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With candles.

An inter­est­ing cri de coeur in the Free Press Sun­day — it was the lead story on the front page, this col­umn by Susan Tom­por, head­lined, “I never knew Detroit was a dirty word.” It’s a good col­umn, although I think any­one who hon­estly didn’t know Detroit was a dirty word in the rest of the coun­try needs to get out of town more. I rec­om­mend it to you because it’s a pretty fair ground-level look at pub­lic opin­ion around here:

Each night when I go home and turn on the tele­vi­sion, I find myself insulted by the right­eous tone on cable or the net­works. Look, I’ve always under­stood that many peo­ple do not like Amer­i­can cars or union work­ers or car com­pany CEOs.

I didn’t know that some really, really hate us — and couldn’t care less if one or two or three Detroit car­mak­ers up and dies. So we’d have hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple sud­denly unem­ployed. And the response is: Who cares?

That shouldn’t sur­prise any­one, really. I’ve writ­ten about this phe­nom­e­non before — I call it dis­tanc­ing. It’s a human trait, after a dis­as­ter, to look for dif­fer­ences between thee and me, so we can tell our­selves this would never hap­pen to us. It’s actu­ally eas­ier to say “who cares” than to face the fact it might actu­ally come true, and how we all might cope. I seem to recall, dur­ing the early-80s reces­sion, when unem­ployed Michi­gan autowork­ers were pour­ing into Texas in search of any sort of work, the natives sneer­ingly referred to them as “the black-tag peo­ple,” after the license plates then in use. I also remem­ber a bumper sticker: “Let ‘em freeze in the dark.” How I am look­ing for­ward to revis­it­ing those happy days.

Let me say only this: I hope the Michi­gan­ders keep their deer rifles handy when they head south.

I’m writ­ing this on Sun­day, because Mon­day is going to be busy­busy­busy and I have the time now. Guess what’s hap­pen­ing out­side? Fat fluffy flakes, that’s what. The whole mit­ten is cov­ered in pre­cip­i­ta­tion, most of it the freez­ing kind. And so it begins. Some­one once told me more babies are born in Novem­ber than any other month, a state­ment I could prob­a­bly ver­ify some­where if I cared enough (but I don’t). There’s cer­tainly noth­ing much to do in Feb­ru­ary, but I always link my birth­day month to out­right suck­age, the real cru­elest month. The only thing that saves it for me is Thanks­giv­ing, which, as Jon Car­roll points out, is a hol­i­day that requires noth­ing of us but grat­i­tude and approval of roast turkey. No prob­lemo for either of those.

I’m not the only one with a Novem­ber birth­day, of course:

That was a lovely cake for Kate and Alan. Thanks to Jef­frey Stein­garten, Joy of Cook­ing and the NYT for the recipe; it’s not the “birth­day cake” recipe here, but the buttermilk-layer vari­ety with chocolate-satin frosting.

The sweet­ness of another year, hon­ored, the sweet­ness of the one to come, hoped-for. That’s what that cake was about. We’ll see what Con­gress thinks.

Oh, and as bad as it gets here, this was the view from Ricardo’s back yard Sat­ur­day. Here’s hopin’ for higher humid­ity, California:

UPDATE: Just got an e-mail from our fre­quent com­menter (and my neigh­bor) JohnC, who rec­om­mends this Mark Phe­lan col­umn from today’s Freep, and adds:

Cou­ple other thoughts.

1. The main com­peti­tors of GM, Ford and Chrysler are already heav­ily sub­si­dized by their gov­ern­ments in the form of uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age. (Note: NOT social­ized med­i­cine, as some would have you believe, but guar­an­teed health cov­er­age, in a pri­vate sys­tem, for all. ) This knocks at least $1,500 PER CAR off the over­head for for­eign auto mak­ers. The fact that the United States is the only indus­tri­al­ized coun­try in the world that does not have uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age is not only mind-boggling, but crip­pling to our indus­trial economy.

2. After Sept. 11, the econ­omy, includ­ing the auto indus­try, went into a tail­spin. You will recall that the air­line indus­try was quickly bailed out by the gov­ern­ment. The automak­ers, led by GM Chair­man Rick Wag­oner, rejected sug­ges­tions that they seek gov­ern­ment help and instead low­ered their prices to drive sales.

Posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 1:14 am
in Current events, Same ol' same ol'.

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58 responses to
“With candles.”

  1. Kevin said on November 17th, 2008 at 1:44 am

    “Each night when I go home and turn on the tele­vi­sion, I find myself insulted by the right­eous tone on cable or the net­works. Look, I’ve always under­stood that many peo­ple do not like Amer­i­can cars or union work­ers or car com­pany CEOs.

    I didn’t know that some really, really hate us — and couldn’t care less if one or two or three Detroit car­mak­ers up and dies. So we’d have hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple sud­denly unem­ployed. And the response is: Who cares?”

    Hi from New Orleans, Susan Tompor.

    Trust me from 3 years ago when we were all down here scream­ing “we’re not a spe­cial case in any sense of the term, and atten­tion must be paid, if not for our sakes, then for yours.”

    The next move will be mak­ing the peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing into the vil­lains in the piece, and it’s already begun: wit­ness the cur­rent spin to turn the fail­ures of the indus­try away from cor­po­rate incom­pe­tence and toward those greedy production-line peo­ple who expected health insur­ance and pen­sions and all those things that are, these days, referred to as Some­thing For Nothing.

    It stinks. You will be blamed. You bet­ter start work­ing on a plan for your­self, and right now.

  2. Dexter said on November 17th, 2008 at 2:19 am

    Sen. Shelby’s tone on MTP Sun­day morn­ing is not really con­veyed by this bit of tran­script, but trust me, he hates more than CEOs and unions…he hates the indus­try and all its peo­ple.
    Brokaw’s com­ment leads off this seg:
    “Sen­a­tor Shelby, no one has been more out­spo­ken than you in oppo­si­tion to all of this( the $25 ‚000,000,000 bailout). Are there any con­di­tions that would per­mit you to vote for a loan or a bailout of some kind for the Detroit Big Three?

    SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R-AL): I haven’t seen them yet, Tom. I would – first of all, I think that we would have to see con­di­tions that would fun­da­men­tally change the way Detroit does busi­ness. They’re not build­ing the right prod­ucts. They did at one time. They’ve got good work­ers. But I don’t believe they’ve got good man­age­ment. They don’t inno­vate. They’re a dinosaur, in a sense, and I hate to see this because I would like to see them become lean and, and hun­gry and inno­v­a­tive. And if they did and put out the right prod­uct, they could sur­vive. But I don’t believe the $25 bil­lion they’re talk­ing about will, will make them sur­vive. It’s just post­pon­ing the inevitable.”

    …and so it’s dead.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    and for Ricardo:
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​d​h​q​h​O​rQWpY8

  3. nancy said on November 17th, 2008 at 7:41 am

    Funny you should men­tion New Orleans, Kevin. That was the first thing I thought of — “well, why do you live in a city below sea level, any­way? you must have wanted this to hap­pen,” etc.

  4. Jolene said on November 17th, 2008 at 8:15 am

    Shelby’s state­ment is offen­sive in a num­ber of ways. I mean, has there ever been a less inno­v­a­tive organ­ism or entity than a South­ern senator?

  5. beb said on November 17th, 2008 at 8:16 am

    I was think­ing about Susan Tompor’s Sun­day head­line as I was dri­ving in to work today. She must have missed all those Zuck­er­man Broth­ers movies where going to Detroit was a fate worse than death. And you don’t really have to leave the City of Detroit to hear peo­ple com­plain that their GM, Ford or Chrysler vehi­cle is a P. O. S. (per­haps with an “F-ing” thrown in their some­where. ) But then Tom­por was advis­ing read­ers less than a year ago that ARM’s were great morte­gages to get into. So she might be the best per­son to look for, for insight in this area.

    I’m not happy with the idea of a bail-out for the auto indus­try because it seems so much of their prob­lem was of their own mak­ing. They deserve to be pun­ished, but as Eleanor Clift [?] pointed out yes­ter­day on The McLaughton Group, we should be pun­ish­ing the work­ers, who weren’t respon­si­ble for this mess.

    I’m not happy with the bail-out of Wall Street either. The moreso when I hear that some of these bailed out com­pa­nies are still plan­ning to give their CEO’s tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in salary bonuses. Bonuses for what — run­ning their com­pany into the ground? Have they no shame? No loy­alty to their company?

  6. coozledad said on November 17th, 2008 at 8:18 am

    Just more of that nox­ious right-wing pro­jec­tion. Remem­ber the “Why do you hate Amer­ica so much?” crap.
    But Detroit can at least take heart, this time. If it’s any con­so­la­tion, Bubba’s gonna be starv­ing his ass off,too.
    It’s a good thing we finally turned those jok­ers out. They fully intended to send all the jobs to China.

  7. Jim said on November 17th, 2008 at 8:57 am

    I remem­ber when Inter­na­tional Har­vester in Fort Wayne was on the brink of shut­ting down, which it even­tu­ally did. There was a lot of local resent­ment against the “$17-an-hour broom-pushers” who had had it too soft for far too long. Althought the impact on the local econ­omy was hard, there were a num­ber of peo­ple who didn’t mind see­ing Har­vester go under. The com­pany had a rep­u­ta­tion for build­ing shoddy prod­ucts and not a few in town delighted at see­ing it get its comeuppance.

    But I don’t think the local econ­omy ever really recov­ered from the loss of such a major employer.

  8. Andrea said on November 17th, 2008 at 9:22 am

    In 2007, I attended the Pub­lic Rela­tions Soci­ety of America’s annual meet­ing in Philadel­phia. The host city for the fol­low­ing year always has a booth to adver­tise the next meet­ing. The 2008 show was to be held in Detroit and the slo­gan was “It’s about time Detroit got some good PR.”

    On the sur­face, with­out know­ing too much about the issue yet, I’m in favor of bail­ing out the automak­ers, only because we’ve bailed out every­one else over the years — Amtrak, the air­lines, the post office, now banks — so why not them?

  9. nancy said on November 17th, 2008 at 9:22 am

    It never did recover, Jim. The loss of Har­vester was really the death blow to the south­east quad­rant of the city, at least as a going con­cern of decent neighborhoods.

    I have mixed feel­ings on the idea of a bailout, and I don’t think bank­ruptcy is nec­es­sar­ily the worst pos­si­ble thing GM could go through right now. It’s entirely pos­si­ble Chap­ter 11 could be just what it needs, even.

    But I grow very impa­tient with the eye-rolling dis­dain at all those hor­ri­ble autowork­ers, with their pesky demands for things like pen­sions and health care. Many of the ben­e­fits every one of us, white col­lar and blue, take for granted today, came because unions like the UAW asked for them and fought for them — things like paid vaca­tions, sick leave, safe work­ing con­di­tions and a cer­tain mea­sure of respect that was never granted by their employ­ers. It seems that respect was always an illu­sion, any­way, but it was nice while it lasted.

  10. Julie Robinson said on November 17th, 2008 at 9:25 am

    And don’t for­get, the IH shut­down was pre­ceded by a lengthy, bit­ter strike that didn’t win the work­ers any favor.

    I’m with beb on both bailouts. But even if US car com­pa­nies start mak­ing cars we want to buy, their costs are too high. Work­ers will have to start pay­ing health insur­ance and copays, just like the rest of us, assum­ing we are so for­tu­nate to have any cov­er­age at all. Or maybe Obama can push through uni­ver­sal health care.

    That said, we have a Chrysler mini­van that we love, as well as a Camry.

  11. John said on November 17th, 2008 at 9:29 am

    I’m back from vaca­tion. Is LA Mary any­where near the fires? I thought of her when I saw the news.

  12. coozledad said on November 17th, 2008 at 9:37 am

    One of Shelby’s motives is to bring a few more Japan­ese automak­ers to Alabama. They’re prob­a­bly fund­ing some ren­o­va­tions to old Tara.

  13. brian stouder said on November 17th, 2008 at 9:46 am

    Four sen­tences about South­east Fort Wayne, where I was born and grew to adult­hood. My friends and I used to ride bikes and play (out of sight of our moms, all day long) all around the area between McMil­lan Park and Pon­tiac Street. Back in those days, peo­ple all up and down the neigh­bor­hood bought new cars every 2nd or third year, and many had boats on their dri­ve­way, and lake cot­tages. They all worked at Tokheim or Frue­hauf Trailer or IH or Fal­staff Brew­ery or Rea Wire or ITT, and it wasn’t unusual to see folks walk­ing to work with a lunch pail (if they worked at Frue­hauf, any­way). And in the space of just four decades, vis­it­ing my mom’s home in SE Ft Wayne, those times are more like an ethe­real dream than a real memory.

