SEE ALSO: Stop Shaming Fat Kids

The company said Friday that it plans to open the lab near Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., in the first few months of this year. It will employ around 15 people, including some recruited locally and others who will rotate in from Ford’s headquarters in Dearborn.

Ford’s Chief Technical Officer Paul Mascarenas said the company decided about a year ago that it needed a bigger presence in Silicon Valley.

“This is a very natural extension into one of the most innovative communities in the world,” he said.

He said the lab will work on ways to better integrate phones and other personal devices into cars, as well as safety systems that alert drivers when they’re approaching another car.

The lab will also solicit and test applications from independent programmers. One app Ford is currently studying can find an open parking space and reserve it. Another would improve weather reporting by transmitting signals when a car’s rain-sensing wipers are triggered.

Mascarenas said the lab will also study larger issues, including population growth in developing countries like China and India, and how best to handle traffic in those countries.

The lab will work with Ford headquarters as well as its design studio in Southern California and its office at Microsoft Corp. in Washington. Microsoft and Ford jointly developed Ford’s Sync voice-activated entertainment system and My Ford Touch touch-screen dashboard.

But Mascarenas said it’s important that the lab be in Silicon Valley – not Dearborn – so employees feel free to experiment.

Ford joins several other automakers that have similar offices in Silicon Valley, including General Motors Co., BMW AG and the Renault-Nissan alliance.

K. Venkatesh Prasad, a senior technical leader at Ford who will commute between Dearborn and the new office, said Ford considered opening a Silicon Valley office in the past but the technology wasn’t ready. Now, he said, the Sync platform makes it easier and faster to reprogram the car and update it with new applications. Ford introduced Sync four years ago.

“The car is finally a platform,” Prasad said.

SEE ALSO:

Spike Lee To Host Obama Fundraiser

Ron Paul Confused By Own Tweet

Given that the government is bailing out failed companies like AIG, Morgan Stanley and is considering bailing out Ford and General Motors shouldn’t they consider bailing out some the ailing Hip Hop companies.

Shouldn’t Ray Benzino and the Source be entitled to some of the $700 billion? Shouldn’t Master P get some money to rebuild his struggling No Limit Records? If Damon Dash was given one billion dollars surely he could make another Hov and go back to being the mega mogul he was 8 years ago.

If the Hip Hop industry fails it could have disastrous effects on the economy. When Hip Hop record labels start going out of business not only will rappers be out of jobs but so will managers, bodyguards, stylists, publicists, deejays, entourage members, A&R’s, and other label people.

If Hip Hop were to cease to be economically viable, it could have a domino effect on the whole economy. If rappers were to no longer have money other sectors like the strip club industry, the tacky platinum chain industry, and the rims industry would also go under. Rap magazines such as XXL, Ozone, The Source, and Vibe would all go out of business as would countless Hip Hop websites and blogs. If Hip Hop dies what would happen to all the radio stations where hip hop lives?

Hip Hop is definitely at a tipping point now. Even the once financial giant of G-Unit is forced to cut back product and lay off workers.If 50 Cent doesn’t receive some money from the government its very possible that we may never hear another Tony Yayo or Loyd Banks album.

Many people would argue that rappers and Hip Hop moguls have lived in material excess beyond their means, been arrogant and greedy, all while not being creative, innovative or even efficient. This may be true but so have the CEOs of Wall St. and Detroit. For years Morgan Stanley, Merryl Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Bros. have been giving large bonuses and salaries to their top level executives.

. The average salary for Morgan Stanley year was $655,000. Just like rappers, Wall Street executives would spend obscene amounts of money on strippers, cars, vacations and houses. How come their houses and cars aren’t being repossessed like all the rappers?

