The company that owns Uni-Solar in Greenville says it will lay off 300 people from the solar roofing business. Michigan based Energy Conversion Devices was going to auction off Uni-Solar but Tuesday's auction was canceled because no acceptable bids were placed.
Uni-Solar's parent company filed for bankruptcy in February. The workers in Montcalm County were then placed on furlough.
Company officials blame the over production of solar panels and the end of federal incentives for its downfall.
Sounds to me like without all the corporate welfare subsidies, the American solar panel industry is simply not viable.
Here is another reminder that climate change doesn't mean just warming, but a greater frequency of weather EXTREMES. It was just a month ago when Michigan was basking in unprecedented late-winter 80 degree weather. And then came the reversal, as reported by a local Michigan television station:
SAINT JOSEPH, Mich. - For Welch’s grape growers, it was the most devastating frost in Michigan’s history. That’s according to the National Grape Cooperation, better known as Welch’s Foods.
Cold temperatures wiped out 95 percent of all the juice grapes in Berrien, Cass and Van Buren County.
“You know it’s a complete wipeout,” said John Jasper, a surveyor for Welch’s Foods. Jasper said more than 10,000 acres of juice grapes were destroyed Thursday morning across Southwest Michigan.
Jasper had a difficult job Friday. He and two other Welch’s surveyors tried to figure out how many grapes the company could expect this year at harvest. “I went through hundreds of acres before I found a spot that had a live bud,” he said.
“I’ve probably been to 100 farms in the last two days,” said Jasper. “The majority (are destroyed) 95 percent.”
According to the National Grape Cooperation, Berrien, Cass and Van Buren farmers collected $24 million in 2011. Jasper said in 2012 they would be lucky to net $2 million.
The situation gets worse for Paul Bixby of Bixby Orchards in Berrien Springs. “Mostly on this tree, everything is gone,” Bixby said pointing out a devastated apple orchard.
Bixby didn’t only lose the grapes. He estimates Thursday’s frost killed half of his apple crop. “You can see the black and you can see five in that cluster. All of them look the same.”
“A lot of these guys know the numbers and they know they’re in trouble,” said Jasper. He said so many juice grapes are gone it’s not cost effective for farmers to harvest the grapes that survived.
Jasper said Welch’s Foods gets one-sixth of their grapes from Southwest Michigan. “This is probably our worst year,” he said. The frost could force the company to change its recipe for some of its products.
I guess we should prepare for higher grape juice prices, among other things.
More globalization-related bad news for the auto industry and the Detroit area. Here is The Oakland Press with the details:
American Axle & Manufacturing Inc. has laid off 300 blue-collar workers from its manufacturing complex at I-75 and Holbrook along the Detroit–Hamtramck border.
The workers were idled Feb. 25 when the American Axle’s labor agreement with the United Auto Workers ran out. Negotiations between the company and union have stalled and the workers were left without any kind of severance package, according to former UAW official familiar with the discussions.
American Axle had announced last summer it planned to close the complex, which in the late 1970s employed as many as 8,000 workers. The company’s headquarters is still on the site but the layoffs mean no more blue-collar work is done inside the Holbrook complex.
Of course, they keep on the management jackals who don't actually produce anything while the real work will now be done abroad:
The union blamed the shutdown on AAM’s unwillingness to negotiate a fair labor agreement.
“This is an indication that hard-working people are sick of constantly helping companies through concessions and back to profitability and companies refusing to share in that,” said UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada, who directs the union’s American Axle Department said last summer.
“Here is a business that started out as an American company providing good-paying jobs to 6,000 employees. As a result of the hard work of these employees, it has grown to an international company with 32 factories worldwide,” said Estrada. “All of this success was achieved off the backs of the original 6,000 hard-working Americans.”
However, American Axle has said it needs further labor concessions, including reducing the pay of active workers, to remain competitive in what has become a global market. Work done at the complex is being shifted to Mexico.
Globalization--the most effective union busting tool ever devised. If these assholes were at all honest, they would change the name of the company to Mexican Axle.
