Headline: General Motors has issued 74 recalls covering almost 30 million vehicles.

Which answers the question: What is the worst business organization in the world?

And which brings up the second question: Why would anyone buy a GM vehicle?

Seriously. There’s a darn good chance any GM-made car you purchase is going to be seriously compromised, regardless of whether it’s old or new. And if you have any doubts about that, consider this: General Motors has stopped shipping some of its 2015 models to dealers because of concerns they may stop unexpectedly, speed up unexpectedly, catch fire unexpectedly or just somehow crash into something.

Why not just put your money in bitcoins and buy a bike with what’s left?

These recalls, lest you forget, cover just about every vehicle Gm makes. If they still made Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles, you can bet they’d be back in the shop, too. Actually, if you still have one of those models, it’s probably back in the shop anyway. At General Motors, quality is an occasional thing not to be confused with coffee breaks.

Here’s what really seems amazing about this to me: Mary T. Barra, GM’s CEO, still has her job. Of course not everything horrible at GM has happened during her watch — there’s blame to be spread among inept and callous executives aplenty — but her insistence before Congress that GM has a new culture dedicated to safety doesn’t preclude that culture seemingly quite leaky. If she worked for Toyota, she would already have had the good sense and human decency to resign, if not to consider hara-kiri (just kidding about that).

Every change of seasons brings with it news of more GM recalls. And don’t think these recalls involve only the cheapest of brands. Nope, not at all. There are a bunch of Cadillacs — the model that passes for the best GM produces — included. And — get this — police cars are now involved! What a relief that must be to the nation’s cops: their cars will now have less chance to explode unexpectedly while they’re in pursuit of criminals. Who, by the way, ought to include all those GM executives who refused to heed warnings from their engineers about defects in all of these vehicles.

In fact, couldn’t we get a new TV reality show going in which GM cars race toward GM executives and we see which cars can brake in time to avoid striking them? OK, just kidding about that.

I guess.

Some of the more unusual news items spotted in recent weeks:

— Carnival Cruises reported a 34% rise in earnings for the last quarter. Really? I’m going to guess that none of that came from passengers who boarded Carnival cruises over the last year or so and found themselves trapped by illnesses on board, mechanical malfunctions or perhaps by the Carnival-owned ship that capsized off the Italian coast. Carnival ought to refund that profit to all those who got stuck on the company’s ships.

— Cadillac is moving its headquarters from Detroit to New York City. The company says the move will help it reach more luxury car buyers. Really? Maybe if Cadillac made better cars, they could sell more of them, regardless of where the headquarters building is located. The facts are — as anyone who drives them can attest — there are many brands much superior in manufactured quality than Cadillac, among them Mercedes, BMW, Infiniti, Audi, Lexus … and more. I can remember the good old days when Cadillac was a synonym for classy. And Dwight Eisenhower was President.

— Scientists report extreme weather caused by climate changes will endanger both coasts and make Detroit a “desirable garden city.” Great timing, Cadillac.

— Apple says it has sold more than 10 million iphone6 smartphones in less than one week. Really? Darn, and I thought it was going to be a collector’s item. Does Apple practice some form of mass hypnosis, or how else are we explain such a huge national craving for a product that is overpriced and so patently unnecessary?

— Researchers in Italy have completed a far-reaching study about the benefits of art. This sounds really good, until you read about the exact nature of the study: scientists found that looking at a beautiful painting while being shot in the hand with a painful laser beam hurts less than when looking at an ugly painting. Yes, but did they try Andy Warhol?

— NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell says the league is going to crack down on players who are involved in domestic violence. And in other news, the Pope has moved the Vatican to Las Vegas in order to get closer to sinners.

We’re seeing a relentless succession of television ads for candidates these days, almost every one of them either negative, out of context or totally lacking in truth. Take it for a fact that when a candidate in a political ad says he or she is going to tell you the facts that the facts will be nowhere in evidence. No political party and no candidate in my hearing escapes this regrettable observation in election 2014.

Still, there are a couple of things that we ought to be aware of in going through these ads. And let me be specific about one race: the election for U.S. Senate between the incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and the Republican challenger Scott Brown. Their campaigns have mostly focused on what’s wrong with the other candidate, and a lot is said about Brown being a carpetbagger from Massachusetts and Shaheen being an Obama clone. Never mind that. In as civil a way as I can view it, here’s what’s important about this race.