The reason Hip Hop went broke is the same reason that Wall Street and Detroit went broke. All of them paid CEO’s way too much money which was squandered on materialism. When things were going well they wasted their wealth and expected the economy to stay the same. Neither Wall St, Detroit or Hip Hop changed to fit the times, sticking with the same tired routine. Wall St. CEO’s kept buying up bad debt and counting it as cash on hand all the while grossly overpaying their executives with lavish bonuses. Detroit refused to join the 21st century, reproducing gas guzzling CEO’s while Honda and Toyota made fuel efficient hybrids.

If these companies are bailed out, the CEO’s should all resign and have their houses and cars repossessed like rappers do. They failed their, country, their employees and their stockholders. The culture of business in America must change. While right wingers might talk about changing labor laws, the problem is at the top and not the bottom.

In 2006 the CEO of Morgan Stanley got a 40 million dollar bonus on top of his salary. That’s enough money to pay the salaries of 1200 average American workers. In 2007, Ford paid their CEO 28 million dollars for four months of work. Given that the these CEO’s have by all accounts failed, shouldn’t they do the honorable thing and give back their money to the taxpayers and shareholders.

If the government is to bail out Wall St. and Detroit, it must treat the executives like rappers. Take all their assets, foreclose their homes and repossess their cars. Give their jobs to new business men with bright new ideas and strategies.

Of course, that wouldn’t be such a peril to us if those groups were a) willing to be held responsible for the lives of those individual participants who invest so much and b) accepted their failures as a personal fault as much as our failures. The established idea of credit (extended from the idea of slavery) is that your work will somehow credit you for future purchases and worth. Should your work fall short of the goods you’ve bought and acquired, you assume debt. If you cannot pay back that debt, you file for bankruptcy and start over, your name and credit damaged for some time. Somewhere between the history of using paper currency instead of traded goods to using promised paper currency, Americans accepted the ordeal of permanent debt to those larger institutions. Can’t pay for college? Take out loans. Can’t afford a home? Take out loans, and leverage your salary against them. Need to send your kids to school with a new car? Refinance that first loan you took out and increase debt with little thought to repayment. After all, what’s debt when you die?

This confused process of imaginary money has led us to the demolishing trend of today: personal and corporate responsibility have dissipated. But even more offensive, the government’s knee-jerk reaction has been to safeguard the ones at the top, save their failures topple our lives in total.

Never has the argument for reparations loomed so prominently.

The previously prevalent notion of leaving the mistakes of the past to bear out on your credit line has been tossed to the wayside for a more communal approach; specifically, rescuing every Bob and Barry CEO in the nation with a gentle billion-dollar nudge into continued prosperity. In fact, the rescue language has become so brisk in the mouths of the Pelosis, Reids, Bushes and Obamas that it seems we’d collectively panic if not for the concerted efforts of the Treasury and Federal Reserve to give our industries life. When the mortgage lenders went under, we feared we would lose any homes not fully paid for. As the banks crumbled, businesses and universities worried about the ability to secure loans for another quarter. The pervasive language of anxiety over our declining capitalism made it reasonable to say that government funds should (gasp) help the citizens of our nation…albeit the richest one percent of our citizens, but we had to start somewhere.

Naturally, we should look to the labor force that built the garrisons of industry during the Transatlantic slave trade. Enslaved Africans have been mired in our economic future since the merchant class of New England used their hands and tears to make colonial farms and banks profitable. The tobacco industry gave way to the cotton and textile industry gave way to the sharecropping industry, all of which yielded millions for corporations still existing today. Since that debt has never been repaid, neither in cash nor in resources, the government has its biggest mortgage crisis yet in addressing that history. As automakers fly in private jets with hands outstretched to cushion their already luxurious lives of spendthrift, where are the billions set aside for the descendants of slaves to recoup on their education debt? Where are the billion-dollar bailouts for the men and women who were denied opportunity until recently for their access into higher industry and government? The Native Americans slaughtered by disease and deprivation have only detached casino revenues (which never reach their depressed population), and Black Americans have some stake in sports and entertainment (until we even, says Jay-Z).

