plus 4, Case In Point - American Reporter

Case In Point - American Reporter
Market Mover - American Reporter
CEO shuffles GM managers, aims for change - Tulsa World
Automobiles : TRUCKS - Frederick News-Post
GM CEO shuffles managers, seeks change - San Mateo Daily Journal

Posted: 05 Dec 2009 08:21 AM PST

Case In Point
THE F.T.C. CHALLENGES HYDROGEN KIT CLAIMS, AND LOSES
by Joe Shea
American Reporter Correspondent
Bradenton, Fla.

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BRADENTON, Fla., March 6, 2009 -- A New Jersey man whose company guarantees that its hydrogen-injection kits for cars and trucks will produce mileage gains of 50% or more has won a key stage of his battle with the Federal Trade Commission after a Federal Judge ruled the agency had not been able to disprove his claims.

Federal judge and magistrate Michael Shipp ruled last monthHREF> that Federal prosecutors and their expert witness failed to prove that inventor Dennis Lee's extraordinary claims for his Hydrogen-Assist Fuel Cell were untrue or that the public would be harmed by them. And, the judge noted, large companies and a major university are trying to build hydrogen kits like his in their own laboratories.

Lee, 62, of Newfoundland, N.J.,-based Dutchman Enterprises, has been battling the government over his claims for hydrogen for almost 20 years.

The Story So Far...

Did the New Jersey Service Center documentation and the testimony by Dennis Lee's expert witness mislead the Court and Federal prosecutors? The American Reporter studied the claims.

At first glance, Lee's claims of mileage gains as high as 180% seem ironclad. The documentation shows how far each car went, how much gas it used and the percentage of gain each had - they averaged 98%. That's far more than the HHO kits I've seen usually produce - and I've seen dozens. Most vendors claim just a 20% to 40% increase in mileage.

So what's the problem? The tests all relied on a car trip of the same measured length, 52 miles, didn't they? Yes, but consider the inner workings of the gasoline gauge.

In most automotive gas tanks, the" float" - like the one floating inside a toilet tank - is submerged in gasoline when the tank is filled to the very top. The depth of the actual float - i.e., the measurement from the base to the top of the float - can be half an inch or more. A gallon or more of gasoline may be used before the float, showing Full the entire time, no longer presses against the top of the tank and the needle on the dashboard starts to fall. The needle usually sinks much faster than it did when the tank was full.

That's also why, when the needle rests on "E" and a warning light comes on, a gallon or more - maybe enough to get you to a station - can remain in the tank. That's because the bottom of float is at rest on the bottom of the tank, but the remaining gasoline may still be halfway down the side of the float. Only when the last of the gas is used does the car stop moving.

If Lee's tests are all predicated on just 52 miles of performance, many of the cars tested would show the gas gauge very close to Full after the trip. Many gas tanks floats take about 40 miles to begin to drop the needle on the dashboard.

The service center appears to measures mileage by the odometer from Point A to Point B. The tests are of actual fuel consumed, as measured by what it takes to refill the tank. The documents don't report the needle gauge position but the actual gas used after 52 miles of driving.

What is not revealed is whether they refilled the gasoline until the gauge said Full. That is the point when the float hits the top of the tank - when there's still space between the bottom and top of the float - and there may be half a gallon or more in the tank.

Drivers may note that even though the gauge shows Empty when they fill up the tank, they don't always see the actual tank capacity reflected on the pump readout - the gauge said Empty and the tank holds 12 gallons, but the driver can only pump 11.5 gallons into the car. The pump has stopped and the tank is spilling gas, but there's a half-gallon or so less than the tank is supposed to hold. Obviously, it wasn't actually empty when the needle said it was.

When they rent a car, smart drivers return it with the tank gauge on Full - not when the gas pump stops pumping. After all, they paid for a "Full" tank, when it may have been a gallon short of that.

Lee stressed that the company's warranty doesn't cover mileage at all, but just free replacement parts and only for a year. The FTC apparently felt Lee was guaranteeing buyers of his kit a 50% mileage improvement, however, and so did the judge, who essentially upheld the claims - for now. It's unclear whether there will be a trial.