    (Call me hope­lessly out of date and dan­ger­ously mis­in­formed, but some ratio­nal bat­tery of pro­tec­tion­ist import tar­riffs seems to me to be long-overdue)

  14. Jolene said on November 17th, 2008 at 9:53 am

    Aside from the pol­i­tics or the eco­nom­ics of bail­ing out the auto indus­try, I’m a lit­tle stunned by con­sid­er­ing the prac­ti­cal details. Hard as it is for me to imag­ine what it’s like to run a global cor­po­ra­tion, it’s even harder to fig­ure out how any­one would under­take the restruc­tur­ing of such a com­plex entity.

    I really feel like we need more report­ing re what would hap­pen if GM filed for bank­ruptcy or what man­age­ment do w/ the money if a bailout were approved. Or pos­si­bly I need to look around for such report­ing. If any­one has use­ful links, I’d be inter­ested in know­ing about them.

  15. Catherine said on November 17th, 2008 at 10:18 am

    The WSJ had an arti­cle this week­end that declared it would be less expen­sive for the gov­ern­ment to just give every auto worker $10K and let what­ever hap­pens, hap­pen to the companies.

    The WSJ also had an inter­est­ing graph on Fri­day(?) show­ing where the jobs actu­ally are in the auto indus­try. IIRC, the biggest chunk is in sales, like your local show­room. The next biggest chunk is in parts man­u­fac­tur­ing. Again, spread out all over the globe, though most con­cen­trated in the Mid­west. Actual putting-the-cars together was like 10 – 12% of the total, I think. So not all the jobs are in Detroit, by any stretch.

    Sorry not to have links, I’m too cheap to pony up for their sub­scrip­tion (though it’s tempting).

  16. coozledad said on November 17th, 2008 at 10:32 am

    Do you sup­pose there’ll be any cuts in mis­sile defense pro­gram spend­ing? Prob­a­bly not. In fact, I hear the Repub­li­can strat­egy is to ratchet up demands for mil­i­tary spend­ing to off­set domes­tic pro­grams, then claim the Democ­rats are slash­ing the defense bud­get.
    http://​www​.defense​news​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​.​p​h​p​?​i​=​3​8​2​3​1​0​5​&​a​m​p​;​c​=​F​E​A​&​a​m​p​;s=COM
    (via josh Marshall)

  17. brian stouder said on November 17th, 2008 at 10:35 am

    A thought from the cheap seats -

    I think a use­ful par­a­digm for gov­ern­ment out­lays in this unfold­ing eco­nomic crash is — war.

    If this was 1941, and we had just been attacked, mas­sive pub­lic expen­di­tures would unques­tion­ably go for­ward for cor­po­rate retool­ing, R&D, and pro­duc­tion (think of Wil­low Run and Ford and B-24 bombers). What if the empha­sis is on (in this case) envi­ron­men­tally ‘green’ cars and not B-24’s?

    At the end of sev­eral years of unimag­ine­ably steep pub­lic spend­ing (aug­mented by pub­lic bond dri­ves), gov­ern­ment can ease back out of the arena, and the refur­bished (and well reg­u­lated) indus­tries can go forward

    This crash will appar­ently require a con­tin­u­ing series of huge pub­lic out­lays, and gen­eral fail­ure sim­ply isn’t an option.…and the heart­en­ing part of this is — we will be financ­ing the reor­ga­ni­za­tion and recapi­tial­iza­tion of our indus­trial base, and NOT the whole­sale destruc­tion of human beings on the other side of the world. (sort of a Mar­shall Plan with­out the lit­eral car­nage and destruc­tion that pre­ceded it)

  18. Jolene said on November 17th, 2008 at 10:41 am

    Thanks, Cather­ine. I’ll look for the arti­cle you men­tioned. But isn’t the WSJ free now?

    The WaPo has a blog about “the tran­si­tion”, focus­ing on announce­ments of appoint­ments and such. Yes­ter­day, they pulled together a set of links that include what might be called after-action reports on the elec­tion, includ­ing dis­cus­sions of elec­toral trends, demo­graphic trends, changes in party affil­i­a­tion, and such. Sev­eral pieces are very good; I par­tic­u­larly liked the piece by Tod Lind­berg on the idea that we are becom­ing a center-left nation and the piece by Ron Suskind on the begin­nings and end­ings of polit­i­cal eras.

    The Suskind piece con­tains this lovely sentence:

    The trans­form­ing promise of the nation, after all, is the idea of wel­com­ing the stranger, the out­cast, to a place of lim­it­less pos­si­bil­ity — a place where each of us might dis­cover our best self, be com­fort­able in our skin and find a home.

    That may be a lit­tle more pos­i­tive than most of us are feel­ing about our coun­try right now, but it was nice to be reminded of the ide­al­ism I learned in school.

  19. Sue said on November 17th, 2008 at 10:58 am

    ’”Novem­ber is the most dis­agree­able month in the whole year,“
    said Mar­garet, stand­ing at the win­dow one dull after­noon,
    look­ing out at the frost­bit­ten gar­den.
    “That’s the rea­son I was born in it,” observed Jo pen­sively,
    quite uncon­scious of the blot on her nose.’

  20. Michael said on November 17th, 2008 at 11:08 am

    I have a dif­fer­ent take, that Sen. Shelby might want to con­sider. It seems to me that with Chap­ter 11, the Japan­ese just might buy up some of those plants in MI instead of green­field­ing in AL. The infra­stuc­ture is there, the employ­ees are there (albeit at much lower wages and ben­e­fits), and the town wants a sav­ior. Sen. Shelby, in my world view, should be first in line to save the big three with another hit from the bot­tle of easy money. With that in place, they don’t empty the plants and sell them, or worse yet, fix their prod­uct and become competitive.

    As to the broader ques­tion of what Chap­ter 11 looks like, it seems to me, the union con­tracts are vacated, and the pen­sions are declared void. Then the gov­ern­ment through the PBGC (I prob­a­bly have the acronym wrong) takes over the Pen­sions and makes good on part of them (the amount of the part is the rub) which means the almighty tax payer is on the hook whether they do the bail out or wait for the end to come naturally.

