Our latest Recovery-Act-in-Action installment features some exciting new technology, 100 good-paying manufacturing jobs, and the public/private co-investment that is critical to job growth right now.
It's all taking place in Indianapolis, Indiana, where Allison Transmission is building a new factory to make hybrid systems that go into energy efficient trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles. The new plant, and the 100 folks Allison expects to put to work in it, was partially financed by a $62.8 million Recovery Act grant from the Department of Energy as part of their advanced battery grant program.
There's a lot to like about this project. Once the new plant is fully operational, it will crank out more than 20,000 hybrid propulsion systems each year. If you're like me, your reaction to that is a) wow!... and b) um, what's a hybrid propulsion system?
Laurie Tuttle, Allison's VP of Hybrid Programs, was kind enough to explain it to me. As I understand it, these are systems that take energy that a vehicle generates that would be otherwise wasted, and reuses that energy. For example, when a vehicle slows down, conventional breaks create friction and heat. "Regenerative breaking" recovers that energy and stores it in the battery for later use in acceleration or, on commercial vehicles, for other purposes like powering a boom on a utility truck.
That saves gas, so fuel efficiency in these hybrids are typically goosed by 25-30 percent.
Allison's long-range plan was to start developing these new systems over the next few years. But the Recovery Act grant, matched by about $68 million of capital from their private investors, enabled them to accelerate the production, creating jobs now when they're most needed, and giving our industry the head start it needs to be globally competitive in the production of clean energy transportation.
Ms. Tuttle tends to be pretty technical in discussing this stuff, but she got downright emotional when she described the positive impact this new investment is having on their community, telling me, "Goodness, to be able to bring these jobs right here to our heartland... it just feels great."
You don't see a lot of people getting all choked up about building systems that capture and recycle kinetic energy. But I think those of us who are rooting for new jobs in American manufacturing, lasting opportunities for middle-class workers, and energy efficiency are right with her on this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yxn7fQy2Bs
STOP working for Chevron and BP (including their horrible "solar" and "wind" boondoggles) and START working for US - we all want efficiency upgrades and solar panels on our homes and businesses NOW.
Thank you!
Understandably some jobs will go overseas, but corporate America with the help of their butt buddies in Congress is doing nothing about real jobs in America...they just line their pockets from cheap overseas labor.
The number of unemployed people before the recession was about 7m. Now it's around 14.5m.
So, to "create" the necessary 7.5m jobs will only cost around $4,710,000,000,000.
And we'd have to borrow all of that and never pay it back or all we'd be doing was stealing other jobs (via taxing) or stealing jobs from the future (when we pay the money back).
Do you think that capital investment resulting in manufacturing jobs in the private sector is free, especially for new technology? You are probably the same person who complains when companies offshore manufacturing - and clearly you think that companies spending money (taxes in your case) reduce the number of jobs they create. So why don't you think that capital investment in new factories would reduce the number of jobs they create? Is it ONLY tax-dodging that creates the salary base for companies, or could dodging a multi-million dollar capital investment do the same? Cuz tax dodging results in money we (the govt) then have to borrow and never pay back, too...
Here's what you are missing. If the govt. collects taxes then targets spending on PRODUCTIVE projects like this, 100 jobs are created for 25 years. If the government just walks away and never gets or spends the money, then that 62 million bucks will just go into the pockets of executives and shareholders and NO jobs will be created. So this is actually a more efficient use of the capital than a tax break would be, because those 100 people will still need money...
Viewing the world through the lens of simplistic "the rich should rule the country" dogma is perhaps understandable, but totally destructive.
The government cannot distribute money more effectively or efficiently than the private sector. If it could, the Soviet Union, North Korea and Cuba would be the world's economic powerhouses.
You can't grotesquely distort the marketplace then pretend it's a "free market."
The life threatening impact of oil and the Gulf disaster may prove to be far more serious than has so far been realized!
See What to Do! at http://www.aesopinstitute.org The subtitle is: A 5 Step Program...
