The Same Kind of Company and the Destruction of Saturn

Remember the late 80s/early 90s, when Toyota and Honda were kicking Detroit's butt (and Japan was buying Rockefeller Center and generally eating our lunch)? And remember GM's awesome response?



"A different kind of company, a different kind of car," went the great tagline for a wondrous new brand perfectly in tune with the times. Finally, here was an American response to the reliable and economical vehicles made in Japan. Companies pray for the kind of brand loyalty Saturn achieved.

And it wasn't just hype. Saturn really was a different kind of company. The unions worked with the corporation to find a competitive formula for the cars to be manufactured in Tennessee. The dealer network was set up with an understanding that many consumers hate car culture and prefer no-haggle pricing to the games car salesmen play. The cars were well-made, fuel-efficient crowd-pleasers. You couldn't ask for a car company better positioned for the 21st Century.

And what did GM do with this extraordinary brand and its well-reviewed debut product, the fuel-efficient S-Series compact sedan? They almost immediately abandoned it to become a lonely orphan. The S-Series languished for a decade with nothing more than cosmetic changes, and the next product, the L-Series, was introduced in 2000 with a thud. Brand? What brand? Later models got worse gas mileage and haplessly competed in the luxury market. GM was clearly too busy building Hummers to worry about Saturn.

Now, with GM on life support, the best idea it has had in the last 30 years for itself and for all of us appears about to be terminated, and that's a crying shame. The destruction of Saturn makes you wonder what planet the people running GM are on. Because what GM needs most right now is to build, what was it, oh yes, a different kind of company and a different kind of car.

Wrongful Convictions Get Some Attention

What better day than Friday the 13th to have a public hearing about the unlucky souls who have been wrongfully convicted? The New York State Bar Association held hearings in Manhattan Friday to finalize its report analyzing the "systemic, procedural and statutory causes that contribute to wrongful convictions and propose solutions to this growing problem."

The Task Force studied 53 cases of wrongful convictions, and determined their leading causes to be: identification procedures, government practices, mishandling of forensic evidence, false confessions, the improper use of jailhouse informants and defense practices.

The 22-member Task Force is chaired by Judge Barry Kamins and includes Prof. William Hellerstein of Brooklyn Law School; Robert C. Gottlieb, who defended Marty Tankleff in his original trial; Brooklyn DA Charles J. Hynes; and Westchester DA Janet DeFiore.

Among those who testified were Jeffrey Deskovic, who was convicted based on a false confession, which occurred in Westchester prior to DeFiore's ascension to DA, and about which she ordered a task force of her own. Deskovic, who speaks regularly on wrongful convictions and writes for the Westchester Guardian, said the Fifth Amendment demands that coercive interrogation techniques--as taught in the Reid technique--be banned. And, pointing out that prosecutors having immunity raises the possibility of abuse, Deskovic argued that prosecutorial misconduct should be prosecuted.

Alan Newton, exonerated for rape after 22 years in prison, described being turned down for parole several times solely because he maintained his innocence.

Barry Scheck, cofounder of the Innocence Project, described how, a few years ago, an Illinois State Senator passed a bill requiring the taping of interrogations. [The shame is President Obama couldn't mention it during the campaign for fear of being portrayed as "soft on crime."]

Peter Neufeld, the IP's other cofounder, called for reliability hearings for confessions, while Scheck said that DNA is "no panacea" because only 14 percent of cases yield DNA evidence.

Bruce Barket, Marty Tankleff's lawyer in Suffolk County during his successful appeal, took Scheck's point a step further, saying DNA has become a "double-edged sword" because it creates too high a bar for the innocent. Barket said Tankleff would never have been convicted if his interrogation had been recorded, and that government must fund lawyers for prisoners with credible claims of innocence.

For his part, Robert Gottlieb, Tankleff's lawyer during the original trial, called for all interaction with police, not just interrogations, to be recorded.