    I vote against bail out, because I would rather see us pay the work­ers directly through gov’t guar­an­tee of pen­sions, than to give man­age­ment more paper to re-decorate the exec­u­tive wash­room, or what­ever they do.

  21. moe99 said on November 17th, 2008 at 11:13 am

    Brian,

    I think one of the main rea­sons that no one buys a car every two or three years and no one has a boat any­more, is that wages have not kept up with real prices. That’s why our houses became our banks for the past ten years or so, because we had no other way to pay for the extras. And now that is com­ing back to haunt us big time. Because I see no way that Obama can ever con­vince Con­gress to increase wages to the level needed, nor can it be done with­out set­ting of a huge round of infla­tion. This should have occurred gradully over time and kept pace with the price increases.

  22. Jeff Borden said on November 17th, 2008 at 11:15 am

    One thing that is truly strik­ing about our Repub­li­can politi­cians and their rightwing cho­ruses is the dif­fer­ence in tone between the finan­cial sec­tor bailout and talk of help­ing the Big Three.

    We are pour­ing hun­dreds of bil­lions of tax­payer dol­lars to sta­bi­lize the eco­nomic mar­kets and prop­ping up unwor­thy com­pa­nies in the process. Christ, those pin­heads in the big offices at AIG are still try­ing to live like pashas! The pro­posed amount headed to Detroit is a pit­tance in com­par­i­son, but I keep hear­ing that the automak­ers should be allowed to sim­ply fail. So, we’re social­iz­ing the bank­ing indus­try but we balk at help­ing out an indus­try that’s vital to the nation’s defense?

    The hatred of orga­nized labor runs deep. So, too, does con­tempt for the poor. I got into it with an Ohioan Repub­li­can over the week­end, who insisted that it was the Com­mu­nity Rein­vest­ment Act that has caused the cur­rent finan­cial melt­down. Yessir. It’s all the fault of the poor. Those vam­pires in $5,000 suits who bun­dled deriv­a­tives? Not guilty.

    There’s an instruc­tive story on Page One of the NYT this morn­ing about Phil Gramm, who helped launch this dis­as­ter because his mother once bor­rowed money at a very high rate of inter­est to buy her home. He’s unre­pen­tant, of course, about all the dereg­u­la­tion he cham­pi­oned and that, sadly, Bill Clin­ton signed into law.

  23. LA Mary said on November 17th, 2008 at 11:24 am

    No fires near me, but plenty of smoke and ash and hor­ri­ble air. Every­thing smells burned. On the news this morn­ing I heard the Mon­tecito fire was arson. The ex used to work at San Ysidro Ranch, a very posh resort there, and the houses around there are huge. Bel Air looks shabby by com­par­i­son.
    My employer sent out an email ask­ing if any­one wants to con­tribute PTO hours for co-workers who need time off due to fire issues. This is a pretty pain­less way to help out. Two or three hours of PTO is not missed, but if lots of peo­ple con­tribute that much, it’s a huge help.

  24. coozledad said on November 17th, 2008 at 11:28 am

    Brian, Michael: Krug­man must have been lis­ten­ing to you. he says we need to have a mas­sive pub­lic works project on the order of WWII, with­out all the killing. Spend unre­pen­tantly, but intel­li­gently. Then we can hand it back over to the idiots in the next gilded-age cycle.

  25. Linda said on November 17th, 2008 at 11:33 am

    Jeff, what I spe­cially like about the hyp­o­crit­i­cal refusal to help the Big Three is the objec­tions of Richard Shelby of Alabama, whose state has done every­thing for Mer­cedes Benz but French kiss them:
    http://​www​.cfed​.org/​f​o​c​u​s​.​m​?​p​a​r​e​n​t​i​d​=​3​4​&​a​m​p​;​s​i​t​e​i​d​=​4​6​&​a​m​p​;​id=177

    Of course his refusal to finan­cially aid rival auto firms is prin­ci­pled! What’s funny to note is that, after all the good­ies and give­aways, the MB plant in Alabama just announced a buy­out pro­gram for its employ­ees. Hee.

  26. Julie Robinson said on November 17th, 2008 at 11:42 am

    Coo­zledad, I think that is what Obama meant in his 60 Min­utes inter­view. He said he would take ideas from any pres­i­dents of the past, specif­i­cally men­tion­ing Lin­coln, FDR and Rea­gan. We need to rebuild lots of infra­struc­ture and have avail­able work­ers and fac­to­ries. Why not a replay of the CCC?

  27. Peter said on November 17th, 2008 at 11:43 am

    Brian’s idea is a really good one — it’s about time we invested in our indus­trial base instead of prop­ping up vapid profiteers.

    Buit as for Brian’s (and Moe99’s) take on the old days; I guess it must depend on where you live. I grew up in Chicago, and nobody I knew had a boat, vaca­tion house, or sec­ond car, and almost every­body rented an apart­ment. On top of that, you can bet that most of the peo­ple who did have a boat in the dri­ve­way wouldn’t have had one twenty years ear­lier. Let’s face it — the US hit the jack­pot in the ’50’s and ’60’s, and for once in his­tory, a lot of peo­ple got a piece of it instead of some greedy slobs on top.

  28. Jason T. said on November 17th, 2008 at 11:50 am

    As my high school his­tory teacher used to say, it boils down to a sim­ple phi­los­o­phy: “Hooray for me, and to hell with you. I got mine.”

    Three of my last four cars have been Amer­i­can (a Ford and two Mer­curys) and I’ve been very happy.

    I actu­ally thought about trad­ing in my cur­rent car (Mer­cury) to “help the econ­omy,” but I like it too much … enough that it’s in the shop all week because I decided to get some body work done. (Penn­syl­va­nia win­ters are mur­der on cars. My only Japan­ese car went almost 200K, but was com­prised mostly of rust and duct tape when I got rid of it.)

    “Detroit” built a lot of crap in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, but those days are mostly gone. (When I say “mostly,” I’m look­ing at Chrysler, but many of its prob­lems were caused by its Ger­man overlords.)

