The question still unanswered is how is a government that cannot even keep their own system clean going to do better than the HMOs?
So there a case where someone takes advantage of the system. There is no fool proof system. Large banks have been had and don't want the bad press. Even Walmart has been conned. Big time! These are kept secret because they are bad for business. I won't go into the scams and add to the problem. However, they were anything but clever.
Medicare and Medicaid are keeping less pencil pushers, no value added, folks out of the system. This is waste and so is the method in which over 50 different companies pay claims in 50 different states, with their own rules.
First of all, we know that parts are brought into this country and put together to avoid VAT. Its the same manner in which companies like to operate in Texas as oppose to other states. Fact is that if it weren't for the news, I wouldn't even know that we are in recession. Them fools are still building homes here. The United States has provided a better economic climate for business and hence we are the largest consumer nation on the planet.
Then the currency manipulation is a fact of life. The central banks do this all the time. They do it to keep people like George Soros from making a cool billion in one days, as he has done in the past. Its legal and there are people out there looking for opportunities to do just this.
The article is well written and if you can't see the point. You just don't understand macro economics. I'll go a step further and state that you have no earthly idea of what the end of the UAW/Big Three means.
At best Toyota/Honda will be a niche market, much like MAC computers (10%) and China/India will make the rest. They might buy the logo/brand, but the end product will employ their population.
Does anyone know if the big drug companies have to pay taxes if they are based in Puerto Rico?
which is really a hidden (to the end consumer) sales tax
So you found out that your paying for the German health benefits in that BMW? So how much less and more appealing would the Caddy be if GM didn't have to bear the full cost of the American health benefits and it was spread out across the entire economy?
how does the VAT give them an advantage?
It narrows the price gap, hence it makes their product more appealing than that of a UAW employees. My only argument is that taxing should be uniform worldwide.
1. Drop any tariffs, quotas or other special taxes on imported goods and services. 2. Drop any market-distorting practices, like selective subsidies, taxes, regulations or other policies that favor domestic or foreign products or services. 3. Provide free access to accurate information about the markets involved. 4. Allow money and other forms of capitol to flow unrestricted between countries, without currency manipulation or restrictions. 5. Labor must also be able to travel freely within the free-trade region.
Then the UAW will have the advantage, we invented everything and that includes robotics, composites, and even the IPOD. Just like in the Olympics, we will take the gold again and again. We are the market they want entry into aka the Americans with deep pockets. The UAW has lots to do with that fact.
Caddy would be more appealing at a lower price point. All taxes should be balanced globally. Hard to achieve with special interests (UAW) and uneven economies.
An old tale about two mid-20th-century titans may be apocryphal, but it offers insights into our economic history. Henry Ford II and Walter Reuther are jointly touring a modern auto plant. Ford jokingly jabs at Reuther: "Walter, how are you going to get these robots to pay UAW dues?" Not missing a beat, Reuther responds: "Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?"
It is easy to romanticize the '50s, but the era did have some positive features. Unions along with minimum wage and unemployment insurance contributed both to the emergence of a strong middle class and to rapid economic growth. Americans may well have paid more for cars than if the "Big Three" had not been unionized, but unions had a protective effect that went well beyond their immediate membership. Many bosses -- from construction to the emerging giants in retailing and services -- hated unions and were willing to pay above market-rate wages in order to forestall union organization.
Many bosses -- from construction to the emerging giants in retailing and services -- hated unions and were willing to pay above market-rate wages in order to forestall union organization.
I have witnessed first hand on several attempts to organize companies where they used tactics like you are saying. I have seen companies give big fat bonuses, throw elaborate parties, increase wages. I have also seen competing Unions screw potential Union members out of their chance to have representation. At least 3 times I remember two Unions were vying for workers at companies in the Oil Fields. Two of those times the company was able to take advantage of the situation and won the NLRB election. Of course as soon as the dust settles they start the old we are not doing well and have to cut wages back. In 1970 when we signed cards with the IBEW to become Unionized, the Teamsters snuck in via the telephone operators. It was a hard fought battle. Operators out numbered the technicians 10 to 1. It was still a close election. The Teamsters knew how to throw better parties and convinced the operators they would get the best deal with their representation. And that was probably true. As the local Telephone operators under IBEW contract did not fare as well as our long distance operators. I would probably be getting about $2000 more per month retirement with the much better run IBEW pension plan. Automation has all but eliminated those 1200 operators. There are more technicians today than in 1970. Automation will continue to eliminate UAW jobs and increase high tech jobs. If the domestics survive.
PS In 1970 RCA Global preferred working with the Teamsters. They did not put out any anti union propaganda. Their employees world wide were under Teamster contracts and felt that was to their advantage. AK Teamsters were not quite as easy to deal with as the International was.
So you found out that your[sic] paying for the German health benefits in that BMW? So how much less and more appealing would the Caddy be if GM didn't have to bear the full cost of the American health benefits and it was spread out across the entire economy?
So you think that the VAT explains why the BMW is less expensive than the Cadillac? If so, you missed my point. Both the BMW & the comparable Mercedes are considerably more expensive. Cadillac enjoys a significant price advantage over its German competition, & yet it can't translate that into increased sales & profits. In the luxury market segment, perceived status matters much more than price differences, so you can't blame Caddy's problems on how other countries tax their citizens.
Caddy's problem, which, by extension, is also a UAW problem, is that far fewer people aspire to own one. You can say that the German brands attract status-seeking badge hounds & you'd be at least partly correct, but I'm old enough to remember when status-seeking badge hounds hungered for Cadillacs & made the Cadillac division a profit monster that was the envy of the entire industry. Why can't Caddy get back some of these shallow people? Their money is just as good as anyone else's. 1. Drop any tariffs, quotas or other special taxes on imported goods and services. 2. Drop any market-distorting practices, like selective subsidies, taxes, regulations or other policies that favor domestic or foreign products or services. 3. Provide free access to accurate information about the markets involved. 4. Allow money and other forms of capitol to flow unrestricted between countries, without currency manipulation or restrictions. 5. Labor must also be able to travel freely within the free-trade region.
I'm a hard-core free-trading Cato Institute supporter, so all of these sound good to me. My main brief is with some UAW supporters who say that until all countries adhere to these principles, the U.S. should be as protectionist as the worst of its trading partners. I don't buy that.
Automation has all but eliminated those 1200 operators. There are more technicians today than in 1970. Automation will continue to eliminate UAW jobs and increase high tech jobs. If the domestics survive.
There's a tremendous variation among labor unions-not only among the industries with which they're affiliated, but among the working people comprising their memberships. There's the guy toiling in an iron foundry in Indiana, the guy running a paper machine in Everett, Washington, the woman nurse tending patients in a San Francisco convalescent hospital. And there's George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriquez, Kobe Bryant and Tom Brady.
What do these folks have in common? They are all dues-paying members of labor unions, organizations dedicated to improving the wages, benefits and working conditions of the American worker. The first three individuals mentioned earn roughly $50,000-$60,000 a year, with decent benefits. The others-the actors and athletes-earn millions.
As for the tel com corridor here in Texas
In many ways, it's worse. Like the massive declines in the nation's steel, oil and automobile industries in decades past, the disintegration of the telecom business is leaving deep wounds in the U.S. work force. But labor historians say telecom stands out for the unprecedented speed of the boom-and-bust cycle. After telecom was deregulated in 1996, it quickly expanded by some 331,000 jobs before peaking in late 2000. Since the downturn started, though, companies have announced layoffs that have wiped out all those new jobs and more -- a total of well over 500,000 workers, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal. By contrast, it took two decades for the ranks of the United Auto Workers to fall to 732,000 from 1.5 million, as the auto industry was forced to become much more efficient in the face of foreign competition.
I have not said one word here on this subject except to say that the big 3 have had excellent insurance in the past at a very high cost. This high cost paid for not only the workers but also those who used the services that did not have insurance. Only lately have the insurance companies fought back. Now when I get back the invoice from the insurance company there is the charge by the care provider, a much lower charge of what the insurance company will actually pay and my copay. So if the medical provider wants my business (insurance approved) they can only accept the insurance companies estimate of what it should be.
But what I really want to say is how the heck can we afford national health care? My brother no longer has a job with insurance. His family cost would be over $15,000 a year. Since only half the families in this country could ever afford that then the other half would need to pay $24,000 in taxes. I do not know about you but that is a large percentage of our income.
My opinion? We start out by providing free health care for all US citizens until they are 18 (and any issues that they had before 18 that continue) and for those over 65. Affordable and fair.
I'm a hard-core free-trading Cato Institute supporter, so all of these sound good to me. My main brief is with some UAW supporters who say that until all countries adhere to these principles, the U.S. should be as protectionist as the worst of its trading partners. I don't buy that.
The United States is the leader of the World. We need to lead by example. We need to get the message out that improved lifestyle is a direct result of free trade. It keeps prices competitive and quality is assured. It has been proven so many times throughout history that protectionism creates mediocrity and eventual collapse. GM and the UAW have to work together to gain back the edge they once had. Or they will just go into the history books with the dozens of other automakers. I miss Studebaker and Packard more than I will miss Chevrolet and Dodge.
Both the BMW & the comparable Mercedes are considerably more expensive.
Could you even think that the price gap would be even more if it were not for VAT?
The CTS V has the recarro seats and a V8 which makes it the Status Car if one is looking for the envy factor.
