Three years after Joe Paterno arrived at Penn State to begin his legendary career, my dad arrived there as a freshman to play football. He never really knew JoePa, who coached quarterbacks in his early days, but I was the comparatively rare Ohio boy to become a Penn State football fan and admirer of its … Continue Reading →
You know United Auto Workers leadership is aware of the dismal state of national economy when their unprecedented news conference today to discuss the details of the tentative agreement with General Motors Co. came down to three words — “jobs, jobs, jobs.” Not cost-of-living increases. Not health care sweeteners. Not the return of benefits diluted … Continue Reading →
Evidently it takes a Navy man to tell China’s bureaucrats that some things are just too important to trade away for incremental sales in the world’s fastest growing auto market. But that’s what General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson is doing, and he deserves credit for standing tall. A report in today’s Wall Street Journal … Continue Reading →
Even as President Barack Obama criss-crosses the country (only in battleground states, natch, come the ’12 election) to sell his latest jobs plan, his administration’s abject failure to pick business winners stands on full display in Fremont, CA. There, solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC — recipient of $535 million in taxpayer-backed loans — is shutting its … Continue Reading →
For the first time in a long time, Ford Motor Co.’s real estate unit — Ford Land — is doing something to benefit its hometown. Sort of. The Michigan Economic Growth Authority today approved a plan to “capture” $2.3 million in local and school taxes to renovate two long-vacant Ford buildings into a dorm and … Continue Reading →
Near the end of his remarks today to Detroit’s annual (organized) Labor Day rally, President Barack Obama said: “We are one nation. We are one people. We will rise and fall together. Anyone who doesn’t believe it should come to Detroit.” Fair enough, if the only allowable measuring stick is the relative success of his … Continue Reading →
Unionized state employees are breathing a little easier today, now that Gov. Rick Snyder has confirmed he does not plan to issue layoff notices effective a month from today. The bad news is that the financially savvy guv instead wants to push ahead with talks to fix the structural imbalances in the state budget, which … Continue Reading →
This week, Ontario Premier Dalton McGinty borrowed a page from America’s green do-gooders and showered $50 million in taxpayer largesse on Magna International Inc., according to The Globe & Mail. McGinty evidently hopes electric cars will amount to 5 percent of the provinces operating vehicle fleet by 2020. Only problem is the numbers. As in, … Continue Reading →
How do you know there is merit to claims this White House is congenitally anti-business? Because the evidence keeps mounting. One day after reports that AT&T Inc. planned to bring 5,000 call-center jobs back to the United States and invest $8 billion in its U.S. infrastructure as part of its planned acquisition of German-owned T-Mobile … Continue Reading →
At a dinner party last weekend, I had occasion to meet a businesswoman who, by the sound of things, considered herself a Detroiter. She’d lived in the city, but doesn’t anymore, in part because she tired of defending the indefensible. Would Detroit ever revive in a meaningful way? Could it? Or is the scale of … Continue Reading →