Among the recommendations in the preliminary report are additional law enforcement training, pre-trial Brady conferences, blind line-ups, recording of custodial interrogations in their entirety, and corroboration of informant's testimony.

Written comments will be accepted by the Task Force until February 20th.

"Pursuing the Truth is Apolitical"

I'm trying to figure out the point of an article in the Times today headlined "Ex-Journalists’ New Jobs Fuel Debate on Favoritism."

"Republicans have long accused mainstream journalists of being on the payroll of President Obama and the Democratic Party, a common refrain of favoritism especially from those on the losing end of an election....But this year the accusation has a new twist: In some notable cases it has become true, with several prominent journalists now on the payrolls of Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congressional leadership."

And? How is that supposed to slant coverage? They may be on the payroll, but they don't still work for their former employers.

What's conspicuously absent from the article is any mention of the individuals who, during the Bush administration, actually were on the government's payroll while purporting to be objective "journalists," including Armstrong Williams, Karen Ryan (of "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting," fame) and a host of Iraqi news professionals. Of course, in any discussion like this, Jeff Gannon is in a class by himself.

And while the article mentions that the Bush administration hired former Fox News commentators, is there really no difference between working for Republicans and working for Democrats? The Times article features Douglas Frantz, a former managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, who is now working as Senator John Kerry's chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Frantz describes the work as similar to that of an investigative reporter but with clout, saying, “Pursuing the truth is apolitical.”

Can you imagine a former journalist with any claim on the profession going to work for President Bush and saying that, much less believing it?

Excited About the Super Bowl?

As excited, say, as Prince appeared to be during the Super Bowl halftime show in '07, when he performed his screaming guitar solo behind a large fabric screen?



On Super Sunday, let's take a moment to appreciate one of the coolest statements ever made on such a grand stage. If Prince had done this out of the blue it would have been no big deal or might have seemed a rock-star indulgence. But as a comment on "Nipplegate," the overblown kerfuffle over Janet Jackson's boob flash in '04, it was genius--in your face but just abstract enough that nobody could complain about it without coming across as a freak themselves. The point being that Janet's boob, so small and fleeting until fixated on with the perverse perseverance peculiar to our appointed moral guardians, was also in our minds. That's rock 'n roll.



So, we've had Janet's boob and Prince's peepee. Will tonight bring Super Body Part III? I will say this: if the Boss comes out in assless chaps, I am so never watching the Super Bowl again.

The Permanent Movement vs. the Permanent Campaign

Many in the media are talking about what they call "Obama's permanent campaign," that is, the effort to harness the citizen participation and social networking that propelled Obama to the Presidency and apply it to governing. Some are criticizing it.

But "permanent campaign" is a lazy and imprecise way to phrase it, because the dominant brand associated with that is the administration of George W. Bush, and in his case "permanent campaign" really fits. Recall the summer of 2002, when White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.” The product he and the other members of the White House Iraq Group were marketing, of course, was the invasion of Iraq. It's an offensive analogy because it equates selling war with selling soap: based on Card's analogy, you'd have to say that the invasion’s “unique selling proposition” was its claim to get the mushroom cloud out, thus offering the consumer benefit of not being incinerated. The marketing tactics to launch and sell the product included lies like Saddam’s having WMD and operational connections to Al Qaeda, color-coded terror alerts to play on our fears, scripted events like Mission Accomplished, and fabricated narratives like the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman fairy tales. Now that's a campaign.

Following the last two presidential terms inflicted on us, calling what occurred in the two years leading up to November 4th a campaign is as reductive as terming Obama's use of the word "change" in this period a "slogan." McCain learned that the hard way by following his pledge of allegiance to Bush's policies with a tone-deaf, stillborn attempt to usurp the mantle of "change."

It's preposterous to presume that the millions of citizens whose engagement elected Obama are preoccupied with the prospects of his reelection in four years. Whether it can be sustained is to be seen, but a more accurate description of what's going on is not a campaign but a movement for a government that works, for a change.