CATO ? Isn't that where old PHDs go to promote think tank ideas which are funded by private interests? Where is the peer review in such institutions? Much like the writers of the old classics, where few women were represented (Emily Dickinson/Harper Lee come to mind) and the good ole boys club came to being. We have to also note that maybe 10% of Americans could read and write. Americans for Democratic Action gets a label slightly less frequently than the Heritage Foundation, though both are labeled very often. In fact, the ADA gets a label more often than the Young Americans for Freedom does, and almost three times as often as conservative groups like the Cato Institute or the National Association of Scholars. And the overall tendency is overwhelming: liberals are singled out for their views more often than conservatives are. Liberal has become such a problematic word that nobody seems to want to use it. Since the Reagan era, the right has gone after it as "the L-word," to the point where a lot of politicians are nervous about owning up to being liberals. And people on the genuine left have always been suspicious of the term, preferring to think of themselves as progressives. But nobody every talks about "the C-word," and people on the right are always happy to call themselves conservatives. Hence, we can go on about the Orwellian lexicon and almost as laughable as the liberal media bias. Just who does own the media? Who advertises/bankrolls on this so called liberal media?
What do these folks have in common? They are all dues-paying members of labor unions, organizations dedicated to improving the wages, benefits and working conditions of the American worker.
As a life long Union person under 3 different Unions, I am not anti union. My problem is with the UAW that is squeezing the life blood out of the Domestic Auto Industry. 400,000 prima donna workers and 700,000 retirees should not be allowed to hold the domestic auto industry hostage. You will never convince me that the auto industry jobs lost are not a direct result of UAW bullheadedness over work rules and benefits. The UAW is as much responsible for the jobs going to Mexico, Brazil and Canada as any one entity. And in spite of that GM was so weighed down here at home that they have not made a decent return on investment for over 20 years. I say that is killing the goose laying the golden egg.
The UAW is as much responsible for the jobs going to Mexico, Brazil and Canada as any one entity.
Thats not up to you and myself. This next generation will send down its list of DEMANDS. If you think they aren't going to change things, think again. Your under estimating their abilities. This isn't China. These are the very kids who are fighting the war as we speak, getting educated, and enjoying the American dream. We could look at those who worked 364 days a year, 12 hours a day, for life's bare needs (food clothing, and shelter) in the steel mills. Its gotten better not worse. Whats next? A 20 hour work week? Its up to them. Your under estimating social forces within a society. I think they will opt for making the UAW stronger. I've seen this whole thing go to the extreme right and now its going the other way, as if it were a law of physics.
You’ll listen to me because I’m your doctor. I only have your health interests in mind.. I have written this article without ‘prior authorization’ from any insurance companies.
If patients, physicians and the Medicare Corporation continue to work together, without the deleterious interference of private for-profit health insurance corporations, malpractice threats and overt pharmaceutical marketing, the future for American health care will be healthy indeed.. A continuation of the status-quo mixture of a government subsidized private health maintenance insurance industry operating parallel to and within Medicare is wasteful, and will continue to provide no potential future health improvements for America
I've seen this whole thing go to the extreme right and now its going the other way, as if it were a law of physics.
My view is just the opposite. I see us swinging to the extreme left over the last 15 years and am hoping that somewhere there are those that cherish conservative values, that will step up and say enough is enough. The UAW entitlement mentality is the epitome of Liberal think. No different than someone sitting in the ghetto watching a big screen TV, waiting for their welfare check and food stamp allotment. After they get their rent paid under Section 8. You see I have first hand knowledge of what goes on with our system of entitlement. I had a Section 8 renter that did not pay me her part of the rent for over 3 years. She found a bigger house than mine and moved her 5 kids and got me off the hook. When they booted her out in 3 months she called asking to move back in. I thankfully had rented it to a paying renter with a job. This country is so far left now, I do not look for it to ever get back close to fiscal conservatism that I live my life by. Hopefully the members in the UAW will boot fiddlefinger out and give GM and Ford a chance to survive. I think it is too late for GM.
up what a lot of us think about what the UAW's have done to point the domestic auto industry towards the huge iceberg. Demanding more from your Company than they really can afford to give is one of the big problems here. While the Big 3 decided that cars weren't the meal ticket and that they could just be left out to twist in the wind, it's the UAW with their rather large pay increase demands and healthcare demands that have helped sink GM and Chrysler.
It sounds like A.Mullaly and Ford Motor Co. are saying that they'll be all right for 2009, and hopefully after that, if I have read my automotive news right. Their autos seem to be getting built better all the time, though a new all-electric would be nice, Ford. Maybe take the 2010 Ford Fiesta model and rebuild it with an all-electric powertrain, it's light, and would be the most fitting Ford to fit for electricity, at least without showing us any other bodystyles they're currently working on.
But that's the point, if GM wants to charge people $40,000+ for the 2010 Chevy Volt, that's not going to mix with this economic situation very well. Think smaller, like the 2010 Pininfarina-Bollore B0, for example, GM, Ford and...umm...Chrysler.
Heck, give me a robot and a computer and I can build a car better than GM from a yacht off Bermuda. That's the future of the market...design and build your own.
I see us swinging to the extreme left over the last 15 years
If this is left then you might just be a fascist. I can only suggest that you quit reading/listening to the right wing corporate controlled media. There is no argument on who owns the media outlets and that they derive their income from advertising for the big multi national companies. They don't have your best interest at heart, even if you think they are your superiors. Save money - live better, is but a slogan. Their new logo is nothing but a con job. Walmart is nasty inferior cookie cutter fecal matter.
Back in the day when the UAW was strong. CEO pay wasn't what it is today. Deregulation and corporate welfare wasn't an issue. Left to their own devices they managed to bring down the entire banking system. If it weren't for the bail out, capitalism would have failed. Its absurd to grant all these tax breaks to wealthy corporations and wait for the trickle down/supply side golden shower. If things were so grand then Obama wouldn't have stood a chance. The compassionate fundamentalist neo conservative has taken this nation to the brink of disaster. I just can't imagine it getting any worse. The only question is if we will have the "lost decade" that Japan had? Trillions lost in 401K money, many will have to put off retirement. Those forward thinking folks who said "there is nothing wrong with our health care system" have yet to explain why there are more Americans without insurance. Why are employers/corporations complaining about the rising cost of health insurance? For that matter why does a Pizza Hut employee in Europe have health insurance, here in the land of milk and honey that same Pizza Hut employee lacks health insurance. Enough of this race to the bottom and back to progress. Again, America elected a new commander and chief, Obama as a forward thinking leader.
up what a lot of us think about what the UAW's have done to point the domestic auto industry towards the huge iceberg
A friend of mine just told me they leased acres and acres. To Toyota and Honda off both the ports of Houston and New York. They are parking their car there. Rodents are nesting in some of them. Who is going to buy them? Then again, I was at the UAW Arlington plant and saw them putting Arabic lettering on the dash controls of those big SUVs.
CATO ? Isn't that where old PHDs go to promote think tank ideas which are funded by private interests?
C'mon, DD. You call yourself a classical liberal - as opposed to a New Deal welfare liberal - so the Cato Institute should be your intellectual home away from home.
The CTS V has the recarro seats and a V8 which makes it the Status Car if one is looking for the envy factor.
I happen to like the CTS - it's unquestionably the best looking Cadillac since the Eldorados of the late 60s - & I hope that it's the breakthrough car that Cadillac desperately needs. But it has to undo almost 30 years of fumbling & blundering, for which I blame GM management more than I blame the UAW.
Perhaps Cadillac is still an aspirational vehicle in Texas & elsewhere in the interior states. But on the coasts, & particularly in the all-important California market, the wealthy & the wannabe wealthy broadcast their social status by buying German. This has been true since the first of the baby boomers reached their early 30s, back in the late 1970s. Remember when the word "yuppie" became part of our popular vocabulary in the early 1980s? Preferring German cars - BMWs in particular - was a large part of being a yuppie. No self-respecting yuppie would be seen alive or dead in a bustleback Seville.
Cadillac's core business was under attack, & alarm bells should have sounded in divisional headquarters. But Cadillac wasted most of the 1980s & all of the 1990s designing & building cars that few buyers born after WWII wanted to buy - particularly if those prospective customers were affluent college-educated professionals living in high-income coastal zip codes.
Just think how much better off GM would be today if it had brought a high-performance Euro-inspired RWD sedan like the CTS to market in 1993 instead of 2008. Try to imagine how many billions of dollars in lost profits this failure has cost the company.
You can carry on all day about the VAT (devised, BTW, by the French in the 1950s to combat revenue lost to smugglers), but the real story here is how Cadillac lost an entire generation of luxury car buyers by failing to understand what they wanted.
CATO ? Isn't that where old PHDs go to promote think tank ideas which are funded by private interests?
They lost me years ago. Big tobacco, Texas sodomy laws, the nuts from Waco, and then they support the neoconservative movement have lost many supporters. Like any large organization, its leadership has been hijacked by special interests.
BMW does lots of leasing and there were plenty of sub prime folks out there in the auto market. I was amazed when the local Infinity dealer told me that 70% plus of their cars were leased. Word is that the repo man is doing good business these days. So one could out right buy a Caddy and or appear to be more affluent by leasing. The fact is that GM in France builds the transmission on the 3 and 5 series BMW. I see common parts in many euro cars. Then I see BMW motors in some GMs too. Its amazing how this cross referencing works.
The fact is that GM in France builds the transmission on the 3 and 5 series BMW.
That's nice, but wouldn't you rather see GM sell the whole car & not just the tranny?
I grew up in a fairly well-off suburb of NYC in the late 50s & 60s, & I remember clearly how Cadillac completely dominated the luxury market then. If you walked through the parking lots of country clubs where the elite golfed & drank, you'd see a few Lincoln Continentals & a sprinkling of Chrysler Imperials, but most of the cars there would be Cadillacs (or Olds 98s or Buick Electras, both of which shared bodies with the Sedan de Ville).
Cadillac's lock on that market segment was hugely profitable for GM. I recall reading in a 1960s business mag that 1 Cadillac sale was worth 5 or 6 Chevrolet sales to the corporation's bottom line. Given Cadillac's importance to GM as a whole, you'd think that the company would pull out all of the stops to keep outsiders - notably, the Germans - from stealing this business. Instead, it kept designing & building cars for the previous generation of buyers while BMW & Mercedes grabbed & the baby boomers. This was a colossal blunder that cost GM billions of dollars.