As it now stands, with the tests unchallenged and the FTC's motion denied, it appears that Lee is free to claim almost double the alleged guarantee that moved the FTC to charge him in the first place.The service center tests, again, showed a 98% gain on average.

We have to agree with the judge that the prosecution made a "fatal" error when it hired an expert witness who admitted he knew little about automobiles and who in six months never examined the kit.

What did they pay him taxpayers' money for?

Lee makes amazing claims, but the right questions have yet to be asked.

-- Joe Shea, Mar. 13, 2009

Ever since Alessandro Volta discovered electrolysis in the year 1800 and chemist William Nicholson discovered four months later that hydrogen and oxygen could be separated in water by Volta's process, hydrogen as a fuel has struggled to gain a footing. Free, easy to make and hugely abundant everywhere, it is a 132-octane fuel for cars that has also found favor with diesel truckers and by researchers working for the U.S. Dept. of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

But skeptics have always claimed that the process of creating the gas in the car in a kit powered by a battery, and then running the car on hydrogen alone, is a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That law says you can't get more energy out of a process than you initially put into it. Most such skeptics, and apparently the FTC, fail to grasp that the kits are used to produce hydrogen as an additive to gasoline, not to run cars on hydrogen alone (a feat that is also possible, but not with small kits like Lee's). The kits create anywhere from a quarter-liter to 21 liters per minute of hydrogen gas, usually mixed with oxygen, that is then added to conventional gasoline or diesel fuel burned in internal combustion engines. The U.S. Dept. of Transportation funded a limited Booz-Hamilton study by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration that says hydrogen-injection systems (i.e., HHO kits) improved mileage and reduced emissions in diesel trucksHREF>.

Prominent scientists like Dr. Yiping Zhao of the University of Ga. physics department say that since the hydrogen gas produced by so-called HHO kits - named for the two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen that bubbles out of them - is used to make gasoline burn more quickly and efficiently, they don't violate the laws of physics. But trying to run the car on HHO alone would do so, since the battery would have to provide more energy than the HHO produced. Zhao is an expert in hydrogen storage who has published more than 97 peer-reviewed articles in physics journals.

"That doesn't violate the law of thermodynamics," Dr. Zhao said in an interview at his campus office. "It could be that it makes the gasoline burn more efficiently, and it could be that it reduces emissions."

The "could be" in the cautious Dr. Zhao's assessment is the limbo hydrogen-injections systems have found themselves in since the early part of the 20th Century. Competing with well-known gasoline and diesel fuels, and now with electric, solar, biodiesel and propane gas systems, cheap and ready hydrogen has fallen far behind. Yet as claims of success in everything from tiny toys to World War II bombers, from giant tandem semis to foreign subcompacts, and even as home heating and welding fuel, continue to get validated, interest has grown.

Someone's been listening, and not just the FTC, which is charged with minimizing harm to the public arising from false claims for everything from snake oil to suntan lotion.

A legion of devoted followers have so far mounted nearly 35,000 videos about HHO on YouTube, and swear to its value in extending the number of miles they get when hydrogen is added to gasoline, environmental benefits of burning about 98% of all the gasoline which strictly gasoline engines fail miserably to do, and the improved engine performance gained by cleaning out "gunk" that results from carbon buildup due to incomplete burning.

Generally, experts say most cars burn just 20 percent or so of the gasoline they use as useful energy that drives the car forward; the rest, they say, is lost heat that is expelled from the tailpipe. Hydrogen, its supporters and some scientists say, causes all of it to be burned.

Now comes the Dennis Lee case. Before the February 5 trial on the FTC's request for an temporary restraining order against Lee and Dutchman Enterprises, on Jan. 14, 2009, Federal prosecutors Joshua Millard of the FTC and U.S. Attorney Susan Steele won a freeze on all of Lee's assets, crippling his Newfoundland, N.J., business.

