Daily Archives: April 5, 2012
Ferdinand Porsche, designer of the 911 Sports Car, dies at age 76.
Porsche, who went on to found a consumer products design firm after creating the 911, died Thursday in Salzburg, Austria.
Porsche’s grandfather had designed the original Volkswagen Beetle in Germany in the 1930s and his father went on to build the Porsche motor empire.
As a child, “Butzi” – as he was known to his family and business associates – enjoyed designing and building his own toys. He studied at the Ulm School of Design before joining the design department of Porsche.
The Porsche 911 was designed in 1963 and went on sale in 1964, as a rear engine vehicle that cost US$5,500.00. The automaker debuted the seventh generation 911 late last year. It now sells for about US$115,000.
Porsche headed the company’s design studio from 1962 to 1972.
Related articles
- “Porsche was his life and what he stood for”: Porsche 911 designer Ferdinand Alexander Porsche dies aged 76 (mirror.co.uk)
- Ferdinand Porsche, 911 sports car designer, dies (newsok.com)
- Ferdinand Porsche, legendary 911 sports car creator, dies at 76 (rt.com)
- Confirmed: Ferdinand Alexander Porsche – designer of the 911 – dies at age 76 (autoblog.com)
- Ferdinand Porsche, designer of 911 and grandson of car company’s founder, dies at 76 (mercurynews.com)
- Ferdinand Porsche Dies at 76 (bloomberg.com)
- Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, 1935-2012 (treehugger.com)
Quote of the Day – Obama at the Center… Where did the Republicans go?
“I think it’s important to remember that the positions I’m taking now on the budget and a host of other issues, if we had been having this discussion 20 years ago, or even 15 years ago, would have been considered squarely centrist positions. What’s changed is the center of the Republican Party.”
The President spoke at an Associated Press luncheon yesterday and reminded campaign journalists about the false-equivalence fallacy:
“I think that there is often times the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing, then they’re equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and an equivalence is presented — which reinforces I think people’s cynicism about Washington generally.”
Note that Obama changed his position on the mandate policy, but remember that the mandate was a conservative idea, embraced by Republican policymakers for years.
Obama went from supporting a single-payer plan during the 2008 campaign to supporting a plan designed by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts and backed by moderate Republicans throughout the ’90s.
Does this strike you as Obama moving to the left? As the Republicans look to tear down the plan they had previously recommended, who is really moving away from the center?
Attorneys General in 11 States call on Congress to reverse Citizens United decision.
Yesterday, 11 state attorneys general sent a letter to Congress requesting a constitutional amendment which would reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United.
This section of the letter gives the historic background that SCOTUS eliminated:
The case overturned elements of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the “McCain-Feingold Act” or “BCRA”) pertaining to the corporate financing of electioneering communications in the run-up to primary and general elections. The Supreme Court ruled that these restrictions on corporate political spending violated the First Amendment’s free speech protections, thereby allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections.
In effect, the Citizens United decision overturned a century of jurisprudence, dating back to the Tillman Act of 1907, which supported Congressional authority to restrict corporate political spending on federal elections. With respect to the BCRA, the decision directly overrules key provisions of McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, 540 U.S. 93 (2003), which upheld the BCRA provisions that prevented direct expenditures by corporate entities on electioneering communications. Importantly, Citizens United kept intact other critical rulings in McConnell regarding disclosure requirements. However, by its decision the Court gave corporations the same rights under the First Amendment as individuals, and thereby severely limited Congress’s power to regulate corporate political spending and invalidated bipartisan, democratically-enacted restrictions on corporate behavior.
Hopefully this brings a start to an action which will eventually eliminate the Super Pacs and bring our elections back to the majority voters.
Hopefully, this won’t become a political volley between Republicans and Democrats.
Hopefully.
