Market Downshift To Automatics

I made a hasty remark in my previous post, to the effect that only blue collar men and rich old geezers are stick-shift drivers anymore. Within a couple hours I heard from several women who also prefer driving manuals, so the stick-shifting driver demographic may be broader than I'd assumed.

But I wondered: what percentage of cars in the United States have manual transmissions, regardless of the driver's gender, age, or income, and where could I find an authoritative source for that information? And immediately I realized: by asking the federal government, of course, since they know everything and put it all on the internet.

Sure enough, the EPA's data on light-duty vehicle trends (see the executive summary excel tables) reports that in 2010 only 7 percent of our cars had stick-shifts, compared to 13 percent in 1998 and 29 percent in 1987. So, our stick-shift cars are slowing becoming a niche market for driving enthusiasts.

Not so in Europe. I've seen news media reports that as many as 85% of European cars are sold with manual transmissions. That accords with my own observations while traveling abroad, however, I haven't found an official source on the subject. For some strange reason, European governments don't seem to be so loquacious as ours.

Next I wondered: what American car brand sells the highest percentage of its cars with manual transmissions? (And I'm not including paddle shift transmissions or 'manualmatics' here; it has to have three foot peddles to count.) Is it Porsche, or BMW? Maybe Audi, or Volkswagen? Mazda?

It's none of those. I learned that Mini Cooper sells more of its cars with stick-shifts than any other maker in the U.S., as much as 50 percent. Mini has a whole ad campaign directed at that market segment. See this informational video on becoming a manual, for example.

I might wave to the next Mini driver I see while on my way to work tomorrow morning. We stick-shifters are a rare breed, and getting rarer. 

How Thick Is Your Bubble?

I took this quiz ("inspired by American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray's new book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010," which explores the unprecedented, class-based cultural gap in America. How culturally isolated are you?") and scored a 13-to-16 out of a possible 20.

Those results mean that I don't even have a bubble. However, I'll admit I could not name the NASCAR guy. Maybe you can.

I would guess that most of my immediate co-workers are pretty bubble-free, as well. Of my less immediate State Department co-workers, and especially among the more rarefied types of FSO, I suspect the class-based cultural gap bubbles get much, much, thicker.

In my experience, a good quick indicator of class-based cultural position is whether or not a person can drive a stick-shift. (This test is not applicable in Europe, where manual transmissions are common, but it works just fine among Americans.) Pretty much the only stick-shift drivers left in America are blue collar men and rich old geezers. Cultural book-ends, as it were. The Mustang GT drivers, and the Porsche Club of America types.

By the way, most BMW drivers are excluded since the large majority of beemers on the road in America - or bimmers, to use their enthusiasts' preferred term for the BMW car versus the motorcycle - are automatics.

That automotive range pretty much defines my personal class-based cultural odyssey, as well. Having been born a Mustang guy, I am now shopping for an entry-level Porsche hobby car with which to entertain myself in my senior years.

State Department Defends Jay Leno

So, Jay Leno told a joke about Mitt Romney, and now we have half of India in a sulk, and the State Department spokeswoman defending Leno's Constitutional right to perform satire? Lighten up, people.

State Department Defends Leno After Joke Offends Sikhs:

Though most comedians hope that their material stands on its own, some additional support from their country now and then doesn’t hurt either: The State Department stood up for Jay Leno after the “Tonight Show” host offended some Indian Sikhs with a joke that implied that a holy shrine in India was a home owned by Mitt Romney.

Previously, Vayalar Ravi, India’s Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs, said he planned to speak with the State Department about a comedic bit that he called “quite unfortunate and quite objectionable.” The segment, during Mr. Leno’s monologue on Thursday night, showed the homes of various Republican presidential hopefuls, but when Mr. Romney’s summer house on Lake Winnipesaukee was mentioned the screen showed the Golden Temple in Amritsar, which is holy to Sikhs as well as to members of other Indian faiths.

Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the State Department, told BBC News that though United States and Indian officials had not communicated about the issue, the United States Constitution protected Mr. Leno’s freedom of speech. Ms. Nuland said she hoped that Mr. Leno would “be appreciative if we make the point that his comments are constitutionally protected in the United States under free speech, and frankly, they appeared to be satirical in nature.” She added that “Sikh Americans have contributed greatly to the United States” and noted that President Obama celebrated the birthday of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, at the White House.

Neither Mr. Leno nor representatives for “The Tonight Show” have commented on the matter.

Change We Can Believe In ... Hillary, Not So Much

The New Yorker magazine has a look back at the Obama campaign of 2008, and notes the personal nature of his attack on his rival candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Another hard-edged decision helped make him the Democratic Presidential nominee. In early October, 2007, David Axelrod and Obama’s other political consultants wrote the candidate a memo explaining how he could repair his floundering campaign against Hillary Clinton. They advised him to attack her personally, presenting a difficult choice for Obama. He had spent years building a reputation as a reformer who deplored the nasty side of politics, and now, he was told, he had to put that aside. Obama’s strategists wrote that all campaign communications, even the slogan — “Change We Can Believe In” — had to emphasize distinctions with Clinton on character rather than on policy. The slogan “was intended to frame the argument along the character fault line, and this is where we can and must win this fight,” the memo said. “Clinton can’t be trusted or believed when it comes to change,” because “she’s driven by political calculation not conviction, regularly backing away and shifting positions. . . . She embodies trench warfare vs. Republicans, and is consumed with beating them rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done. She prides herself on working the system, not changing it.” The “current goal,” the memo continued, was to define Obama as “the only authentic ‘remedy’ to what ails Washington and stands in the way of progress.”
 

Obama’s message promised voters, in what his aides called “the inspiration,” that “Barack Obama will end the divisive trench warfare that treats politics as a game and will lead Americans to come together to restore our common purpose.” Clinton was too polarizing to get anything done: “It may not be her fault, but Americans have deeply divided feelings about Hillary Clinton, threatening a Democratic victory in 2008 and insuring another four years of the bitter political battles that have plagued Washington for the last two decades and stymied progress.”

Neera Tanden was the policy director for Clinton’s campaign. When Clinton lost the Democratic race, Tanden became the director of domestic policy for Obama’s general-election campaign, and then a senior official working on health care in his Administration. She is now the president of the liberal Center for American Progress, perhaps the most important institution in Democratic politics. “It was a character attack,” Tanden said recently, speaking about the Obama campaign against Clinton. “I went over to Obama, I’m a big supporter of the President, but their campaign was entirely a character attack on Hillary as a liar and untrustworthy. It wasn’t an ‘issue contrast,’ it was entirely personal.” And, of course, it worked.

Ninety-Eight Thousand Of My Fellow Feds Are Deadbeats

It is an annual ritual in Washington to publish the list of tax delinquencies by federal employees. The WaPo ran it today, and it turns out that federal employees owe $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes:

Congressional staffers owed about $10.6 million in unpaid taxes in 2010, a slight increase from the previous year and a growing slice of the roughly $1 billion owed by federal and postal workers nationwide.

The figures come as Republican efforts to pass legislation allowing federal agencies to fire tax delinquent federal employees have slowed and as the White House continues to crack down on improper payments made by agencies to delinquent government contractors and federal beneficiaries.

About 98,000 federal, postal and congressional employees owed $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes at the end of fiscal 2010, according to records provided by the Internal Revenue Service. The total number of delinquent employees dipped slightly from 2009, but the amount owed jumped by $32 million.

The WaPo provided a beakdown by agency, which shows that Treasury employees have the lowest rate of delinquency at under one percent (as you might expect, since they must make a special effort to avoid tax embarrassments), and the biggest scofflaws among cabinet agencies were Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Education, at 3.88 and 3.99 percent delinquent employees respectively.

Department of State employees were reasonably law-abiding, with just under three percent of them - 394 employees to be precise - owing a total of $3,958,293.