"If this decision goes the wrong way ... we are a dead company," Lee had told Judge Faith S. Hochberg. "Our primary asset was not money in the bank. It was our inventory, much of which is not paid for, and will have to be returned to those we trained as independent manufacturers to make it." Judge Hochberg granted the FTC's request.

At the February hearings on turning the temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction, however, Lee's lawyers introduced documents from the New Jersey Service Center. There, Lee's patented device was tested last October on 34 cars and trucks ranging from luxury SUVs to Ford F-150s and little Honda subcompacts, in some cases in freezing weather - when hydrogen kits may perform poorly. The defense pleadings provided the service center's documentation as scientific evidence for some astonishing results. Mileage on those 34 cars improved an average of 98 percent, and in some, fuel savings were more than doubled.

The center, run by a high-performance race-car mechanic, showed that a 4-cylinder 2005 Honda Accord with pre-testing mileage of 33MPG got 104MPG with the HAFC kit. A Lincoln MXK V6 went from 20 to 42.5MPG. A Ford F-150 V8 went from 15MPG to 35MPG. A 2006 Mazda 3 4-cylinder car went from 28.4 to 60MPG. A 1997 Lincoln Town Car went from 20 to 35MPG, a 75 percent improvement. All of the results were positiveHREF> (see sidebar).

Perhaps most compelling of all was one testimonial from Rick Brancadora, an Atlantic City, N.J., Christian radio station owner. After a broadcast radio interview with Lee, he had Lee's HAFC installed on his 2005 Honda Accord LX, a 4-cylinder coupe with 87,345 miles on it.

"We ran exhaustive tests on the vehicle," Brancadora told the court in a Jan. 19, 2009, letter, "and found that in city driving, Trenton and Atlantic City, the vehicles performance held steady at just over 77 miles per gallon. On open road travel, Route 195, Route 133 and the New Jersey Turnpike, the car immediately returned to high mileage 100 miles per gallon and slightly above."

Brancadora told the court that he'd also noted "improved passing performance," the absence of service codes or problems with an important sensor, less soot at the tailpipe and a modest amperage draw of just 11 to 13 amps of DC current from the car's battery. "During extremely cold weather," he noted, "fuel mileage dropped to 65 miles per gallon in single figure degree days, however, the mileage returned to much higher levels as the temperature improved to the upper teens. Overall, the fuel savings are measurably and dramatically improved, and the vehicle's performance has likewise improved."

Lee, who has been prosecuted in eight states for his claims, multilevel marketing schemes and other charges and was once convicted of a felony, had been advertising the HAFC kit in Newsweek, Popular Science and Smithsonian Magazine when the FTC finally noticed him.

He wholesales the kits through his WebsiteHREF> to those who pay to be distributors, such as auto shops and mechanics. Foes frequently call Lee a "scammer," and a Google search for his name brings up numerous Websites that criticize him; Judge Shipp took note of his "checkered past." Those issues were not at the center of the FTC case, though. The issues that were, however, sound like a million other claims floating around the Internet these days.

The FTC says "the advertising campaign has claimed that the HAFC kit offers 'Incredible Savings,' fostering 'Less Dependence on Foreign Oil.' One magazine advertisement claimed that the HAFC kit increased a 2007 Honda Civic's gas mileage from 35 miles per gallon to 85 miles per gallon, and had increased mileage from 33 mpg to 121 mpg on a 2006 Mazda. Another ad claimed that the device would "double mileage, even with SUVs."

Also, the FTC said, the company's Website "claimed to have 'scientific data on over two hundred vehicles right now that have gotten over 50% increase in fuel economy - and there are a dozen of the smaller four-cylinder cars that have gotten over 100 miles per gallon,'" the federal consumer-watchdog agency said.

Like others who have fought against the hydrogen-injection movement, the FTC also cited the laws of physics the Lee firm was supposedly violating. In a Feb. 2. press releaseHREF>, the agency said "... [T]hese and other claims defy well-established physical principles and contain 'gross errors and misrepresentations of fact.' According to an expert hired by the FTC, the device does not even meet the scientific definition of a 'fuel cell,' and several of the processes touted by the companies either are impossible or would lead to a net loss of energy. The promoters 'are marketing a product that cannot exist and function as claimed.'"