Again, I'm a fan of the new CTS. But it could have been & should have been brought to market many years earlier.
Again, I'm a fan of the new CTS. But it could have been & should have been brought to market many years earlier.
And then let's talk about the "entry-luxury" buyers. I've always liked smaller cars, but not CHEAP cars. For the past 20 years those cars were BMW, Audi, VW, perhaps Lexus, Acura - but NO CADDYS. Why couldn't Caddy have built the A4 rather than Audi in the mid 1990s? The 3-series rather than BMW in the early 1990s?
Not only are these smaller sport sedans very profitable compared to a Cobalt or Cavalier, they gain the brand loyalty to more expensive "move-up" luxury cars for the future. GM squandered this market and was left selling rental-fodder cars while most Americans who had a choice bought foreign to get some quality. And part of the issue was GM de-contenting the cars due to high fixed costs brought on by UAW benefits.
Not only are these smaller sport sedans very profitable compared to a Cobalt or Cavalier, they gain the brand loyalty to more expensive "move-up" luxury cars for the future. GM squandered this market and was left selling rental-fodder cars while most Americans who had a choice bought foreign to get some quality.
Excellent point, but not one that the UAW wants us to ponder. They would rather have us believe that the D3's current predicament is due entirely to forces beyond their control: currency manipulation, trade barriers, sunspots, Waco, etc. It will be easier for the UAW to sell us on the need for a no-strings bailout if they can get us to see the D3 as helpless victims. But once we understand that the D3 are their own worst enemies - that their blundering got them into this mess - then what little sympathy there is for a helping hand from the taxpayers will evaporate.
Back in the day when the UAW was strong. CEO pay wasn't what it is today.
Just when would that have been? I believe someone posted statistics showing that Wagoner was way behind the average CEO compared to the high paid UAW workers.
If it weren't for the bail out, capitalism would have failed.
I think you are very confused. The bailouts are a sign of failure. You will not find a true fiscal conservative that was in favor of ANY of the bailouts. Any good conservative will tell you that you do not reward failure. The liberals have pushed to bailout the banks, GM and their UAW millstone. They did it to cover up their failure to rein in their banking cronies that have given BIG donations to mainly Democrats. Don't kid yourself. If not for the politics of the UAW, GM would be out of business today. You can believe what you like. You are not convincing in your arguments for the UAW. Maybe your UAW local and bargaining unit are responsible and cognizant of the health of your Company. The UAW locals that are tied to the auto industry are totally out in LEFT field.
You said ==> "If it weren't for the bail out, capitalism would have failed."
You do not understand capitalism at all.... In short - capitalism provides freedom to take risks, freedom to succeed and freedom to fail.
The bail-outs are cutting off the "freedom to fail" part of capitalism and replacing it with the notion that the government will save you if you fail. THIS IS VERY WRONG.
The failed ventures MUST be allowed to die so newer-better ideas can take over. Otherwise, our grandkids will be paying taxes for more and more losing ventures which our goverment was too corrupt to allow to die. The inevatable end to this spiral is a FAILED GOVERNMENT!!!
This logic would be obvious to anyone who steps back a looks at things with an open mind.
regarding the conditions of the GM-Chrysler-UAW bailout. Might Obama hire some knowledgeable auto industry consultants(many of us would fill that spot admirably, IMHO )to help him keep tabs on how the UAW intends to get their grubbly paws on...uhhh...I...I mean work nicely with Daddy GM and Chrysler towards building product that the public actually feels like parting cash with?
I read some of his latest comments on this and that sounds like his intent. But who is he actually going to hire to watch over this 14B large, eh? Valid question?
But who is he actually going to hire to watch over this 14B large, eh? Valid question?
It is a good question. I just don't think any executive worth a hoot would take on the GM mess without the benefit of bankruptcy. They need the latitude to shed all the waste, UAW contracts and monstrous debts they have incurred. I think as in 1979, Chrysler would be easier to save than GM. They need a Jack Welch type that will streamline the operation, into a money making entity. I see it becoming a nationalized industry that ultimately fails to produce anything the consumers will want. Just think about a car designed by Pelosi, Reid, Obama and Barney Frank... :sick:
I say it was already time to punt, but apparently enough important others feel otherwise. 4th down and about 99 yards to go with a bunch of Guv-Mint cash. Can anyone smell raspberry jelly donuts warming in the Company microwave?
I noticed my old buddy's at The Boeing Company are finally joining the rest of the nation's manufacturer's and are layoff off some 4,500 workers. Here we go again. Boeing smells rotten socks with the sensivity of a hound dog. Anything close to tight pocketbooks anywhere in the world and they're brewing up the Starbuck's and buying the raspberry jelly donuts for those long, extendo excruciating Big-Boy meetings. With announcements following like this week's one. :sick:
What is the average residual value on a GM....oh wait a minuite..GM can't lease...the resid value is zero on a 3 year old vehicle...not to mention the repair costs, since the vehicle would be out of warranty. I believe that UAW workers need to negotiate for higher per hour earnings, higher matching 401k's, more sick leave per year and guaranteed job security. The obaaahma way is the UAWay... Go UAW...
Thats a rare breed today. Any car buyer is rare and I posted all the imports parked in lots off the ports yesterday. Maybe we could stack them to save space? Isn't it bad enough that the transplants can't sell theirs? Why do they import them to park them here?
"This is about power. And the business community is not going to give up power willingly." Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott said as much to a meeting with analysts in October. "We like driving the car," he told them, "and we're not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us."
Throughout his run for president, Obama was explicit in his support for Employee Free Choice and his understanding of the forces arrayed against it. "If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union; it's that simple," he told union members in Pennsylvania in April. "Let's stand up to the business lobby."
Nationwide, some 86,000 workers have been fired over the past eight years for trying to unionize (countless others have been threatened), and only a fraction of these get reinstated by the NLRB. So Lawhorn's return to the forklift is what passes for a victory these days, under the shredded protections of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, whose intent was not merely to protect the right to collective bargaining but to "encourag[e] the practice."
But unionization rates have been crashing for decades. "Historically, unionization basically created the middle class," says economist James Galbraith. "First, by its direct effect on the wages and benefits of unionized workers; second, by its indirect effect on the wages of workers who weren't unionized; and third, by the impact unions had on the creation of the social institutions that underpin the middle class, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid--the very structures of the New Deal and the Great Society."
Since the election, the business community has savvily retooled its campaign. In a November 21 letter to Congress, the Chamber wrote that passage of the bill "would have a particularly devastating impact on small employers who, as the primary source for new jobs, would be counted on to reverse the current economic downturn." The bill, the letter went on, "is an awful idea in good economic times and a catastrophic idea in the difficult economic times now upon us." Days later, the Chamber presented new research claiming that unionization is a drag on GDP--an assertion that Galbraith and other economists find laughable. And the Chamber used negotiations over the auto bailout to claim that unionization bankrupted the industry. In fact, labor makes up a tiny portion of a car's production cost, but in a tense economic environment with spiking unemployment, such talking points easily gained traction in the media.
As UC Santa Barbara labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein points out, the New Deal was not just a series of reforms that stabilized banking or stimulated the economy. "Those reforms," he says, "were backstopped by the organization of the working class, and those reforms continued for two generations." Any Obama-era reforms, he adds, "can and will dissipate" unless unions form an institutional bulwark against retreat.
Then, unions were more than twice their current size and less allied with progressive causes, and so it was easier to frame the battle as a parochial fight between big labor and big business. "Labor's decline helps recast that dynamic," he says. "This time around it isn't about two special interests; it's about economic recovery and restoring the middle class."
from just yesterday..."It would be nice for Audi to be different and build a plant in the north or midwest part of the U.S.,like around NYC ,Cleveland,Chicago,Kansas City,etc."...
You must come back to reality...I would believe that ANY foreign maker coming here will simply avoid the North or the Midwest...too many northern cities are overrun by unions and the cities are a failure, too, not just having the UAW...NYC has the transit union screwing up the city, Detroit is an absolute mess, and would still be even if the UAW was never there...truthfully, conisdering it is known as the rust belt, I see NO advantages to locating in ANY northern city, and they will be surrounded by environment-ruining unions running the North...the South simply does not have that problem, they don't have workers with the you-owe-me-a-job mentality, and no bad work habits to break...and if ANYONE thinks that a former UAW worker does not have about 12 million rotten work (or non-work) habits to break, they have been living in fantasyland...UAW people have grown up with, and have developed on their own, the worst militant attitudes and work habits seen since the fall of Rome...
If I had any kind of a job to offer, and someone noted on their resume that they even took a tour of a UAW plant 27 years ago as a school field trip, I would show them the door before they sat down for an interview...when you ingest a poison, there are often antidotes to save your life and help you survive...once you have the UAW poisoned attitude, even a religious epiphany cannot remove that welfare attitude..
No, they will look South as the North has been destroyed by all unions, not just UAW, but if you want to make cars, the North offers NOTHING...and please don't tell me about a trained workforce, as there is none up North...they are UAW trained, which means brainwashing to make anything but good product...it appears that the transplants train their workers that a good product is what means job security, something that people want to buy...the UAW just trains them that product quality is simply an accident, but you will demand your wages whether you work or not, whether someone buys your product or not...
One would have to be an absolute fool to go anywhere but the South...and avoiding any vestiges of the union is Job One...
AIG doesn’t break out its U.S. employment numbers, but it has 116,000 workers worldwide. Perhaps half of those are U.S. jobs.
GM employs 96,000 Americans. Total worldwide employment is 252,000, more than twice AIG’s.
Former AIG CEO Martin Sullivan earned about $14 million in 2007. Total pay over the last three years: About $53 million (including only 9 months in 2005, the year he became CEO).
GM CEO Rick Wagoner earned $14.4 million in 2007. Total pay over the last three years: About $30 million.