As much as Obama’s electoral victory presented us with a new model of racial politics — or the beginnings of new racial politics — we have yet to see the same sympathy for our cheated countrymen of color that’s been extended to reckless executives and tiresome financiers. Supposedly, we should feel proud that the CEOs of GM, Chrysler and Ford have (grudgingly) given up their exorbitant salaries for $1-a-year nominal fees. In fact, I would feel more heartened by that tipping of the scales if descendants of Asian-American railroad workers got their cash retributions for their opening of the Western frontiers. Or, I would feel encouraged if the Mexican workers responsible for every part of our bottom-rung jobs were fairly rewarded with health benefits. As we make steps to provide safety nets for those elites who have toddled with their great-grandparents’ inheritance dollars, we should also consider those of us who never had the advantages (and never expected any), but have braved past those obstacles to create new wealth. Since reparations is an accursed term, I’m comfortable with just labeling it a “bailout” for now.

Unless one of Detroit‘s other Big Three auto companies goes bust, Ford expects to have enough money to make it through next year without government help, it said in a plan that projected the firm will break even or turn a pretax profit in 2011.

Detroit’s automakers, making a second bid for $25 billion in funding, are presenting Congress with plans Tuesday to restructure their ailing companies and provide assurances that the funding will help them survive and thrive.

General Motors Corp., Ford and Chrysler LLC said they would refinance their companies’ debt, cut executive pay, seek concessions from workers and find other ways of reviving their staggering companies.

The Big Three executives also are offering a series of mostly symbolic moves to burnish their images, badly tattered after they arrived in Washington D.C. last month on three separate private jets to plead for a federal lifeline for their struggling companies. All three companies offered separate plans for hearings that will be held Thursday and Friday.

That approach the auto executives took last month led Democratic congressional leaders to declare they didn’t come prepared to justify their pleas and they told them to go back home and ready a new plan.

This week, the automakers are going out of their way to show deference to lawmakers and a willingness to flog themselves for past mistakes. “I think we learned a lot from that experience,” Ford CEO Alan Mulally told The Associated Press in an interview.

Mulally said he’d work for $1 per year if his firm had to take any government loan money. The company’s plan also says it will cancel all management employees’ 2009 bonuses, scrap merit increases for its North American salaried employees next year, and sell its five corporate aircraft.

And for this week’s appearances here, all three company chiefs will skip the lavish travel arrangements. Mulally is coming by car from Detroit for this week’s second round of congressional hearings on government help for the Big Three. GM Chief Rick Wagoner will drive a Chevrolet Malibu hybrid sedan for the 520-mile trek from Detroit to Capitol Hill, spokesman Tony Cervone said Tuesday. And Chrysler LLC CEO Robert Nardelli won’t travel by corporate jet, but a spokeswoman declined to elaborate on his travel plans, citing security reasons.

The unions were preparing to make sacrifices as well. United Auto Workers leaders summoned local union leaders from across the country to an emergency meeting Wednesday in Detroit to discuss concessions the union could make to help auto companies get government loans.

U.S. automakers are struggling to stay afloat heading into 2009 under the weight of an economic meltdown, the worst auto sales in decades and a tight credit market. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler went through nearly $18 billion in cash reserves during the last quarter, and GM and Chrysler have said they could collapse in weeks.

Meanwhile, the auto companies released new sales numbers that underlined the punishing business environment facing the Big Three. Ford said its November U.S. light vehicle sales tumbled 31 percent amid a continued slump in consumer spending and tight credit markets. Sales at Toyota, Japan’s No. 1 automaker, fell 34 percent despite its extension of zero-percent financing on a dozen vehicles.

Ford’s blueprint said it would invest $14 billion over the next seven years to boost its vehicles’ fuel-efficiency, and improve the overall efficiency of its fleet by an average of 14 percent next year. And Ford is calling for a new partnership among automakers, parts suppliers and the government to develop new battery technologies domestically, so the U.S. doesn’t have to rely on foreign batteries — as it now does on foreign oil — to power its cars.

