Dollars for dishwashers

Are you ready for Round Two of cash-for-clunkers?

Fresh from the success of its rebate program for car trade-ins, the U.S. government is gearing up for a similar effort covering old appliances like dishwashers, refrigerators and air conditioners.

The automotive version of cash-for-clunkers proved to be extremely popular, reportedly generating sales of about 700,000 new cars as consumers scooped up the $4,500 rebate the government was offering them to trade in their gas guzzlers for fuel-efficient vehicles.

The application of the clunkers concept to appliances initially will be a much smaller program than the automotive initiative, which was financed by more than $2 billion in federal funds.

Thus far, about $300 million in federal stimulus funds have been earmarked to provide rebates to consumers who junk their energy-hogging appliances for new energy-efficient models, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Rebates are not expected to exceed more than $200 per appliance.

However, if the appliance effort proves as popular as the auto clunker bonanza, it is likely that funding will be increased and the program extended.

The Department of Energy, which oversees the program, wants states to focus on 10 categories of appliances carrying the federal Energy Star seal of approval for efficiency, including washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, tankless gas water heaters, refrigerators, freezers and room air conditioners.

According to the Journal, the program allows each state to pick qualifying models and tailor rebate amounts. Manufacturers and retailers have indicated a reluctance to ramp up appliance production and inventories until it is clear which models qualify.

If the Òdollars for dishwashersÓ program takes off, we can envision the clunkers concept being applied to other sectors in need of a trade-in rebate. To wit:

Pennies for Presents:

DonÕt know what to do with that tie-rack you got for FatherÕs Day last year, or the hideous yellow sweater you found under the Christmas tree? Uncle Sam wants to help you out!

Cash for Congressmen:

Tired of seeing the same old hack schmoozing with lobbyists while he pretends to represent you? Trade him in!

Benjamins for Bonus Babies:

Is your investment advisor telling you he doesnÕt know how that crater developed in what used to be your 401k? Did your bank go belly up? Turn these turkeys in and get a brand new mattress!

Miracles for Mistakes:

DonÕt have any use for those Mets season tickets you bought? Your government will help you convert them into a lifetime supply of bowling shoes!

Get busy, folks. LetÕs put those tax dollars to work for us.ÊÊ

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Lion of the Senate

Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.

William Shakespeare -- Twelfth Night

Shakespeare would have had a field day with the Kennedy brothers.

There were four of them, driven into a life of public service by their Lear-like father, Joseph, who pushed them to grab for power that was beyond his grasp. Joe Kennedy instilled in his sons a relentless drive that left an indelible imprint on the course of American history for more than half a century. The Kennedy brothers also inherited first-class political genes from their mother, Rose, whose father John F. Fitzgerald had been the beloved mayor of Boston known to all as ''Honey Fitz.''

In the first four acts of this Shakespearean epic, all-too-brief moments of exhilarating triumph were enveloped by overwhelming tragedy. This poignant history is familiar to all Americans of a certain age, seen here in snapshots:

Joseph Jr., the oldest, volunteered for a dangerous World War II mission involving an aircraft loaded with explosives and died when the plane blew up over Europe. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a skinny and sickly boy who wanted to become a writer, joined the Navy and was commanding a small patrol boat in the Pacific when PT-109 was cut in half by a Japanese ship and sunk. Jack swam with an injured sailor on his back and shepherded his crew to a deserted island. Then he swam to a nearby island and left a message carved in a coconut with the natives that resulted in the crewÕs rescue.

Papa JoeÕs buddies in the news biz magnified his sonÕs wartime exploits into the stuff of legend, fertile fodder for the launching of a post-war political career. With dashing good looks and a scintillating staccato speaking style -- and his father's connections -- Jack rocketed to the top of the political charts. In 1960, the 43-year-old Kennedy, an untested junior senator whose resume consisted primarily of his family name and fortune, became the youngest man elected president of the United States and the first Catholic to hold the post.

The 35th president soon was tested, and when the chips were down President Kennedy passed the test. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, with the world teetering on the brink of nuclear Armaggedon, Kennedy refused to be bullied by his generals into a potentially catastrophic invasion; for thirteen days, he coolly presided over a high-stakes diplomatic and military minuet that ultimately produced a face-saving way for the Soviet Union to back down. JFK also had the political courage to confront the moral challenge of the civil rights movement.

