Here are the January 2009 results (source articles – Detroit Free Press, Associated Press; December 2008 results on the right are from this USA Today report [scroll to bottom left at article]):

• General Motors – Down 48.9%
• Ford – Down 40.3%
• Chrysler – Down 54.8%
• Toyota – Down 31.7%
• Honda – Down 27.9%
• Nissan – Down 29.7%
• Relatively minor players Subaru and Hyundai posted gains (that’s right) of 8% and 14%, respectively.

What follows are three reader-catching headlines you won’t see:

1. Bailed-out companies underperform the rest in January

   As you see above, everyone but Chrysler was bunched fairly close in mutual misery in December. That changed radically in January. GM plummeted to a near Chrysler-like performance, while Ford’s drop from December was about half as much.

   Gee, you don’t think it might be that a significant percentage of US car buyers, who also double as taxpayers, might be refusing to buy GM vehicles, and continuing to not buy Chrysler vehicles, because of the bailouts the companies received from Washington in December?Fleet sales were off at both GM and Chrysler by 80%. These buyers may also not be impressed with companies that take bailout money.

   I’m afraid that Ford’s falloff compared to January might be due to the fact that press continually referred to “Detroit” and “the US auto industry” during its coverage of the GM-Chrysler bailout instead of naming the two companies involved. Even though Ford has said it doesn’t anticipate needing bailout money from Uncle Sam, many Americans probably think that all three Detroit automakers received bailouts.

2. Dismal January results threaten companies’ ability to repay bailout loans at end of March

   This one explains itself. But no one in the press, beyond reporting the existence of the $13.4 billion in “loans” (the fourth paragraph at this Business Week article says it’s $17.4 billion) seems interested in this angle. GM and Chrysler have to submit viability plans in two weeks.

3. Foreign makers gain market share in January; Detroit’s share well below 50%

   Last Wednesday, before results were known, Edmunds.com predicted that Detroit’s Big Three would have a combined market share of “46.1 percent in January, down from 52.1 percent in January 2008 and down from 50.0 percent in December 2008.” While all of the largest six companies came in with larger individual declines than Edmunds expected, Detroit’s underperformance against Edmunds’ predictions was collectively much larger than Toyota’s, Nissan’s and Honda’s. The combined market share of GM, Ford, and Chrysler is probably just above 45%. Most of that decline is due to GM and Chrysler, where your tax dollars are supposedly at work.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

….. But I Don’t Have Any Time For:

• Well, the computer situation is back under control, and I have nothing but kind things to say about my last two encounters at the Apple Store’s Genius Bar — except that I still think the name is a bit presumptuous. But that’s Steve Jobs for you. Regular blogging probably won’t return until late tonight or tomorrow morning, as there’s lots to sift through and prioritize.
• Speaking of Steve Jobs, did you know that while the economy is in an uproar, the SEC is somehow finding the time to investigate his health?
• The computer grief came not long after the announcement that Pajamas Media would end its blogger network (Jeff Goldstein has Roger Simon’s e-mail and his own reax here), and Roger Simon’s follow-up post at PJM. I have four comments: First, I made virtually nothing from their ads, and I’m not complaining. Second, unlike most others, I did not go exclusive, and have maintained a relationship with Blogads (which is either a smart move or a lucky one). Third, my weekly columns will continue as long as my submissions meet PJM’s standards (what part of “the PJM portal ….. will continue as is” don’t people understand?). Fourth, I signed a confidentiality agreement, so that’s probably all you’ll hear from me. If you want the opinions of other network members, go to their blogs.
• Jim Cramer, Democrat, on Barack Obama’s denunciation of Wall Street bonuses — “We heard Lenin.”
• There were four deaths of American soldiers from hostile action in Iraq in January (click on the “Hostile” bar by “Fatality Type” at the link). That’s the lowest single-month total ever, despite the month-end elections that took place on Saturday. Yes there were elections. They went well, which explains why you probably haven’t heard much about them.
• Human error caused the weekend Google glitch that led the search engine to tag virtually every web site as potentially containing malware.
• Norma at Collecting My Thoughts notes that the auto dealership at which her son works got a threatening delinquency notice over a past due bill of 50 cents. Does that mean Tom Daschle, who owed $128,000 in taxes over a three-year period before paying them on January 2 (plus $12,000 in interest), would have received a letter $256,000 times as threatening?

The new-used computer is having fits and needs to see a “genius” (ugh), which will probably leave yours truly not blogging until late tonight at best.

