Veteran automotive journalist Phoebe Wall Howard recently uncovered the disheartening story of an experienced Ford factory electrician who was fired after being falsely accused of stealing a $1.95 cookie from the plant commissary. Howard’s reporting burst my bubble about Ford’s leadership and reaffirmed my dim view of the UAW.
Howard’s prodigious reporting deserves amplification.
Ford’s Mexican-made Mustang Mach-E has muscled its way big time onto the roads of my west Los Angeles neighborhood. For years I rarely saw the vehicle, which first went on sale in December 2020, but these days they’re everywhere, in some pretty sweet color schemes, I must add. I saw…
In a not-so-long-ago era, my recent experience at The Vitamin Shoppe in Santa Monica would not have been a blog-worthy experience. Once upon a time it was common to walk into a retail store and engage with someone who was well versed in the company’s products and cared enough to…
It speaks volumes about the corporate media that to better understand antisemitism, growing wage disparity and labor unrest, and the declining state of the global automotive industry, I’m increasingly drawn to the World Socialist Web Site. The corporate media covers politics and business through the prism of its business owners—that’s…
You can’t make this stuff up! Ford CEO Jim Farley last October made headlines prognosticating that “artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.” He opined that “AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind.” Given that Farley’s mistaken embrace of electric…
GM CEO Mary Barra’s ability to reinvent herself rivals that of a career politician switching platforms on the campaign trail. First there was “No More Crappy Cars Mary,” a promise she made on CNBC when she oversaw the automaker’s new product development. Then there was “Mechanic Mary,” a moniker she…
Uber’s business model—which I feared from the get-go would morph into a platform engineered to exploit drivers and riders—has always been personal to me. As I’ve noted several times on this blog, I drove a Toronto taxi when I was in college, and it was a very lucrative gig. In…
I’ve warned for some time about America’s rigged economy fueling a dangerous level of wealth inequality that has mutated into a direct threat to our national security. Until the other day, I mistakenly thought I was a choir of one. Turns out, people far better credentialed than me agree. I’m…
It is disheartening that truly thoughtful journalism, the kind that takes considerable smarts and experience to produce, is rarely noticed or appreciated by the corporate media, even at the publications where it appears. A case in point is this column by Greg Ip, the Wall Street Journal’s economics columnist. Ip’s…
Michigan is a national tragedy. The state’s household income has plummeted to 40th in the nation from 16th and now sits 13% below the national average. Six out of every 10 jobs fail to pay what is generally considered a middle-class wage. Unless the trend is reversed, Michigan is on…