Then, a sunny November afternoon in 1963 was transformed into one of the darkest days in American history when the 46-year-old president was gunned down and died in his wifeÕs arms as they rode in a motorcade through Dallas.

Joe Kennedy's third son, Robert Francis, had been his brother's campaign manager and closest advisor. As Attorney General, Bobby launched a crusade against the Mafia and put the power of the U.S. government behind the enforcement of civil rights. In his brief time at the Justice Department, RFK made such an impact they eventually named the building after him.

Bobby Kennedy was consumed with grief over his brotherÕs murder, amplified by the suspicion that his own instigations against the Mob and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro may have sparked the assassination. He easily won election to New YorkÕs seat in the U.S. Senate in 1964, but seemed to be wrestling with Hamlet-like indecision over whether to reach for national leadership.

Finally, the endless quagmire of the Vietnam War induced Bobby in 1968 to challenge his brother's successor as president, Lyndon Johnson. Moments after he made a victory speech in a Los Angeles hotel on the night of the California primary election, he was shot by a deranged Palestinian in the hotel kitchen. He died the next day.

The last Kennedy brother was born on Feb. 22, 1932, the 200th anniversary of George Washington's birthday. Jack wanted to name him George Washington Kennedy, but his parents settled on Edward Moore, and his brothers called him Teddy.

Nobody took Ted Kennedy seriously when he was tapped at age 30 to fill JFK's vacant Senate seat in 1962. The only thing of note Teddy had done before joining the Senate was to narrowly avoid getting thrown out of Harvard when he asked a friend to take an exam for him.

Until 1968, Ted labored quietly in his brothers' huge shadow, learning the rules of the Senate club as a junior member. Then, a nation paralyzed with grief over the second Kennedy assassination turned to the surviving brother and anointed him as the president-in-waiting. The 36-year-old Ted Kennedy knew he wasn't ready. He was wrestling with inner demons unleashed by the tragic deaths of his three older brothers. He resisted the call to pick up the fallen standard.

The demons got the upper hand on a July night in 1969. As the men his brother Jack had sent to the moon began their triumphant descent to the lunar surface, Ted drove his car off a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. A female companion who was not his wife drowned and Kennedy did not report the accident for eight hours. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene and received a suspended sentence.

Shakespeare might have chosen to end the saga here, leaving us an epic tragedy of hubris punished with a harrowing fall from grace, but Ted Kennedy did not.

He went on to serve in the United States Senate for 47 years and became the most dynamic legislator of this or any time. As the remaining patriarch of the Kennedy clan, he was father and surrogate father to 13 children, and by all accounts did a remarkable job in that role as well. He championed human rights and became a voice for the disadvantaged, picking up where his brothers had left off.

The list of landmark bills that Sen. Kennedy ushered into law through the force of his personality is far too long to recount in this space, but here's a sampling: the 18-year-old voting age, the abolition of the draft, the deregulation of the airline and trucking industries, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, post-Watergate campaign finance laws, federal funding for community health care centers, the National Cancer Institute, Meals on Wheels for seniors, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family Medical Leave Act, extending health care coverage to disadvantaged children, the renewals of the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing law, No Child Left Behind.Ê

The list goes on and on, more than 1,000 bills in all.

Stricken with brain cancer a year ago, Ted Kennedy etched his own profile in courage as he continued to serve in good cheer, captain his beloved sailboat, and gracefully passed his family's political torch to a new standard bearer, Barack Obama.

Last week, as Sen. Kennedy neared the end, President Obama awarded him the nation's highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom. Today, he lies in state in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library overlooking Boston Harbor and the sea that he loved to sail.

On Saturday, he will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, next to his brothers.

Bait and switch

The ''credibility gap'' at the new General Motors seems to be growing a lot faster than the pile of old cars GM has absorbed in the cash-for-clunkers program.

Last week, we reported in this space that GM's much-ballyhooed announcement that its Chevy Volt has received an incredible 230 mpg fuel economy ranking shriveled under close inspection. The new electric car can only achieve this standard if you don't drive it more than 40 miles. Drive a couple of hundred miles in the Volt and you get about 60 mpg.

This week comes news that GM appears to be executing a sloppy U-turn on its recent promise to the United Auto Workers union that it would re-open a shuttered U.S. plant to produce a new sub-compact vehicle, called Spark, which GM originally had planned to build in China.

