There they go again

The .NY Times reports today that,

Automakers said Monday that they were working toward President Obama’s goal of reducing fuel consumption, but rapid imposition of stricter emissions standards could force them to drastically cut production of larger, more profitable vehicles, adding to their financial duress.

Adding to their financial duress? I thought "Job One" was to repair the ailing economy. This seems like a harebrained way to do it. The Government continues to bury the auto industry in new regulations with one hand while trying to bail them out with the other. Workers lose, consumers lose, communities lose. The only winner? Government bureaucracy, of course. Mark my words, if the new emissions and fuel economy standards go into effect, the only way the auto industry will be able to sell these cars will be at drastically higher gas prices. Steven Cho has already said he'd like to see a punitive gas tax and with Carole browner leading the way will anyone be able to stop them? Tim Geithner? John Dingell? Not a chance. But hey, they're doing it for our own good. We'll only have to wait a thousand years to see the benefits!

Facadism!

I had just dropped Lola and Isabela at Bowl-Mor lanes (gosh I could do a whole post on that place) and was driving down 12th Street when I passed this church. Or what remains of this church. You see, it's just a facade behind which looms a towering new condo building or NYU dorm or some such glass and metal monolith. I'm not sure how I feel about facadism which I vaguely remember reading about in a Brendan Gill New Yorker article in the early '90's. I love small scale historic districts where the buildings interact with the street and don't overwhelm passersby and so facadism offers a way to maintain this feel while allowing for necessary development. But this thing is an atrocity. My friend Clay Miller designs beautiful modern buildings that deserve to be seen and appreciated. Here in Brooklyn that often means having to take down an older building. So be it. Don't get me wrong, I almost cried when they tore down the Old Dutch Mustard Building in Williamsburg. We need to preserve our city's heritage but we're a dynamic city not a museum. We need to find a way to allow for vibrant, creative architects to make their marks here. Not that there's been any shortage of that lately, I'm just saying. But is facadism the way to do it? I mean, this church thing is a fucking farce. It's an abortion for Chrissakes (sorry, I couldn't help myself). Look no further than the goddam Christmas wreath on the door. You're joking right? Is this a joke? You want to build a big ass building? Have some balls. Tear the church down. So, while I am of (at least) two minds on the concept of facadism, I tend to agree with this 1985 NY Times article:

To save only the facade of a building is not to save its essence; it is to turn the building into a stage set, into a cute toy intended to make a skyscraper more palatable. And the street becomes a kind of Disneyland of false fronts.

What do you think?

Modern!

I was just re-reading my very first post here and I see that I promised to write about architecture. As if I knew anything about it. Still, I did see an amazing documentary over the Holidays on the design and construction of Tadao Ando's Modern Museum of Art in Fort Worth, Texas. Since I was there this past weekend, my kind host, Dwain Cannon, made a gracious detour on our way out West for the annual Coleman County Quail Hunt in order that I might take this atrocious cell phone photo (too much parking lot, not enough sky or building).

Mr. Obama, Read a Newspaper!

If you've run into me between Monday and Friday anytime in the last 25 years, there's a very good chance that there was a newspaper tucked under my arm, sticking out of my briefcase, or shielding me from the world on the IRT. Sometimes all of the above. Indeed, I rejoiced last year when the NY Times in a cost saving measure followed the lead of the Wall Street Journal and re-sized so that for the first time in my adult life the two papers were the same width and could be folded and read as one. This could be a metaphor for the life of any critical thinker - welcoming all points of view and attempting to sort through them in search of a personal version of the truth. It goes without saying that a newspaper reader has a broader world view and more informed opinions than most others. This can verge on the ridiculous as I found this morning when a TV news story on the problems in the Congo got me started on Laurent Kabila and his mis-rule in the '90's. Still, I think the world would be a better place and a Republican would be entering the White House had President Bush read a newspaper every once in a while. It may be too much of a stretch to say that this was his biggest failing but it certainly contributed in some way to many of them. Don't get me wrong, a President should not be deciding our fate based on what Gail Collins (NYT) or Paul Gigot (WSJ) think he should do. Nor should he ignore what his advisors say in favor of the latest (and undoubtedly biased) Reuters dispatch. But a blind over-reliance on agenda driven staffers gets us into quagmires. Damn, I'm really digressing.

The point here is that the newspaper industry is in truly dire straits. As I rode the aforementioned IRT this morning I read that Cox Newspapers (Atlanta Consitution, Austin Statesmen) and Advance Publishing (Newark Star-Ledger, Cleveland Plain Dealer)were both closing their Washington D.C. bureaus. Are you kidding me? But then I looked around me. Whereas 20, or even 10 years ago the Lexington Ave. Line would be a cacophony of Posts, and Daily News, and NYT's and WSJ's, it is now a melange of iPods, people watching movies on PSP's (!) and playing video games on their cell phones. I truly worry about our society. Do people really know what's going on in the world? Can they think critically? Do they know that the new Bouley restaurant is only "satisfactory"? I bet more people based their votes on SNL and the creepy Shepard Fairey "Hope" poster (which, in a final insult, now haunts me from the cover of Time magazine) than did from editorial page endorsements. Not that the outcome would have been any different. And I wish our new President all possible success because, after all, I am an American. As a society, we can also put some of this sickening idolatry to good use. For instance, I have never had much success convincing my children that they should turn out lights and turn off the TV when they leave a room. However, a single invocation of the President-elect's directive to conserve energy and, voila, complete darkness. Sometimes while they are still in the room! So here is my semi-serious solution to a very serious problem. Barack Obama's positive influence on young people is well documented and truly inspirational. Even I am guilty of being a little inspired. So, if you want people to put down their iPhones and begin reading newspapers again, hand the new President a paper. Let's see a photo of him in the Oval Office with a Washington Post or striding to the waiting Marine One helicpoter with a sharply folded Wall Street Journal under his arm or surrounded by his beautiful family on a Sunday morning at Camp David with the NY Times Magazine Section laying in his lap while he dozes before the Redskins game. If only the housing crisis were so easy to solve.