  29. mark said on November 17th, 2008 at 11:54 am

    good morn­ing all–

    I’m not sure whether Detroit suf­fers more from it’s asso­coa­t­ion with the auto indus­try or the auto indus­try from it’s asso­ci­a­tion with Detroit. Prob­a­bly the latter.

    GM has to restruc­ture and bank­ruptcy court is the best place to do it. Yes, Unions brought lots of improve­ments to the work­place dur­ing the last cen­tury. That some­times laud­able his­tory can’t change eco­nomic real­ity and does not enti­tle one par­tic­u­lar gen­er­a­tion of mem­ber­ship in one par­tic­u­lar union to a level of pay and ben­e­fits that require mas­sive pub­lic assis­tance in order to be maintained.

    Pen­sions have to be phased out, every­where. They rep­re­sent a model that no longer con­forms to real­ity. In the hay­day of pen­sions, the life expectancy of a retir­ing worker was 10 to 12 years post retire­ment. Today?

    My father worked for Chrysler, retir­ing as a main­te­nance fore­man and tool room super­v­sor. He spent 15 years or so in the UAW, as a tool and die maker, then ele­vated to the “fore­man world”- mid-level man­age­ment respon­si­bil­i­ties but no exec­u­tive perks.

    In 1985, dur­ing one of the many auto­mo­tive indus­try down­turns, he was offered early retire­ment or trans­fer to a dif­fer­ent City and plant. He took early retire­ment. Sixty per­cent of his pre-retirement pay for life with COLA. Twenty-three years later he is, thank God, still in good health and still draw­ing his pen­sion. If he lives as long as his father (also a Chrysler retiree) the pen­sion will con­tinue another 15 years.

    Only gov­ern­ment offers a pen­sion these days. As pay goes up peo­ple retire ear­lier. As health care advances, peo­ple live longer. Pen­sions have to be replaced with defined con­tri­bu­tion plans and that is hap­pen­ing in every respon­si­ble industry.

    brian–

    If gov­ern­ment knows how to make cars bet­ter than pri­vate indus­try, why not nation­al­ize all auto pro­duc­tion? And where is gov­ern­ment not bet­ter than the pri­vate sec­tor? Com­put­ers? Cloth­ing? Sit­u­a­tion come­dies? There are coun­tries that have gone much fur­ther down that road than we have, and I’m hard pressed to think of any that have enjoyed great success.

    Paul­son had a “solu­tion” to the credit cri­sis– $700 bil­lion to buy toxic mort­gage backed secu­ri­ties. In the space of two weeks Con­gress was herded like cat­tle to autho­rize the money. Some, like my idiot con­gress­man (Souder), were even spout­ing off that the tax­pay­ers would “make money” buy­ing these secu­ri­ties. Now we are told “never mind.” I’m dubi­ous about government’s abil­ity to run a business.

    GM has been slowly out­sourc­ing every­thing but assem­bly and research for years. All that most of those sup­pli­ers need is for GM to be more com­pet­i­tive. Their pay and ben­e­fits are already non-UAW scale and many of them sell to Toy­ota and Honda as well. GM will con­tinue to pro­duce in bank­ruptcy and to buy parts. With luck, they will buy more parts once they have restruc­tured and can be more com­pet­i­tive. If not, well, Stude­baker doesn’t sell cov­ered wag­ons these days either.

  30. nancy said on November 17th, 2008 at 12:00 pm

    I’ll give up my pen­sion — such as it is, if it even exists — when Gen­eral Elec­tric takes Jack Welch off its wel­fare rolls:

    The divorce papers filed by Jane Welch detail her husband’s use of an $80,000 per month Man­hat­tan apart­ment owned by the com­pany, court-side seats to the New York Knicks and U.S. Open, seat­ing at Wim­ble­don, box seats at Red Sox and Yan­kees base­ball games, coun­try club fees, secu­rity ser­vices and restau­rant bills, accord­ing to the Times.

  31. mark said on November 17th, 2008 at 12:02 pm

    I am in favor of an Eisen­hower like invest­ment in infra­struc­ture like high­ways, bridges, dams, water treat­ment, etc. For 50 years we lived large off the high­ways Ike built. We should have done this under Clin­ton, when times were good and we had the ben­e­fit of the peace div­i­dend. But bet­ter late than never.

  32. Catherine said on November 17th, 2008 at 12:03 pm

    Michael, your point about “giv­ing man­age­ment more paper to re-decorate the exec­u­tive wash­room, or what­ever they do” is echoed in the Sat. WSJ arti­cle (which I found still lying on my kitchen table). It’s from a finance pro­fes­sor at NYU, and the part of his argu­ment that I found most inter­est­ing is his cal­cu­la­tions about what GM and, to a lesser extent, Ford, have done with the cap­i­tal that has flowed into them in the last 10 years, which is: squan­der it and ask for more. He says that mak­ing a bon­fire of all the poten­tial bailout cash would actu­ally leave the coun­try bet­ter off than set­ting GM up to squan­der more capital.

    And this is the dif­fer­ence, accord­ing to him, with the Wall St. bailout. Yes, the finan­cial cri­sis was made by those firms (with a bunch of gov­ern­ment look­ing the other way, IMHO), but they have shown his­tor­i­cally much bet­ter use of capital.

    He doesn’t say this, but it would seem like the air­line indus­try bailout is a bet­ter par­al­lel for the auto industry.

    Just think it’s an inter­est­ing perspective.

    And, Jolene, I think I have a cookie from an old WSJ sub­scrip­tion — it won’t let me see bup­kus online with­out re-subscribing! (Hence the pile of news­pa­pers on the table…)

  33. mark said on November 17th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

    nancy–

    I think it is a dif­fer­ent topic, but exec­u­tive com­pen­sa­tion is and has been an out­rage. And I see it is spread­ing to col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. Peo­ple who build and cre­ate things deserve all that flows to them. Peo­ple who merely man­age, with lucra­tive exit pack­ages nego­ti­ated at the time of hire, take lit­tle risk. Cor­po­rate boards need to be sued by share­hold­ers for guar­an­tee­ing out­ra­geous wealth for life as “com­pen­sa­tion” to newly hired management.

  34. nancy said on November 17th, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    Mark, true. I just wanted to point out that the “time to take it easy” men­tal­ity affects a lot more than the UAW. Who are bear­ing a dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of the pub­lic blame for what’s happening.