When GM was bailed out earlier this year in a bankruptcy restructuring that made the U.S. government and the UAW majority shareholders in the ailing auto giant, it generally was assumed that preserving U.S. automotive manufacturing jobs would be a top priority at the ''new'' GM. But the ink was barely dry on the restructuring plan when GM created an uproar in May by announcing it planned to produce up to 51,000 of its new Chevrolet Spark sub-compacts in China under the auspices of its Chinese joint venture, Shanghai GM, starting in 2011.

Predictably, the UAW was not amused. The autoworkers union demanded that its new ''subsidiary'' change course, and quickly. In June, GM told the Beijing Times it had decided not to import small vehicles from China but instead would make the new sub-compacts in the U.S. The new mini Spark would replace the Chevy Aveo subcompact, currently produced in South Korea.

So jobs that might have been shipped to China and jobs currently sited in South Korea will move to the U.S., and a boarded-up Rust Belt factory will re-emerge as a 21st century manufacturing jewel. UAW members will keep getting paychecks and everybody lives happily ever after, right?

Unfortunately for GM, one of its top execs apparently did not get the memo.

According to a report this week in the Wall Street Journal, Nick Reilly, GM's newly installed executive vice president of international operations, told a media briefing in San Paulo, Brazil, that GM is planning to build a sub-compact that it will sell for $4,000, going head-to-head with the $2,500 mini that Tata Motors is producing in India. Then he dropped this little bombshell on the UAW:

''We are looking at lower-cost vehicles, but do not know yet where they will be made, though most likely in Asia,'' Reilly said.

Here's the rubbing salt in the wound part: Mr. Reilly, formerly head of GM's Asia business, told the press gathering that in his new position he will be based in Shanghai. And, just for good measure, he said GM plans to expand its production of micro-minivans in China.

So the company that used to be the world's largest carmaker, now owned by U.S. taxpayers and U.S. autoworkers, is talking out of both sides of its grille on the subject of where its auto manufacturing jobs will be located. Is it any wonder that car salesmen still outrank undertakers, indicted public officials and Wall Street bonus babies in annual surveys of ''least admired'' people?

Memo to GM from U.S. taxpayers: We own you. Bring the jobs home or you're fired.

Juiced

While we were watching the Yankees sweep the Red Sox over the weekend, the former slugger, David Ortiz, came up to bat. Suddenly, one of those electronic advertising signs behind home plate flashed a strange message: the number 23 next to what looked like a happy face, on a green background.

For a few minutes, we thought perhaps the Yankees were preparing to re-retire Don Mattingly's uniform number. Then we looked closer and noticed the happy face was actually a plug.

This minor mystery was resolved today when the company that used to be the world's largest carmaker proclaimed that the official fuel economy rating for its new electric car, the Chevy Volt, is an astounding 230 mpg.

Unfortunately, like everything else that has come out of Detroit in the past 50 years, you have to read the fine print to discover there are some major caveats attached to this proclamation.

The Volt, scheduled to go on sale in 2010, is powered by lithium-ion batteries. Unlike the gas-electric hybrids currently on the market, this new Chevy will be able to operate solely on battery power (assuming the battery is charged) without consuming gasoline -- sort of.

Here's the catch: the Volt does not need gasoline as long as you don't drive more than 40 miles. Once you exceed the 40-mile limit, the new Chevy begins to consume gas and the loudly proclaimed fuel economy rating starts dropping like Niagara Falls.

It works like this: If you drive 50 miles, no gas is consumed for the first 40 miles and during the last 10 miles 0.2 gallons are consumed. So, for a 50-mile trip, the Volt would in fact achieve its 230 mpg standard. But if the driver continues on to 80 miles, this drops to 100 mpg.

If the driver goes 300 miles, the fuel economy would be 62.5 mpg, still impressive by current averages but certainly not as impressive as GM's earth-shattering press release would lead you to believe. And if you live in New York and want to drive to Boston to see the Yankees sweep the Red Sox again later this year, well, you get the picture.

Sort of like the difference between David Ortiz hitting a baseball before he takes his ''vitamins'' and after.

A few other minor details:

--You will need to find a place to plug your Volt in every night and give it the 10-kilowatt-hours of recharge it needs to travel its gas-free 40 miles.

-- General Motors currently is producing only 10 Volts per month and is expected to slap a $40,000 sticker price on the electric car when it is available for purchase, which gives new meaning to the term ''sticker shock.''

We're going to wait for the model that comes with fine Corinthian leather and a really, really long extension cord.