Take My Advice, I'm Not Using It Anyway

H/T to Reason magazine for this tidbit: Uncle Sam tells Americans how to get out of debt:

After saddling the country with as much new debt as the rest of the world combined in one year flat, one would think that Uncle Sam wouldn’t have the cojones to dish out debt advice to others. But one would be wrong. In an unwitting self-parody worthy of Froma Harrop on The Daily Show, the Federal Trade Commission has created a step-by-step web guide for Americans “Knee-Deep in Debt.”

The first step, says the agency, which represents a government that went over 800 days without passing a budget, is: create a budget! Get a “realistic assessment of how much money you take in and how much money you spend,” it lectures those in financial doo-doo, seemingly oblivious of the fact that its own bosses have promised $60 trillion to a $100 trillion more in entitlements than the country has money to pay for.

It continues: [L]ist your "fixed" expenses — those that are the same each month — like mortgage payments or rent, car payments, and insurance premiums. Next, list the expenses that vary — like entertainment, recreation, and clothing. Writing down all your expenses, even those that seem insignificant, is a helpful way to track your spending patterns, identify necessary expenses, and prioritize the rest.

Prioritize! Who knew that the word even existed in the federal lexicon? But “irony” obviously does not because the FTC, with a straight face, goes on to offer advice for those who are not “disciplined enough to create a workable budget and stick to it.” And by this it doesn’t mean our elected representatives.

And its advice is not that over-extended Americans call their credit card company and demand that it raise their credit limit every time they max out their card, as Uncle Sam has done 75 times since 1962. It suggests that they consider —wait for this!—“debt settlement.” And if no one is willing to settle, then the option of last resort is bankruptcy, although it warns its repercussions can be “long-lasting and far reaching.” No kidding!

No word on whether the White House of Capitol Hill have glanced at the guide. Or maybe they are waiting for the agency to create one for those “Neck-Deep In Debt But Too Stupid to Know And Too Obtuse to Care.”

Napoleonland Theme Park (What's Next, Six Flags Over The Somme?)

Doesn't he just seem to be saying: "Allons enfants de la Patrie, this way to the gift shop"?

H/T to GWB for pointing out to me this fascinating historical / commercial proposal from France.

A former French minister and history buff named Yves Jégo is proposing to build a Napoleonland theme park as a showcase for Napoleon's greatest victories and to compete with Disneyland Paris. 

The park would go on the site of the Battle of Montereau, about 70 miles - oops, I mean, 112 kilometers - south of Paris. Montreau, BTW, was a great victory for the French but a relatively small action by the bloody standards of the Napoleonic Age, since fewer than 9,000 were killed there on all sides.

The theme park will reportedly have a museum, a hotel, shops, restaurants, battle reenactments, and Napoleon-themed attractions. If it is to compete with Disneyland Paris, you know they'll also have to have fun stuff for the kids, like rides. And if the developers have any sense at all, they'll put up signs in front of the roller coasters and log flumes saying You Must Be This Short → To Ride, because a little easygoing self-deprecating humor would help to release the tension caused by, well, the whole Napoleon Complex thing.

Meanwhile, the kids' parents could kick back with a couple Whiff of Grapeshot Wine Coolers. I see great commercial possibilities here.

But, I get creeped out by this part:

Other curious potential attractions include a ski run through a battlefield "surrounded by the frozen bodies of soldiers and horses" and a recreation of Louis XVI being guillotined during the revolution – the precursor to Napoleon’s rise to power.

"It's going to be fun for the family,” [Yves Jégo] told the Times.

Napoleon's retreat from Moscow must be the inspiration for that "curious" - not to say macabre - ski run. I'm sure it will be much more fun for the tourists than it was for Napoleon's Grande Armée. They were half a million troops strong when they invaded Russia in August of 1812, but only 27,000 of them came back out the following December.

Some fun.

Something about this whole idea is just wrong. Napoleonic warfare isn't suitable for a theme park treatment. The developers ought to repackage the whole deal into a battlefield preservation project, which would also have potential for economic development, but without the cringe-inducing factor of frozen corpses and such.

Yves Jégo should look at how the U.S. government promotes heritage tourism as an example of how he could combine economic development with French history.