Mark Twain and Ken Zino in Michigan.
While automobile use continues to thrive in this new century, the reigning companies and the executives who run them are amidst upheavals that parallel the revolutions of the 18th. Potentially there are similar consequences – not only for automakers – but also for owners of cars, trucks, SUVs and crossovers, as well as the communities they live in.
Restrictions on car use, car sharing, hybrids, EVs, CO2 emissions and global warming, hydrogen fuel, ethanol, Distracted Driving from web enabled cars, driver-less vehicles, the collection of and sale of personal data from your driving and privacy issues – all challenge the old ruling order and conventional wisdom.
Add to this a web-enabled democratization and corruption of communications as establishment print and broadcast media fade as Google and Facebook abet foreign interference in our elections, and the time is right for a broad dialogue about the evolution of personal mobility and the emerging issues surrounding it.
Thus is AutoInformed – a web-based information service that urges and promotes critical thinking about the political, social and economic consequences resulting from the complex business of automobiles, all the while celebrating what are sometimes magnificent machines at the pinnacle of the human industrial arts.
Join us with your observations about the political, economic, social and environmental consequences of automobile use so they are available to all for debate. Mobility and auto-mobility here means that you are free to think what you want, read what you want and are free from corrupt politicians, their propaganda outlets and bought judges who only want to maintain their power at the expense of We the People.
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Ken Zino, publisher (kzhw@aol.com), is a versatile auto industry participant with global experience spanning decades in print and broadcast journalism, as well as social media. He has automobile testing, marketing, public relations and communications experience. He is past president of The International Motor Press Assn, the Detroit Press Club, founding member and first President of the Automotive Press Assn. He is a member of APA, IMPA and the Midwest Automotive Press Assn.
Zino is at home on test tracks, knows his way around U.S. Congressional hearing rooms, auto company headquarters, plant floors, as well as industry research and development labs where the real mobility work is done. He can quote from court decisions, refer to instrumented road tests, analyze financial results, and profile executive personalities and corporate cultures.
He also brings an historical perspective while citing their contemporary relevance of the work of legendary auto writers such as Ken Purdy, Jim Dunne or Jerry Flint, or writers such as Red Smith, Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson – all to bring perspective to a chaotic automotive universe.
Above all, decades after he first drove a car, Zino still revels in the sound of the exhaust as the throttle is blipped and the driver’s rush that occurs when the entry, apex and exit points of a turn are smoothly and swiftly crossed. It’s the beginning of a perfect lap.
AutoInformed has an editorial philosophy that loves transportation machines of all kinds while promoting critical thinking about the future use of cars and trucks.
Zino builds AutoInformed from his background in automotive journalism starting at Hearst Publishing in New York City on Motor and MotorTech Magazines and car testing where he reviewed hundreds of vehicles in his decade-long stint as the Detroit Bureau Chief of Road & Track magazine. Zino has also worked in Europe, and Asia – now the largest automotive market in the world with China at its center.
Zino wryly notes that he continues to conduct his education in public via this format, and invites all to celebrate and shape the ongoing debate about automobiles so that we can all be – AutoInformed.
I thought that a reference by Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times op-ed page yesterday about the influence of money in politics sounded familiar.
Sure enough, the line, “U.S. congressmen should have to dress like Nascar drivers and wear logos of all the banks, investment banks, insurance companies and real estate firms that they’re taking money from” is not new. I saw it for the first time anywhere in the AutoInformed website.
Friedman credits the “blogosphere” for the quote. Well, the word from AutoInformed certainly does get around.
Well, I certainly did write it, but I don’t know where Friedman saw it – or if someone else used it as well, or given the nature of blogs just used it without attribution.
In any event, here’s my original contained in Taxpayer Subsidized Ethanol Caught in Partisan Budget Battle
“The politics of ethanol, virtually all of it corn derived and therefore benefiting big money farm lobby interests, are as tangled as it gets. Taxpayers would be better off if legislators were required to wear NASCAR-style uniforms with the patches of the organizations that are their major, err, sponsors, to put it politely in “pay to play” Washington where campaign contributions from special interests determine policy not our national interests…”
Friedman was working a similar theme – click here – He said:
“…We can’t afford this any longer. We need to focus on four reforms that don’t require new bureaucracies to implement. 1) If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big and needs to be broken up. We can’t risk another trillion-dollar bailout. 2) If your bank’s deposits are federally insured by U.S. taxpayers, you can’t do any proprietary trading with those deposits — period. 3) Derivatives have to be traded on transparent exchanges where we can see if another A.I.G. is building up enormous risk. 4) Finally, an idea from the blogosphere: U.S. congressmen should have to dress like Nascar drivers and wear the logos of all the banks, investment banks, insurance companies and real estate firms that they’re taking money from. The public needs to know…”
Good to hear you. Hope all is well. I was just telling my beloved about the weekend you threw me the keys to your MG… still appreciated.
Well done. Now on my regular reading list.
Good stuff!