Brown is a Republican who claims he will be an independent. Unfortunately I don’t find much evidence to back this up, and it seems likely that if and when he arrives in the Senate, he will join a party who whose members have largely been unwilling or unable to participate in the governing of the country for the last six years, so earnest has been their determination to keep President Obama from doing so.

The Republican Party is currently the party of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, who are, sadly, among the least formidable intellects to have led the GOP in in recent times. The party includes the likes of Ted Cruz and his Tea Party colleagues, whose brand of convervatism has done created more alienation than affection in America. I don’t doubt anyone’s belief that they are acting in the nation’s best interests, but the results so far suggest that interest has not been well served by their style of governing, or rather their disinclination to govern.

I don’t believe Scott Brown is a bad person. I disagree with much of what he says, but then political advertisements don’t exactly encourage strict adherence to truth. As a person, Scott Brown seems reasonable and likable. But how that might translate into a senator from New Hampshire who is part of a Republican Party which projects a negative, exclusive philosophy and which seems to have no serious focus beyond opposing the President leaves me wondering if this is really the best thing for our country.

So we come down to the bottom line: while Jeanne Shaheen may provoke some measure of disappointment — she is a politician, after all — she has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to look beyond provincialism and partisanship to vote often for what she believes is better for America. I don’t agree with all those votes, and I’m a Democrat. But I have respect for her. I have some respect for Scott Brown as well, but I’m not convinced Scott Brown will be able to rise above the partisanship of his party.

Way past the point you imagined the nation’s airlines couldn’t get any more disdainful of the traveling public, they have managed to do exactly that.

In case you missed it, here’s the headline: American Airlines has just re-configured the schedule at its Miami hub to put its hundreds of daily landings and departures closer together, what is called delicately “peak scheduling.” The airline says this will enable it to put more passengers from connecting flights on board and thereby earn more money. “An additional person per flight will make a difference,” a spokesman for the airline told The Wall Street Journal (whose reporter Scott McCartney does a terrific job of keeping up with these shenanigans).

Think about the meaning of this for passengers this for a moment, please. There now will be much less time for passengers to make connections (imagine how bad weather will complicate that throughout the entire system). It’s not enough that American crams passengers into tiny seats on crowded flights, now they want more. You can bet that additional rows of minuscule seats in the generously named coach section will soon be a part of all of their flights. Do you have some sense of how difficult this is going to make the process of transferring bags from one flight to the next? Less time means more bags won’t make the connecting flights. Enjoy.

And this incredibly irresponsible corporate decision means that the airport will now have periods of intense activity followed by periods of not much. How wasteful is that? Vendors in the Miami airport are already unhappy, reducing employment because passengers no longer have any time to stop. On a cheerful note, however, Americans says it will be hiring more people to deal with those hectic scheduled moments. Wow.

This is happening at Miami, but other airlines are apparently planning the same thing for their hubs. Mmmm, makes you want to climb on a plane, doesn’t it?

Last year when I wrote about the awful idea of merging of American and USAir — which of course is now a fact of life — I didn’t see this coming. The crowded flights, crappy seats, rising airfares and increased fees I did correctly forecast (being right still doesn’t feel very good) at the time. But this was a bad surprise, sort of like the sushi that leaves an unpleasant aftertaste.

Frankly, I can’t think of another corporate entity in this country that has so little regard and respect for its customers, that treats them as animals. Unless, of course, they have lots of money and are willing to spend it. I think it’s shameful, and I think we need a serious dose of federal regulation of the industry, in spite of my lack of faith in the federal process.

I’ve said for well over a decade that the airlines are not your friends. Don’t be deceived by anything they do. They are not on your side unless you are wealthy. And if you’re smart, you’ll do everything possible to avoid giving them your money. Think about it.

Let’s talk about the nightly news programs on the major networks. Let’s talk about them at least partly because that’s more satisfying than watching them. To put it bluntly, the state of television news has seldom been worse. Maybe back in the 1950s when anchormen (no women back then) smoked the cigarettes of their sponsor as they read the news was worse. But not by a lot.

Consider ABC News these days. Under Diane Sawyer’s watch and now that of pretty boy David Muir, the nightly half-hour newscast has become too much of a touchy-feely program, devoted to self-help items and a kind of “pop” news that downplays hard stories in favor of nice-people stories. The day’s complex, significant stories — think Ukraine, ISIS and the Middle East — get slight shrift at the top of the news while the bulk of the program is given over to stories that are more properly showcased in People magazine. NBC and CBS are better — how could they get worse? — but they have not much more room to proclaim superiority.

