Now that the Big O’s nixed the idea of a car czar and tasked Tim Geithner and Larry Summers to deal with the Big 3 who are asking for boatloads more money as we speak, let’s hope those economic titans understand the entire auto parts industry is about to go pfffft unless it gets bailed out, too. 

The parts suppliers requested federal aid 10 days ago. $25.5 billion was the opening bid made by the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, a trade group representing 400 companies in the sector.

It’s probably just coincidence that the amount is nearly identical to the handouts already received by GM, Chrysler and their flailing finance divisions…so far.

“Without immediate assistance to suppliers, the country will face massive job losses and the eventual breakdown of the entire automotive sector in the United States,” according to an 11-page request from the Association that was obtained by the Wall Street Journal.

Last week GM and Chrysler reported breathtaking declines in domestic vehicle sales for January: GM dropped 49% and Chrysler was off 55%.

In 2008, 40 auto parts suppliers filed for bankruptcy protection. That number is likely to be surpassed this year almost no matter what.

The suppliers propose that $7 billion be used to fund a “quick pay program” allowing the beleaguered auto makers to pay suppliers 10 days after receipt of goods. That’s substantially less than the 45 days or more that has become their norm.

They also want $10.5 billion to guarantee receivables and $8 billion in federal loans.

Failure of key parts suppliers could cripple the industry faster than a rabbit on skates because the Big 3 use just-in-time supplier management systems meaning they have essentially no inventory on hand to feed the assembly line.

A decade ago, the US government decided we should switch from analog to digital TV. It was a no-brainer. People would get improved reception and the Feds would rake in $20 billion by selling the analog spectrum to cell phone carriers.

The only problem was wiring 20 million US households that watched the tube the old fashioned way. Many of them rely on TV for news about things like impending floods, severe weather and other life-threatening events.

Low income, elderly and Hispanic viewers were particularly likely to be analog users.

These people needed a converter box which cost $80. Senator Ed Markey reasoned government was going to profit from the transition, so it should pay for the boxes.

He wanted to give consumers two $60 coupons each, which would cost $4 billion. Republicans said what are you crazy and capped the program at $1.5 billion.

Meanwhile, the FCC thought the NTIA was supposed to do consumer education but the NTIA was dead in the water due to laughably frequent leadership changes. It turned out the FCC was supposed to do it.

Now the deadline was approaching and the people wanted their coupons.

Not a problem, the NTIA told Congress in November. “The coupon program has both sufficient funds and system processing capabilities to…distribute…more than 50 million coupons (in time)…and to do so without…a backlog.”

So on January 4 the coupon program ran out of money and millions had no coupons.

And Congress had mandated that the coupons be distributed third class mail which we think involves horses and buggies so it was taking a month to get there anyway.

“Millions of Americans, including those in our most vulnerable communities, would have been left in the dark if the conversion had gone on as planned,” sighed the Big O upon signing a bill postponing implementation for 4 months.

76% of people approve of the Big O’s performance since election night, including nearly 6 in 10 Republicans, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll of 1,000 adults conducted between December 11 and 14.

And while most people say he needs to bear down on the economy right away, many want him to expand his policy focus quickly.

A shade less than half of the survey respondents believe the Big O can do a “great deal” or “good amount” to fix the economy, and 55% percent think he’s done well so far on this matter.

A higher number, 65% favor a stimulus package of the sort recently floated by the president-elect’s transition team.

A majority of respondents support major health system reform, and 65% of Democrats and 52% of Independents want immediate action on the matter.

But 44% of Republicans say they don’t favor major health system reform and an equal amount could swallow something big but don’t think it’s something he needs to focus on immediately.

A majority of respondents from both parties think the federal government should expand health coverage for children by extending the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which at the moment has a March sunset provision.

The stem cell issue remains contentious with most Republicans opposing new federal funding and most Democrats saying the Big O should authorize exactly that right away.

Democrats and Republicans also disagree in predictable ways on the Big O’s pledge to pull troops out of Iraq in 16 months.

There was strong bipartisan support for increased use of renewable energy and a nationwide moratorium on home foreclosures. Most people want the Big O to address these issues right away.

Russia’s cyber attacks on Georgia and Estonia didn’t do it. A US citizen’s big hack into the Pentagon’s computer system didn’t do it. Even a special Congressional commission’s warnings about China’s advanced cyber warfare capabilities didn’t do it.

