We get tons of Goldfinches, and though they are more colorful in the summer, this plump winter goldfinch is also pretty cute:

During the recent serious cold spell and heavy snow we got a flock of Juncos loading up on thistle seeds at our feeder.  One would sit on the feeder knocking the seeds down to the ground where the rest would chow down as they prefer:

The only other variety I recall seeing on our porch is a woodpecker, nothing too exotic.  Our recently added suet feeder so far has had no customers, but hopefully it will draw some soon.

Lynn LoPucki, who teaches bankruptcy law at Harvard University and the University of California at Los Angeles, said Democrats’ goal of preserving a U.S. auto industry is not doable without a bankruptcy.

“A workout requires everybody’s agreement,” LoPucki said. “If I own bonds, GM can’t force me to take less than 100 cents on the dollar outside of bankruptcy court. Bankruptcy is the only thing that can work because GM and the government need the ability to force people to go along with the plan. Paying everyone in full is prohibitively expensive.” (my emphasis)

This little snipped struck me by its sheer straightforwardness.  It is so rare to see such a thing stated so directly in a political hearing!  You get so used to the double-talk and evasiveness, when the naked truth is laid out there you almost miss it out of pure shock.  This is what they’re really talking about after all: power, the power to force people to do what they want.  Not what is in their own best interest, but in the auto maker’s (and ultimately the government’s) interests.

You have the option of giving up future salary and benefits for an immediate lump sum payout, or staying on and keeping your salary and benefits and hoping you are not laid off involuntarily.  If you ask me, it’s pretty easy to predict who will leave and who will stay: Good employees will take the money and run, to find another job.  They don’t want to risk an unplanned layoff and the prospect of interviewing amidst a mass layoff.  Bad employees will remain, collecting their paychecks, marking their time to retirement, and generally not producing anything of value.  They’re willing to take the chance of an involuntary layoff, heck odds are by the time that happens they will have collected more in salary than the buyout anyway.

There is no way that the potential cost of litigation outweighs the huge buyout packages being offered to employees.  So the buyouts which are intended to lower costs and thus lead the company back to profitability end up sabotaging any possible hope of recovery by giving the best and brightest a strong incentive to leave and saddling the company with a remaining workforce that is less productive.

The leaders of these companies are so far removed from reality and the day-to-day operations that they have no idea who the important and useful employees are.  Or maybe they are just so incapable of making the hard decisions that they would rather just take the easy way out.  I guess it seems like the nice thing to do.  Unfortunately the nice thing spells doom for the rest.

Several such negative consequences are outlined in this excellent but lengthy and sometimes wandering Washington Post article.

• 92% of the 112,000 government owned Flex Fuel vehicles are run exclusively on regular gas, mainly becuase there are no E85 filling stations anywhere near where they are used.
• Perverse government incentives on auto manufacturers resulted in them producing Flex Fuel capable vehicles but only amongst their most fuel inefficient V6 and V8 powered large sedans and SUVs.  Consequently:
• The Post Office’s legally mandated 37,000 delivery van fleet consumed 1.5 million gallons more gasoline than if they had simply purchased more fuel efficient non-Flex Fuel capable models.

So let’s see, 16 years and billions of taxpayer dollars later, what has Flex Fuel accomplished?  It has resulted in more, not less fossil fuel being consumed - with the related increase in greenhouse gas emissions.  By consuming massive amounts of corn for fuel instead of food, it has raised the price of all sorts of corn based foods.  And people wonder why the auto companies continued to build inefficient vehicles for so long, well look no further than the incentives pushed on them by the Fed.

The Fed falls back on its last possible spinnable benefit: that they have created an alternative, all other problems aside.  What an accomplishment!  An overpriced alternative that no one wants to use even when faced with a government mandate!  Congratulations!  And if we were in fact faced with a real disruption in the supply of oil, E85 wouldn’t make a dent in replacing that supply, not even if every last kernel of corn grown in the country were diverted to fuel.

Read the whole thing - its hilarious!  Now multiply the ill effects of this one government program thousands of times over.  This is the government people vote for, time and time again.  And the really hilarious thing is that they want even more, not less!  Thank you sir may I have another!  The government intervenes and completely screws up.  And yet people seem to think the answer is more intervention by the same idiots who screwed up in the first place.

“There’s the feeling that next to financial services, automotive execs are the dumbest people in the world,” said Thomas Stallkamp, a former Chrysler president