  35. Jeff Borden said on November 17th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    More good news today: Citibank will cut 53,000 jobs.

    I am in com­plete agree­ment with Paul Krug­man that the first thing Pres­i­dent Obama must do is start a wide array of pub­lic works projects. This would not only help cre­ate a lot of decent jobs, but would per­form an invalu­able ser­vice to this country.

    We still use the schools, bridges, muse­ums, parks, libraries, road­ways and dams built dur­ing the Depres­sion. Any­one who walks, ped­als or dri­ves on a reg­u­lar basis knows how far our infra­struc­ture has fallen into disrepair.

    Then, I hope some­one fol­lows the advice of Thomas Fried­man, who I agree is often some­thing of a pin­head. His call to com­mit the U.S. to becom­ing the world leader in envi­ron­men­tal tech­nol­ogy is, I think, a wise one.

    This nation is capa­ble of aston­ish­ing accom­plish­ments in a very short period of time. The arm­ing, sup­ply­ing and field­ing of two huge armies dur­ing WWII comes first to mind, but as a kid, I remem­ber how this coun­try dove into sci­ence edu­ca­tion when the Russkies launched Sput­nik. Within 12 years, we’d landed men on the moon.

    My fear is that we may be depend­ing on a gen­er­a­tion of polit­i­cal pyg­mies. Time will tell if Obama is FDR or Jimmy Carter. But when I look at the Con­gres­sional polit­i­cal lead­ers on both sides –Pelosi, Reed, Boehner and McConnell– I’m not exactly lifted by a tide of hope.

  36. Jenflex said on November 17th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

    Yes, Jeff, but who the heck was Speaker or Sen­ate Major­ity Leader when FDR took office? Darned if I can remem­ber their names. Sam Ray­burn wasn’t until ’40.

  37. beb said on November 17th, 2008 at 1:17 pm

    me at 8 am: So she might [not] be the best per­son to look for, for insight in this area.

    Left out the neg­a­tive. I don’t think highly of Tompor.

    Julie Robin­son says: But even if US car com­pa­nies start mak­ing cars we want to buy, their costs are too high. Work­ers will have to start pay­ing health insur­ance and copays, just like the rest of us…

    I’m not employed in the auto indus­try but I kind of think work­ers already pay a por­tion of their health care with co-pays and so on. But when you talk about the need to off-load health ben­e­fits unto the work­ers that is pun­ish­ing the work­ers for the mis­man­age­ment of the owners.

    A big­ger issue is the pen­sion fund oblig­a­tions. I see pen­sions as a bind­ing con­tract between own­ers and work­ers. Work­ers were asked to work at a lower rate because they were guar­an­teed a bet­ter deal at retire­ment. The own­ers never invested suf­fi­cuiently into their pen­sion funds to cover their oblig­a­tions and now are cry­ing poverty. But it’s not the work­ers’ fault that the own­ers spend their pen­sion money. They shouldn’t have to suf­fer. And the man­age­ment who wasted that money should be going to jail.

  38. Jeff Borden said on November 17th, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    Jen­flex,

    You make a great point. Well-taken.

    Regard­ing the auto­mo­bile indus­try, I recall read­ing a story about Toy­ota, which was con­sid­er­ing two sites for a new pro­duc­tion plant: Alabama or Ontario province.

    Despite the higher costs of doing busi­ness in Canada, Toy­ota chose Ontario. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the com­pany cited two big rea­sons: a bet­ter edu­cated work force and national health care.

    Frankly, I’ve been amazed that Amer­i­can big busi­ness did NOT cham­pion national health care. It’s clear a lot of indus­tries would be more com­pet­i­tive glob­ally if they were able to get out from under med­ical cov­er­age. This does not address the pen­sion issue, of course, but it’s a start.

    My heart agrees with Beb that some of these arro­gant jerks in Detroit ought to be behind bars, but my mind says it would be just as well if they were sim­ply ousted. They’ve for­feited the right to main­tain their lofty positions.

  39. John c said on November 17th, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    Michael:
    The for­eign automak­ers would never buy plants in Michi­gan or any other state with laws sym­pa­thetic to union organizing.

    And who­ever pointed out that “actu­ally assem­bling the cars is some­thing like 10 – 12 per­cent,” I’m not sure what your point is. None of the more than 100 peo­ple laid of at my wife’s com­pany in the last month assem­bled cars. They helped GM spend adver­tis­ing money. My friend Jeff is a metal fab­ri­ca­tor. He’s never assem­bled cars, but has always worked in the car indus­try. He spent most of this year laid off and is very wor­ried the job he finally landed won’t last. I think of him because I just went to a fundraiser to help defray costs for treat­ment of his wife’s breast can­cer. My friend Tom never worked for a car com­pany, though he did assem­ble cars. He also took them apart. His job was to write the ser­vice man­u­als mechan­ics use to esti­mate labor costs. I haven’t seen him for a few months. But last time I checked he was work­ing at a hard­ware store.
    Get­ting back to the for­eign auto mak­ers briefly. They will be in dire straits if the Big 3 go down, as they share many of the same parts sup­pli­ers, many of whom will drop a few moments after GM, Ford and Chrysler.
    I agree that bank­ruptcy may be the way to go. But those who lightly say we should let these com­pa­nies die, well, I don’t think they under­stand what that means.

  40. Catherine said on November 17th, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    John c, it was me, quot­ing the WSJ. I think my point was that the notion of “Detroit” is far less sim­ple than the TV news clip of a union­ized guy assem­bling a car in Detroit.
    Pain in that indus­try is already extend­ing far and wide. Our local Ford dealer shut down a cou­ple months ago — noth­ing on the scale of what’s going on where you are, but per­haps a sign of how it’s not just hap­pen­ing to some *other* place called “Detroit.” So I guess just echo­ing Nancy’s point about distancing.

  41. moe99 said on November 17th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    OT (but the dis­cus­sion on the GM bailout has been great):

    I.F. Stone’s grandaugh­ter speaks:

    http://​tehip​ite​tom​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​1​1​/​o​n​e​-​h​u​n​d​r​e​d​-​y​e​a​r​s​-​o​f​-​i​f​-​s​t​o​n​e​.​html#0

    she thinks he would be a blog­ger these days.

  42. crinoidgirl said on November 17th, 2008 at 3:15 pm

    I’m in Detroit.

