Texas whackadoodle's bid for Detroit Packard site rejected

I had heard recently that an old, long-abandoned Packard manufacturing plant in Detroit had been put up for sale by Wayne County, Mich.

I hadn't heard about the winning bid, which has now been rejected by the city for its principal, Dr. Jill Van Horn, and her associates missing a payment.

But, let's take further look at that bid, and the person making it, via her professional website.

I'm venturing, given this from her statement on winning the bid:

Prior to placing her bid on the Packard Plant, Dr. Van Horn's prophecy was to resurrect Detroit by providing education, jobs and vocational training to the city's residence, simultaneously unplugging the financial arteries of the city.

Plus this, based on Peruvian hypercapitalist economist Hernando DeSoto:

Although the process to convert the potential energy in the water into electricity is well known. The one that gives Detroit's assets the form required to put in motion. More production is not known, in other words while we know that it is the pin stop, turbaned, generators, transformers, and wires of the hydro-electric energy system, that convert the potential energy of the lake until it is fixed in a  accessible form. We do not know where to find the key process that connects the economic potential of that Detroiters can benefit from.

As combined with her medical ideas and her first-person plural talk on her website, that Dr. Van Horn is either a New Ager or a prosperity-gospel Christian of an envelope-pushing form. 

That said, given how wacky her press release was, plus a simple use of teh Google pulling up her website, why was her bid even officially accepted in the first place?

Obama talks realism on auto industry

And, in Michigan, no less. And, he’s right — the jobs are gone. With the skill level needed to build today’s cars, if the American auto industry bounces back, American companies may not hire back old workers, and they certainly won’t hire illegals. Look for more robotics, with the possibility of Michigan creating some jobs in that area if its smart.

That said, Obama’s community college iniative, touted again might create some robotic maintenance-skilled people. It won’t create any new robotic engineers.

Granholm smokes Big Three ‘green’ crack

Yesterday, in dissecting the likelihood that General Motors could make a quick emergence from bankruptcy (and even raising in passing the question of whether it could really emerge from bankruptcy at all), and noting how much it could stiff the government/taxpayer in the process, I wondered skeptically (to put it politely) at the naïve optimism (to put it politely) of President Barack Obama’s “industrial policy” toward two of the Shrinking Three automakers.

Well, it turns out The One has nothing in this area on Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who (to put it politely) is whistling in the dark.

Unless Toyota is opening its delayed U.S. Prius plant in the Great Lakes State, Granholm is even more deluded about the Shrinking Three than Obama is, given the woo she pitches at the HuffPost. (Of course, given the amount of pseudoscience the Greek Goddess peddles, it’s only fitting that this pseudoeconomics piece should appear there too. It's also fitting that Gang Green-ish Kos would tout this story.)

Beyond the absurd idea that GM or Chrysler is going to make anything green in terms of either environmentally-driven cars OR American dinero in profits in the next several years, some of the companies she touts as partners in this project?

Dow Chemical? Polluter of Saginaw Bay. Hardly green.

Johnson Controls? With at least one municipal government that I’ve reported for a newspaper, it’s failed to deliver on projected “green” cost savings.

Dunno about all the others, but if these are alleged “green” partners for GM, it shows just how deluded — or how fearfully grasping at straws — Granholm is.

It could be a mix, to be sure. In that case, the end result is self-delusion.

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As if Michigan could sink much lower, oh Detroit News?

The Detroit News has a boilerplate-hot editorial against President Obama’s cap-and-trade carbon dioxide plans. saying they could “sink Michigan.”

First, while somewhat snarky, my title isn’t totally that way.

Second, as every environmentalist knows, the Big Three was working on much of this technology 30 years ago and deliberately dumped it. Where was the Detroit News editorial over that? The editorial over the Big Three sinking Michigan in exchange for short-term profit?

That would be crickets I hear.

Third, the reason EU cap-and-trade didn’t work was because standards were set wrong, cap-and-trade amounts were oversold, etc. But, that’s what happens the first time you try something so new — you get to work out bugs. Also, the “punitive” complaint was partially based on the U.S. not having any sort of CO2 plan.

Fourth, you think Michigan is underwater now? It could be really in trouble if climate change decouples Lakes Superior and Michigan from Lake Huron. Lots of inland shipping down the tubes.

That said, is there some way to link this cap-and-trade with encouraging green auto jobs in Michigan? Sure.

But, given the past history of the Big Three, quasi-protectionism be damned. “Japanese” carmakers, at least those that also have plants in America, should have a chance to get in on the same action.