As part of their cost-cutting moves, the networks have trimmed the number of foreign correspondents so that they rely on freelancers to cover important stories on a regular basis. The other night on NBC, for instance, we were treated to a story about political unrest in Pakistan as reported by a correspondent in London, about 2,000 miles away. Similar occurrences on other networks suggest we’re not getting the fullest story of anything that doesn’t happen in this country or perhaps London or Paris. (Yes, I know correspondents get to war scenes, but they seldom stay there very long; the network’s bean counters find that is not conducive to the bottom line. And the bottom line is what it’s all about.

The root of a lot of this problem goes back several decades when television stations hired consultants to help them find new audiences. The consultants agreed that news programs needed more accessible, pretty anchors reporting a kinder, gentler sort of news to appeal to a younger audience. Things like serious stories, foreign news, cutting-edge interviews were not appealing and hence could be safely dispensed with. Anything visual — think weather-related stories and crime — would boost ratings. So that’s what everyone did, the networks and their local affiliates. That legacy continues, regrettably.

It’s always been true, and acknowledged by the likes of Walter Cronkite, that you cannot rely solely on network news programs to acquire an understanding of important and world issues. That is even more true today. Those who do so are woefully under-informed about everything that matters. No kidding.

If you believe that awareness of the world around us is important, then you’d better read The New York Times or The Washington Post or one of a small handful of serious daily newspapers (not including USA Today). If you’re not, then you are not a clueless citizen of this country.

And that could mean you’re one of the three co-hosts on the Fox Morning Show. This is surely the stupidest news/entertainment show on television, and that’s saying something the low, low bar. The other day those three shamefully dumb people laughed off the Ray Rice woman-beating video which occurred in an elevator by suggesting everyone should learn to use the stairs where there’s no video. There ought to be a way to put people like this out of their self-imposed misery. Everyone could start by turning off their program.

The battle over space in airline coach cabins just turned into a real-life battle. We all read with about the passenger who attached a “knee defender” onto the seat of the passenger in front of him to prevent her from reclining her seat. Bingo. She tries to recline, can’t, gets upset, guy behind her says too bad I want my own space, and she throws a cup of water on him. Result: the plane is diverted from its intended destination, and both unruly passengers are removed.

End of story. Almost.

The tale of revenge or rudeness, depnding on your viewpoint, has stirred quite a commotion. Social media folks are declaiming opinions, pro and con. The airlines have no specific rules against using a knee defender, but the in-air regulations that nothing be done that might interfere with the flight can be used in this case. As for the passenger who tossed the water, well, technically that’s an assault, and that’s seldom the right thing.

I’m sympathetic. I’ve had that middle seat and found myself inhumanly squeezed when the passenger in front of me fully reclined the seat. It’s awful. And while you may consider the person who wishes to recline to be thoughtless of others — correct on that count — they paid for their seat, and it relines, so they are quite entitled.

So who’s really to blame here? It’s as plain as the water dripping down your shirt: the airlines. Who is it that created the sub-human seating plan in coach these days? Who deliberately shrank the size and space for passengers in order to cram more seats and paying customers on each flight? And who is using the crowding to try and persuade more passengers to pay more money for slightly larger (but still uncomfortable) seats?

If you’re a coach class passenger — and by the way, you’re paying about 25% more than you used to four years ago to get the lowest fares four years ago. And that doesn’t include the myriad extra fees that have helped to raise airline profits to new heights (and allowed them to improve first class and business class seating at the expense of coach passengers).

To put it pleasantly, the airlines are finding new ways to screw coach class passengers. The airlines are not your friends, as I’ve been saying for years. It’s difficult to be charitable about corporate entities so disdainful of a large segment of their customers.

Once upon a time, PBS presented to Americans the very finest examples of our musical culture. Such programs as “Live from Lincoln Center,” “Great Performances” and “Live from the Met” offered viewers a wonderful sampling of classical music, opera and dance featuring some of the greatest and most admired artists in the world. That’s what PBS used to do, anyway, and I say that with sadness and regret and now some growing anger.

