of violence so profound that government seems almost beside the point. This is especially true in northern places like Ciudad Mier and surrounding Tamaulipas state - a narrow, cleaver-shaped province that snakes along the Texas border and hugs Mexico's Gulf Coast.

Across Tamaulipas, gunmen run their own checkpoints on highways. The cartels have forced Mexico's national oil company to abandon several gas fields. Many farmers have given up on tons of soybeans and sorghum in fields controlled by criminals. Leading families, fleeing extortion and threats of kidnapping, have escaped to Texas - as have the mayors of the state's three largest cities.

(*???*) SO... ARE THESE MAYORS NOW ILLEGAL ALIENS LIVING OPENLY IN TEXAS...??? CALL ME CRAZY, BUT... er... WOULDN'T THE PROPER PLACE FOR MEXICAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS TO FLEE TO BE... er... MEXICO CITY...???

Most of the brutality that takes place along this vast arid landscape goes unrecorded. Newspapers as well as television broadcasters have been silenced. Rumors have taken the place of news and circulate on social networks like Twitter, which people check regularly to make sure that no shootouts are taking place on the routes they take to work or school. "Public space has been taken over by criminals, and Tamaulipas society is at their mercy," says Carlos Flores, a visiting professor at the University of Connecticut who studies the state's crime groups.

As goes Tamaulipas also go a small but growing number of Mexico's 31 states, including Chihuahua and Michoacán - places where rival organized crime groups either exert political and territorial control or are in the midst of bloody battles to impose their hegemony. In these states, despite four years of intense effort, the Mexican government and its institutions hold little sway.

Tamaulipas...shares roughly 230 miles of border with Texas and...only a river separates it from the U.S. cities of Laredo, McAllen and Brownsville.

For Mexico's armed forces, Tamaulipas and next-door Nuevo León, where the fight between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel has spilled over, are Mexico's most dangerous states. So far this year, the army has been attacked 128 times across Mexico; 91 of those attacks have taken place in Tamaulipas and in Nuevo León, up from only three the previous year.

On a recent day, unknown assailants threw a grenade at an army base in the border city of Matamoros, just across from Brownsville [,Texas], while cartel gunmen fought in broad daylight in Reynosa, the state's biggest city. In the state capital of Ciudad Victoria, the man poised to win the state governor's election was ambushed and shot dead in broad daylight this summer, along with his four bodyguards.

* To be continued...

November 21, 2010 at 8:41 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

Ciudad Mier, a picturesque colonial village on the Texas border, was a sleepy tourist attraction until February, when two rival drug cartels turned it into a slaughterhouse. Caravans of armored SUVs crammed with gunmen firing automatic rifles prowled the streets. Parents pulled terrified children from schools. The town of 6,000 went dark every time the combatants shot out the transformers. In May, a man was hung alive from a tree in the central plaza and dismembered while town folk heard the screaming from behind shuttered doors. Then last week, after a new offensive by the Zetas, one of the two groups that have turned the town into a no-man's land, hundreds of residents packed what they could into their cars and fled, leaving eerily empty streets with burned out shells of cars and bullet-pocked walls.

Last month, an American riding a jet ski on Falcon Reservoir, a border lake not far from Ciudad Mier, was shot dead by suspected cartel gunmen, his body never recovered. Days later, the severed head of the lead Mexican investigator on the case was dumped in a suitcase in front of a Mexican army barracks.

While Ciudad Mier remains the only city to have emptied out so far, the rule of law is breaking down elsewhere. In Reynosa, a taco stand a short walk from the main plaza offers a typical encounter with criminals who have no fear of authorities. Days ago, the owners say, a group of men descended from sport-utility vehicles, AK-47 machine guns slung to their belts. "They came for lunch. They didn't pay," says an employee at the stand.

In Tampico, a port city that bears a passing resemblance to a faded New Orleans, the most important society dance was cancelled this year for the first time in 70 years, says a cattle rancher. Kidnappings have surged. Among the victims: two of the city's former mayors. "Most owners of businesses have left and run their companies by telephone from Texas," says a local resident. The outgoing mayor, Oscar Pérez, is rarely seen in town. Residents believe he lives in Garland, Texas.

