4politics.org

AUTO BAILOUT BOMBSHELL: Fiat Says Chrysler, Jeep Production May Move to Italy

by Leave a Comment

Submitted by Mark Modica on Tue, 10/29/2012 – 10:53

Coming hot on the heels of speculation that some Jeep production may be moved to China comes a bombshell from a Bloomberg report. Fiat is now considering moving Chrysler and Jeep production to Italy.

According to the piece, “To counter the severe slump in European sales, (Fiat CEO Sergio) Marchionne is considering building Chrysler models in Italy, including Jeeps, for export to North America. The Italian government is evaluating tax rebates on export goods to help Fiat. Marchionne may announce details of his plan as soon as Oct. 30, the people said.”

So, let’s be real clear here, we are talking about vehicles that will be built in Italy and exported to America. The evidence is clear that Fiat is looking at ways to move production of vehicles from the US to elsewhere, whether it be China or Italy, costing American jobs. This is becoming indisputable, despite outcries from certain parties to the contrary.

Mitt Romney has rightfully criticized the Obama Administration for handing over Chrysler to the Italians and now leaving the fate of American workers in the hands of Fiat management. Fiat is not a healthy company and the auto industry is in as great a risk as ever. The insistence that all is well by those with political motivations does not mask the danger. More jobs are at risk of being lost and more taxpayer money may be lost as well.

Let’s face it, the auto bailouts were not well thought out. Perhaps General Motors’ CEO, Dan Akerson, said it best when he said, “The good thing about our bankruptcy is that it took only 39 days. The bad news is that bankruptcy took only 39 days. If we had been there longer, people would have asked these questions and looked at these things.”

The whole auto industry bailout process was rushed through with the wrong primary motivation of protecting the politically powerful UAW’s interests. The Obama Administration never considered that giving Chrysler to Fiat was not a great idea and could eventually hurt the same UAW workers it was trying to protect. Manufacturers like Chrysler and GM are at a competitive disadvantage due to UAW obligations that were not properly addressed in the bankruptcy process. The industry is more competitive than ever and the government does not seem to be the best innovators to lead the sector to real health. This truth is very likely to become more apparent when the political season ends.

Mark Modica is an NLPC Associate Fellow.

Every GoDaddy-registered site temporarily knocked offline

by Leave a Comment

A malicious flood of network traffic temporarily knocked Internet registrar GoDaddy’s servers offline Monday — taking with it the site, its email, and thousands, potentially millions of websites registered through one of the Internet’s most popular services.

A Twitter user quickly claimed credit for the incident. Anup Ghosh, chief scientist with security company Invincea, described it as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

“This is yet another example of how anyone with an agenda can take down large portions of the Internet with really cheap, off-the-shelf tools,” Ghosh told FoxNews.com.

GoDaddy should be protected against such a simple web assault — a DDoS attack involves an overwhelming flood of communication that a server can’t keep up with, but it can be orchestrated with as few as 50 computers.

That an Internet service which hosts more than 5 million websites wasn’t protected reveals a surprising truth: The Internet is still startlingly vulnerable to such an attack.

“Anyone can be hacked, the size of the company has no bearing on it all,” Ghosh said.

Twitter user Anonymous Own3r claimed credit for the attack, and was quick to distance himself from the hacking collective that goes by a similar name.

“It is not Anonymous collective it’s only me. Don’t use Anonymous collective name on it, just my name,” he wrote, shortly after claiming responsibility.

AnonymousOwn3r

In broken English filled with typos, he explained his justification for the attack.

“I’m taking godaddy down bacause well i’d like to test how the cyber security is safe and for more reasons that i can not talk now.”

GoDaddy quickly acknowledged the problem online, writing on Twitter that it was “working feverishly” to resolve the matter in a timely fashion.

“We’re aware of the trouble people are having with our site. We’re working on it,” GoDaddy explained in a simple Tweet Monday afternoon. Within two hours, the company claimed to be making progress.

“Update: Still working on it, but we’re making progress. Some service has already been restored. Stick with us.”

GoDaddy’s own site came back into service late Monday afternoon. But Ghosh and Invincea are particularly sensitive to the problem; as a GoDaddy customer, his site is down.

“Our website is down, any emails sent to Invincea aren’t going to make it.”

By taking down the servers at just a single key service providers, those responsible took down a lot of properties, he noted. And infrastructure needs to be made less vulnerable to these types of attacks.

“The bar is low to implement these types of attacks. It doesn’t take a lot,” he said.

T-Mobile launches campaign to lure iPhone users

by Leave a Comment

Published September 10, 2012 / Associated Press

Steve JobsNEW YORK – T-Mobile USA, the only “Big 4” phone company that doesn’t sell the iPhone, now wants to snag used ones from AT&T.

Starting Wednesday, when Apple is expected to reveal a new iPhone model, T-Mobile will start advertising that AT&T iPhone owners who are out of contract can switch to T-Mobile.

“We expect that consumers will start trading in older devices,” said Harry Thomas, T-Mobile’s director of marketing. “For every person waiting in line for the next model, a lot of them have to find a secondary market for that older device.”

We expect that consumers will start trading in older devices.
– Harry Thomas, T-Mobile director of marketing

Apple hasn’t said anything about a new iPhone, but it is expected to announce the iPhone 5 at an event it has scheduled in San Francisco on Wednesday. Sales would likely start later this month.

Signing an iPhone up for T-Mobile service has been possible for years, and the company says it has more than a million iPhones on its network. But they suffer a big penalty in data speeds, taking about 50 times longer to download files than on AT&T’s network.

This year, T-Mobile is reshuffling the frequencies on its network, which will let it match or even exceed AT&T’s data speeds on iPhones. For now, that will be evident only in a few spots here and there in such cities as New York, Seattle, Las Vegas and Washington.

Sprint and Verizon iPhones of the “4” model won’t work on T-Mobile’s network at all. The later iPhone 4S will work if it’s been hacked, but that’s not something T-Mobile wants to get into.

AT&T iPhones have to be unlocked using codes that AT&T will supply after the customer’s contract is up.

T-Mobile, the U.S. cellphone business of Deutsche Telekom AG of Germany, has bought 3,000 iPhones and spread them out in its stores, so salespeople can demonstrate the iPhone working.

T-Mobile’s pitch will center on its unlimited data plan, which it reintroduced last week. AT&T stopped signing up new customers to unlimited plans two years ago, and now slows down service drastically for the rest of the billing cycle once those still on old unlimited plans reach a certain level of data usage.

In Atlanta and New York, T-Mobile will be giving away $100 gift cards to customers who sign their iPhones up for two-year contracts.

Comments