Bonus: Speaking of Axl, remember when he was young, thin and could still ROCK?
image: The Machesney Park Mall, Rockford, Illinois...yesterday and today
The new Forbes list of America's Most Miserable Cities is out. Here is Yahoo Real Estate with the details:
Miami is a playground for the rich and famous. Celebrities flock to parties at South Beach clubs and then return to their $10 million mansions in Miami Beach and Key Biscayne. It’s a leading city in culture, finance and international trade. But away from the glitz and glamor, many ordinary Miamians are struggling.
A crippling housing crisis has cost multitudes of residents their homes and jobs. The metro area has one of the highest violent crime rates in the country and workers face lengthy daily commutes. Add it all up and Miami takes the top spot in our ranking of America’s Most Miserable Cities.
The most famous way to gauge misery is the Misery Index developed by economist Arthur Okun in the 1960s, which combines unemployment and inflation. Our take on misery is based on the things that people complain about on a regular basis.
We looked at 10 factors for the 200 largest metro areas and divisions in the U.S. Some are serious, like violent crime, unemployment rates, foreclosures, taxes (income and property), home prices and political corruption. Other factors we included are less weighty, like commute times, weather and how the area’s pro sports teams did. While sports, commuting and weather can be considered trivial by many, they can be the determining factor in the level of misery for a significant number of people. One tweak to this year’s list: we swapped out sales tax rates for property tax rates. Miami would have finished No. 1 under the old methodology as well.
Miami has local company in misery on our list: the West Palm Beach metropolitan division ranks fourth and Fort Lauderdale is seventh. Both areas have been hit hard by the housing crises.
Michigan’s troubled duo of Detroit and Flint clock in at No. 2 and No. 3 among the most miserable cities. The cities have been reeling for decades due to the decline of the U.S. auto industry and in recent years have been demolishing houses to change their city landscapes. Detroit has closed schools and laid off police, while Michigan appointed an emergency manager last year to take over Flint’s budget and operations. Detroit and Flint rank No. 1 and No. 3 when it comes to violent crime, and unemployment over the past three years in both communities has also been among the worst in the U.S.
Last year’s most miserable city, Stockton, ranks No. 11 this year. Stockton got a boost as housing prices have stabilized to some degree after a 45% drop between 2006 and 2008. They also benefited from our replacement of sales tax rates with property taxes in the methodology (Stockton would have finished No. 6 under the old methodology). Stockton still has plenty of problems, though. It ranks among the country’s six worst when it comes to unemployment, foreclosures and violent crime.
The Top 10 List is below, with details for each one at the link:
10. Warren, Michigan
9. Rockford, Illinois
8. Toledo, Ohio
7. Fort Lauderdale, Florida
6. Chicago, Illinois
5. Sacramento, California
4. West Palm Beach, Florida
3. Flint, Michigan
2. Detroit, Michigan
1. Miami, Florida
Interesting that two cities in which I used to reside, Chicago (6) and Rockford (9) made the list. Perhaps that is why I am such a sunny personality. I chronicled Rockford's descent into hell last May 23rd in my post, "Worst City in America" -- How Rampant Globalization Transformed Rockford, Illinois." I'm sure it must be cold comfort to the citizens of Rockford that eight other cities have passed them up in their misery.
Bonus: "They say misery loves company. We could start a company...and make misery"
Pardon me for being so crude, but I simply cannot think of another way to express my feelings here other than to ask the question: how many more ways can we fuck over our young adults in this country? We brainwash the poor kinds into thinking that the MUST have a college education in order to succeed in this society (even as that becomes more of a cruel lie with every passing year), send them to institutions of alleged higher learning which charge them exorbitant fees and then saddle them with massive amounts if student loan debt. And then, when some of them have the audacity to try to help support themselves by applying for food stamps, we cut off that meager support because its "too expensive." Here is a local Georgia television station with the story:
Georgia's college students are facing the prospect of the HOPE Scholarship paying less and less toward their tuition in the next few years.
So how are they dealing with rising tuition and fees?
Many are working whatever part-time jobs they can rustle up, mornings, nights and weekends. But they're also tapping into an unconventional form of student financial aid: food stamps.
The "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program" is providing college students who qualify with $200 a month toward their groceries, making them part of the 20 percent of Georgia's population currently receiving the benefit.
Here are two students' appalling stories:
"With the budget cuts, students are definitely going to have to think of different ways to get money and finances for things such as groceries," said Danielle Ford, a GSU Junior. "So food stamps will definitely be a big help, absolutely. Without food stamps, they wouldn't be able to eat."
