THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† Chevy Volt: An electric Edsel: Some Chevrolet dealers are refusing to accept the number of Volts that General Motors has allocated to them, which will make it even harder for the company to meet its sales target for the plug-in hybrid that consumers have shunned (related article, third article on the page), Automotive News reports: 

For example, consider the New York City market. Last month, GM allocated 104 Volts to 14 dealerships in the area, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

Dealers took just 31 of them, the lowest take rate for any Chevy model in that market last month. That group of dealers ordered more than 90 percent of the other vehicles they were eligible to take, the source said. 

In Clovis, Calif., meanwhile, Brett Hedrick, dealer principal at Hedrick's Chevrolet, sold 10 Volts last year. But in December and January he turned down all six Volts allocated to him under GM's "turn-and-earn" system, which distributes vehicles based on past sales volumes and inventory levels. 

GM's "thinking we need six more Volts is just crazy," Hedrick says. "We've never sold more than two in a month." Hedrick says he usually takes just about every vehicle that GM allocates to him. 

GM spokesman Rob Peterson confirmed that "dealer ordering is down" for the Volt. He said many dealers have been waiting for resolution of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's investigation into the risk of fires in the car's battery pack. Last year three packs caught fire in the days or weeks following government test crashes. 

Editorial Note: In response to a letter from Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mike Kelly (R-PA), National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator David Strickland denied that the Obama administration pressured the agency to delay informing consumers about the problem with the battery pack fires for several months, The Detroit News reports. 

† Media Irrelevancy – A Self-Inflicted Wound: After reading a significant chunk of his paper’s coverage of Barack Obama from October 2006 through Election Day 2008 (he wasn’t using his middle name back then; only racists were) Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton agrees with his predecessor, Deborah Howell, that “some of the conservatives’ complaints about a liberal tilt [at The Post] are valid”: 

I won’t quibble with her conclusion. I think she was right. … 

I think there was way too little coverage of his record in the Illinois Senate and U.S. Senate, for example, with one or two notably good exceptions. But there were hard-hitting stories too, even a very tough one on Michelle Obama’s job at the University of Chicago Medical Center. 

And that’s what The Post needs to do in covering his reelection campaign this year: be hard-hitting on his record and provide fresh insight and plenty of context to put the past three rough years into perspective. 

Pexton poses 20 questions that his paper should delve into, including: “Has the image of the United States abroad gotten, as Obama promised, better than it was under Bush?”; “Has Iran’s drive for nuclear technologies been blunted at all?”; and “How well or badly have his Cabinet secretaries run the government?”   

In other words, Pexton is urging his clients to do their jobs this time around. 

† Was Steve Jobs A Closet Republican? (related article, third item on the page): A year ago, President Barack Hussein Obama asked Steve Jobs why iPhones were not manufactured in the U.S. This New York Times article answers his question – raises questions about Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum’s plan to revive manufacturing in this country: 

It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products. 

Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google. … 

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight. 

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. 

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.” 

[Apple executives] say Apple’s success has benefited the economy by empowering entrepreneurs and creating jobs at companies like cellular providers and businesses shipping Apple products. And, ultimately, they say curing unemployment is not their job. 

“We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries,” a current Apple executive said. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.” … [emphasis, The Stiletto] 

The pace of innovation, say executives from a variety of industries, has been quickened by businessmen like Mr. Jobs. G.M. went as long as half a decade between major automobile redesigns. Apple, by comparison, has released five iPhones in four years, doubling the devices’ speed and memory while dropping the price that some consumers pay. 

The boldfaced bits also serve as a prebuttal to the final State of the Union address of Obama’s only term in office™: 

If you’re a high-tech manufacturer, we should double the tax deduction you get for making products here. And if you want to relocate in a community that was hit hard when a factory left town, you should get help financing a new plant, equipment, or training for new workers. 

My message is simple. It’s time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. 

Apple is not going to move these jobs back to the U.S. just to get a tax deduction. Not when they can avoid union work rules that guarantee inefficiency and instead contract their manufacturing to factory workers in China who are willing to forego a full night's sleep to make their product to their exacting specs.  

