Sam Purtill

‘making the bailout work at all costs’…

Quantifying just how much taxpayer money will have been wasted on the hastily developed Volt is no easy feat. Start with the $50 billion bailout (without which none of this would have been necessary), add $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to G.M. last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan G.M. got in 2008 for “retooling” its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt.

In the end, making the bailout work — whatever the cost — is the only good reason for buying a Volt. The car is not just an environmental hair shirt (a charge leveled at the Prius early in its existence), it is an act of political self-denial as well.

Article in the Times

They told us how to simplify our lives, but we complicated them again. It is the paradox of the designer-as-revolutionary. He can give us the tools for easier living, but if we buy too many, or the wrong ones, it is still just stuff.

Easier Living, by Design (via @nytimes)

Bill Clinton often says his greatest regret as president is that he didn’t do more to stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. There were signs that trouble was brewing long before the killing started, but when it did begin, Mr. Clinton and the international community did not act decisively.

This is President Obama’s Rwanda moment, and it is unfolding now, in slow motion. It is not too late to prevent the coming war in Sudan, and protect the peace we helped build five short years ago.

- Dave Eggers: In Sudan, War Is Around the Corner

If there’s one thing you must read today, this is it (forget about the Mel Gibson stories…)