But it now appears that the Commission made a serious error in their selection of an "expert witness." Lee says the man never bought or tested his kit, and was an expert on cryogenics, not automobile engines and equipment. Judge Shipp agreed when he lifted Hochberg's temporary restraining order the day after a Feb. 5 hearing and denied it formally in a decision on Feb. 9. That decision never got postedHREF> on the FTC's Website, although its preliminary victories against Lee were. The FTC instead relies on studies done by the Environmental Protection Agency cited in an FTC brochureHREF> titled "'Gas-Saving' Products: Fact or Fuelishness?" The EPA's own site, however, shows that it hasn't studied any hydrogen-generating HHO kits since 1999, when the technology was still primitive at best. Even so, the FTC says only testing data by the EPA can be claimed as evidence. "The most that can be claimed in advertising is that the EPA has reached certain conclusions about possible gas savings by testing the product or by evaluating the manufacturer's own test data," the agency says. It's a Catch-22 for HHO kit manufacturers: they can't claim gains until the EPA tests their kits or their data, and the EPA isn't testing any kits or data. Instead, the FTC files civil or criminal actions against defendants who often have no financial resources to defend themselves, even when they may have kits that are quite defensible. The Lee case is most unusual because Lee had a lawyer and both evidence and an expert witness to defend his kit.

Shipp wrote that "William P. Halperin, PhD., an expert in the field of physics, testified on behalf of the FTC and opined that Defendants' product violates the laws of thermodynamics, principles of physics, and has no foundation in science. According to Plaintiff's expert, the HAFC cannot possibly do what Defendants state that it can do." But Shipp was unsparingly critical of Halperin and the FTC's sloppy work in the case. Before the hearing was over, Halperin had to admit that a major engineering firm and MIT were both working on a similar product.

The FTC, Shipp's 13-page decision said, "did not carry its burden of proving that the Defendants' representations are false" as it presented a six-month investigation of the HAFC by Halperin. The ruling is unpublished, meaning it cannot be used as a citation in other cases, but is available to the public.

First, Shipp said, the FTC did not substantially challenge the so-called "orange test" documentation presented by the New Jersey Service Center's representative. The defendants told the judge that their tests compared "an orange to an orange," not a physics theory to a practical application.

Second, Shipp ruled, Halperin "is not an expert on automotive internal combustion engines" and never worked in the automotive industry. "The Court finds it significant that the FTC failed to rebut the Defendants' proffered scientific evidence with any specificity," Shipp wrote.

Case documents also indicate that Halperin never realized that the hydrogen produced by Lee's kit is an additive to gasoline, not a vehicle's lone source of fuel.

Third, Judge Shipp said, "in the six months that Dr. Halperin worked with the FTC on this investigation, he never once physically touched an actual HAFC unit, he never tested it in a lab, and he never examined its component parts. This is a fatal defect in the FTC's proofs. Instead, the FTC and Dr. Halperin deemed it sufficient to abstractly conclude the HAFC simply cannot work. The FTC's lack of thoroughness calls into question the basis of its arguments," wrote Shipp, a former N.J. assistant attorney general for consumer protection appointed by President Bush in 2007.

And that was not all. "Fourth, Dr. Halperin actually agrees that adding hydrogen to fuel which is what the HAFC purportedly does, could increase fuel efficiency. Furthermore, Dr. Halperin acknowledged the potential of a similar device being developed by ArvinMeritorHREF> and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The fact that the FTC's expert concedes that the technology employed by the Defendants has potential to meet Defendants' challenged representations further handicaps the FTC's claim."