Readers’ homework in the meantime is to check out Thomas Sowell’s latest and the two or three columns before that. Even by his lofty standards, Sowell has been on a roll of late.

His priceless quote from his latest:

Out of $355 billion newly appropriated, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that only $26 billion will be spent this fiscal year and only $110 billion by the end of 2010.

Using long, drawn-out processes to put money into circulation to meet an emergency is like mailing a letter to the fire department to tell them that your house is on fire.

From Reno, Nevada:

Posted: 02/01/2009 12:03:07 AM PST

As long as Janet Simpson heard the familiar beep of the brain scan monitor, everything was OK.

But the wrong beep could signal too much pressure on her son’s brain—too much stimulation for a young brain that had experienced severe trauma. The wrong beep could’ve been triggered just by touching her son’s hand.

“We couldn’t talk more than a whisper,” she said.

Reno High graduate and baseball fanatic Drew Simpson was barely 18 years old when a fall down the steps at his older brother’s home almost took his life.

Unconscious and in a hospital bed at Renown Medical Center, he hardly resembled the young college baseball player who was supposed to be worrying about making it to class on time.

Tubes supplied him with food, air pumped straight into his lungs and the skin on the side of his head was peeled back to relieve swelling in his brain.

It was late August, and the former high school pitcher had come home to celebrate his girlfriend’s birthday from nearby Feather River College, where he was planning to play baseball.

He did not make it back to school.

He was not given a chance to live when he first arrived at the hospital. Hope and pray, doctors told his family.

Simpson spent 11 days in a coma, almost six weeks in the hospital and five months in occupational therapy. He has two titanium plates and 48 screws in his skull.

But he is alive. His family, his friends, his teammates—they all believe he is a miracle.

“My dream was to play baseball since forever and ever, but it’s really changed ever since this happened,” Drew Simpson said. “Now, I just want to love everybody, never hate one thing. It’s just really brightened my eyes. I don’t regret one thing because I feel like I’m a whole lot better than I ever was.”

By fall, doctors say Simpson could be back on the road to achieving his dream. But baseball may be just a vehicle to spread the message he learned after Aug. 24, 2008.

“He’s impacted people whether they know him or not just by seeing what he has gotten through,” said Patrick O’Brien, a family friend. “And I believe he wants to give back, no doubt.”

As a right-handed starter, Simpson helped pitch the Reno High Huskies to the semifinal round of the Nevada state 4A baseball tournament last spring.

He had just finished his first week at Feather River College in Quincy, Calif., a 90-minute drive away from his family and his girlfriend, Anne Goodman, who was a year behind him at Reno High.

After celebrating Goodman’s birthday with her family, Simpson went to spend the night at his brother’s home. Having trouble sleeping, he went outside around 5 a.m. to get some air.

But he felt ill, and thought it was something he ate the night before. Suddenly, he fell backward down the switchback stairs leading to the front door of the house and hit the back of his head on the corner of the concrete stairs.

“All I heard was screaming,” said Ryan Simpson, who was sleeping when his brother fell. “I went to the front, saw him laying and not moving, bleeding out of his eyes and his ears.”

Ryan Simpson said his brother went into a panic attack and stopped breathing. He tried to calm his brother while they waited about 10 minutes for an ambulance. Not even the paramedics gave him a chance to live. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

I received the following on Saturday afternoon from Conne Schultz, wife of Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, and because of computer challenges didn’t see it until late Sunday night:

Hi,

A friend just sent me the link to your post about Sherrod’s absence for the Geithner vote. Sherrod has been spending most of his time in Mansfield helping to care for his terminally ill mother, who is at home with round-the-clock care from family and hospice. That is why he wasn’t in DC for the vote. His positions are certainly always fair game for criticism, but I thought you might want to know the back story on this one. My guess is that the staff person who took your call may have thought he or she was protecting our family’s privacy during this very difficult time.

Connie Schultz

I appreciate your taking the time to e-mail, Ms. Schultz.

The referenced Monday post (at Update 4) referred to a phone call to Brown’s office, where, “….. the person I spoke to said that the Senator was called away due to a family illness. He also said (paraphrasing) that while Brown was troubled by Geither’s tax compliance errors, he supported the Senate’s decision to confirm Geithner.”

I certainly wish and pray for God to give strength to Sherrod Brown’s mother, family, and extended family in what is clearly a difficult time for all. I expect that readers will as well.