AIG is also offering controversial “retention bonuses,” ranging from $92,500 to $4,000,000, to a select group of execs deemed essential to the company’s turnaround. Congress has asked questions - but so far shown little outrage
There’s only been one Congressional hearing on AIG, and that focused mostly on past practices. No current AIG officials have testified before Congress since the feds got involved.
Wagoner has testified before Congress four times since November. And GM has presented a 38-page “viability plan,” that’s publicly available, showing how it would use government money.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke both support the AIG bailout, and they’ve steered money to the company without Congressional approval.
GM’s most important friends in Washington have been the Michigan Congressional delegation, which obviously doesn’t have the clout it used to. Paulson has actually argued against using part of the huge $700 billion financial bailout fund to help the automakers, because they can’t pass a “viability” test proving they’ll stay in business long enough to pay back the loans. But AIG hasn’t passed a viability test either, and without federal help there’s little doubt it would be in bankruptcy.
GM has a bunch: 64,000. Ah ha! Maybe that explains it. In fact, Senate Republicans who blocked a $10 billion emergency loan for GM and a $4 billion loan for Chrysler said they wouldn’t approve a Detroit bailout unless the United Auto Workers made much deeper concessions than they’ve already offered, essentially giving up any advantages they have over non-unionized workers in other states.
So here’s one lesson: If you want a government bailout, try to have problems that are too complicated for most people to understand. And make sure your employees are the kind who wear a suit to work every day. Once you’ve satisfied those two requirements, ask for as much as you want: The coffers are open.
One would have to be an absolute fool to go anywhere but the South...and avoiding any vestiges of the union is Job One..
VW would have probably given the UAW a shot at their new plant if not for the strikes this year against companies bleeding red ink. The UAW leadership is BRAIN DEAD!
Tough labor climate isn't helping state
BY TOM WALSH • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • August 3, 2008 When the top-level VW and Staubach teams came to Michigan for the crucial pitch in May at the Yarrow resort, their worst fears about Michigan's reputation for adversarial labor relations were splattered in headlines across Detroit's newspapers and USA Today:
"Local UAW strike hits GM's popular Chevy Malibu," May 6.
"UAW Turns Up the Heat," May 7
"Axle Union Reps Leave Talks," May 8.
"Fear of the UAW probably drove the final decision," Hettinger told me last week.
While some people in Michigan are quick to blame the UAW and other labor unions for all of the state's economic ills, others -- especially in the Democratic Party -- tend to dance around the topic. Labor has been politically powerful in Michigan for generations, and the UAW is deeply embedded in the state's fabric, not only in auto plants but in offices, casinos and on the boards of hospitals and charitable groups.
The past 30 years of decline for Michigan's auto industry and its chief labor union should have made it abundantly clear by now. If we keep doing the same dumb stuff, we will get the same dumb results.
While Michigan and Detroit may not be the most corrupt state in the Union, they run a close second to Illinois and Chicago. The UAW is a BIG part of that corruption.
So your argument is valid, starting a business in the Midwest or NE is problematic. Though it seems that Indiana has had better success than Michigan.
One would have to be an absolute fool to go anywhere but the South
A half-century ago, Mississippi's political godfather, the late U.S. Sen. James O. Eastland, told other prominent Southern pols during a meeting at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis that the South will "fight the CIO" (Congress of Industrial Organizations) and unionism with just as much vehemence and determination as it fights racial integration.
Semiskilled and unskilled workers present the main problems for the unions, because most of the skilled workers in the South have long been relatively well organized. In fact, several strong national craft organizations, including the International Association of Machinists, were founded in that region.
The deep-seated, evangelical, fundamentalist religion of southern communities has played a part in Southern unionism. It has cut both ways, or rather both sides have attempted to use it to forward their ends. The social gospel would lead some churchmen to favor measures that would promote the welfare of the worker. Lucy Randolph Mason, as agent of the CIO, was at least indirectly responsible for the adoption by the Southern Baptist Convention of a resolution favoring collective bargaining. Since the main training in leadership, speaking, and organizing of the southern worker has been in his church, and since his religion has such an appeal for him, organizers have used hymns and church procedures in their meetings. When in 1949 a large conference of the CIO in Atlanta sought to invigorate its southern drive, national CIO leaders used religious slogans. This was to be "a spiritual crusade led by men with religion in their hearts . . .," ". . . the thing we are fighting for is Christianity."
On the other hand, some southern brands of religion contain a fatalism and a pacifism, among other element, that are not conducive to the united action required of unionist. Moreover, from various motives, among them religious conviction, many Southern preachers have been either cool or actively hostile to unionization. Among those who adduce evidence of anti-union activity by preachers are Liston Page (Mill Hands and Preachers, New Haven, 1942) and Miss Mason (To Win These Rights, New York, 1952).
The attitude of the press in the South is predominantly anti-union, although seldom as extreme and violent as the late Frederick Sullens, editor of the Jackson (Mississippi) Daily News, who wrote in 1937:
Note to the CIO: If you want to start trouble anywhere in Mississippi, please pause and take this information. The Mississippi National Guard has been mustered up to 2,300. It has been made an effective fighting organization. The boys know how to shoot guns and are not afraid to do it when the command to fire is given.
However, if communities oppose 'outside agitators', these latter can expect little protection from local officials, who reflect the attitudes of their communities, and, if the press seems to advocate disregard of the civil rights of objectionable people, the labor organizer may find his work dangerous as well as difficult.
The extent of anti-union legislation by Southern states may be indicated by the fact that the eighteen 'right-to-work laws in the United States, ten have been passed by Southern legislatures--in Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Texas, and Mississippi. Louisiana had a similar statute, but repealed it in 1956. These laws vary in content, but are usually patterned on that of Virginia, which makes the union shop illegal under any circumstances. Their net effect on organized labor is nor easily determined, but it is clear that they represent an anti-union bias on the part of Southern lawmakers, who employ in passing them arguments not against the union shop but against union themselves.
Paradoxically, the facts that wages in the South are low and that they are rising both militate against the unions. Low wages and small incomes make it harder for workers to pay union dues, to hold through a strike, and to see the usefulness of a long struggle. When wages are increased, frequently indirectly through union activity, the Southern worker is as likely to give credit to the employer as to the union.
Once you’ve satisfied those two requirements, ask for as much as you want: The coffers are open.
Again every thing you have posted is a smokescreen to avoid the issue of UAW running the Domestic auto industry into the toilet. And your lame arguments about all the bank bailouts were pushed by the Democrats not the conservative Republicans. The bailouts have done nothing to keep the country going. Just more graft to friends of the 110th Congress. The same bunch of losers that the UAW supports. Let them all rot in the same hole.
The extent of anti-union legislation by Southern states may be indicated by the fact that the eighteen 'right-to-work laws in the United States, ten have been passed by Southern legislatures--in Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Texas, and Mississippi. Louisiana had a similar statute, but repealed it in 1956. These laws vary in content, but are usually patterned on that of Virginia, which makes the union shop illegal under any circumstances.
Those states at the time were predominantly Democrat. So what is your point? They did not swing over to Republican until a true Conservative was elected in Ronald Reagan. Even JFK was not as left wing wacko as today's Democrats that have corrupted the Unions in this country and especially the UAW.
capitalism provides freedom to take risks, freedom to succeed and freedom to fail.
Perhaps you could explain to me the risks of taxpayers building stadiums/arenas for billionaires? All I see is welfare for the rich and little risk and unGodly rewards/ill gotten gains/profits. AIG is a prime example of a $400,000 spa orgy after the bail out. Where was the outrage? If you have two children or more? Do you send only one to college? You do it for one, you MUST do it for the other.
AIG is a prime example of a $400,000 spa orgy after the bail out.
Thank your Democratic 110th Congress they fought hard for the bailout to their banking buddies. Name one conservative Republican that voted for the bailout bill.
Again every thing you have posted is a smokescreen to avoid the issue of UAW running the Domestic auto industry into the toilet.
Again the CEO in not a UAW represented employee. The CEO runs the company. Get over it. Deal with it. The AIG CEO ran that company into the toilet and was rewarded. Now GM is asking for a fraction of what AIG got.
Again if you detest socialism. Send that entitlement/social security check back and don't use Medicare either.
Name one conservative Republican that voted for the bailout bill.
McCain voted for it, Bush and Paulson pushed it. Its a republican bill. You can't be serious? Can you say VETO?
WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush signed into law an unprecedented $700 billion plan to rescue the U.S. financial system, one of the largest-ever government interventions in the nation's economy -- and almost certainly not the last.
On Friday, 26 Republicans and 33 Democrats switched from no to yes.
The compromise won wide support in the Senate Wednesday and passed the House on the second attempt on Friday by a vote of 263-171. President Bush signed the bill shortly thereafter.
Hello Everyone, Just saw the Hal Turner video on YouTube. He talks about the Amero, the supposed new American dollar, and that the present dollar will be devalued, that Canada, the US, and Mexico will be linked to a common currency the Amero Just do a search on YouTube for Hal Turner Amero, and tell me what you think and how this will affect the Autoworkers and working class of the US, Canada and Mexico if it comes to true. How believable is this?? Should I be concerned?
I also saw Mr. Gerard President of the United Steel Workers Union speak on National TV. He did a great job. Are there any Union leaders in the know on the unification of North American currencies? Do you guys know if this is true? Because the main stream press is suppressing this. Pretty scary stuff considering the situation the US, Canada and Mexico are in economically right now. Hal Turner says the US dollar should calapse by February 2009.
To throw in some sidetalk about the UAW, I heard a radio report early this morning about UAW picketing at the Detroit Auto Show (NAIAS). The report said they were complaining about mismanagement and something else causing the current problem... :sick:
I would give mismanagement the nod especially in respect to having given the overpaid in benefits to UAW workers too much future financial gain rather than paying for their current worth in the past. Yup, it was management's fault as long as we overlook UAW's part in the whole process.
