Prison Moons

Lunchable
Hollywood’s power lunches have been filled in recent days with conversations about hypocrisy, according to people in the industry: Many of those who are liberal leaning and support gun control also make their livings selling violent images.

There is also a creeping dread in Hollywood that the industry will be drawn into a governmental crackdown on violent imagery. President Obama, in an appearance Wednesday in which he pledged to pursue more restrictive gun-control measures, also suggested that the country needed to look more closely “at a culture that all too often glorifies guns and violence.” (NYT, 12/19/2012)

Hollywood should feel dread...and guilt. Good for Obama for putting Hollywood's Liberals on notice. Let's hope he follows through.

But then there is this....

But even in a period of reflection, there were already pockets of people in Hollywood pushing back on Tuesday — executives who maintain that, while tragic, the Newtown massacre had no connection with entertainment. (NYT, 12/19/2012)

So, tell us again. It's the NRA that is in denial?


With A Flourish
The auto industry has not only survived but it is flourishing. Car sales, which had sunk as low as 10.4 million in 2009, are now running at an annual rate of more than 15 million. As many as 250,000 new workers have been added. Disastrous past industry practices – from bloated inventories to excessive sales incentives – have been curbed. (Steven Rattner, NYT, 12/19/2012)

Just to review, "Obama Car Czar" Rattner is a private equity guy (we thought private equity guys were evil!) who paid $10 million in "restitution" for alleged improprieties involving a New York State public pension fund. Now he writes extolling the wonderful thing that the auto bailout turned out to be. What with the low inventories and reduced sales incentives and everything. But didn't we just read something about this a mere six days ago? Of course we did! 

G.M. ended November with about a 140-day inventory of Silverados, which is about double the industry standard of 60 to 70 days of supply. To clear out the backlog, G.M. raised its truck incentives an unspecified amount this month to generate more showroom traffic. (NYT, 12/13/2012)

A pretty strong chart from today’s WSJ piece by Jeff Bennett and Christina Rogers, looking at a new problem for Detroit auto makers: despite healthy sales growth, stockpiles of unsold vehicles are building up to more than twice the size of the industry average. And foreign brands are not having the same problem. (WSJ, 12/5/2012)

Calling the New York Times Fact-Checker!


Taxing
Vermont's Green Mountain Power sends a notice to customers announcing an increase in the Energy Efficiency Charge (EEC) from $0.00931 to $0.01011 per kWh. Sounds innocuous enough...until we did the math. The increase is 8.6%! This is the thing with taxes and why we fight them. They always go up in such stealthy and seemingly small increments that we tend to overlook them. Until we realize that the government has their hands on our wallet and is shaking it hard. 

What is the EEC? Here is how it is described: "The EEC pays for an organization called Efficiency Vermont to provide energy efficiency services to most of the state....Energy efficiency benefits Vermonters in two ways: first, using less electricity lowers the bills of individuals who take steps to reduce their power; second, and more importantly, when statewide use goes down, it reduces electric utilities' total system costs, which would otherwise be paid by all electric customers through rates."

Only the government (or a public utility) could write something like this, both idiotic and incomprehensible at the same time. To the first point, apparently the public is not aware that 'using less electricity lowers their bills.' They just HAVE to get the word out on that! Second, lower overall usage drives down rates for all customers...such savings, we would note, which are reduced by the cost of the EEC paid by these very same customers. Here's a thought - and we are just free-styling here - eliminate the EEC and pass the savings along directly!