"Over the long term," ArvinMeritor's Website says about its "plasma reformer" kit, "the hydrogen-rich gas may also be used to greatly enhance the combustion efficiency of gasoline engines." That claim comes from a major player in the auto industry that is traded on the NYSE. And it also sounds an awful lot like what's been going on throughout the much-maligned HHO industry for years - without the associated million-dollar grants and other government help. Listen:

"The [ArvinMeritor kit] produces hydrogen onboard and on demand from the vehicle's fuel," Pedro Ferro, the firm's vice president and general manager, said in a press release in 2007. "It's also compact, has a rapid start-up, a low electrical power drain and an excellent transient response. It can efficiently convert diesel and gasoline fuel. Most of all - because the hydrogen is created efficiently on the vehicle and used as needed - there is no need for any kind of hydrogen storage on the vehicle. There is also no need for an all-new roadside hydrogen distribution infrastructure - two unsolved issues of other hydrogen systems."

Shipp didn't note it, but a 1973 study by scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, using a nearly identical design on a 1974 Chevrolet, made similar claims. A similar kit was tested by the Society of Automotive Engineers years later with similar results.

And now oil major ExxonMobil has gotten into the act. The company says it is working on a kit to convert not water, which is free, but hydrocarbons, which it owns an abundance of, into hydrogen. Their kit would replace compressed hydrogen tanks with much smaller electrolyzers that, like Lee's HAFC, creates hydrogen on demand.

Ironically, perhaps, their announcement came just a day after the end of the Nov. 11-14 Florida mega-conference called the HHO Games & Exposition, which brought scores of developers, inventors, and vendors together to "cross-pollinate" their ideas about onboard hydrogen-injection systems, better known as HHO kits. More than 2,500 people from all over the country and abroad attended the four-day event, which culminated Nov. 14 in a six-hour developer seminar at Manatee Technical Institute in nearby Bradenton, Fla.

On Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008, Exxon announced via the PR NewswireHREF>that its own onboard hydrogen kit "uses conventional fuels and produces hydrogen on demand. ... We found a way to scale down [the] process so that it will fit on a vehicle. ... Unlike [hydrogen tanks] this overcomes one of the key challenges manufacturers face... ," the company said. But how about competing claims markedly different from Lee's and those of many others who manufacture HHO kits - i.e., onboard hydrogen generators - that are already available on eBay and at smaller auto shops? The judge answered that. Dr. Halperin's abstract observations on the laws of physics, he said, are "inapplicable."

Finding that the FTC had failed both to prove the falsity of Lee's claims or that they were unreasonable - and that the FTC did not challenge Lee's mileage evidence - fairness required that the TRO be lifted. There was "minimal" indication the public could be harmed, Shipp said, yet Lee would suffer an "oppressive hardship" if the TRO was allowed to become a preliminary injunction.

What will happen now? The FTC can drop the case - and if they do, Lee says he will forego the $750,000 loss he's suffered - or appeal the injunction defeat to a higher court. It could also proceed to a trial on the merits of Lee's claims. The agency did not return a reporter's call for comment. Lee could not be reached.

American Reporter Editor-in-Chief Joe Shea founded the HHO Games & Exposition, which brings together hydrogen-injection kit inventors, developers, vendors and users - and the curious public - to advance green technology. Follow Joe on Twitter as jousterusa.

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Market Mover - American Reporter

Posted: 05 Dec 2009 08:21 AM PST

Market Mover
DEAR ANDREW: THERE'S THIS GUY NAMED OBAMA
Mark Scheinbaum
American Reporter Correspondent
Panama City, Panama

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PANAMA CITY, Panama -- After hosting my own election night party I awoke with a slight hangover, vaguely recalling this dream that a black guy had been elected President of the United States of America.

Then I switched on Voice of America news and realized it was not a dream, and realized among others that I never said good-bye to Andrew Goodman when we hurriedly threw our stuff together to leave the room we shared with two other summer camp workers at Camp Kitattinny in Dingman's Ferry, Pa., which was really in Layton, N.J.

How could I know that a few months later Andrew would be murdered with two other civil rights workers in Mississippi and dumped in a mucky clay grave. Who knew?

There is so much I want to say, so little I can say.

~ ~ ~

In the international spirit of spirits on election night we settled into the tony lounge at the English-owned Bristol Hotel because it was one of the few public rooms not closed by Flag Day in Panama. Knowing that a Barack Obama victory would have international repercussions, I started the evening with Canadian whisky, moving on to French cognac, and then finishing with by then pre-dawn Nicaraguan dark rum.

