How to Fix a Flat

Last September, I was in a hotel room watching CNBC early one morning. They were interviewing Bob Nardelli, the C.E.O. of Chrysler, and he was explaining why the auto industry, at that time, needed $25 billion in loan guarantees. It wasn’t a bailout, he said. It was a way to enable the car companies to retool for innovation. I could not help but shout back at the TV screen: “We have to subsidize Detroit so that it will innovate? What business were you people in other than innovation?” If we give you another $25 billion, will you also do accounting?

How could these companies be so bad for so long? Clearly the combination of a very un-innovative business culture, visionless management and overly generous labor contracts explains a lot of it. It led to a situation whereby General Motors could make money only by selling big, gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s and trucks. Therefore, instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw way too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers.

This included striking special deals with Congress that allowed the Detroit automakers to count the mileage of gas guzzlers as being more than they really were — provided they made some cars flex-fuel capable for ethanol. It included special offers of $1.99-a-gallon gasoline for a year to any customer who purchased a gas guzzler. And it included endless lobbying to block Congress from raising the miles-per-gallon requirements. The result was an industry that became brain dead.

Nothing typified this more than statements like those of Bob Lutz, G.M.’s vice chairman. He has been quoted as saying that hybrids like the Toyota Prius “make no economic sense.” And, in February, D Magazine of Dallas quoted him as saying that global warming “is a total crock of [expletive].”

These are the guys taxpayers are being asked to bail out.

And please, spare me the alligator tears about G.M.’s health care costs. Sure, they are outrageous. “But then why did G.M. refuse to lift a finger to support a national health care program when Hillary Clinton was pushing for it?” asks Dan Becker, a top environmental lobbyist.

Not every automaker is at death’s door. Look at this article that ran two weeks ago on autochannel.com: “ALLISTON, Ontario, Canada — Honda of Canada Mfg. officially opened its newest investment in Canada — a state-of-the art $154 million engine plant. The new facility will produce 200,000 fuel-efficient four-cylinder engines annually for Civic production in response to growing North American demand for vehicles that provide excellent fuel economy.”

The blame for this travesty not only belongs to the auto executives, but must be shared equally with the entire Michigan delegation in the House and Senate, virtually all of whom, year after year, voted however the Detroit automakers and unions instructed them to vote. That shielded General Motors, Ford and Chrysler from environmental concerns, mileage concerns and the full impact of global competition that could have forced Detroit to adapt long ago.

Indeed, if and when they do have to bury Detroit, I hope that all the current and past representatives and senators from Michigan have to serve as pallbearers. And no one has earned the “honor” of chief pallbearer more than the Michigan Representative John Dingell, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who is more responsible for protecting Detroit to death than any single legislator.

O.K., now that I have all that off my chest, what do we do? I am as terrified as anyone of the domino effect on industry and workers if G.M. were to collapse. But if we are going to use taxpayer money to rescue Detroit, then it should be done along the lines proposed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday by Paul Ingrassia, a former Detroit bureau chief for that paper.

“In return for any direct government aid,” he wrote, “the board and the management [of G.M.] should go. Shareholders should lose their paltry remaining equity. And a government-appointed receiver — someone hard-nosed and nonpolitical — should have broad power to revamp G.M. with a viable business plan and return it to a private operation as soon as possible. That will mean tearing up existing contracts with unions, dealers and suppliers, closing some operations and selling others and downsizing the company … Giving G.M. a blank check — which the company and the United Auto Workers union badly want, and which Washington will be tempted to grant — would be an enormous mistake.”

I would add other conditions: Any car company that gets taxpayer money must demonstrate a plan for transforming every vehicle in its fleet to a hybrid-electric engine with flex-fuel capability, so its entire fleet can also run on next generation cellulosic ethanol.

Lastly, somebody ought to call Steve Jobs, who doesn’t need to be bribed to do innovation, and ask him if he’d like to do national service and run a car company for a year. I’d bet it wouldn’t take him much longer than that to come up with the G.M. iCar

This study is about single parent’s children and their daily lives after school. From the

ecological perspective, children’s development is strongly influenced by micro-system such as home,

playgrounds, and educational institutions. With the common experience of everyday lives in micro-

system, children tend to build the foundational structure which helps to understand themselves and the

world. In particular, the most crucial factor for children’s ideal development is their lives with the

relationship of people who care about them at home.

Due to the social and cultural changes, based upon the development of industrialization and

civilization, the increase of a single parent family has been observed, which has social and economical

disadvantage. Thus, the children of single parent families have encountered various drawbacks;

especially, with the assumption that children’s after school lives are considered as the extension of

institutional education and critical conditions for the healthier development. The unequal condition and

the handicap of single parent’s children require the significant attention and awareness in our society.

Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the daily lives of after school of children from a

single parent family and identify the place for the social intervention and methods. The research

questions for this study are the following.

1. How do children from a single parent family spend their daily lives after school?

1-1. How much time do children, from single parent families, spend studying after school?

1-2. How much time do children, from a single parent family, spend for leisure after school?

2. How are children, from single parent families influenced by their background factors and what

kind of difference do they make?

This study is conducted from August 1^st to October 15^th , and the participants of this study are 207 single

parent families in the Pusan area. The researcher modified and adopted the survey instruments that

were used for the study of Hyusun Kim (2001) and HyungJung Kim (2003) in order to associate with this

study. Collected data were analyzed in descriptive statistics and variables among differential verification

through SPSS 12.0 windows program. The following is the result of this study.

1. Children from a single parent family spend their time for study at kindergarten or at home.

2. Only 30.6% of children from a single parent family study home-study-papers in order to aid their own study.

3. 37.9% of children from a single parent family attend 1.61 of private institutions and most of them are English institutions. The reason they go to these types of instructions is to get assistance for their study or no one is available to take care of the children. The reason they do not attend the institutions is for financial shortages.

4. The money that a single parent spends for their children is 13.73 Man won (10 $ is 1 Man won). In general they feel a burden for expenses in their children’s education.

5. 68.1% of children from single parent spends less than two hours studying. One parent commented that 2 hours of studying is sufficient.

6. A single parent mainly decided study activity for their children and 63.8% of study activity is an extra make-up.

7. Children from single parent homes take breaks to spend time with brothers, sisters, and friends at home or child-care facilities, playing around or watching T.V or Videos.

8. 43.5% of children from single parent families spend less than two hours for leisure activities and 68.6% of single parents sense that it is reasonable.

9. 71.0% of single parents answered that they think leisure activities is a necessity for their children, but they are not sure that their child’s leisure time conducted in a positive way.

10. A single parent answered that financial support is the most important factor for their children’s leisure activity, and desirable leisure activities are cultural and artistic experience.

11. A single father’s child has less percentage than that of a single mother’s in attending private institutions after school and the level of education of a single parent’s has positively correlated to the expenses of education for their children.

12. A single parent’s income and expenses for education are positively correlated, yet the amounts of study time are not correlated.

13. 38% of single parents have another caregiver for children, and they tend to use more home-study-paper. 28% of children from single parent households do not have other caregivers has more hours for the study.

14. Elementary school children from single parent families attend more institutions, spend more expenses for education, and study more hours than kindergarten children from a single parent household.

The following research study shows a concrete and quantitative analysis for the daily activities of

children from a single parent. In order to get desirable after school activities for these types of children,

much attention should be paid from the society level and economical support should be followed. Also,

this study indicates that much guidance and direction are needed for children in single parent homes.