GM will outline efforts to negotiate swapping some of the company’s debt for equity stakes in the automaker, either shares or warrants for them, said two people briefed on the company’s plan.

With eight separate brands, GM will also discuss efforts to shed brands but it would prefer to sell them instead of shutting down Pontiac, Saturn or Saab, said one of the people briefed on the plan. Killing off brands, like GM did with Oldsmobile in 2004, would require cash the company doesn’t have, the person said. The people briefed on GM’s preparations didn’t want to be identified because the plan hadn’t been completed.

Chrysler is expected to outline changes that would include a swap of debt in the company for equity stakes and reductions in some vehicle models, according to a person who was briefed on the plan. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private.

GM, according to its quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, owes creditors $45 billion and it must pay more than $7.5 billion early in 2010 to a UAW-administered trust fund that will take over retiree health care payments.

Ford owes more than $26 billion, with $6.3 billion due to its UAW trust fund at the end of 2009. Chrysler, a private company, does not have to open its books, but its CEO, Nardelli, has said it would be difficult for the company to make it without federal aid. All three likely are negotiating with the UAW for delays in payments to the trusts.

The companies are resisting calls for bankruptcy, arguing that no one would buy a car from an automaker that may not survive the life of the vehicle.

Democratic leaders in Congress sidetracked legislation to bail out the auto industry Thursday and demanded the Big Three develop a plan assuring the money would make them economically viable.

“Until they show us the plan, we cannot show them the money,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a hastily called news conference in the Capitol.

She and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Congress would return to work in early December to vote on legislation if the General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC produce an acceptable plan.

The decision averted a likely defeat of legislation providing $25 billion loans for the industry. Reid and Pelosi both said there was no plan in circulation that could pass both houses of Congress and win President George W. Bush’s approval.

While the decision headed off the defeat of one bill, it did not necessarily translate into passage of a different one.

As a result, the fate of hundreds of thousands of auto workers and even of an iconic American industry hangs in the balance.

The chief executives of the Big Three automakers appealed personally to lawmakers for the loans this week, and warned that their industry might collapse without them. In testimony, they said their problem was that credit was unavailable, and not that they were manufacturing products that consumers had turned their backs on.

But whatever support they found sagged when it became known that each of them had flown into Washington aboard multi-million dollar corporate jets. Reid observed that was “difficult to explain” to taxpayers in his home town of Searchlight, Nev.

The automakers are on a tight timeline. Reid and Pelosi said their plan must be turned over to key lawmakers by Dec. 2 They said hearings were possible the first week of December, and Congress may return to session the following week to consider legislation.

Pelosi stressed that whatever the Big Three provided to Congress, it must show they had a plan for “viability and accountability,” meaning that the were transforming theoir industry in a way that it would become competitive, and that they were clear about how the federal loan money was used.

Even if lawmakers return to vote, they are likely to insist on numerous conditions on any loans. One possibility is to seek a partial ownership of the companies. Another is to limit salaries of top executives. A third is to prohibit use of the funds for any lobbying.

A bipartisan group of auto-state senators reached a last-ditch compromise Thursday to throw Detroit’s Big Three a government lifeline worth billions, but the plan faces an uphill battle in a reluctant Senate.

With the auto bailout stalled, the fate of hundreds of thousands of workers and Detroit’s once-venerable car companies hangs in the balance.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., canceled plans for a vote on a bill to carve $25 billion in new loans out of the $700 billion Wall Street rescue fund. The Bush administration and congressional Republicans oppose that plan.

Warning of economic disaster, Democrats and Republicans from auto industry states reached a deal Thursday on an alternative package that would temporarily divert money from a fuel-efficiency loan program to cover the Big Three’s immediate costs. But it was unclear whether it could draw enough support to pass.