About 20 American health care professionals who worked with a missionary group wandered in to watch the results. I had spread the word where I'd be hanging out and for the doctors and nurses working with clinics in poor Panama neighborhoods the clean bathroom, fresh linen towels, and quiet Bella Vista neighborhood street were welcome relief.

My first clue that stereotypes are, well, stereotypical, was after listening to pockets of conversations about the sanctity of life; role of the church in society, family values and structures, and the morass of health care in the United States, a uniform cheer went up when the networks awarded an Obama victory to Michigan from where many of the visitors hailed.

~ ~ ~

Earlier in the day the exclusive, member-segregated Union Club (which allows black, mixed-race, indigenous, Jewish, and other "guests" who would be denied actual membership) hosted a room filled with multi-culturalism gone wild. Sponsored by the Junior Chamber of Commerce in celebration of Panama's 105th Independence Day, Lions, Rotarians, Kiwanians, Soroptomists and others gathered to pledge continued work for the poor.

One speaker as if mocking defeated GOP candidate John McCain's recent mantra of Sen. Obama wanting to "spread" wealth and "give away money belonging to rich people" reminded the audience that "even a small country is judged by how we treat the least among us. How we care for abandoned kids and uncared for elderly." It was the Panamanian equivalent of "a rising tide raises all ships."

The speaker was millionaire Panamanian Sen. Felipe Ariel Rodriguez who made his money in the auto parts business. He has refused urgings to run for president because he can't decide which political party is less corrupt, and after the hoopla of being named legislative "ombudsman" of the cleptocracy if former Pres. Mireya Moscoso he quit in disgust when it turned out Her Shoppingness only wanted to use his trusted name to lend righteousness to her cash "disappearances" and state visits to the Town Center Mall in Boca Raton, Fla.

The listeners above age 50 were white and mostly male. The listeners under 50 were black and brown and had Chinese and Hispanic surnames, and were women club presidents and board members in significant numbers.

The tall black priest who gave the invocation, Father Oscar Martin, could have been right out of an Obama playbook. The Spanish flowed like poetry and in the room, in the moment, in the frozen humid tropical time it defied precise English translation. But it included an inner glow and eye contact with every one of the 50 or 60 civic leaders, and the slow prayer: "Lord. For many of us let your Son Jesus be the rich coffee of our high lands whose aroma and strength flavors a people. And, Lord, let the people of all religions, and cultures, and histories who fled so much oppression elsewhere to settle here, be the cream which blends the coffee into a magnificent texture."

~ ~ ~

On local radio today the news "readers" bantered ad lib comments in between the reaction of world leaders to the Barack Obama's victory. Comments included:

"It might be that the United States which was born in an age of slavery, and institutionalized racism, for the first time has stood tall as the leader of nations, for all people, of all origins."

"It would be hard for some child anywhere in Asia, or Africa, or Latin America to feel that there is something they could not achieve because of their skin color or family background, when you think of who was just elected in the most powerful country."

"World leaders really want North American to lead. The U.S. and Canada, but mostly the U.S. and to show lots of experts were wrong, and change is possible,"

"Fidel Castro of Cuba issued a comment which was positive about Obama, and it was the usual stuff, but it sort of has some resonance in the defeat of John McCain and a signal that a string of years which seemed to relish the 'politics of war' could be behind us."

~ ~ ~

It was 1976 on a muddy country road in a trailer park near Havana, Florida which is pronounced Hay'-vah-ner and was about four years before I ever set foot in the other Havana, the one in Cuba.

Near the Leon Co.-Gadsden Co. line was in one of the most concentrated "Black Belts" and poverty belts of the Old South, and the Williams family was preparing the Independence Day goat roast. The day before we had taken a truck up to Thomasville, Ga., to their longtime butcher to pick up the dressed-out "half goat" ready for the spit and hot coals of the front yard.