Let Ford be Ford

Many thanks to Nancy Rommelmann for hosting the lively dialogue that inspired this post. Full disclosure, I drive a Ford Explorer but I wish I drove an Audi. And a Maserati. I have three kids, two of whom play travel soccer. Not a week goes by when we don't have at least one sortie where all seven seats are filled. Guess what? Ford made a great vehicle I wanted at a price I could afford. This is how the free market works. I own a Ducati motorcyle and drove a Triumph TR6 when I met Lola. Both of those vehicles have about as much utility to me as a Prius. Which is to say, almost none.

A lot has been written about bailing out the big three, forcing them to re-structure, build green cars and become viable companies. Here's the problem with that argument. You can't build green cars AND be a viable company without enormous taxpayer subsidies or artificially high gasoline prices. Why, because people don't want or can't afford green cars as they exist today. The problem with tieing federal funds to manufacturing mandates is that they force companies to respond not to public demand but to the EPA and their flunkies in Congress. Wait a minute, you say. Priui were flying out of the dealerships last year. Yes, but so were Toll Brothers houses. Both were an anomoly driven by an overheated global economy. C'mon, did oil suddenly become scarce in 2006? Was everybody in China really going to have two cars in the garage? I don't think so. Well, you ask, now that gas is $1.77 in New Jersey why aren't F-150's flying out of the dealerships? You ask a lot of questions but that one is easy. Because almost no one can get financing and those that can are waiting for prices to come down further (ah, deflation knocks at the door). Sure, gasoline prices will probably go up a little when demand increases (let us pray) but it won't breach $4.00 a gallon anytime soon unless the do-gooders in Congress decide to "fix" it. More on that later.

De-regulation has taken its hits lately. Ironically, the financial industry is one of the most regulated businesses in America. The other one is the auto industry. OK, I think cars should have seat belts. In fact, I wouldn't buy one that didn't. But that's the point. We didn't need the government or Ralph Nader to tell us to put seat belts in cars. Remember when everyone said we needed airbags in every car right now? The car companies did a great job responding to the public clamor and congressional mandate creating more complex and expensive cars for the public. Then we found out that airbags kill small people. Oops. But safety features and personal choice can co-exist and I point to side airbags as an example. They are not mandated but people who want them and can afford them buy cars with them as an option. But let us set aside safety for a moment (as I am often wont to do) and talk about one of the more insidious government intrusions that has hamstrung the auto makers for 30 years. Yes, the dreaded CAFE standards. Corporate Average Fuel Economy as mandated by Congress in 1975 prevented auto makers from making only the highly profitable vehicles that Americans wanted to buy, SUV's and Mustangs because the standards required a fleet average fuel economy well above those of the desirable vehicles. In order to maintain a high domestic fleet average (the UAW insisted that foreign Fords could not be used in the harmonic mean calculation)the automaker had to offset the gas guzzlers with unprofitable Escorts and Fiestas. Remember that wages, healthcare costs, real estate, robots and all the other inputs cost the same whether you're building a high profit vehicle or a loss leader. Sure, the automakers might have been caught out when oil skyrocketed, but if they had been unfettered by Congressional mandates they would have had half the number of facilities (because the UAW won't let you build Explorers and Escorts in the same plant) and been sitting on a pile of cash. Now I'm not here to bash the UAW, they are looking out for their members and, let's face it, American workers are the most productive in the world. They've taken their licks and are going to have to play ball for the survival of the auto industry. I have faith that they will. But when I hear that any bailout will be contingent on yet more Congressional mandates for "greenness" I want to scream. That's how we got here in the first place. If Congress insists on dictating the way cars are built then they need to stop bitching about paying for it and just pony up the cash. Because the only way green cars can be "sustainable" is to artificially inflate the price of gas to European levels and the only way that could happen is with a filibuster-proof Democratic Congress, a Democrat President and Henry Waxman as head of the Energy and Commerce committee. Uh oh.

My Hero

Last Saturday, after months of dedicated training and a hellish week of cutting weight, my lovely wife Lola took the Gold Medal in the Women's Masters Division at the North American Grappling Association Tournament in Newark, NJ. She's a great Mom and a great wife and she can adapt and overcome better than anyone I have ever met. Lola's in the white Gi and check out her wicked arm bar!


Lola, you rock and I love you more than ever!

Thank You For Your Service

I just wanted to take a moment to thank those Veterans, young and old, who have answered the call to serve their Country. They performed this service without political agenda and without Democrat or Republican partisanship. So I write today in that spirit, with only gratitude in my heart and the hope that those currently serving will return safely to their families when their job is done. I am humbled by their sacrifice.