400 parts per million of carbon has recently been found to be the Arctic Tipping Point, which could conceivably endanger all of humanity. We are presently approaching 390 ppm. The safe limit is 350 ppm.
A thin oil film on the surface of the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans appears to threaten to raise temperatures toward the catastrophic Tipping Point.
If these facts are accurate, an emergency program that can generate millions of jobs is now urgent.
Little known and hard to fathom breakthroughs involving radically new energy technologies can help to supersede oil much more rapidly than might be readily understood or believed.
See Moving Beyond Oil on the same Aesop Institute website.
All decentralized renewable energy work should rapidly proceed on a 24/7 basis. Congress needs to provide whatever incentives are necessary to make that possible without delay.
We need far more robust steps to effectively attack the problems in the Gulf and prevent as much oil as possible from reaching the Atlantic ocean.
Three programs have the potential to reduce unemployment.
Included are a Human Investment Tax Credit program and The Brooklyn Project. Both at www.aesopinstitute.org
Unless you are one of the politically favored, it is silly to try an compete with a subsidized company. If Allison Transmission can't do it on their dime, perhaps leaving the opportunity to someone who is more innovative and actually has a background batteries and power electronics -- not an old line gear/transmission company, that is politically connected.
Unless you've been living in a vacuum, you must know that the stimulus has absolutely created jobs, and saved jobs. During the Bush Administration the financial meltdown was already beginning to show it's ugly head in late 2006, but ignored, and in 2007, only brave souls were outspoken about what was happening. But in late 2008, it was apparent we were headed to falling down an abyss.
CNN Money.com reported in November of 2008 that the government reported employers cut 240,000 jobs in October - bringing the year's total job losses to nearly 1.2 million.
Now, it wasn't that long ago, but so many people either refuse to give credit to President Obama, or really just don't know. He said over and over in his campaign speeches when referring to the financial crisis of 2008, "jobs would be the last thing to improve." That is the way with depressions. It is the terrible fact of how recovery takes place.
To improve the situation we need bipartisenship; not going to happen. Stimulus is still being held up in many States, and more stimulus is a bad word in Repub circles.
They were constrained by three factors: •A majority that's too slim to break party-line filibusters in the Senate or override presidential vetoes. •Republican lawmakers' willingness to stick by the White House most of the time. •And divisions among themselves over how far to go in opposing the war or changing how deals get done on Capitol Hill.
And, you must be aware President Bush had quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. He would sign bills with much fanfare, then after the media and the lawmakers left the White House, Bush quietly filed ''signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register
Observations by a man who has traveled the world and dedicated his adult life to understanding the dynamics of politics and investment.
China is not everything it's cracked up to be.
http://www.caseyresearch.com/displayCwc.php
The stimulus was large enough to turn the economy around so that it is now growing, but is was too small to make the economy grow fast enough to bring the unemployment rate down at an acceptable rate.
We need a second stimulus. But his inept political advisors are telling him there is no political support for a second stimulus. Obama needs to get a more competent set of political advisors P.D.Q. If Franklin D. Roosevelt were President, he would engage in a series of fireside chats with the American people explaining why a second stimulus is needed and building up political support for such a second stimulus. But, alas, Obama, at least so far, is no Roosevelt. He is another Jimmy Carter willing to accept failure instead of boldly leading the country in the direction it needs to go.
1. taking over the worst financial crisis since the Depression
2. ending the recession. that's right, GDP is growing, recession is over
(that's according to economists, they invented the term, so don't argue with them)
3. bringing unemployment down to 9.5%, and still going lower (was 20% in Depression)
Despite doing that in 18 months, Obama is a "failure"?
So, what does that make FDR? How big a failure was he?
A full five (5) years after FDR took office, after being relected, the Depression had still not ended, and in fact in 1937 the economy reached it's lowest point. Five years after FDR took office!
As to comparisons to Carter: political history seems not to be your forte.