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Christine posted this on August 10th, 2011. Hoo boy, this is going to irritate the teabaggers. The Department of Energy announced today that more than $175 million has been awarded to fund energy research projects. Specifically, the projects will help improve the fuel efficiency of next generation vehicles. The awards reflect only a portion of the investment in these projects. There are 40 projects that are being supported, totaling over $300 million.
President Obama’s energy initiatives include standards for work trucks and buses, and a 54.5 fuel efficiency standard. These initiatives are designed to save consumers and businesses thousands of dollars, and reduce our dependency on foreign oil. You can see the specifics if you follow the links.
Michigan is well represented in the awards.
Applicant Location DOE Award Description Ford Motor Company Dearborn, MI $1,500,000 This project will identify fuel properties that can be used to enable novel combustion strategies with low emissions of nitrogen oxides in an engine, and enhance existing models to capture the effect of additional key fuel properties on combustion. Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company Dearborn, MI $1,200,000 This project will research, develop, and demonstrate polyalkylene glycol (PAG)- based engine oil technology which can reduce engine friction relative to conventional petroleum-based and synthetic oils. United States Automotive Materials Partnership, LLC Southfield, MI $3,500,000 This project will validate crash models for carbon-fiber composites that would enable the use of lightweight composites in primary-structural automotive crash and energy management applications. United States Automotive Materials Partnership, LLC Southfield, MI $3,000,000 This project will design, engineer, fabricate and test an integrated magnesiumintensive automotive assembly focused on a 45 percent weight reduction over currently-used steel counterpart structures. Vehma International of America, Inc. Troy, MI $10,000,000 This project will develop and validate a “new passenger vehicle design architecture” which facilitates a 50% weight reduction through the extensive use of lightweight and high strength materials. Chrysler Group LLC Auburn Hills, MI $10,000,000 This project will develop and demonstrate a cost effective, light-weight, multimaterial vehicle incorporating technologies targeting 50% weight reduction. DENSO International America, Inc. Southfield, MI $2,610,555 This project will develop and demonstrate an innovative battery thermal management system that will allow [...]
Christine posted this on August 7th, 2011. From Joan Walsh on Salon,
I go back to Grover Norquist telling his friend Deval Patrick at a Harvard reunion during the Bush administration that on the off chance another Democrat ever became president, “We’ll make it impossible for him to govern like a Democrat.” Norquist and friends did their best with Clinton; they’ve succeeded with Obama, with terrible consequences for the country.
This is certainly what is happening. I remember a segment on the Stephanie Miller show (only $4.95 a month if you pay for a year in advance) where Chris was asking why the GOP controls the government when they are in the majority, and still controls the government while they are in the minority?
John Judas on the New Republic spells it out for us,
Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today’s Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to, and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery.
The Republicans have a pretty sick pathology going on. They are truly domestic terrorists, but very few people would dare say that out loud. What else would you call a party that brings your government to a standstill? That ruins your economy? The only difference between these people and the people commonly recognized as terrorists is the means by which they kill people. Islamic terrorists kill people with bombs and anthrax and airplanes. Republican domestic terrorists kill people by using dog whistles to activate the lone wolves.
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Amy B. Dean posted this on August 7th, 2011.
My friend, like other progressives, complained that the Tea Party rally got more press coverage, despite being far smaller. I understood her frustration.
But, at the same time, I said that I thought she was missing the bigger picture: If only 500 people are showing up for a rally, it's because the public doesn't care. In this case, it doesn't care about politicians bickering over the debt ceiling. America has a different agenda and Washington is missing it entirely.
As has been often noted, we are not facing a debt crisis in our country. We are facing a jobs crisis. Working people desperately need the economy to improve and to start generating well-paying jobs.
Less often noted is the fact that taking on America's real problems will require the president to behave differently, and it will require us to behave differently.
First, the president.
There are not simple and easy answers to our country's economic difficulties. The truth is that the challenges we face as a nation are far more complicated than our elected officials would like to acknowledge. To solve them, our leaders must act with an entrepreneurial, can-do spirit and put forward innovative solutions. To do anything less, is to forget the best of what our country represents – its capacity to pull together to solve problems.
The essence of presidential leadership is being able to pull together diverse interests and to find solutions that serve the common good, as opposed to policies that play to extremists at the margins.