Instead of picketing for effective change of work rules and pay NOW, the UAW picketed about the past trying to rewrite history and absolve themselves of all responsibility. Yup, it was just the management NOT. :P
AIG doesn’t break out its U.S. employment numbers, but it has 116,000 workers worldwide. Perhaps half of those are U.S. jobs.
I don't know what this has to do with Cadillac, which was the topic of the post to which you're replying.
Here's what I think you're trying to say: if I supported bailing out the banks & insurance companies, then I should support the auto industry bailout.
Here's my reply: I never supported the bank/insurance bailout, so I am under no obligation to support the auto industry bailout. In my judgment, both bailouts are based on flawed thinking & both will do more harm than good.
As you should know by now, we classical liberals just don't like bailouts.
(Or maybe you're trying to say that bailing out AIG was the right thing to do because some AIG executives drive Cadillacs. Is that it? I guess so, because we were discussing Cadillac. Sometimes I can't figure out what you're trying to say, DD.)
Your[sic] ignoring the price difference and comparing apples to oranges. Whats a 3 series BMW run? MSRP $36,300 Whats a Cobalt run? MSRP $15,660.00
Go back & read the post to which I was replying. The OP made what I thought was an excellent point: GM ceded the market for small luxury cars - like the 3-series BMW & the Audi A4 - to the Germans, thereby forfeiting billions in profits. GM was blind when it came to this segment of the market. Its top executives believed that the only people who bought small cars were people who couldn't afford big cars.
Did any of them ever drive a BMW 325?
Suppose that Cadillac had introduced a real 3-series competitor - a compact high-performance sports sedan or coupe - back in 1990. That car could have brought affluent baby boomers into the Cadillac fold, creating a customer base for larger & more expensive cars. Cadillac's failure to do this lost an entire generation of upper income buyers & cost the brand countless billions in profits.
I know that you'd rather talk about AIG & right-wing media takeover conspiracies, but I'd prefer to discuss the criminal marketing & design blunders that led to the loss of a hugely profitable franchise.
McCain voted for it, Bush and Paulson pushed it. Its a republican bill.
You are in denial. So blinded by UAW politics you cannot decipher what your own party is doing to this country. If you want to find Conservative Republicans check the 171 that voted against the bailouts. Bush has signed onto just about every liberal bill that has crossed his desk in an attempt to REACH out. Big mistake. He tossed his conservative roots into the liberal trash heap of politics.
Comments
So there a case where someone takes advantage of the system. There is no fool proof system. Large banks have been had and don't want the bad press. Even Walmart has been conned. Big time! These are kept secret because they are bad for business. I won't go into the scams and add to the problem. However, they were anything but clever.
Medicare and Medicaid are keeping less pencil pushers, no value added, folks out of the system. This is waste and so is the method in which over 50 different companies pay claims in 50 different states, with their own rules.
First of all, we know that parts are brought into this country and put together to avoid VAT. Its the same manner in which companies like to operate in Texas as oppose to other states. Fact is that if it weren't for the news, I wouldn't even know that we are in recession. Them fools are still building homes here. The United States has provided a better economic climate for business and hence we are the largest consumer nation on the planet.
Then the currency manipulation is a fact of life. The central banks do this all the time. They do it to keep people like George Soros from making a cool billion in one days, as he has done in the past. Its legal and there are people out there looking for opportunities to do just this.
The article is well written and if you can't see the point. You just don't understand macro economics. I'll go a step further and state that you have no earthly idea of what the end of the UAW/Big Three means.
At best Toyota/Honda will be a niche market, much like MAC computers (10%) and China/India will make the rest. They might buy the logo/brand, but the end product will employ their population.
Does anyone know if the big drug companies have to pay taxes if they are based in Puerto Rico?
So you found out that your paying for the German health benefits in that BMW? So how much less and more appealing would the Caddy be if GM didn't have to bear the full cost of the American health benefits and it was spread out across the entire economy?
how does the VAT give them an advantage?
It narrows the price gap, hence it makes their product more appealing than that of a UAW employees. My only argument is that taxing should be uniform worldwide.
1. Drop any tariffs, quotas or other special taxes on imported goods and services.
2. Drop any market-distorting practices, like selective subsidies, taxes, regulations or other policies that favor domestic or foreign products or services.
3. Provide free access to accurate information about the markets involved.
4. Allow money and other forms of capitol to flow unrestricted between countries, without currency manipulation or restrictions.
5. Labor must also be able to travel freely within the free-trade region.
Then the UAW will have the advantage, we invented everything and that includes robotics, composites, and even the IPOD. Just like in the Olympics, we will take the gold again and again. We are the market they want entry into aka the Americans with deep pockets. The UAW has lots to do with that fact.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_3415.cfm
Caddy would be more appealing at a lower price point. All taxes should be balanced globally. Hard to achieve with special interests (UAW) and uneven economies.
Regards,
OW
It is easy to romanticize the '50s, but the era did have some positive features. Unions along with minimum wage and unemployment insurance contributed both to the emergence of a strong middle class and to rapid economic growth. Americans may well have paid more for cars than if the "Big Three" had not been unionized, but unions had a protective effect that went well beyond their immediate membership. Many bosses -- from construction to the emerging giants in retailing and services -- hated unions and were willing to pay above market-rate wages in order to forestall union organization.
I have witnessed first hand on several attempts to organize companies where they used tactics like you are saying. I have seen companies give big fat bonuses, throw elaborate parties, increase wages. I have also seen competing Unions screw potential Union members out of their chance to have representation. At least 3 times I remember two Unions were vying for workers at companies in the Oil Fields. Two of those times the company was able to take advantage of the situation and won the NLRB election. Of course as soon as the dust settles they start the old we are not doing well and have to cut wages back. In 1970 when we signed cards with the IBEW to become Unionized, the Teamsters snuck in via the telephone operators. It was a hard fought battle. Operators out numbered the technicians 10 to 1. It was still a close election. The Teamsters knew how to throw better parties and convinced the operators they would get the best deal with their representation. And that was probably true. As the local Telephone operators under IBEW contract did not fare as well as our long distance operators. I would probably be getting about $2000 more per month retirement with the much better run IBEW pension plan. Automation has all but eliminated those 1200 operators. There are more technicians today than in 1970. Automation will continue to eliminate UAW jobs and increase high tech jobs. If the domestics survive.
PS
In 1970 RCA Global preferred working with the Teamsters. They did not put out any anti union propaganda. Their employees world wide were under Teamster contracts and felt that was to their advantage. AK Teamsters were not quite as easy to deal with as the International was.
So you think that the VAT explains why the BMW is less expensive than the Cadillac? If so, you missed my point. Both the BMW & the comparable Mercedes are considerably more expensive. Cadillac enjoys a significant price advantage over its German competition, & yet it can't translate that into increased sales & profits. In the luxury market segment, perceived status matters much more than price differences, so you can't blame Caddy's problems on how other countries tax their citizens.
Caddy's problem, which, by extension, is also a UAW problem, is that far fewer people aspire to own one. You can say that the German brands attract status-seeking badge hounds & you'd be at least partly correct, but I'm old enough to remember when status-seeking badge hounds hungered for Cadillacs & made the Cadillac division a profit monster that was the envy of the entire industry. Why can't Caddy get back some of these shallow people? Their money is just as good as anyone else's.
1. Drop any tariffs, quotas or other special taxes on imported goods and services.
2. Drop any market-distorting practices, like selective subsidies, taxes, regulations or other policies that favor domestic or foreign products or services.
3. Provide free access to accurate information about the markets involved.
4. Allow money and other forms of capitol to flow unrestricted between countries, without currency manipulation or restrictions.
5. Labor must also be able to travel freely within the free-trade region.
I'm a hard-core free-trading Cato Institute supporter, so all of these sound good to me. My main brief is with some UAW supporters who say that until all countries adhere to these principles, the U.S. should be as protectionist as the worst of its trading partners. I don't buy that.
There's a tremendous variation among labor unions-not only among the industries with which they're affiliated, but among the working people comprising their memberships. There's the guy toiling in an iron foundry in Indiana, the guy running a paper machine in Everett, Washington, the woman nurse tending patients in a San Francisco convalescent hospital. And there's George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriquez, Kobe Bryant and Tom Brady.
What do these folks have in common? They are all dues-paying members of labor unions, organizations dedicated to improving the wages, benefits and working conditions of the American worker. The first three individuals mentioned earn roughly $50,000-$60,000 a year, with decent benefits. The others-the actors and athletes-earn millions.
As for the tel com corridor here in Texas
In many ways, it's worse. Like the massive declines in the nation's steel, oil and automobile industries in decades past, the disintegration of the telecom business is leaving deep wounds in the U.S. work force. But labor historians say telecom stands out for the unprecedented speed of the boom-and-bust cycle. After telecom was deregulated in 1996, it quickly expanded by some 331,000 jobs before peaking in late 2000. Since the downturn started, though, companies have announced layoffs that have wiped out all those new jobs and more -- a total of well over 500,000 workers, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal. By contrast, it took two decades for the ranks of the United Auto Workers to fall to 732,000 from 1.5 million, as the auto industry was forced to become much more efficient in the face of foreign competition.
http://www.happinessonline.org/InfectiousGreed/p26.htm
But what I really want to say is how the heck can we afford national health care? My brother no longer has a job with insurance. His family cost would be over $15,000 a year. Since only half the families in this country could ever afford that then the other half would need to pay $24,000 in taxes. I do not know about you but that is a large percentage of our income.
My opinion? We start out by providing free health care for all US citizens until they are 18 (and any issues that they had before 18 that continue) and for those over 65. Affordable and fair.
The United States is the leader of the World. We need to lead by example. We need to get the message out that improved lifestyle is a direct result of free trade. It keeps prices competitive and quality is assured. It has been proven so many times throughout history that protectionism creates mediocrity and eventual collapse. GM and the UAW have to work together to gain back the edge they once had. Or they will just go into the history books with the dozens of other automakers. I miss Studebaker and Packard more than I will miss Chevrolet and Dodge.