Taylor is a full-time student with a part-time job.
"As a full-time student, my bill usually comes up to about almost $5,000 a semester. That's tuition alone," he said.
On top of that are his books and fees and his rent for an off-campus apartment, which is $600 a month.
One of the reasons he moved out of a campus dorm, Taylor said, is that GSU was requiring him to pay, in addition to his room cost, about $1,700 a semester for the university's meal plan.
Now, living off-campus and buying his own groceries, he understands why students are tapping into the SNAP program.
"I mean, I think it helps," said Taylor, "because these are students that I know that [like me] are working, like, jobs! And they're really tight on money. These are people who actually really, really need it, and they tell me it's a big help."
Alas:
Last year, Michigan cut 30,000 students from its food stamp rolls by tightening up the requirements for approval, in order to save $75 million a year.
Sadly, these kids don't know it but they are learning some hard lessons about the new realities in modern day America. They'd be much better off dropping out of school and joining the Occupy movement than driving themselves ever deeper into debt chasing an American Dream than has long since turned into an epic nightmare.
Bonus: "Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders...here are the young men, where have they been? We knocked on the doors of hell's darkest chamber...pushed to the limits, we dragged ourselves in"
It's a common vision of the future, as popularized by fictional works like the book and movie versions of The Road, desperate survivors picking through the ruins as they try to get through even one more day. But there is at least one place in America where the future is now:
Two people allegedly hunting for scrap metal were killed Wednesday after part of a vacant nursing home collapsed on them on Detroit’s west side.
Fire, police, and rescue crews were called to Seven Mile and Glastonbury, near the Southfield Freeway.
Two bodies were discovered in the abandoned five-story building. Fire Chief Kwaku Atara said it’s believed the two men were scrapping at the time of the roof collapse.
Sad as this story is, I couldn't help seeing the black humor in this:
“If you see someone scrapping in your neighborhood, call police immediately. This activity directly affects the Detroit Fire Department, because the firefighters have to respond to buildings just like this in emergencies. Not only firefighters but all emergency responders, possibly may have to go into these facilities,” said Atara.
And he says it’s very dangerous. “We would like to urge residents that this is extremely dangerous way to make a living and we would discourage it at all costs,” said Atara.
You know what else is really dangerous? Starving. Which is about the level of desperation it takes to get someone to go scrounging around in a dilapidated building looking for scrap metal.
There has been quite a wave of layoffs/closings stories in the news the past few days. This one was about as appalling as the one I posted on Saturday about Hanes buying up a rival factory and moving it to Mexico:
Just a little more than a year after Gaymar Industries was acquired by Stryker Corp. in a $150 million cash deal, the company is now shutting its area operations.
The closings in Orchard Park and West Seneca will put approximately 160 people out of work.
The privately-held Orchard Park medical manufacturer, which specializes in support surface, pressure ulcer management solutions for the health-care industry, was bought by medical devices giant Stryker of Michigan in a deal announced in late summer 2010.
A statement from the company issued Thursday said the process of closing down production lines and relocating equipment to other Stryker sites or supply chain partners will take place in phases and will be completed by the end of 2012.
Okay, that's bad enough, but then there is this little tidbit:
When the transaction was announced, Gaymar CEO Kent Davies said, "We've been working with them for 10 years. It's always a subject to talk about how things can get better and where we can take the relationship."
"Where we can take the relationship," huh? That sounds like the kind of "relationship" a serial killer has with one of his victims, which I think is quite an apt metaphor in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court case declaring corporations to have the same "free speech" rights as human beings. Things certainly got better for the 160 Gaymar employees about to lose their jobs, all right. But that's okay, I'm sure former Gaymar CEO Kent Davis got HIS golden parachute while his employees were getting their golden showers from Stryker.
I just don't understand why people put up with the destruction of their livelihoods like this without so much as a peep of protest. Someone needs to go Occupy Stryker headquarters. That's it in the picture above. They're in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in case anyone is interested.
There was a time in my life when I was an aspiring fiction writer. Mysteries specifically. Sadly, I had just enough talent to know how much I sucked...kind of like Salieri beholding Mozart, actually. I seem to do a bit better at this Gonzo Journalism thing I've got going on now. I might never be able to make people forget the late good Dr. Thompson, but whatever.