* AGAIN... WHY ARE MEXICAN OFFICIALS FLEEING TO THE UNITED STATES...??? IF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL KNOWS ABOUT THIS, DOES SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON...???

* MILITARIZE THE BORDER. THAT'S WHAT I SAY. PROTECT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER. MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS... AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS. DOESN'T THAT MAKE SENSE...???

November 21, 2010 at 8:41 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010/11/19/54-arrested-in-huge-sweep-for-undocumented-immigrants/?mod=rss_WSJBlog&mod=WSJ_NY_NY_Blog

Federal agents arrested 54 undocumented immigrants who re-entered the country after being deported following criminal convictions, authorities said Friday.

* I'VE GOTTA BE HONEST WITH YOU, FOLKS... IF IT WERE UP TO ME... I'D EXECUTE THE BASTARDS. TWO STRIKES AND YOU'RE DEAD!

November 21, 2010 at 9:20 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010/11/20/union-drops-health-coverage-for-workers-children/?mod=rss_WSJBlog&mod=WSJ_NY_NY_Blog

One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants, union officials said.

The fund is administered by Local 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East - an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.

(*SMIRK*)

The union fund faced a “dramatic shortfall” between what employers contributed to the fund and the premiums charged by its insurance provider, Fidelis Care, according to Mitra Behroozi, executive director of benefit and pension funds for 1199 SEIU.

(*SMIRK*) (*ROLLING MY EYES*)

The fund informed its members late last month that their dependents will no longer be covered as of Jan. 1, 2011. Currently about 6,000 children are covered by the benefit fund, some until age 23. “In addition, new federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26,” Behroozi wrote in a letter to members Oct. 22. “Our limited resources are already stretched as far as possible, and meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”

(*SNICKER*) BUT... er... umm... I THOUGHT THAT COVERING "KIDS" TILL AGE 26 WAS ONE OF THE DEMOCRAT'S PROUDEST ACHIEVEMENTS... (*SMIRK*)

Behroozi estimated that the fund faced a $15 million shortfall in 2011 and more in the following years for the coverage of workers’ children.

* LET'S HEAR IT FOR OBAMACARE! (*RASPBERRY*) LET'S HEAR IT FOR SEIU! (*MIDDLE FINGER*) (*SMIRK*)

November 21, 2010 at 9:20 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704648604575620474145202434.html?mod=ITP_TEST

The new General Motors sold shares in a ballyhooed public offering this week. Out of the klieg lights, a more subdued sale has been under way: the hammers, wrenches, robots, hydraulic pumps, drills and other properties that remain with Motors Liquidation Co. - the collection of unwanted assets known as the "old" GM.

At one auction here a week before GM's IPO, Terry Lashin stepped into the game. With a final wave of his hand, Mr. Lashin nabbed his prize: the SNK DC-5ASM High-Speed CNC Die Milling Machine. For the discounted price of $290,000, Mr. Lashin won the last of these roughly 22-ton metal-cutting machines from the tidy floor of GM's defunct Grand Rapids Stamping factory near here.

Destination: Korea.

(*SIGH*)

* FOLKS... IN CASE ANYONE IS MISSING THE POINT... THIS "DISCOUNTED PRICE"... THIS SUBSIDY... GOES TO A KOREAN COMPANY COURTESY OF THE UNWILLING LARGESS OF THE U.S. TAXPAYER!

About 3,000 pieces of whirring, clanging equipment once stamped out frames and other parts here for Chevrolet Suburbans, Cadillac Escalades and other vehicles. The machines were now being sold off for between 10 and 30 cents on the dollar. Picking through ["old"] GM's unwanted remnants now are small foreign manufacturers, electric-car start-ups, and a subculture of so-called vulture dealers who specialize in factory liquidations.

November 21, 2010 at 9:20 PM

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