Could you even think that the price gap would be even more if it were not for VAT?
The CTS V has the recarro seats and a V8 which makes it the Status Car if one is looking for the envy factor.
CATO ? Isn't that where old PHDs go to promote think tank ideas which are funded by private interests? Where is the peer review in such institutions? Much like the writers of the old classics, where few women were represented (Emily Dickinson/Harper Lee come to mind) and the good ole boys club came to being. We have to also note that maybe 10% of Americans could read and write.
Americans for Democratic Action gets a label slightly less frequently than the Heritage Foundation, though both are labeled very often. In fact, the ADA gets a label more often than the Young Americans for Freedom does, and almost three times as often as conservative groups like the Cato Institute or the National Association of Scholars. And the overall tendency is overwhelming: liberals are singled out for their views more often than conservatives are. Liberal has become such a problematic word that nobody seems to want to use it. Since the Reagan era, the right has gone after it as "the L-word," to the point where a lot of politicians are nervous about owning up to being liberals. And people on the genuine left have always been suspicious of the term, preferring to think of themselves as progressives. But nobody every talks about "the C-word," and people on the right are always happy to call themselves conservatives. Hence, we can go on about the Orwellian lexicon and almost as laughable as the liberal media bias. Just who does own the media? Who advertises/bankrolls on this so called liberal media?
As a life long Union person under 3 different Unions, I am not anti union. My problem is with the UAW that is squeezing the life blood out of the Domestic Auto Industry. 400,000 prima donna workers and 700,000 retirees should not be allowed to hold the domestic auto industry hostage. You will never convince me that the auto industry jobs lost are not a direct result of UAW bullheadedness over work rules and benefits. The UAW is as much responsible for the jobs going to Mexico, Brazil and Canada as any one entity. And in spite of that GM was so weighed down here at home that they have not made a decent return on investment for over 20 years. I say that is killing the goose laying the golden egg.
Thats not up to you and myself. This next generation will send down its list of DEMANDS. If you think they aren't going to change things, think again. Your under estimating their abilities. This isn't China. These are the very kids who are fighting the war as we speak, getting educated, and enjoying the American dream. We could look at those who worked 364 days a year, 12 hours a day, for life's bare needs (food clothing, and shelter) in the steel mills. Its gotten better not worse. Whats next? A 20 hour work week? Its up to them. Your under estimating social forces within a society. I think they will opt for making the UAW stronger. I've seen this whole thing go to the extreme right and now its going the other way, as if it were a law of physics.
If patients, physicians and the Medicare Corporation continue to work together, without the deleterious interference of private for-profit health insurance corporations, malpractice threats and overt pharmaceutical marketing, the future for American health care will be healthy indeed.. A continuation of the status-quo mixture of a government subsidized private health maintenance insurance industry operating parallel to and within Medicare is wasteful, and will continue to provide no potential future health improvements for America
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/february/what_government_does.php
http://www.americanhealthcarereform.org/
http://www.health-care-reform.net/causedeath.htm
My view is just the opposite. I see us swinging to the extreme left over the last 15 years and am hoping that somewhere there are those that cherish conservative values, that will step up and say enough is enough. The UAW entitlement mentality is the epitome of Liberal think. No different than someone sitting in the ghetto watching a big screen TV, waiting for their welfare check and food stamp allotment. After they get their rent paid under Section 8. You see I have first hand knowledge of what goes on with our system of entitlement. I had a Section 8 renter that did not pay me her part of the rent for over 3 years. She found a bigger house than mine and moved her 5 kids and got me off the hook. When they booted her out in 3 months she called asking to move back in. I thankfully had rented it to a paying renter with a job. This country is so far left now, I do not look for it to ever get back close to fiscal conservatism that I live my life by. Hopefully the members in the UAW will boot fiddlefinger out and give GM and Ford a chance to survive. I think it is too late for GM.
It sounds like A.Mullaly and Ford Motor Co. are saying that they'll be all right for 2009, and hopefully after that, if I have read my automotive news right. Their autos seem to be getting built better all the time, though a new all-electric would be nice, Ford. Maybe take the 2010 Ford Fiesta model and rebuild it with an all-electric powertrain, it's light, and would be the most fitting Ford to fit for electricity, at least without showing us any other bodystyles they're currently working on.
But that's the point, if GM wants to charge people $40,000+ for the 2010 Chevy Volt, that's not going to mix with this economic situation very well. Think smaller, like the 2010 Pininfarina-Bollore B0, for example, GM, Ford and...umm...Chrysler.
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
It's the Dell way!
Regards,
OW
If this is left then you might just be a fascist. I can only suggest that you quit reading/listening to the right wing corporate controlled media. There is no argument on who owns the media outlets and that they derive their income from advertising for the big multi national companies. They don't have your best interest at heart, even if you think they are your superiors. Save money - live better, is but a slogan. Their new logo is nothing but a con job. Walmart is nasty inferior cookie cutter fecal matter.
Back in the day when the UAW was strong. CEO pay wasn't what it is today. Deregulation and corporate welfare wasn't an issue. Left to their own devices they managed to bring down the entire banking system. If it weren't for the bail out, capitalism would have failed. Its absurd to grant all these tax breaks to wealthy corporations and wait for the trickle down/supply side golden shower. If things were so grand then Obama wouldn't have stood a chance. The compassionate fundamentalist neo conservative has taken this nation to the brink of disaster. I just can't imagine it getting any worse. The only question is if we will have the "lost decade" that Japan had? Trillions lost in 401K money, many will have to put off retirement. Those forward thinking folks who said "there is nothing wrong with our health care system" have yet to explain why there are more Americans without insurance. Why are employers/corporations complaining about the rising cost of health insurance? For that matter why does a Pizza Hut employee in Europe have health insurance, here in the land of milk and honey that same Pizza Hut employee lacks health insurance. Enough of this race to the bottom and back to progress. Again, America elected a new commander and chief, Obama as a forward thinking leader.
A friend of mine just told me they leased acres and acres. To Toyota and Honda off both the ports of Houston and New York. They are parking their car there. Rodents are nesting in some of them. Who is going to buy them? Then again, I was at the UAW Arlington plant and saw them putting Arabic lettering on the dash controls of those big SUVs.
http://www.newser.com/story/44666/us-ports-awash-in-foreign-cars.html
So who did that to the import auto industry? Why aren't Americans buying cars? Why are China and India coming into this industry?
C'mon, DD. You call yourself a classical liberal - as opposed to a New Deal welfare liberal - so the Cato Institute should be your intellectual home away from home.
The CTS V has the recarro seats and a V8 which makes it the Status Car if one is looking for the envy factor.
I happen to like the CTS - it's unquestionably the best looking Cadillac since the Eldorados of the late 60s - & I hope that it's the breakthrough car that Cadillac desperately needs. But it has to undo almost 30 years of fumbling & blundering, for which I blame GM management more than I blame the UAW.
Perhaps Cadillac is still an aspirational vehicle in Texas & elsewhere in the interior states. But on the coasts, & particularly in the all-important California market, the wealthy & the wannabe wealthy broadcast their social status by buying German. This has been true since the first of the baby boomers reached their early 30s, back in the late 1970s. Remember when the word "yuppie" became part of our popular vocabulary in the early 1980s? Preferring German cars - BMWs in particular - was a large part of being a yuppie. No self-respecting yuppie would be seen alive or dead in a bustleback Seville.
Cadillac's core business was under attack, & alarm bells should have sounded in divisional headquarters. But Cadillac wasted most of the 1980s & all of the 1990s designing & building cars that few buyers born after WWII wanted to buy - particularly if those prospective customers were affluent college-educated professionals living in high-income coastal zip codes.
Just think how much better off GM would be today if it had brought a high-performance Euro-inspired RWD sedan like the CTS to market in 1993 instead of 2008. Try to imagine how many billions of dollars in lost profits this failure has cost the company.
You can carry on all day about the VAT (devised, BTW, by the French in the 1950s to combat revenue lost to smugglers), but the real story here is how Cadillac lost an entire generation of luxury car buyers by failing to understand what they wanted.
They lost me years ago. Big tobacco, Texas sodomy laws, the nuts from Waco, and then they support the neoconservative movement have lost many supporters. Like any large organization, its leadership has been hijacked by special interests.
BMW does lots of leasing and there were plenty of sub prime folks out there in the auto market. I was amazed when the local Infinity dealer told me that 70% plus of their cars were leased. Word is that the repo man is doing good business these days. So one could out right buy a Caddy and or appear to be more affluent by leasing. The fact is that GM in France builds the transmission on the 3 and 5 series BMW. I see common parts in many euro cars. Then I see BMW motors in some GMs too. Its amazing how this cross referencing works.
That's nice, but wouldn't you rather see GM sell the whole car & not just the tranny?
I grew up in a fairly well-off suburb of NYC in the late 50s & 60s, & I remember clearly how Cadillac completely dominated the luxury market then. If you walked through the parking lots of country clubs where the elite golfed & drank, you'd see a few Lincoln Continentals & a sprinkling of Chrysler Imperials, but most of the cars there would be Cadillacs (or Olds 98s or Buick Electras, both of which shared bodies with the Sedan de Ville).
Cadillac's lock on that market segment was hugely profitable for GM. I recall reading in a 1960s business mag that 1 Cadillac sale was worth 5 or 6 Chevrolet sales to the corporation's bottom line. Given Cadillac's importance to GM as a whole, you'd think that the company would pull out all of the stops to keep outsiders - notably, the Germans - from stealing this business. Instead, it kept designing & building cars for the previous generation of buyers while BMW & Mercedes grabbed & the baby boomers. This was a colossal blunder that cost GM billions of dollars.