What has replaced that programming are low-brow shows such as “Antiques Roadshow,” surely the dullest and most predictable non-reality entity on television, along with self-help shows with the well-worn likes of the Suze Orman and Wayne Dyer and an increased number of pledge week appeals for money which specialize in showing aging doo-wop groups from the 1950s and ’60s. What a sad ending for PBS.

The network recently announced its 2014-1015 program lineup. Yes, “Downtown Abbey” is there again — to my delight, although the PBS insistence on delaying it months beyond the first showing in Great Britain is another instance of misguided management. But the rest of the season is notably mostly for the total absence of classical music. There’s no classical dance. And there’s only one opera, “Porgy and Bess.” (If you happen to like jazz, you’re out of luck once again as well.)

In brief, it’s a pathetic lineup that speaks to a diminished sense of values on the part of the people who run the network. I of course cannot say it will cost PBS viewers because I have no way of knowing. But I do know it will cost them at least one viewer — me. And it will cost them my pledge, too, because I will no longer offer my financial support given their lack of interest in what interests me.

There are network programs of some quality, to be fair about it. But more and more I am seeing lower-level programming come to the fore with an emphasis on pop culture. What else would you call the appearance of Lady Gaga and a repeat showing of “Cats” from nearly 20 years ago?

All of this does indeed make me sad and disappointed. I feel abandoned, my companionship no longer desired. I don’t expect that to matter in the big picture, but the executives who oversee PBS need to know they have divorced me, not the other way around.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. To wit, the conflict between the Israelis and Hamas.

I do not pretend to understand all the nuances of this ages-old clash in the Middle East. Does anyone? But I don’t believe you have to be terribly nuanced when to grasp the level of mindless killing and destruction going on now in Gaza. And how many words have been wasted once again on who is to blame?

The answer to that is, obviously it would seem, both sides. Leaders on both sides through the years have demonstrated an appalling lack of vision, have turned a deaf ear to the needs of their people and have justified murderous rampages with rank platitudes. A plague on both of them.

Yes, Hamas has shown it cares nothing for the welfare of the people it claims it wants to protect and lead. It has shamelessly put those people at great risk and failed them time and again. It is a terrorist organization which shows no evidence of a sense of morality. And thousands of people have been killed and so many more made homeless solely by their failed, misguided actions.

And yes, Israel has a right to defend itself against violent attacks that deliberately target civilians. Israel is a democratic nation — something the warlords at Hamas can only imagine — and that merits respect. But precisely because it is a democratic nation, it must rise above the eye-for-an-eye tactics that diminish the nation in the world’s eyes. Israel says it does not target schools and hospitals and civilians. I can believe that. But when the result of your own militarism is attacks on schools and hospitals and the deaths of hundreds and thousands of civilians, what’s the difference? Residents of Gaza who have nothing to do with Hamas must wonder.

The leaders of Hamas and Israel jointly share responsibility for the horror now underway in Gaza. They seem unable and unwilling to move beyond their own hatreds. A lasting peace in the Middle East will forever elude these narrow-minded worshipers of chaos. And it is their people who will continue to suffer as a result. Shame on them. Shame on all of them who pursue paths of infinite pain, death and betrayal.

Ah-ha. Gotcha’. Republicans in Congress eager to show the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups are now gleefully reporting they have been handed a selection of emails written by Lois Lerner, in which the former IRS officer refers to some members of the Republican Party as “wackos,” “crazies” and “assholes.”

Republican Dave Camp of Michigan says this demonstrates Lerner’s “deep animus toward conservatives.” Apart from the surprise at finding a Republican who knows the meaning of “animus” — Michele Bachman no doubt thinks it has something to do either with animals or enemas — Rep. Camp’s assertion brings evokes a reply of so-what?

Whether Ms. Lerner has an animus or not, she’s hardly off base in referring to a large number of Republicans in those terms. Really. How else can you seriously characterize people like the witless Bachman and Sarah Palin, with her constant cries of ‘impeach him.”? What else would you call Republicans like Ted Yoho and his suggestion that only property owners in this country be allowed to vote? Or Ted Cruz, who shut down the government and cost this nation hundreds of millions of dollars for his own selfish wants? Or Louis Gohmert, perhaps the most amoeba-like congressman currently holding elective office? Or the brain-addled Glenn Beck or drug-addled Rush Limbaugh, among the densest of the conservative commentators?