Let's give President Obama the benefit of the doubt and assume that he wants to get re-elected so that he can take on the real challenge of jump-starting the economy and getting America back to work. He is asking us to give him a second chance, so that he can lead without being encumbered by the need to gauge his actions against campaign polls. But for us to give this benefit of the doubt, to operate based on good faith, Obama needs to put something substantive on the table between now and the elections.
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Christine posted this on August 5th, 2011. Dow Jones drops 512 points in one day, FAA bill for temporary funding expected to pass today, millionaires paying 25 percent less in taxes than they did in 1990s, Romney gets million-dollar donation from mystery company, Congress’ disapproval rating at an all-time high of 82 percent, and more.
Transcript below the fold
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WeAreThePeopleMichigan posted this on August 4th, 2011.
Here are today's top stories –
AP: Poll: Many local government leaders say Michigan is on the wrong track – After seeing lawmakers cut their funding and give financial managers sweeping new powers, half of local government leaders say they think Michigan is on the wrong track while a third saying it's headed in the right direction. The survey released Thursday by The Center for Local, State and Urban Policy at the University of Michigan also shows 37 percent give Gov. Rick Snyder a positive job rating while just 21 percent give that rating to the Legislature.
MLive: General Motors makes $2.5 billion in second quarter, nearly doubling last year's profits – General Motors Co. continued its rebound from bankruptcy and the 2009 auto bailout in the second quarter of 2011. The Detroit automaker today reported a $2.5 billion profit in the second quarter, its sixth straight quarterly profit. “Our progress has been steady and we’re preparing to launch more new products this year, including the Chevrolet Sonic in North America, the Opel/Vauxhall Zafira in Europe and the Baojun 630 in China to keep the momentum going,” said Dan Akerson, chairman and CEO, in a statement.
MLive: Obama administration awards Michigan, other Midwest states $268M for high-speed trains – Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded Michigan nearly $200 million to upgrade tracks between Dearborn and Kalamazoo for a future Detroit to Chicago high-speed rail corridor. On Wednesday, the department awarded Michigan and four other Midwest states a combined $268.2 million to purchase next-generation, American-made trains to ride those rails. The Midwest funding will be used to purchase seven quick-acceleration locomotives and 48 bi-level rail cars. All told, the Obama administration has invested more than $782 million for new trains in six states.
Christine posted this on August 2nd, 2011. Speaker of the House John Boehner bragged that he got 98 percent of what he wanted in the debt-limit deal, GOP goes on vacation and leaves FAA funding in limbo, GOP sending Wisconsin Democratic voters false ballots, billion-dollar corporations now reporting massive profits, Fukushima nuclear plant is still spewing radiation, and more. Scroll down to watch the newscast.
Transcript below the fold
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Thom posted this on July 27th, 2011. Speaker of the House John Boehner probably had a few more cocktails and cigarettes than normal last night – it was a rough Tuesday for him. One day after a source at Standard and Poor's credit rating agency warned that passing Boehner's short-term debt-limit plan will still lead to a United States credit downgrade – the Congressional Budget Office piled on even more bad news. According to the CBO – the plan that Speaker Boehner touted as cutting $1 trillion from the deficit – ACTUALLY only cuts about $850 billion.
Not only that – droves of Republicans came out against the bill – forcing leadership to reach out to Fox so-called News talking heads like Sean Hannity and Brit Hume – as well as a number of other Conservative journalists, radio show hosts, and pundits to whip up support for the Boehner deal. But it didn't work. And now a vote on Boehner's debt-limit plan that was scheduled for today has been delayed as the Speaker goes back to the drawing board. It's becoming increasingly clear that Republicans invented this economic crisis now just 5 days away – by turning a routine housekeeping matter done 18 times during the Reagan Administration and 7 times during the Bush administration into a hostage-taking event that's now gotten out of their own control.
And the hostages are the American working people – and now the success or failure of the Obama presidency. I'm sure the real leaders of their party – Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist – are quite happy.
-Thom
(Will they still be happy next week? Tell us here.)
This post is written by Thom Hartmann and syndicated here with permission. To respond to Thom directly, please visit his blog at www.thomhartmann.com/thom/blog. For more of his work including his radio and tv programs, visit www.thomhartmann.com
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