    I just lost my job as a tech­ni­cal writer for a sup­plier to the auto com­pa­nies, after PREVIOUSLY los­ing my job as a non-degreed engi­neer with a Major Auto Com­pany start­ing with “F”.

    Now the only com­pa­nies that are hir­ing (and hir­ing like mad), are defense con­trac­tors. Which I swore I would never work for.

    I hate this. But I need a job, and I have a fam­ily to sup­port, and can’t move. I have no alternative.

  43. Joe Kobiela said on November 17th, 2008 at 3:15 pm

    Being a retired union worker, this bail out is inter­est­ing to say the least. I haven’t decided yet what side to be on. Kind of was hop­ing Brother Dave K might weigh in on this, he was a union offi­cial, and by the way, a HILLSDALE COLLEGE, grad­u­ate. If your lurk­ing Bro chime in.
    Joe K

  44. mark said on November 17th, 2008 at 3:54 pm

    One more thought on the bail-out.

    To a degree, I think the auto­mo­tive indus­try is a vic­tim of it’s own suc­cess. When I was a kid (60s and 70s) it was pretty com­monly accepted that after 60,000 miles or so, it was time to look for a new car or accept some pretty sig­nif­i­can repair and main­te­nance bills. And even if you were great work­ing on your own car, in most parts of the coun­try you had 3 to 5 years before rust took hold, paint faded and cloth inte­ri­ors tore and wore out. (My mater­nal grand­par­ents always had a plas­tic cover on the “good sofa” and they kept one on the seats of the “new Buick” as well. Do they even make such things anymore?)

    Cars wore out faster, aes­the­ically and mechan­i­cally. Remem­ber auto­mo­bile inspec­tions? The aver­age guy was look­ing at a new car every three or four years.

    Today, with just a lit­tle main­te­nace, a car will go 150K or more miles and still look pretty good even 10 years post man­u­fac­ture. Autos have become much more of a durable and less of a con­sum­able. Mate­ri­als, engi­neer­ing, safety, etc are all rad­i­cally bet­ter than 25 years ago.

    For the last 10 or 15 years auto man­u­fac­tur­ers have spent huge sums on adver­tis­ing (and 36 month lease pro­grams) to get us into new cars. Increas­ing the num­ber of cup hold­ers and in car refrig­er­a­tors can only sell so many new cars.

    Nobody really needs a new car. There’s a glut of very good used ones and car life expectancy is way up. The indus­try has already put three cars in the typ­i­cal 2 adult home (slight exag­ger­a­tion). Coun­tries that don’t have our sprawl aren’t going to cre­ate it, or destroy exist­ing mass trans­porta­tion, so more cars will be needed.

    The entire indus­try is very vul­ner­a­ble to any pro­longed eco­nomic downturn.

  45. Dorothy said on November 17th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    Happy, happy birth­day to Kate & Alan! Even if it’s belated, the wish is sincere.

  46. brian stouder said on November 17th, 2008 at 4:12 pm

    Mark — an excel­lent point. I bought a ‘com­pany car’ back in 2003; a 1998 Olds 88 with 140,000 miles on it (mostly high­way). We replaced some elec­tronic thing in the igni­tion a few years ago, but other than that — and a set of tires, that’s about it .

    We still have that car — it starts every morn­ing and all the odds and ends still work, and it has 50,000 more miles on it…and despite all the snowey, salty Indi­ana win­ters it has endured, it has essen­tially no rust at all (although the paint wants to flake off of the front fend­ers up near where the engine hood seam is)…and they don’t make ‘em anymore!

    a GREAT car!! (even if it makes me an old guy to drive an Olds 88!).

    We also have an ’03 Dodge Car­a­van, which we love. (no mat­ter what any­one says — mini­vans are mar­velously pleas­ant to travel in, and for day-to-day kid haul­ing). I can­not under­stand why some peo­ple wor­ship the Honda Odyessy — gimme a Car­a­van anytime.

    ‘Detroit’ (ie — Amer­i­can car mak­ers) are OK with me — but fur­ther to Mark’s point — we almost never buy new

  47. Julie Robinson said on November 17th, 2008 at 4:19 pm

    Amen, Brian – who can afford an Oydessy any­way? Just to make you feel bet­ter, I inher­ited my grandma’s 1972 Olds 88 while in col­lege and had it for sev­eral years. It was one of the last made before the oil embargo (remem­ber how we had the chance to fix all this then?) and got about 5 – 6 mpg. You could lit­er­ally watch the gas gauge fall on a trip across town. Great cargo capac­ity though – it prob­a­bly held about as much as our minivan.

  48. Jeff Borden said on November 17th, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    My sec­ond car was a used 1966 Chevro­let Bel-Air four-door. I bought it from the father of a friend, who worked at a Ford deal­er­ship. The car was five-years-old and had exactly two options: auto­matic trans­mis­sion and an AM radio. Try par­al­lel park­ing a beast like this with­out power steer­ing. It also was a four-door pow­ered by a pathetic straight 6 and looked pretty much like an unmarked police car. The farm cou­ple who traded it in on a new Ford Cus­tom had never opened the back doors. I think it took two cans of WD-40 to get those hinges work­ing again.

    Not a fast car, but it did seat eight for dinner.

  49. paddyo' said on November 17th, 2008 at 6:43 pm

    Hear, hear to the calls for pub­lic works pro­grams to help us climb out of this eco­nomic crevass. Any­body looked around at the sorry state of our national infra­struc­ture lately?

    Oth­er­wise we’ll wait around for the next Twin Cities bridge, or New Orleans lev­ees, or dete­ri­o­rat­ing inter­states, or broken-down water and sewage sys­tems … the list is as long as an inter­state. (BTW, remem­ber when dri­ving on an inter­state highway/freeway — well, OK, SOME inter­states — was smooth as glass?)

    The CCC built a lot of the build­ings and facil­i­ties that put the still-young National Park Ser­vice (full dis­clo­sure: after three-plus decades as an ink-stained wretch, I work for that agency now) on the map as the keeper of our national scenic and his­tor­i­cal trea­sures. Think what a 21st-century CCC-style effort could do for the econ­omy AND the national infra­struc­ture … espe­cially if we weren’t spend­ing those daily bil­lions in Iraq.

