GM’s Personal Crisis

Actual quotes from General Motors’ CEO:

This is all about a lot more than just Detroit. It’s about saving the U.S. economy from a catastrophic collapse. (November 18)

The societal costs would be catastrophic — three million jobs lost within the first year, U.S. personal income reduced by $150 billion and a government tax loss of more than $156 billion over three years. (November 18)

This is an issue of the whole auto industry, if that becomes under severe pressure, the impact on the whole U.S. economy will be devastating. (November 16)

I don’t believe we have the luxury of a lot of time. (November 19)

It is to be expected that anyone seeking help tries to make their predicament seem bigger than just themselves, but GM has gone too far. The truth is, the collapse of GM is mostly behind us, and although it’s been a serious problem, it hasn’t been a catastrophe for the world.

And by so exaggerating their own importance, GM executives have given up not only their own credibility, but that of their company. The more GM executives go around talking about how the sky is falling, the more it seems like a personal crisis rather than a global one.

No one seems to have a workable bailout plan for GM, and as long as GM keeps pointing fingers and trying to avoid responsibility for its own mistakes, that’s a political reality that is not likely to change.

Republican States: Smoking and Obesity

I mentioned on Monday the connection between vices and the Republican Party. This association is not news — for many years, the Republican Party was virtually owned by the tobacco industry. Tobacco may have fallen on hard times, but the Republican Party is still the party of tobacco. I verified this today by comparing adult smoking rates (from Good Magazine) to the state-by-state election results (tentative results from today’s map at Electoral-Vote.com).

The graph below ranks states by smoking rates, increasing from left to right. States at the left have the lowest adult smoking rates; those at the right have the highest adult smoking rates. The color of each bar shows the presidential election result. The blue bars represent the Democratic states, where Obama polled better than McCain and won the state. The red bars represent the Republican states, where McCain polled better. The darker colors represent stronger leaning toward one candidate or the other. The preponderance of blue bars in the left half of the graph indicate that Obama drew overwhelming support from states that have fewer smokers than average. Similarly, the red bars at the right end of the chart show that McCain drew most of his support from the states that have the most smokers.

Back in July, I wrote about the strong association between Republican voting and obesity, again looking at it state by state. This association becomes even stronger when graphed with the actual election results. The left half of the graph below is mostly dark blue, indicating that most of the states with below average adult obesity rates voted for Obama over McCain by at least a 10 percent margin. The cluster of red states at the right end of the graph indicates that McCain was the overwhelming choice in states with especially high obesity rates. McCain carried the states with the 10 highest obesity rates, along with only 11 other states. (As before, obesity rates are from from the 2007 survey conducted by the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)

The conclusion to draw from this is that the cultural differences between Democratic and Republican voters are real. Smoking and obesity are perhaps the two lifestyle issues with the most compelling effects on the quality of life. They show striking differences between Republican and Democratic states, and similar differences can be found in dozens of other areas. It’s not something made up by the media or by political strategists. At the very least, different lifestyles and attitudes are prevalent in different places, and there is a connection between these cultural factors and the way people vote.

Bees Are Dying From Stress

Scientists trying to figure out why so many bees are dying have not been able to find the single agent that would explain the deaths. In the past, widespread declines in bee populations were explained by pesticides, fungi, and parasites. This time, at least from what the scientists can see so far, the cause is simply stress. That is, it is a combination of factors making bees’ lives difficult, weakening their immune systems and making them susceptible to disease.

Researchers conducting autopsies of bees in declining hives are finding every disease known to bees. As one put it, “Their bodies are broken down and every little thing that comes into their system causes them problems.” Efforts to identify a disease that might be the primary cause of stress have been inconclusive. Instead, environmental studies of bees are providing clearer insight — indicating that the mysterious bee problems are largely the result of a stressful environment. For example, bees living near greenhouses are more likely to fall ill, apparently the result of one or more properties of greenhouses or their commercial bee populations.

Efforts to breed bees that are more disease-resistant are in the very early stages, but have not produced anything useful so far, and this also is consistent with the idea that it is not any specific disease, but an accumulation of stress, that is killing bees.

Winter is the toughest time for bees, as weather is unfavorable and there is little food for them for a few months, so it is the time of year when bee colonies are most likely to die off. The problems may be solved only when we can find ways to make things easier for bees, especially commercial bees, which seem to be having the worst problems. But that is the opposite of the way farmers are used to thinking about bees, so it is a change that may not come easily or quickly.