Again, I'm a fan of the new CTS. But it could have been & should have been brought to market many years earlier.
And then let's talk about the "entry-luxury" buyers. I've always liked smaller cars, but not CHEAP cars. For the past 20 years those cars were BMW, Audi, VW, perhaps Lexus, Acura - but NO CADDYS. Why couldn't Caddy have built the A4 rather than Audi in the mid 1990s? The 3-series rather than BMW in the early 1990s?
Not only are these smaller sport sedans very profitable compared to a Cobalt or Cavalier, they gain the brand loyalty to more expensive "move-up" luxury cars for the future. GM squandered this market and was left selling rental-fodder cars while most Americans who had a choice bought foreign to get some quality. And part of the issue was GM de-contenting the cars due to high fixed costs brought on by UAW benefits.
Excellent point, but not one that the UAW wants us to ponder. They would rather have us believe that the D3's current predicament is due entirely to forces beyond their control: currency manipulation, trade barriers, sunspots, Waco, etc. It will be easier for the UAW to sell us on the need for a no-strings bailout if they can get us to see the D3 as helpless victims. But once we understand that the D3 are their own worst enemies - that their blundering got them into this mess - then what little sympathy there is for a helping hand from the taxpayers will evaporate.
Just when would that have been? I believe someone posted statistics showing that Wagoner was way behind the average CEO compared to the high paid UAW workers.
If it weren't for the bail out, capitalism would have failed.
I think you are very confused. The bailouts are a sign of failure. You will not find a true fiscal conservative that was in favor of ANY of the bailouts. Any good conservative will tell you that you do not reward failure. The liberals have pushed to bailout the banks, GM and their UAW millstone. They did it to cover up their failure to rein in their banking cronies that have given BIG donations to mainly Democrats. Don't kid yourself. If not for the politics of the UAW, GM would be out of business today. You can believe what you like. You are not convincing in your arguments for the UAW. Maybe your UAW local and bargaining unit are responsible and cognizant of the health of your Company. The UAW locals that are tied to the auto industry are totally out in LEFT field.
You do not understand capitalism at all....
In short - capitalism provides freedom to take risks, freedom to succeed and freedom to fail.
The bail-outs are cutting off the "freedom to fail" part of
capitalism and replacing it with the notion that the government will save you if you fail. THIS IS VERY WRONG.
The failed ventures MUST be allowed to die so newer-better ideas can take over. Otherwise, our grandkids will be paying taxes for more and more losing ventures which our goverment was too corrupt to allow to die. The inevatable end to this spiral is a FAILED GOVERNMENT!!!
This logic would be obvious to anyone who steps back a looks at things with an open mind.
I read some of his latest comments on this and that sounds like his intent. But who is he actually going to hire to watch over this 14B large, eh? Valid question?
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
It is a good question. I just don't think any executive worth a hoot would take on the GM mess without the benefit of bankruptcy. They need the latitude to shed all the waste, UAW contracts and monstrous debts they have incurred. I think as in 1979, Chrysler would be easier to save than GM. They need a Jack Welch type that will streamline the operation, into a money making entity. I see it becoming a nationalized industry that ultimately fails to produce anything the consumers will want. Just think about a car designed by Pelosi, Reid, Obama and Barney Frank... :sick:
I say it was already time to punt, but apparently enough important others feel otherwise. 4th down and about 99 yards to go with a bunch of Guv-Mint cash. Can anyone smell raspberry jelly donuts warming in the Company microwave?
I noticed my old buddy's at The Boeing Company are finally joining the rest of the nation's manufacturer's and are layoff off some 4,500 workers. Here we go again. Boeing smells rotten socks with the sensivity of a hound dog. Anything close to tight pocketbooks anywhere in the world and they're brewing up the Starbuck's and buying the raspberry jelly donuts for those long, extendo excruciating Big-Boy meetings. With announcements following like this week's one. :sick:
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
Thats a rare breed today. Any car buyer is rare and I posted all the imports parked in lots off the ports yesterday. Maybe we could stack them to save space? Isn't it bad enough that the transplants can't sell theirs? Why do they import them to park them here?
http://www.newser.com/story/44666/us-ports-awash-in-foreign-cars.html
"This is about power. And the business community is not going to give up power willingly." Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott said as much to a meeting with analysts in October. "We like driving the car," he told them, "and we're not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us."
Throughout his run for president, Obama was explicit in his support for Employee Free Choice and his understanding of the forces arrayed against it. "If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union; it's that simple," he told union members in Pennsylvania in April. "Let's stand up to the business lobby."
Nationwide, some 86,000 workers have been fired over the past eight years for trying to unionize (countless others have been threatened), and only a fraction of these get reinstated by the NLRB. So Lawhorn's return to the forklift is what passes for a victory these days, under the shredded protections of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, whose intent was not merely to protect the right to collective bargaining but to "encourag[e] the practice."
But unionization rates have been crashing for decades. "Historically, unionization basically created the middle class," says economist James Galbraith. "First, by its direct effect on the wages and benefits of unionized workers; second, by its indirect effect on the wages of workers who weren't unionized; and third, by the impact unions had on the creation of the social institutions that underpin the middle class, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid--the very structures of the New Deal and the Great Society."
Since the election, the business community has savvily retooled its campaign. In a November 21 letter to Congress, the Chamber wrote that passage of the bill "would have a particularly devastating impact on small employers who, as the primary source for new jobs, would be counted on to reverse the current economic downturn." The bill, the letter went on, "is an awful idea in good economic times and a catastrophic idea in the difficult economic times now upon us." Days later, the Chamber presented new research claiming that unionization is a drag on GDP--an assertion that Galbraith and other economists find laughable. And the Chamber used negotiations over the auto bailout to claim that unionization bankrupted the industry. In fact, labor makes up a tiny portion of a car's production cost, but in a tense economic environment with spiking unemployment, such talking points easily gained traction in the media.
As UC Santa Barbara labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein points out, the New Deal was not just a series of reforms that stabilized banking or stimulated the economy. "Those reforms," he says, "were backstopped by the organization of the working class, and those reforms continued for two generations." Any Obama-era reforms, he adds, "can and will dissipate" unless unions form an institutional bulwark against retreat.
Then, unions were more than twice their current size and less allied with progressive causes, and so it was easier to frame the battle as a parochial fight between big labor and big business. "Labor's decline helps recast that dynamic," he says. "This time around it isn't about two special interests; it's about economic recovery and restoring the middle class."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090126/kaplan/single
You must come back to reality...I would believe that ANY foreign maker coming here will simply avoid the North or the Midwest...too many northern cities are overrun by unions and the cities are a failure, too, not just having the UAW...NYC has the transit union screwing up the city, Detroit is an absolute mess, and would still be even if the UAW was never there...truthfully, conisdering it is known as the rust belt, I see NO advantages to locating in ANY northern city, and they will be surrounded by environment-ruining unions running the North...the South simply does not have that problem, they don't have workers with the you-owe-me-a-job mentality, and no bad work habits to break...and if ANYONE thinks that a former UAW worker does not have about 12 million rotten work (or non-work) habits to break, they have been living in fantasyland...UAW people have grown up with, and have developed on their own, the worst militant attitudes and work habits seen since the fall of Rome...
If I had any kind of a job to offer, and someone noted on their resume that they even took a tour of a UAW plant 27 years ago as a school field trip, I would show them the door before they sat down for an interview...when you ingest a poison, there are often antidotes to save your life and help you survive...once you have the UAW poisoned attitude, even a religious epiphany cannot remove that welfare attitude..
No, they will look South as the North has been destroyed by all unions, not just UAW, but if you want to make cars, the North offers NOTHING...and please don't tell me about a trained workforce, as there is none up North...they are UAW trained, which means brainwashing to make anything but good product...it appears that the transplants train their workers that a good product is what means job security, something that people want to buy...the UAW just trains them that product quality is simply an accident, but you will demand your wages whether you work or not, whether someone buys your product or not...
One would have to be an absolute fool to go anywhere but the South...and avoiding any vestiges of the union is Job One...
AIG doesn’t break out its U.S. employment numbers, but it has 116,000 workers worldwide. Perhaps half of those are U.S. jobs.
GM employs 96,000 Americans. Total worldwide employment is 252,000, more than twice AIG’s.
Former AIG CEO Martin Sullivan earned about $14 million in 2007. Total pay over the last three years: About $53 million (including only 9 months in 2005, the year he became CEO).
GM CEO Rick Wagoner earned $14.4 million in 2007. Total pay over the last three years: About $30 million.
AIG is also offering controversial “retention bonuses,” ranging from $92,500 to $4,000,000, to a select group of execs deemed essential to the company’s turnaround. Congress has asked questions - but so far shown little outrage
There’s only been one Congressional hearing on AIG, and that focused mostly on past practices. No current AIG officials have testified before Congress since the feds got involved.
Wagoner has testified before Congress four times since November. And GM has presented a 38-page “viability plan,” that’s publicly available, showing how it would use government money.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke both support the AIG bailout, and they’ve steered money to the company without Congressional approval.
GM’s most important friends in Washington have been the Michigan Congressional delegation, which obviously doesn’t have the clout it used to. Paulson has actually argued against using part of the huge $700 billion financial bailout fund to help the automakers, because they can’t pass a “viability” test proving they’ll stay in business long enough to pay back the loans. But AIG hasn’t passed a viability test either, and without federal help there’s little doubt it would be in bankruptcy.
GM has a bunch: 64,000. Ah ha! Maybe that explains it. In fact, Senate Republicans who blocked a $10 billion emergency loan for GM and a $4 billion loan for Chrysler said they wouldn’t approve a Detroit bailout unless the United Auto Workers made much deeper concessions than they’ve already offered, essentially giving up any advantages they have over non-unionized workers in other states.
So here’s one lesson: If you want a government bailout, try to have problems that are too complicated for most people to understand. And make sure your employees are the kind who wear a suit to work every day. Once you’ve satisfied those two requirements, ask for as much as you want: The coffers are open.