But Agent.btz did. When the embarrassingly simple, 3 year-old worm infected the bejeesus out of the whole US Army necessitating a costly pan-continental thumb-drive scrubbing, the US government finally got the message.

And now, maybe, it will get serious about beefing up the nation’s cyber security systems. 

The likely starting point will be National Security Presidential Directive 54 a program that has languished since the day President Bush signed it into law.

Directive 54 set aside $15 billion to develop a national cyber security program that would protect the federal government’s computers as well as critical energy, electric and water systems.

The main reason Directive 54 has gone nowhere is the lack leadership on the issue, according to a special commission set up by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

So the commission plans to recommend appointment of a cyber czar, a person that would report directly to the President and have at his or her disposal all the proper diplomatic, military and intelligence tools to confront cyber threats.

The recommendation is likely to trigger the same furious debate around privacy that surfaced during Bush’s domestic wiretapping caper, so the Big O, who long ago recognized the cyber problem and promised during the campaign to appoint a “national cyber adviser,” better save some chips.

Hopefully, the Big O prevails because according to the commission, “America’s failure to protect cyberspace is one of the most urgent national security problems facing the new administration. The battle in cyberspace…is a battle we are losing.”

Chuck E. Cheese’s says it’s a place “where a kid can be a kid” and who can argue, but it’s also a place where adults get arrested for battery and disorderly conduct more often than you think.

The Chuck E. Cheese’s Brookfield Wisconsin franchise for example has prompted more calls to the police than any other restaurant in town, 2 years running.

Cops have had to break up at least 12 fights there since January, 2007 including a 40-person melee that spilled onto the stage reserved for the singing chicken and life-sized mouse!

“There’s a biker bar down the street, and we rarely get calls there,” local police Captain Timothy Imler deadpanned to the Wall Street Journal.

Imler blames the conflagrations on loud noise, crowded interiors and all the emotion wrapped up in children’s birthday parties these days. Oh and alcohol is served at most venues, and then there’s the phenomenon psychologists call the “momma bear instinct.”

Apparently when kids scope out the place they think “child’s play” and they’re off to the races. But adults for whatever reason see danger in all directions, like it’s the Serengeti or something. So they go into all-out child protection mode.

Like when someone cuts the line for Whack-a-Mole, for example.

“It’s part of protective parenting,” Frank Farley told the Journal. The Temple University psychologist added, “it is part of the species—all species, in fact…we do it all the time.”

To Chuck E. Cheese’s parent company, CEC Entertainment, this is no laughing matter. Some of its 538 locations have decided to halt alcohol sales, for example. There’s at least one store that posts armed security guards and the Milwaukee store has a dress code that bans gang-style apparel, not to mention knives, screwdrivers and glass cutters.

It’s “like something out of a Quentin Tarantino film,” Milwaukee Alderman Tony Zielinski told the Journal.

About the only people reveling amid the Great Economic Crisis of 2008 are the ones living in the caves of South Waziristan.

Al-Qaeda had been trumpeting for years that the US economy was poised to collapse. They thought it would be “the force of the jihadists that’s going to push us over the edge,” Georgetown Professor Bruce Hoffman told the Washington Post.

Turns out it was a bunch of bad bets on real estate in Stockton, California but never mind because several US officials and private analysts believe the Crisis has increased the risk of a terrorist attack on US soil.

These people believe US intelligence and defense budgets are going to be cut to free up cash for domestic spending, and al-Qaeda will attempt to exploit border protection and other national defense systems that may be adversely impacted as a result.

But the greater threat appears to be to the very survival of pro-Western regimes such as nuclear-tipped Pakistan.

Pakistan had been struggling with poverty and a growing insurgency before the Crisis. Now, it is a mess. Its currency reserves have been obliterated, its currency has been devalued, and inflation is squeezing just about everyone. China recently declined Pakistan’s pleas for a bail-out and there is a chance the country could default on its debt obligations.

This unhealthy mix has already produced a marked uptick in anti-Western demonstrations and violence, no doubt incited by al-Qaeda. Right now Pakistan’s teeming cities are easy pickings for the recruiting arms of terrorist organizations. It remains distinctly possible in fact that the thugs who held Mumbai hostage for 72 hours were from Pakistan.