Seriously, what else can you conclude when you look at that group, and so many others in and out of the Congress who cling to the Tea Party branch? They are indeed wackos and crazies, and the worst of them are assholes. And while Speaker John Boehner doesn’t qualify — he’s merely a wasted opportunist — he’s behind the wacko, crazed effort to sue President Obama for not properly implementing Obamacare, a program Boehner and his Republicans have wasted a vast amount of time and money trying to repeal. Does that make any sort of sense?

Now, yes, I know name-calling doesn’t advance the political agenda, nor does it help us move toward nonpartisanship in government. But frankly, there’s little hint that many Republicans in Congress — and unfortunately, some Democrats — really want any sort of nonpartisan role. The result is a Congress that has done nothing, making for this to be perhaps the worst session in memory, and which continues to applaud a stance that abhors the very nature of government.

For that they deserve the label of assholes. Now let’s move forward.

Who’s the most interesting man in the world?

It isn’t Ryan Reynolds. It isn’t Robert Pattinson (whoever he is). Heck, it isn’t even George Clooney. Nope, the most interesting man in the world is Jonathan Goldsmith, and that’s official. And yes, you do know who Jonathan Goldsmith is. He’s that guy from Vermont who appears so cool in the Dos Equis television advertisements. And guess what? He’s 75 years old.

I mention that last fact only because I’m really getting tired of the people who oversee production and marketing campaigns pretending that people who are older don’t exist. Or don’t count.

My grievances have reached something of a peak this summer. I enjoy going to the movies, always have. As a youngster, I especially liked war movies. As an adult, I preferred films that had a story and characters and something to care about besides explosions. Maybe even the occasional fantasy. As an older adult, I want films that tell me interesting stories about people.

As an older adult, however, what Hollywood sends me are over-the-top, witless movies (i.e., Transformers, The Expendables III, any other sequel or prequel) written for children under the age of 18 with a mental age not exceeding 12. I’ve lost a lot of enthusiasm for going to the movies, not because I’m an immobile (I ride a bicycle twice daily and hike regularly) crank (I’m a grandfather addicted to the kids and grandkids) but because I still respect the virtue of good storytelling and find it conspicuously absent in the theaters. My money instead now goes to live theater and concerts.

And a lot of us older adults — I’m 74 — have some money. The AARP reports that there are 100 million Americans over the age of 50 who control about 70 per cent of the disposable income in this country. In fact, Americans over the age of 50 constitute the third largest economy in the world, surpassed only by the gross national product of the United states and China. And Hollywood can’t turn out more than a couple dozen or so movies for us each year?

Again, using an AARP factoid, almost everyone you see in a new car commercial these days apparently is between the ages of 18 and 24. And yet — people ages 75 to dead buy five times as many new cars as people 18 to 24. That’s worth repeating bluntly: if you’re close to shuffling off this mortal coil, you’re still more likely to buy a new car than your great grandchildren! Why haven’t the boneheads who market new car ads caught on to this by now?

Ironically, one group that does seem to have a scintilla of knowledge of these things is the justly beleaguered airline industry. Their ads — when they show you people and not clouds and baggage — focus on the first class or business cabins. And the people sitting in them are older. That’s because, of course, flying first class these days requires that you be a CEO (they tend to be older) or have a functioning annuity (again, most likely the property of someone older).

Everyone else on the flights is presumed by the airlines to be immobile, given that seating in coach — the “main cabin,” in airline-speak — is somewhere between really tight and really-really right, no kidding. if you’re flying coach, and you don’t or can’t pay increasing fees for upgraded seating, you will soon come to know what it feels like to be old and infirm. The worst I ever felt in my life came not after running a 6.2 mile road race but after I stepped off the plane following a coach class flight from Atlanta to Dallas. I would rather body surf from LA to Sydney than fly that trip in coach.

Another one of the industries which has a regrettable focus on older adults are the large drug manufacturers. In pursuit of ever-greater aggrandizement, they are constantly peddling their latest over-priced pills for a variety of problems that aren’t really problems (Low-T guys, I’m talking to you) and which generate more side effects than a bad bike crash. I wish they would go away. Or at least face some kind of control in the sale, advertisement and pricing of their pills.

So yes, sometimes I suppose I do sound more like a grump than a gramp. But you should also know that I occasionally sip one of those Dos Equis beers, and that at least makes me one of the most interesting men for a little while, doesn’t it?