Democrats Become the New Conservative Party

In this month’s national election, Democrats captured the core conservative vote for the first time in nearly a century. Voters who were looking for a safe, non-controversial, all-American choice mostly voted Democratic.

The Republicans were the party of choice for conservatives for a lifetime, and it seemed inconceivable that they would ever give that up, but that’s exactly what they’ve done.

Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, appearing on CBS, spelled out some of the ways the party gave up its conservative appeal:

As Republicans, we need to do three things to get back on track. Number one, we have got to stop defending the kind of spending and out-of-control spending that we would never tolerate in the other side. You know, when voters tell us that they trust Democrats more to cut their taxes, control spending, that tells you something is wrong with the Republican Party. We’ve got to match our actions with our rhetoric.

Number two, we’ve got to stop defending the kinds of corruption we would rightfully criticize in the other party. The week before the election, our most senior senator is convicted on federal charges — and that’s only the latest example.

Number three, we have got to be the party that offers real solutions to the problems that American voters, American families are worried about. We don’t need to abandon our conservative principles; we can’t just be the “party of no.” We need to offer real solutions on making health care more affordable, on the economic challenges facing families, on the international threats.

To be more blunt about it, the Republican party became the party of out-of-control deficit spending, economic troubles, foreign military adventures, official corruption, sex scandals, corporate giveaways, vices, voter suppression, controversy, and general lawlessness — nothing that a conservative could easily support. The Republicans in Washington have spent the last ten years trying to drag their feet on any work that needed to be done. That’s the opposite of the hard work that conservatives believe in. Nationally, Republicans have set out on a crusade, a war of sorts to overthrow many of the core principles of American culture and replace them with a cultish kind of religious extremism. To a conservative, that sounds like trouble that would be better avoided.

For their part, the Democrats — at least the core of the party — have come to see conservatives as a constructive part of a ruling coalition. And so it should be no surprise if the Democrats continue to carry the conservative vote for decades to come.

Jindal’s instructions to the Republican Party couldn’t be more clear, and others have sounded the same alarms, but to no avail. Most Republicans do not even realize that Jindal is a member of their party. When you talk about integrity, restraint, and priorities, you do not exactly sound Republican. Why, you sound more like President-elect Barack Obama — a Democrat. And so the call for the Republican Party to get back to basics seems destined to be lost in the cacophony of recriminations and strategizing.

Instead, the Republican Party seems to be preparing to embrace religious extremism and an all-out culture war over the next five years. The thought of converting American by force to a wacko version of Christian principles (that’s not the most charitable way of describing the plan, but that’s essentially what it’s about) might play well in a few states, but across most of the country, it is likely to cement the Republicans’ image as controversial and dangerous — exactly the wrong thing if they want to appeal to conservatives.

So what will become of the Republican Party? That is up to the Republicans, of course. But no political party has ever thrived by trying to overthrow American culture, and the Republicans will not either. If the Republicans continue down the road they are on, they will soon become a regional party, and in a few years, a third party, shut out of the debates, struggling to get on the ballot.

World Leaders Don’t Make an Effective Task Force

About 20 world leaders met in Washington this weekend to try to sort out the global financial crisis. It’s a bold move meant to show how serious they are at addressing the problems. They were focusing mainly on regulatory reform that could eliminate some of the most troublesome transactions and improved transparency that will allow phantom investments to be spotted more easily. That makes perfect sense. It’s an area where they can do some good. The recommendations they came out with, though, are about further study on harmonizing accounting rules, with the possibility of further action before the end of 2009. That is like a bad committee meeting.

There isn’t much they can do because there isn’t any one country that can lay out solutions it has already put into effect, for the others to imitate. As long as no one has a solution to offer, the meeting can scarcely get beyond speculation about what solutions might look like and where they might be found.

If a meeting of world leaders is just for show, then who is really working on the problem? Worse, does the goofing off at the summit meeting set a bad example? The fear is that no one is really working on solving the world’s financial problems, and the people who might be working on it get the impression that it isn’t all that urgent. In truth, of course, there are many people working to keep the world afloat financially, so the question is whether those efforts are enough to overcome the indifference at the top.