One thing I've come to realize about my former ambition to be a fiction writer as I've gotten older is that my imagination, while fertile, is just not expansive enough to compete with reality. For example, you could have chained me in a room with a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters for a thousand years and I never would have written anything this absurd:
The United States is fighting terrorism — one snow cone at a time.
Montcalm County recently received a $900 Arctic Blast Sno-Cone machine.
The West Michigan Shoreline Regional Development Commission (WMSRDC) is a federal- and state-designated agency responsible for managing and administrating the homeland security program in Montcalm County and 12 other counties.
The WMSRDC recently purchased and transferred homeland security equipment to these counties — including 13 snow cone machines at a total cost of $11,700.
The machines were funded by a grant from the Michigan Homeland Security Program. The request for a snow cone machine came from another county, but all 13 counties received them.
Really, if you're a fiction writer you need to give it up. How can you possibly compete with the idea of a country where the national debt just topped $15 trillion, and where teachers, firefighters and police officers are being laid off in huge numbers, buying sno-cone machines with Homeland Security funds?
So what was the justification for this purchase? Uh, you might want to sit down for this:
“It is used to attract people so they can be educated and prepared for homeland security,” Dey said from his office in Muskegon. “More importantly, they (homeland security officials) felt in a medical emergency the machine was capable of making ice packs which could be used for medical purposes.”
Really? People need to be bribed with a snow cone in order to pay attention to bullshit Homeland Security propaganda? And when all of the first responders get laid off, who is going to be left to administer the ice packs?
I take back what I said about fiction writers. Matt Groening, please step forward and claim your prize, for we have truly become a nation full of Homer Simpsons. "Mmmmmmm...snow cones"
Bonus: "If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough"
Here is a story that should surprise precisely no one:
It's a race against the clock in Detroit.
The home to America's Big Three automakers has until spring to straighten out its budget problems or the city could face bankruptcy or, worse, potential default on its largest debt obligations.
"Without change, the city could run out of cash by April, with the potential cash shortfall of $45 million by the end of the fiscal year," Mayor Dave Bing said in an address to Detroit residents Wednesday night.
The mayor said $40 million could be saved in the city's budget through pension reform, cuts to medical care costs, and strategic layoffs -- all key points in the budget reform proposal he announced in the televised speech.
While many government jobs are on the chopping block under the mayor's proposal, many more could be lost if major changes are not made to the government's deficit, warns David L. Littmann, senior economist with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
The fiscal situation in Detroit has become so dire that "now even modest changes are not going to be sufficient to avoid default in the next four months," he forecasts.
Going into default could result in the shutdown of public works such as garbage collection and public transportation.
Littmann also said that if the mayor's proposal is not approved, it will "100%" file for bankruptcy. If the city fails to overhaul its budget, it's not a matter of if the city will file for bankruptcy, it's when, he said.
When you think about just how bad the economic situation is in Detroit and how long it has been that way, the only surprise is that this hasn't happened sooner.
In the latest of a recurring theme of stories over the past few years, the Detroit suburb of Highland Park recently announced that is was shutting off over half of its streetlights due to unpaid electricity bills. Here's the Detroit Free Press with the story:
DTE Energy has finished removing more than half of Highland Park's street lights in a city-approved plan to pay off $4 million in unpaid lighting bills.
DTE Energy spokesman Scott Simons said today that the company removed 1400 light poles and put in 200 poles, replacing them with improved technology at intersections. DTE workers completed the project in late September, he said. There are now 500 streetlights left in the city, Simons said.
Mayor Hubert Yopp said today that he looked at crime statistics and felt the move was the best option for the city.
"We’re trying to keep (costs) down so the taxpayers don’t have to pay extra money," Yopp said. He said city council approved the plan earlier this year.
Highland Park has been unable to pay a bill in full for at least five years, sending only partial payment on $60,000-per-month streetlight fees, Simons said. DTE and city officials agreed on the current plan in May, which will reduce costs to about $15,000 per month, Simons said.
Streetlights are such a commonplace feature of our modern infrastructure that you don't even think about them. Until they get turned off, that is. Taken in isolation, this is just one little story about one struggling community tightening its belt in the age of austerity. But taking the larger, long term view, there is no doubt that, as the picture above shows, it's a sign of things to come for the rest of the country.