My dad was visiting from New York, and we were incidentally the only white folks there, but we were with family nonetheless. This was my American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees organizing "family" and three generations of the Williams family were centers of influence and respect on both the campuses of huge Florida State University and historically black "FAMU" Florida A&M University.

As day faded to evening, and goat barbeque, baked beans, cole slaw, sweet potato pie, and 'nilla bread puddin' was washed down by Old Milwaukee and later hot coffee and "sweet tea" we talked of where we were and why we were.

"Good Ole Boy rednecks' like Jim Cushing had slapped aside their "upbringin'" and led other rural whites to integrated union organizational meetings, and Sunday covered dish rallies in small wooden black churches with names like "Missionary Baptist," or "Ethiopian Ezekial," or "Mount Zion Tabernacle" and moved pockets of the Deep South ever so slowly into the "New South" which in many ways eclipsed the pseudo-liberal rhetoric of New York or Philly.

A black president of a local union would be a great thing.

A black president of the United States was never mentioned.

~ ~ ~

It was 3PM on an October afternoon. The Bums of Brooklyn were facing the mighty New York Yankees. It was the sports version of David v. Goliath and as usual Goliath would win. The dad in the waiting room two blocks from Ebbets Field was listening to the game on radio because the New York Daily Mirror had promised a then-huge $100 U.S. Savings Bond to any baby born in Brooklyn, during the deciding game of the World Series, if and only if the Dodgers won the game and the Series.

It was Jackie Robinson's first season as the first African-American officially allowed to play in Major League Baseball.

Someone smacked me on the butt and I was born.

Third out, Dodgers lost, no Savings Bond.

~ ~ ~

The United States of America at times is a very, very, very strange and wonderful place.

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CEO shuffles GM managers, aims for change - Tulsa World

Posted: 05 Dec 2009 08:50 AM PST

DETROIT — When auto industry veteran Bob Lutz returned to General Motors in 2001 after 30 years with other companies, he quickly grew tired of GM's numbers-oriented bureaucracy, printing up post-it notes that asked, "Says Who?"

Lutz stuck his credo on walls and bulletin boards as he publicly challenged the lumbering corporate culture.

In announcing another sudden management overhaul on Friday, GM chairman and acting CEO Ed Whitacre Jr. was speaking Lutz's words when he told employees that the bureaucracy needs to end and they can take reasonable risks without fear of being fired.

"We want you to step up. We don't want any bureaucracy," Whitacre said in his folksy Texas drawl to about 800 GM workers. "We're not going to make it if you won't take a risk," he said in the address, which was broadcast to employees worldwide on the Internet.

Whitacre, 68, who has been frustrated with the pace of change, appointed the 77-year-old Lutz as a top adviser, creating an alliance of hard-charging veteran executives to lead the troubled company.

The former CEO of AT&T Inc., Whitacre heads a board that just pushed out CEO Fritz Henderson after only eight months in office.

In his 45-minute speech, Whitacre, reversed several changes that Henderson made, restoring the position of North American president and rejoining sales and marketing, which had been split in two.

Whitacre, wearing a charcoal pinstriped suit, paced across a stage, encouraging workers to make changes

and get things done quickly. Several times he was self-deprecating, acknowledging that he knows little about cars and would need help from workers.

Whitacre made clear he would rely on Lutz, the company's legendary car guy, to craft GM's future and teach him the business. "Bob, with me as a pupil, you've got a tough job," Whitacre said.

Lutz, a 40-year industry veteran who has worked for major automakers across the globe, is known best for leading Chrysler's wild success in the late 1990s with the introduction of a new 300 luxury sedan and an aggressively designed Ram pickup truck.

But while his new job gives him Whitacre's ear, he loses responsibility for marketing, which he was granted when Henderson persuaded him to postpone retirement earlier this year.

"It could be his exit package," said Gerald Meyers, a former chairman of American Motors Corp. who now teaches at the University of Michigan. "You think of it in business terms, he's moved to a position where he isn't going to run anything. That's not too exciting."

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Automobiles : TRUCKS - Frederick News-Post

Posted: 05 Dec 2009 08:42 AM PST