Here’s the ad, and here’s the story from Life News (HT Hot Air):

Enjoy the game. Enjoy life. Support life.

Note: This was first posted at Pajamas Media on Friday morning.

__________________________________________________

Income inequality is a popular topic — until a Democratic president takes office.

__________________________________________________

It gets repeated so frequently and so persistently that you assume it must be true: The rich are getting richer, and the poor have been left behind in ever-larger numbers, especially during the eeeeeevil Bush administration.

Baloney.

Let’s take a look at the latest inflation-adjusted Census Bureau data from 2003 through 2007 (data is from Table A-3 at Page 40 of the Bureau’s annual “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States” publication; this Bureau page has the link to the PDF publication; more historical detail is here):

I’m using 2003 as the starting point for two reasons. First, the negative effects of the Internet bubble that occurred during the Clinton administration and of the 9/11 attacks didn’t wear off until that year. Second, the investment-related Bush tax cuts on capital gains and dividends, along with across-the-board cuts in marginal rates, finally took effect that year. 2001′s Bush cuts were, unfortunately, relatively ineffectual, because they represented a one-time stimulus instead of long-term change.

Note that in the last four years the Bureau has tracked:

• The 10th percentile cutoff went up by more than the cutoffs for the richest three percentiles. The rich did not get proportionally richer than the poorest of the poor
• In the aggregate, it’s fair to say that no income group “lost ground.”
• The Gini coefficient, which is a statistical measure of income inequality — a value of zero would mean that everyone has the same income, and a value of one would mean that one person makes all the income — barely budged, and the budge was in the direction of less inequality.

What’s more, the gains at the lower income levels are probably understated. That’s because the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers don’t fully take the “Wal-Mart Effect” into account. The linked OpinionJournal.com column cited outside research showing that “Wal-Mart’s 1985-2004 expansion of sales resulted in a 9.1% drop in the price of food at home, a 4.2% drop in the price of other goods and commodities, and a 3.1% decline in consumer prices overall, saving the average working family about $2,329 per year.”

The government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has partially missed Wal-Mart’s full-bore entry into the grocery business that has occurred rapidly over most of the past decade. A BLS employee I spoke to in preparing this column told me that the agency rotates 20% of the stores included in its price surveys annually. Thus, a new Wal-Mart superstore will take from 1-5 years to get into a given area’s rotation. Thus, BLS has been playing catch-up in measuring the true impact of the chain’s lower prices.

To the extent BLS’s partial omission of the Wal-Mart effect can be quantified, its impact is clearly much greater at lower income levels than at higher ones, simply because items bought there represent a larger percentage of low-income budgets. Even a few hundred bucks of real increased purchasing power at the two lowest-earning percentile cutoffs above would obviously make a big difference in the results. Even after considering competitors’ reactions, the effect is likely at least that big.

Nonetheless, even after considering the Wal-Mart Effect, anyone being fair has to concede that income gains during the 1990s, especially the latter half of the decade, were more impressive. The improvement was fueled by a combination of technological advances, welfare reform, and relatively controlled spending in Washington — not necessarily in that order.

But guess what? Income inequality during the 1990s also increased, and quite significantly:

The richest 5% saw their incomes increase up to twice as quickly as those in lower quintiles.

Surprised? Do you not remember hearing very much about the phenomenon of growing income inequality during the 1990s?

If you don’t, you’re right. There wasn’t much.

• A Google News Archive search on “income inequality” (entered in quotes) returned 9,940 results for the date range of January 1, 2000 through December 31, 2008, but only 1,830 results between January 1, 1993 and December 31 1999. The 1993 beginning date coincides with the first year of the Clinton administration, and the 1999 cutoff was picked to avoid the 2000 presidential campaign, where talk of income inequality increased because of the Bush campaign’s proposed tax cuts.
• Even the New York Times and its stable of preoccupied income redistributionists only had 114 articles (about 16 per year) containing “income inequality” between January 1, 1993 and December 31, 1999. But from January 1, 2000 to the end of last year, there were 308 (about 33 per year).

I can’t help but conclude that “income inequality,” like previous attempts to roll out the homeless, is a convenient media club that is employed during Republican administrations, while it’s generally kept in the closet when Democrats are in the White House. You will know that I’m right if, as I expect, the topic gets short shrift from the media — with the exception of obsessives like former Times reporter David Cay Johnston and current Times columnist Paul Krugman — in the first few years of the Obama administration.