It should be readily apparent by now to anyone who even casually follows the financial news that many state and local governments are in deep, deep trouble. Layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters along with cuts in spending for state benefit programs are occurring all over the country and negating the supposed economic benefits of the recent massive increases in federal deficit spending.
One of the most basic anti-poverty programs is Temporary Aid to Dependent Families (TADF)—known colloquially as “welfare.” The program is the stepchild of the original Aid to Families with Dependent Children (ADFC), a New Deal initiative designed to combat poverty in America. There's little argument that ADFC created a culture of dependency, with multiple generations becoming welfare recipients, and did little to actually elevate the fortunes of the underclass. Thus the change over to TADF under President Clinton, which set time limits to how long families could receive welfare.
Nevertheless, since welfare payments—as the program names imply—are doled out to people with children (often single mothers), cutting off or reducing such benefits strikes right at the most vulnerable members of our society. So it was quite distressing to read this article published yesterday by the Detroit News:
On Saturday, Oct. 1, 41,000 Michigan welfare recipients will lose cash benefits in the amount of approximately $515 each. Gov. Rick Snyder capped maximum welfare payments at 48 months. Several Michigan recipients filed a class action lawsuit to overturn the four-year cap.
Five years was the original cap on cash assistance for welfare. In some cases, extensions were available for those in need. The lawsuit says that the welfare cap violates the due process clause of the 14th amendment. They claim that the cutoff notices were vague and generic. The plaintiffs are asking a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order against the cap.
I’m not going to take sides in this dispute either way. On the one hand the state is broke and welfare payments have never proven to be an effective means of combating poverty. On the other hand, thousands of families with children may well soon end up out on the streets. There are no easy answers here.
But what really struck me was a set of statistics that the article presented about the dismal condition of Michigan’s economy:
Welfare cash assistance cuts aren't the only economic issue plaguing Michigan. Cuts are happening everywhere. In August, 11.2 percent of Michiganders were unemployed. Let's look at Michigan's deteriorating economy, by the numbers.
* 2.5 million: People in Michigan who receive one or more form of welfare benefits.
* 220,000 thousand: People in Michigan who receive cash benefits. The four-year cap would reduce it to 180,000 people.
* 21,000-25,000: The number of welfare recipients in Detroit alone (Michigan's largest city) who had their cash benefits cut.
* 30,000: The number of children in Michigan who will lose welfare benefits.
* 1 out of 10: The ratio of children in Detroit and Flint whose no longer qualify for cash assistance.
* 2,000: The number of adults in Detroit's 48205 zip code alone that will lose cash welfare benefits.
* 1,500: The number children in the 48025 zip code that will no longer be covered.
* 5 square miles: The area of Detroit's 48205 zip code district.
* 30,000 : The number of college students who lost food stamps benefits in Michigan this year.
* 1 percent: The jump in Michigan's unemployment from April, 2011 to August, 2011.
* 2.9 percent: The difference between Michigan's unemployment at its peak (14.1 percent) in 2009 and now.
* 23 percent: The amount unemployment benefits will be reduced in 2012. Gov. Snyder passed legislation reducing benefits from 26 to 20 weeks for new applicants.
* 27.5 percent: Unemployment rate in Pontiac, Mich.
* 22.5 percent: Unemployment rate in Detroit, Mich.
* 19.7 percent: Unemployment rate in Flint, Mich.
* 16.6 percent: Unemployment rate in Saginaw, Mich.
* 14.7 percent: Unemployment rate in Warren, Mich.
These are some of Michigan's largest cities. They are also the areas hardest hit by both unemployment and welfare cuts.
So…throw the “bums” off of welfare, as many conservatives and Tea Party types would no doubt advocate. Then what? It’s not like more than a handful are ever going to find a job in the worsening Michigan economy. The irony is that many of these destitute people are likley descendents of the old Southern sharecroppers who fled north in the first half of the 20th century to go to work in the automobile factories that once made Detroit and the surrounding area one of the preeminent manufacturing centers in the world.
Ignore or scoff at their plight if you will. But recognize that what you are seeing is a sobering glimpse at the eventual future for the rest of the country as well.
