The decline, fall and hypocrisy of FKAHBT and Craig Calcaterra, part 2

Last week, I did an extended blog post about the fuglyness of the changes to the NBC baseball blog formerly known as Hardball Talk. I riffed a bit on head blogger there, Craig Calcaterra (I'd call Aaron Gleeman 1A, I guess, Bill Baer and others the second team).

I talked a bit about Craig as a "brand" in today's "branded journalism" world, as well as the background of how he got to where he's at now, while tidying up some of the history I originally had wrong, or incomplete, because I'd forgotten a couple of things I knew, had a couple of things wrong, and had a couple of things unclear. (See how easy it is to admit you're wrong in public, you numbnuts called Reflex who was a prime mover for this piece about bad commenters at sports blogs? :) ) Thanks to a personal friend and a new Twitter friend for help.

OK, I'm picking up the thread here, from that first blog, from comments responding to me suggesting Craigie could move on, especially if he's gone beyond snarky to condescending (or worse) on Twitter, and other things.

And, beyond snarky or condescending, ultimately, he's gone hypocritical, and that's the big theme here.

First, Reflex, I'm far from the only one saying Craig's a hypocrite on saying these things are good in the long run, not just for NBC's wallet, but for commenters/viewers, despite all the feedback to the contrary. Craig's flat-on-his-face snark about the Cubs doing a fan loyalty ballot to get playoff tickets may have been intended as a lighthearted poke, but per an old Hawkeye Pierce comment, it had the same light touch as a German jazz band.

(NBC's also a hypocrite for refusing to put up a poll itself. Craig's a double hypocrite because, typos and all, he could easily Google for "free polls," find a website like Pollhost, create a link and drop it in a blog post. I used Pollhost often, for years, before Blogger created a polling widget. That said, I get the feeling that, beyond NBC controlling all formatting issues for years, Craig isn't even a mild version of an Internet-formatting techie.)

Second, commenters have a right to bitch about Craig, and make suggestions.

Specifically, Craig likes to bitch about how wrong, how often, is ESPN's lawyer-commenter, Lester Munson. Well, Craig's not an idiot about sports besides baseball, and he used to be a practicing lawyer. A lot of it was government work, but I assume not too far away from contract tort law and similar stuff.

If Munson's that bad, Craig could start pitching himself to Yahoo, Fox, CBS Sports, Grantland 2.0 or whomever as the newer, better Munson.

Maybe, per the Twitter friend, Craig's burned out. Maybe all he wants to do is blog and take his NBC paycheck.

If so, then at least be honest about it, Craig, when you're talking about how the changes help NBC's wallet, even if that honesty leads yet a few more people to start using AdBlock, and a lot more people to start using Ghostery to block NBC and ad partners from tracking them.

Third, accept that, as part of further criticism, the next time you bitch about Munson, I'll bitch back about you not doing something about it, per what I just said.

Fourth, per item No. 1, know it alls who also act bullying at times? I have no problem being a PITA, or more of a PITA than already. That's especially true if you think you can single me out, among the commenters you disagree with.

(Unfortunately, said PITA has migrated to the new site I am now following. Fortunately, he doesn't know my real world name; else, his shipping company might lose a package I want.)

The background of Obama's "competitiveness guru"

President Obama made waves a month or so ago when he signed up GE CEO Jeff Immelt to head his outsider-based business competitiveness council.

Well, the type of "business competitiveness" Jeff Immelt's GE favors is paying little to no income tax, year after year.

In essence, GE's financial shell games are government-legalized money laundering. So, we should really wonder just how much Obama is committed to financial reform, if this is a prime example of business competitiveness.

And, let's not even call Obama "neoliberal" anymore.

The skinny on corporate tax dodgers

They're bad.

The worst? Arguably, GE. Other bad ones? Some of the are Hewlett-Packard, Verizon, Chevron, Ford, ExxonMobil and Bank of America. Exxon, for example, actually pays taxes at a 47 percent rate - but none of that in the US.

China wants to build high-speed rail — in US!

If anything illustrates the United States' collapse into a post-manufacturing nation, per Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" and previous post-Renaissance nation-states (and get a CLUE, David Brooks, "emotional experiences" do NOT "sell"), it's the idea that that China now wants to build high-speed rail in the United States.

Beyond our increasing collapse as a manufacturer, including both GM and GE making more money off credit than products (note that GE wants the Chinese company as a partner), this story illustrates so many other things:
1. The gutting of manufacturing companies for stock $$;
2. The refusal of the government to invest in infrastructure;
3. The Chinese using govt money to boost private companies like this;
4. The cluelessness of U.S. conservatives to all this, and the drag-along factor of neoliberals.

Even if GM clears bankruptcy quickly …

The current market for automotive sales is likely to be no better a year from now:

Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, director of the Center for Automotive Research in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, said capacity will need to shift to emerging markets such as India and China, not saturated markets like the United States and Europe, where most of the dealmaking is centered.

All the changes brings to mind past unhappy auto mergers: Ford with Land Rover and Jaguar, Chrysler with Germany's Daimler AG, and General Motors with Fiat.

A big exception, Dudenhoeffer said, is Volkswagen AG, which gathers multiple brands from Bentley to Lamborghini to Skoda under one roof. "But it took 20 years to bring them onto the same technical platforms," he said.

This should, but won’t, give pause to boisterous Saturn buyer Roger Penske, who is planning on using Saturn dealerships as a platform to sell multiple brands of foreign cars. Indy Roger says that will only happen when those unspecified brands meet GM quality before he’ll sell their cars through Saturn as a multi-brand dealer network. Besides the laughableness of that, with many foreign brands already ahead of GM, one that isn’t yet is working on that.

When India’s Tata is looking at coming to America, not the other way around, Roger Penske should shut up until he can prove something.

A hybrid tugboat?

Yes, says General Electric.

Shipping is dirtier, global-warming wise, than aviation. And, the GE boar could use 35 percent less fuel as well as burn 80 percent cleaner. And, GE has made a major investment in a lithium-ion battery maker.