  50. LA Mary said on November 17th, 2008 at 8:04 pm

    I don’t wish unem­ploy­ment on all the auto work­ers and all the other busi­nesses that con­nect to them in any way, but I do wish evil on the jerks who decided to make Hum­mers for pas­sen­ger car use. And Escalades, and Expedition/Excursions and all the pas­sen­ger vehi­cles that excede the weight limit for local streets but drive on them anyway.

  51. Suzi said on November 17th, 2008 at 10:20 pm

    Regard­ing IH, the com­pany did not go under. Nav­is­tar still has a healthy pres­ence in FW — about 1200 employ­ees, mostly UAW engi­neers who work in prod­uct devel­op­ment. That’s about the same num­ber of employ­ees at the local Raytheon (for­merly Mag­navox) and ITT engi­neer­ing facil­i­ties. In fact, the local Nav facil­ity is in hir­ing mode and employ­ing a lot of con­tract engi­neers who are com­mut­ing weekly from the Motor City. The com­pany is sup­ply­ing the US mil­i­tary with lots of vehi­cles as it did dur­ing WWII. Can you say MRAP? (Mine Resis­tant Ambush Pro­tected v-shaped hull vehi­cle that is sav­ing lives on the bat­tle­field). Tho the plant in FW that once employed sev­eral thou­sand is no more, Nav­is­tar does still employee thou­sands of assem­blers in the US, Canada and Mex­ico. I’m hav­ing a deja vu of blog­gage with Harl Delos … what­ever hap­pened to that guy?

  52. Dexter said on November 18th, 2008 at 1:41 am

    Harl dis­ap­peared months ago and never re-surfaced here.

    After WWII my dad and uncles were part of the wave of return­ing sol­diers. Dad and one uncle went to dif­fer­ent schools in Chicago, Dad to be a sales­man and my uncle to be a machin­ist.
    When I was a boy in the 1950’s the best pay­ing jobs were Warner Gear in Auburn and “The Har­vester” . Lots of men from DeKalb and Steuben county drove to IH every day. Oth­ers hired in at Warner Gear. Gen­er­a­tions of men and later women made careers out of those jobs.
    If your dad worked at Har­vester or Warner Gear you lived in a new stick-built home and you rode in a new car. Women encour­aged (maybe even nagged a bit) hus­bands who did not work there to get an appli­ca­tion.
    I lived north of Gar­rett a few miles and I knew kids whose dads worked at places in FWA like Mohawk Motors, Fal­staff, Zoll­ner Piston,and in DeKalb County, Auburn Clutch (later Dana , later Eaton) , but it seems those dads were always get­ting laid off.
    Har­vester dads and Warner Gear dads did too, but it seemed they usu­ally got called back.
    By the time I came of age, instead of being on the cusp of a new era, I was con­signed to sort of mop up . I was one of the last draftees before the draft lot­tery started. After Viet­nam I hired into one of those UAW fac­to­ries and made it to retire­ment just before the whole damn place went to hell.
    My wife and I were able to guide and help all three daugh­ters through col­lege, and they now all have good jobs.
    I guess it all works out.
    After the army I attended col­lege for a while but ran out of cash and sim­ply went to work full time, and even­tu­ally retired.
    What do kids with just 12 or 13 years of edu­ca­tion do for a career these days?

  53. Jolene said on November 18th, 2008 at 1:57 am

    Dex­ter, if all of our kids had 12 or 13 years of edu­ca­tion, we could count our­selves well off. Detroit has a 75% high school dropout rate. Nation­ally, the num­bers are around 50% for African Amer­i­can and His­panic kids and about 30% over­all. It’s an awful, awful situation.

  54. moe99 said on November 18th, 2008 at 4:14 am

    Nancy, here’s a must see zom­bie movie: Nud­ist Colony of the Dead

    http://​www​.imdb​.com/​t​i​t​l​e​/​t​t​0​1​02564/

  55. caliban said on November 18th, 2008 at 8:32 am

    Fox calls hen­house black. Man bites dog? Mixed metaphor? Take that bull by the horns and run with it. Biggest crooks in history.

    No shame. These ass­holes will try this with Black­wa­ter before all is said and done. Lit­tle Miss Runa­muck must get a shiver up her thigh when embed­ment is the story of the day.

    You know, the mis­ad­min­is­tra­tion screwed up badly on embed­ding excep­tion­ally foul envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions. Thought they were clever. Like they japped on the NAFTA side agree­ments and home heat­ing fuel to Korea. Clever frat boys.

    It’s con­ta­gious. crooks.

    Nud­ist Colony of the Dead is on Hawkeye’s to do list.

  56. brian stouder said on November 18th, 2008 at 9:32 am

    Speak­ing of “no shame”, check out Nate Silver’s blog; he goes after an egre­gious exam­ple of what hap­pens when you mix whiney-righty sour grapes, with a huckster’s desire to sep­a­rate rubes from their cash, AND give chest-thumping par­ti­sans like Sean Han­nity some racist talk­ing points, wrapped up as shiney baubles (poll results, don­cha know)

    Nate Sil­ver became and remains one of my favorite stops on the inter­net, for just this sort of ‘answer-back’ material

    http://​www​.fivethir​tyeight​.com/

  57. Linda said on November 18th, 2008 at 9:23 pm

    Brian, I should never have stopped read­ing fivethir­tyeight after the elec­tion – that inter­view was price­less. Reminded me of the inter­view in this Sunday’s NYTimes with Karl Rove. When they are cor­nered – or not on top of the world – both are no-class, snippy ***holes.

  58. Ricardo said on November 21st, 2008 at 11:55 pm

    If there is any con­so­la­tion, imported autos are piled up sit­ting at the docks in Los Ange­les. Detroit pulled out of the great depres­sion, but it left a lot of scars on the land­scape. The Ford his­tory book that was made into a PBS movie had a lot to say about the Guardian col­lapse. At that point, Detroit was on its way to sur­pass Chicago as the sec­ond city. Then after, all was left was an unfin­ished city. You can still drive around and see where the nice build­ings ended. It is a lit­tle harder to see, because of the other decay, but it is there. Edsel Ford lost every­thing and had to face Henry who warned him about New York bankers. He gave Edsel a mil­lion in cash and told him to ditch his NY friends. The old coot prob­a­bly had it in a mat­tress over at Fairlane.

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