Perry unveiled his optional 20% flat tax, which keeps the mortgage and charity deductions (thus not flat), and I’m not sure I can even comment on it with a straight face.

The idea of selecting a 20% “flat” tax or use the old 60,000 page tax system is actually more absurd than Cain’s 9-9-9 plan that was ripped off from SimCity. At its core, the 20% flat tax is just a 15 point tax cut for wealthy people.

Any family filing jointly and making less than $69,000 a year AGI will end up on the old tax regulations. So there is no actual reduction of tax code. (Median family income is in the mid-40 thousand range).

At the same time, he says he wants to cut the budget by 10%, but doesn’t really say where and what he wants to cut.

It basically blows an even bigger hole in the budget and doesn’t simplify the tax code even though he is running around calling this a “Flat Tax”.

It’s the ultimate self contained flip flop.

Say you’re throwing a Super Bowl party for roughly 20 people, and you’ve got a 24 pack of Coke from Costco in the fridge. Word gets out about your party, and 35 people show up. By midway through the second quarter there’s 2 cans left, but plenty of pretzels and chips to make everyone thirsty. Further complicating matters is that all the local grocery/convenience stores are out of Coke. What do you do?

1) Drive way out of town to hopefully find a store that a) is still open and b) has some Coke in stock.
2) Serve some fruit punch, iced tea, juice, and/or water in place of the Coke.
3) Do nothing, because those two cans should probably last the rest of the party.

Did he even watch the SOTU?

The San Francisco bay bridge rebuild project was off shored to China, a country known (we need a sarcasm font) for it’s high quality building practices.

The bridge is arriving in pieces aboard specially built ships, 15 months late due to poorly translated plans, low grade steel and prison labor quality construction; and being constructed like a giant lego set in the sky.

The job was out sourced to China rather than built in the US to save roughly $6.3 billion in costs, a 100% increase…. never mind that the $6.3 billion saved would have been returned into the US… and San Fransisco economy instead of joining the rest of the flow of our wealth to China.

With any luck, we’ve financed the project with bonds sold to the Chinese so we can pay interest on the bridge as well so they eventually also get the $6.3 billion we saved.

Jake Fisher, and automotive engineer at Consumer Reports stated in an interview to Automotive News that “”Toyota is trying very hard to do the right thing and being bold and having large recalls to portray the fact that they are willing to stop at nothing and spare no expense so nobody gets hurt in their vehicles.” and “Toyota has built this reputation on quality and reliability and safety and being a practical choice.”

Jake, Toyota “trying very hard to do the right thing” would have been addressing the issue when they allegedly knew about it as early as 2004. Having massive recalled 6 years after the problem began surfacing and after multiple people have lost their lives isn’t “trying very hard to do the right thing”

Also, doing a recall and stopping production when you know you are legally required to do so is not the same as doing so voluntarily.

One last thing Consumer Reports, Toyota didn’t build their reputation for quality, you built Toyota’s reputation for quality. Toyota has been having quality issues for years with sludging engines, failing transmissions, exploding camshafts, premature rusting, wheels falling off, and cracking frames, all the while resisting responsibility and blaming consumers. All this time you’ve given them passes for these issues and only jump on the reality train once Toyotas started killing people.

Toyota doesn’t have the reputation for quality you proclaim with anyone who reads just about any publication other than Consumer Reports.

Ford Motor Company, the only American auto manufacturer to not go through the pain of bankruptcy and government loans, posted a net profit for 2009 of $2.7 billion.

“We’re going to be profitable in 2010,” said CFO Lewis Booth, issuing the automaker’s first forecast for the year. Three months ago, Ford changed its 2011 outlook to “solidly profitable” from “break-even or better.”

Domestic sales by Shanghai GM rose 63.3 percent to 727,620 units in 2009.  The passenger car joint venture was once again led by its original brand, Buick, which experienced sales growth of 59.6 percent year on year to 447,011 units.  The Excelle, which sold 241,109 units, remained the brand’s bestseller for the sixth consecutive year.  Further contributing to the resurgence of Buick in China were the New Regal, which generated sales of 79,930 units, and the new LaCROSSE, which generated sales of 43,429 units in just six months on the market.

Chevrolet sales in China likewise experienced strong growth, with 332,774 units sold – an increase of 67.1 percent from 2008.  The Cruze, GM’s new global compact car, enjoyed great success in China, with sales of 92,190 units despite being on the market only nine months.  In addition, the Lova had sales of 118,935 units.

In 2009, SAIC-GM-Wuling became the first automaker in China to sell more than 1 million vehicles in a year, increasing its domestic sales by 63.9 percent to 1,061,213 units.  With sales of 596,630 units, the Wuling Sunshine set a Chinese industry record for annual sales by a single model.

FAW-GM sold 34,510 light commercial vehicles in the four months after its establishment in August 2009 and began construction of a new assembly plant in Ha’erbin.

GM China Sales jump to all time high

Update: Ok apparently WordPress didn’t import my post from blogger very cleanly so I’m going to have to go back and update all the formatting on them. They didn’t look like that originally…. promise.