CIA director Michael Hayden said just before the Mumbai attacks that his agency had not detected increased communications or other signs of an impending terrorist attack on US soil, which is good but let’s not forget that al-Qaeda’s only two attacks on the US homeland occurred during the first months of new presidential administrations.

For 5 years beginning in 2010, US astronauts looking for a lift into space will have to hitch a ride on a Russian Soyuz rocket.

That’s because NASA plans to shelve the space shuttle program in 2010, but the next generation of US spacecraft won’t lift-off until 2015, the earliest.

The gap will be associated with thousands of layoffs in Florida. Meanwhile, recent US-Russian antagonism following Russia’s romp in Georgia has highlighted potential risks associated with Russia as a sole-source taxi service to the International Space Station. And of course, China’s space program is moving ahead to a point where it is now likely that the next person to walk on the Moon will be Chinese.

The Bush administration implemented this gap strategy in 2004 to maintain NASA’s annual budget at $17 billion while accelerating development of its new launching program known as Constellation. The goal of Constellation is to return astronauts to the Moon and perhaps Mars and near-Earth asteroids, but none of this will happen before 2020.

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Last week, the US Postal Service and its major labor union tentatively approved HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt’s proposal to have mailmen distribute doxycycline to all homes along their routes in the event of an anthrax attack.

“We have found letter carriers to be the federal government’s quickest and surest way of getting pills to whole communities,” Leavitt told the Washington Post.

Mail carriers would not be required to participate in the distribution scheme. Volunteer mail carriers would be accompanied by police officers during any handout.

HHS has conducted trials of the proposed strategy in Seattle, Boston and Philadelphia. In one trial, 50 carriers delivered antibiotics to 55,000 homes in less than 8 hours. Now the plan is to run a more extensive trial in the Minneapolis area.

One small problem is that the FDA has not approved doxycycline for the treatment of anthrax. Leavitt requested an expedited review last Friday. Take a number, Mike.

The Pentagon just postponed until after the elections a $40 billion competition to determine which company will supply aerial refueling tankers to the US Air Force.

The Air Force has tried for 7 years replace its tankers which average nearly 50 years old.

The Pentagon’s decision represents victory for Boeing Co. Boeing has held the tanker contract for decades, but it apparently lost the contract earlier this year to a JV involving European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS, makers of the Airbus) and Northrop Grumman Corp.

At the time, Boeing wouldn’t go quietly. It protested to the GAO that the selection process was flawed. It called in favors from politicians who decried the decision to award the contract to a team including, gasp! A foreign country! And before you can say “fasten your seatbelt,” the contract was voided.

Then, Boeing grew concerned that its bid on the revised contract also wouldn’t pass muster, so it threatened to pull its bid altogether unless it was given more time to prepare. If Boeing doesn’t bid, the Pentagon is left with only one bidder. This is unacceptable, especially in an election year, so the Pentagon punted the competition all the way to next summer.

Ironically, Top Gun McCain could be president then. McCain, it happens, is a longtime critic of Boeing. His office helped open the competition to EADS/Northrop in the first place.

Emergent BioSolutions of Rockville, Maryland has been the government’s only provider of anthrax vaccine ever since it secured a half billion dollar sole source deal several years ago to stockpile 19 million doses of its version, known as BioThrax.

BioThrax has limitations though. It must be refrigerated for example. Inoculated conscripts have reported serious complications, and 6 injections over 18 months are needed to produce a sufficient immune response.

The US government has thus just awarded development contracts to two companies, Emergent and its rival PharmAthene, to create improved vaccines.

Emergent Biosystems secured $29.7 million to develop an improved version of BioThrax that will require fewer injections. It will still require refrigeration, however.

The government’s decision was a coup for PharmAthene. It received $83.9 million to create a vaccine that requires only 1 or 2 injections and can be stored at room temperature.

The split decision heightens anticipation for the announcement later this fall of the big prize, a contract (or contracts) to supply 25 million doses of recombinant (genetically engineered) anthrax vaccine to the US Strategic National Stockpile. 

The agency that awarded the two contracts is the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). It sits within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. According to the HHS web site, BARDA’s mission is “to provide an integrated, systematic approach to the development and purchase of the necessary vaccines, drugs, therapies, and diagnostic tools for public health medical emergencies.”