The group, led by Sens. Carl M. Levin, D-Mich. and Kit Bond, R-Mo., scheduled a news conference to announce details.

Even if agreement can be reached to consider their plan, Reid signaled earlier Thursday that the Senate was not likely do so until after Thanksgiving.

“We have some procedural roadblocks,” Reid said.

With all sides sensing doom for a Big Three automaker rescue, the finger-pointing proceeded.

White House press secretary Dana Perino on Thursday blamed Reid for not allowing the Republicans’ separate auto-aid plan to come up for a vote.

“Unfortunately it looks like Sen. Reid just wants to pick up his ball and go home for the next two weeks — two months — for vacation,” she said.

Pressed on what the White House would do if Congress can’t agree on a plan to rescue the automakers this week, Perino said she thought lawmakers would return after the Thanksgiving holiday for an emergency legislative session if an auto company was in imminent danger of collapsing.

“I can’t imagine a scenario where they wouldn’t come back, unless the answer is that they just don’t care. And if that’s the case, then the American people ought to know that.”

Congressional Democrats countered that the Treasury Department already had the power to grant emergency funds to the automakers, but the Bush administration opposed the approach.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney stood steadfastly behind forces opposing the bailout.

Speaking Thursday morning amid growing signs of gridlock in Congress, Romney said, “There’s no question but that if you just write a check, you’re going to see these companies go out of business ultimately.”

Romney, who had run for the Republican presidential nomination, told CBS’ “The Early Show” that he doesn’t want to see the carmakers go out of business, “but we don’t want them to continue business as usual.”

The leaders of General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC painted a grim picture of their financial position during two days of congressional hearings, warning that the collapse of the auto industry could lead to the loss of 3 million jobs. Detroit’s automakers, hurt by a sharp drop in sales and a nearly frozen credit market, burned through nearly $18 billion in cash reserves during the last quarter — about $7 billion at GM, almost $8 billion at Ford and $3 billion at Chrysler. Both GM and Chrysler said they could collapse in weeks.

“I don’t believe we have the luxury of a lot of time,” GM CEO Rick Wagoner told a House hearing.

Alan Mulally, the CEO of Ford Motor Co., said the company had enough cash reserves to make it through 2009. But United Auto Workers union president Ron Gettelfinger said a bankruptcy could spawn others.

“If there’s a Chapter 11 (for) one of the companies, it will drag at least one other with them, if not all of them. And I do not believe Chapter 11 is where it will end. It will go to liquidation,” he said ominously.

Automakers ran into more resistance from House lawmakers, who chastised the executives for fighting tougher fuel-efficiency standards in the past and questioned their use of private jets while at the same time seeking government handouts.

“My fear is that you’re going to take this money and continue the same stupid decisions you’ve made for 25 years,” said Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass.

The stakes are high. The Detroit automakers employ nearly a quarter-million workers, and more than 730,000 other workers produce materials and parts that go into cars. About 1 million more people work in dealerships nationwide. If just one of the automakers declared bankruptcy, some estimates put U.S. job losses next year as high as 2.5 million.

The White House and congressional Republicans have urged Democrats to support a GOP plan to divert a $25 billion loan program created by Congress in September — designed to help the companies develop more fuel-efficient vehicles — to meet the auto giants’ immediate financial needs.

Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., Kit Bond. R-Mo., and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, are trying to broker an alternative that could provide bridge loans or a guarantee that the fuel-efficiency loan fund ultimately would be replenished. Negotiators were discussing a scaled-down aid package of $5 billion to $8 billion to help the automakers survive through year’s end.

But it was unclear if any progress could be made. Democrats strongly oppose letting the car companies tap into the energy loans for short-term cash-flow needs.

Despite the gridlock in Congress, there could be a contingency plan: a return to Washington in December for another postelection session to try to strike a deal.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., noted that Democratic leaders were planning to gather for an economic conference the week of Dec. 8. “That is available,” Hoyer said. “The year has not ended.”