VW would have probably given the UAW a shot at their new plant if not for the strikes this year against companies bleeding red ink. The UAW leadership is BRAIN DEAD!
Tough labor climate isn't helping state
BY TOM WALSH • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • August 3, 2008
When the top-level VW and Staubach teams came to Michigan for the crucial pitch in May at the Yarrow resort, their worst fears about Michigan's reputation for adversarial labor relations were splattered in headlines across Detroit's newspapers and USA Today:
"Local UAW strike hits GM's popular Chevy Malibu," May 6.
"UAW Turns Up the Heat," May 7
"Axle Union Reps Leave Talks," May 8.
"Fear of the UAW probably drove the final decision," Hettinger told me last week.
While some people in Michigan are quick to blame the UAW and other labor unions for all of the state's economic ills, others -- especially in the Democratic Party -- tend to dance around the topic. Labor has been politically powerful in Michigan for generations, and the UAW is deeply embedded in the state's fabric, not only in auto plants but in offices, casinos and on the boards of hospitals and charitable groups.
The past 30 years of decline for Michigan's auto industry and its chief labor union should have made it abundantly clear by now. If we keep doing the same dumb stuff, we will get the same dumb results.
http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=3963871
While Michigan and Detroit may not be the most corrupt state in the Union, they run a close second to Illinois and Chicago. The UAW is a BIG part of that corruption.
So your argument is valid, starting a business in the Midwest or NE is problematic. Though it seems that Indiana has had better success than Michigan.
A half-century ago, Mississippi's political godfather, the late U.S. Sen. James O. Eastland, told other prominent Southern pols during a meeting at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis that the South will "fight the CIO" (Congress of Industrial Organizations) and unionism with just as much vehemence and determination as it fights racial integration.
Semiskilled and unskilled workers present the main problems for the unions, because most of the skilled workers in the South have long been relatively well organized. In fact, several strong national craft organizations, including the International Association of Machinists, were founded in that region.
The deep-seated, evangelical, fundamentalist religion of southern communities has played a part in Southern unionism. It has cut both ways, or rather both sides have attempted to use it to forward their ends. The social gospel would lead some churchmen to favor measures that would promote the welfare of the worker. Lucy Randolph Mason, as agent of the CIO, was at least indirectly responsible for the adoption by the Southern Baptist Convention of a resolution favoring collective bargaining. Since the main training in leadership, speaking, and organizing of the southern worker has been in his church, and since his religion has such an appeal for him, organizers have used hymns and church procedures in their meetings. When in 1949 a large conference of the CIO in Atlanta sought to invigorate its southern drive, national CIO leaders used religious slogans. This was to be "a spiritual crusade led by men with religion in their hearts . . .," ". . . the thing we are fighting for is Christianity."
On the other hand, some southern brands of religion contain a fatalism and a pacifism, among other element, that are not conducive to the united action required of unionist. Moreover, from various motives, among them religious conviction, many Southern preachers have been either cool or actively hostile to unionization. Among those who adduce evidence of anti-union activity by preachers are Liston Page (Mill Hands and Preachers, New Haven, 1942) and Miss Mason (To Win These Rights, New York, 1952).
The attitude of the press in the South is predominantly anti-union, although seldom as extreme and violent as the late Frederick Sullens, editor of the Jackson (Mississippi) Daily News, who wrote in 1937:
Note to the CIO: If you want to start trouble anywhere in Mississippi, please pause and take this information. The Mississippi National Guard has been mustered up to 2,300. It has been made an effective fighting organization. The boys know how to shoot guns and are not afraid to do it when the command to fire is given.
However, if communities oppose 'outside agitators', these latter can expect little protection from local officials, who reflect the attitudes of their communities, and, if the press seems to advocate disregard of the civil rights of objectionable people, the labor organizer may find his work dangerous as well as difficult.
The extent of anti-union legislation by Southern states may be indicated by the fact that the eighteen 'right-to-work laws in the United States, ten have been passed by Southern legislatures--in Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Texas, and Mississippi. Louisiana had a similar statute, but repealed it in 1956. These laws vary in content, but are usually patterned on that of Virginia, which makes the union shop illegal under any circumstances. Their net effect on organized labor is nor easily determined, but it is clear that they represent an anti-union bias on the part of Southern lawmakers, who employ in passing them arguments not against the union shop but against union themselves.
Paradoxically, the facts that wages in the South are low and that they are rising both militate against the unions. Low wages and small incomes make it harder for workers to pay union dues, to hold through a strike, and to see the usefulness of a long struggle. When wages are increased, frequently indirectly through union activity, the Southern worker is as likely to give credit to the employer as to the union.
Again every thing you have posted is a smokescreen to avoid the issue of UAW running the Domestic auto industry into the toilet. And your lame arguments about all the bank bailouts were pushed by the Democrats not the conservative Republicans. The bailouts have done nothing to keep the country going. Just more graft to friends of the 110th Congress. The same bunch of losers that the UAW supports. Let them all rot in the same hole.
Those states at the time were predominantly Democrat. So what is your point? They did not swing over to Republican until a true Conservative was elected in Ronald Reagan. Even JFK was not as left wing wacko as today's Democrats that have corrupted the Unions in this country and especially the UAW.
Your ignoring the price difference and comparing apples to oranges. Whats a 3 series BMW run? MSRP $36,300 Whats a Cobalt run? MSRP $15,660.00
Thats the plain Jane cheapoo too!
Perhaps you could explain to me the risks of taxpayers building stadiums/arenas for billionaires? All I see is welfare for the rich and little risk and unGodly rewards/ill gotten gains/profits. AIG is a prime example of a $400,000 spa orgy after the bail out. Where was the outrage? If you have two children or more? Do you send only one to college? You do it for one, you MUST do it for the other.
Thank your Democratic 110th Congress they fought hard for the bailout to their banking buddies. Name one conservative Republican that voted for the bailout bill.
Again the CEO in not a UAW represented employee. The CEO runs the company. Get over it. Deal with it. The AIG CEO ran that company into the toilet and was rewarded. Now GM is asking for a fraction of what AIG got.
Again if you detest socialism. Send that entitlement/social security check back and don't use Medicare either.
McCain voted for it, Bush and Paulson pushed it. Its a republican bill. You can't be serious? Can you say VETO?
WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush signed into law an unprecedented $700 billion plan to rescue the U.S. financial system, one of the largest-ever government interventions in the nation's economy -- and almost certainly not the last.
On Friday, 26 Republicans and 33 Democrats switched from no to yes.
The compromise won wide support in the Senate Wednesday and passed the House on the second attempt on Friday by a vote of 263-171. President Bush signed the bill shortly thereafter.
Just saw the Hal Turner video on YouTube. He talks about the Amero, the supposed new American dollar, and that the present dollar will be devalued, that Canada, the US, and Mexico will be linked to a common currency the Amero Just do a search on YouTube for Hal Turner Amero, and tell me what you think and how this will affect the Autoworkers and working class of the US, Canada and Mexico if it comes to true. How believable is this?? Should I be concerned?
I also saw Mr. Gerard President of the United Steel Workers Union speak on National TV. He did a great job.
Are there any Union leaders in the know on the unification of North American currencies? Do you guys know if this is true? Because the main stream press is suppressing this. Pretty scary stuff considering the situation the US, Canada and Mexico are in economically right now. Hal Turner says the US dollar should calapse by February 2009.
I would give mismanagement the nod especially in respect to having given the overpaid in benefits to UAW workers too much future financial gain rather than paying for their current worth in the past. Yup, it was management's fault as long as we overlook UAW's part in the whole process.
Instead of picketing for effective change of work rules and pay NOW, the UAW picketed about the past trying to rewrite history and absolve themselves of all responsibility. Yup, it was just the management NOT. :P
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
AIG doesn’t break out its U.S. employment numbers, but it has 116,000 workers worldwide. Perhaps half of those are U.S. jobs.
I don't know what this has to do with Cadillac, which was the topic of the post to which you're replying.
Here's what I think you're trying to say: if I supported bailing out the banks & insurance companies, then I should support the auto industry bailout.
Here's my reply: I never supported the bank/insurance bailout, so I am under no obligation to support the auto industry bailout. In my judgment, both bailouts are based on flawed thinking & both will do more harm than good.
As you should know by now, we classical liberals just don't like bailouts.
(Or maybe you're trying to say that bailing out AIG was the right thing to do because some AIG executives drive Cadillacs. Is that it? I guess so, because we were discussing Cadillac. Sometimes I can't figure out what you're trying to say, DD.)
He actually made less than $2 million last year per the restructuring plan submitted. All those millions of stock options are worthless.
Go back & read the post to which I was replying. The OP made what I thought was an excellent point: GM ceded the market for small luxury cars - like the 3-series BMW & the Audi A4 - to the Germans, thereby forfeiting billions in profits. GM was blind when it came to this segment of the market. Its top executives believed that the only people who bought small cars were people who couldn't afford big cars.
Did any of them ever drive a BMW 325?
Suppose that Cadillac had introduced a real 3-series competitor - a compact high-performance sports sedan or coupe - back in 1990. That car could have brought affluent baby boomers into the Cadillac fold, creating a customer base for larger & more expensive cars. Cadillac's failure to do this lost an entire generation of upper income buyers & cost the brand countless billions in profits.
I know that you'd rather talk about AIG & right-wing media takeover conspiracies, but I'd prefer to discuss the criminal marketing & design blunders that led to the loss of a hugely profitable franchise.
You are in denial. So blinded by UAW politics you cannot decipher what your own party is doing to this country. If you want to find Conservative Republicans check the 171 that voted against the bailouts. Bush has signed onto just about every liberal bill that has crossed his desk in an attempt to REACH out. Big mistake. He tossed his conservative roots into the liberal trash heap of politics.