† Does the U.S. need an election monitor?: The Obama Justice Department is trying to squelch a SC law requiring a state-issued photo ID in order to vote on the grounds that minority voters theoretically may be disenfranchised (click here for related article), while ignoring actual voter fraud that has occurred in the state. Based on an analysis by the Department of Motor Vehicles that found 953 ballots cast by voters who had been dead from two months and 76, SC Attorney General Alan Wilson has asked the State Law Enforcement Division to investigate, WTOC-TV (Channel 11, Savannah, GA) reports. It is unclear in which election(s) the fraudulent ballots had been cast. 

† Garbage In, Garbage Out: Part II: Teachers in the Palo Alto High School math department doesn’t think it’s their job to teach every public school student in their classes quadratic equations and logarithmic functions, San Jose Mercury News reports: 

Other districts, including San Jose Unified, East Side Union and San Francisco Unified, set A-G as the default curriculum, and in Palo Alto the administration had recommended the district follow suit. The school board is set to take up the issue in the spring. But Palo Alto High's math teachers oppose the recommendation. Yes, bump up the graduation requirement to three years of math, they argue, but don't require students to master Algebra II -- because they say not everyone can. … 

While other districts have Algebra II courses designed for students to master, Palo Alto's standards exceed UC's. 

Palo Alto High math department chair Radu Toma said critics confuse standards with achievement. "They make the assumption just by setting the bar up there, the bar will be reached," he said. "I'm not saying it's impossible; it's a big gamble." 

Toma said that while students elsewhere may pass Algebra II, 45 percent of CSU and UC students must take remedial math. That doesn't happen with Palo Alto graduates, he said. "When our kids finish with Algebra II, we are not pretending they completed Algebra II." 

† SOTU = Stuff Our Taxes Underwrite: Rep. Cliff Stearns R-FL), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee investigations panel is outraged over footage shot by CBS 5 (San Francisco) showing Solyndra employees trashing solar panel parts – which U.S. taxpayers bought and paid for through the Department of Energy’s failed green energy investment program (related article, second item on the page). The Washington Times reports: 

"First we learn of the ridiculous request for $500,000 in Solyndra bonuses. Now we find out that these employees are apparently destroying millions of dollars worth of equipment," [Stearns said]. 

The [CBS] report cited court documents saying the company had gotten permission to abandon high grade glass because the cost of storing it exceeded its value. 

The report also said an employee from Heritage Global Partners, which is in charge of selling some of the company's assets, told CBS 5 that nobody wanted to buy the equipment, despite an exhaustive search. 

† Can The Nutrition Police Lay Off Coffee, Already?: Epidemiologic studies have suggested a correlation between drinking four or more cups of coffee and reduced risk of developing type 2 (adult onset) diabetes. Chinese researchers have now identified compounds in coffee that inhibit hIAPP (human islet amyloid polypeptide), a substance linked to diabetes. Their study, which was published in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found that caffeic acid and caffeine inhibited hIAPP significantly, Los Angeles Times reports: 

Scientists looking for ways to prevent diabetes have been investigating ways to block hIAPP, which is present in high levels in the pancreases of those with the disease. … 

"A beneficial effect may thus be expected in regular coffee drinkers," [the study authors concluded]. 

A growing body of research suggests that coffee is good for just about everything that ails you (related article, fourth item on the page). 

† Is This One Of Those Jobs That “Americans Won’t Do?”: Averting its gaze from the thousands of tons of trash that an estimated 500 thousand illegals a year leave behind in the Sonoran Desert as they make the trek from Mexico to AZ, The New York Times instead chooses to focus on the trash generated by tourists to Tombstone: 

Tombstone started paying Waste Management, a private hauler, to collect its trash and expand its recycling program. The city still will collect money from each household for trash collection, but will turn it over to Waste Management instead of keeping it. 

The company will buy the city’s two trucks, one of which is for backup, enabling the city to retire its $180,000 in debt on them. The city will no longer have to worry about fixing trucks or buying garbage cans, and the wooden barrels that doubled as garbage cans on historic Allen Street will be replaced with solar-powered compactors that will wirelessly alert the city when they are full. 

But Tombstone, with a population of 1,500, is unusual because it creates a disproportionate amount of trash. The city welcomes at least 200,000 tourists a year.  …

Nancy Sosa, the city archivist, recalled that when she was a child growing up in this high desert 35 miles from the Mexican border, city workers picked up trash by hand and used a pickup truck to supplement the garbage truck.