>"Don't see any in Philly. I remember when these cars were dirt common. Now, I'm more likely to see a Duesenberg Phaeton rolling down Roosevelt Blvd. than an '80s Camcord."
Maybe the Honda and Toyota owners had the good judgement to move to a better place. Just as they had the good judgement to buy a better car. :shades:
dallasdude: Under Clinton the deficit was actually in the BLACK and thus the national debt was being paid off.
When Clinton was initially elected, he was anything but a fiscal conservative. He supported his wife's health care initiative, which would have greatly expanded federal spending. President Clinton suddenly got that old-time fiscal "religion" when the Republicans took control of Congress after fall 1994 elections. He was also helped by a recovering economy (which was recovering BEFORE the fall 1992 election), fueled by the 1990s tech boom. It's easy to govern when the economy is booming.
During those days, Republicans remembered why they were Republicans and forced fiscal discipline on him. But President Clinton wasn't entirely comfortable with that restraint - remember the infamous government shutdown over the budget in the mid 1990s? It wasn't because President Clinton wanted to spend less.
dallasdude: Like the one from Alaska who was taking from the oil companies to remodel his home. He is due in court at about the same time as the general election and was re-elected. Anyone with a sloped head, inset eyes, and who's knuckles drag could get elected there. Talk about Eskimo pie?
Insulting an entire state is hardly a way to win credibility. I can search the roster of elected local, state and federal officials of ANY state in the union - including Pennsylvania - and find some real losers (from both parties).
And the last time I checked, those supposedly dumb Alaskans appear to have a better handle on how to run a state than, say, the residents of Michigan, which is an economic basket case.
If I was to be brutally honest, all I really need is my 1988 Buick Park Avenue. I could get rid of both Caddies and wouldn't feel deprived. Of course the way I am with my cars, you'd be seeing the ultimate 1988 Park Ave the next time we meet up for Carlisle. I am pretty cheap when it comes to everything else. I guarantee if I didn't have this thing for cars, I'd be a millionaire by now.
rockylee: Mr. Grbeck, believes it's those nasty unions like the UAW & IUE are the main reason why down GM, is down and that currency manipulation which gives foreign car company's like Toyota, billions of dollars a year in additional revenue to use at it's disposal is false, half-truths, a giant facade !!!
Rocky, learn to read what people post, not what you think (or hope) they have posted. I've never placed all of the blame for GM's woes on the unions. In fact, I have specifically blamed management, too.
The difference is that, unlike you, I and several other posters can look at this in an unbiased manner, and realize that the union isn't helping the situation, and in some cases, has contributed to the problems by decreasing GM's flexibility, hampering management discipline on the factory floor (we've posted several comparisons of the daily absentee rate at transplant factories and GM, Ford and Chrysler factories) and insisting on a benefits package that companies cannot afford.
If anyone is absolving a party, it is you, by insisting that the unions are completely blameless here.
rockylee: (don't tell him their is several articles by economist that say otherwise)
You apparently missed the posts where other members completely refuted those articles. (Sorry, Rocky, but most of us don't consider union economists to be reputable sources of unbiased information.)
And please explain why the domestics continue to lose market share, regardless of the level of the dollar as compared to the yen, mark, euro, etc.
rockylee: Or that Toyota, didn't keep it's recalls and other manufactoring defects a secret in the 80's/90's to give a false perception of quality....that I suppose had nothing to do with it, right ???
If a company tries to conduct a secret recall for a SAFETY defect, it has violated the federal law and will face sanctions. And it MUST notify customers directly, or face further sanctions.
All companies - including GM - conduct "secret" recalls for manufacturing defects. Ask someone who has owned a GM V-6 with the defective intake manifold gaskets about how GM stepped up to the plate for that one...if the owner didn't know enough to complain, he or she got stuck with the entire bill for the repair. And this defect could ruin the engine. It cost my parents four figures to get their Park Avenue running.
rockylee: The trade barriers set up in Japan, to virtually eliminate the american cars from their market is all a big lie also I suppose ???
I guess those sales of GERMAN cars in Japan (where they are considered quite prestigious) exist only in my imagination? Or that Ford's controlling interest in Mazda is a fiction, too?
Since the 1930s, the preferred strategy of GM and Ford has been to either set up local operations in a host country, or buy an established company, and serve the market directly. They have not exported cars from North America in large numbers for well over half a century.
Now Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai have taken a page from their playbook and are building factories over here to serve the North American market, because they are designing cars specifically for this market. Which is one reason why they are so succesful - unlike many of the Europeans, they listened to the feedback from American customers and built products that reflected local tastes and conditions.
rockylee: I also suppose that automobiles sold in China, must be made in china, is all a lie as well, right ???
And when you can show me the large numbers of Chinese-made automobiles sold in the U.S., let me know.
rockylee: Or that states give multi-million dollar tax breaks to set up new, modern plants, in the U.S. and buy their politicans from both major party's hasn't contributed to the demise of GM and the rest of the big 3 either.
States give multi-million tax breaks to the domestics, too, when they build a new plant, or modernize an existing one. (The main problem is that the domestics are largely shutting down plants, not building new ones, so they can't receive subsidies for plants that they are not building.) If you think that only the transplants benefit from the largesse of state and local governments, you are wrong.
rockylee: Or such companies, don't threaten or fire union activist that have attempted to unionize the transplants for better wages, working conditions, etc.
We'll need more proof of these accusations beyond what is posted on a UAW website or the "This is what happened to me" that comes from the mouth of a union activist.
Let's just say that some of us, who have followed this issue, realize that these sources are quite often less than truthful.
rockylee: It amazes me that many of you that have never turned a wrench in a factory and have nary a clue to what it's like have all the right answers.
We need to know how to turn a wrench to install a fender or a seat. We don't need to know how to turn a wrench to decipher productivity figures, judge reliability surveys and compare daily absentee rates of various plants.
rockylee: The evidence points that GM, cars are made just as well as Toyota's and in some even cases better but with extremely high energy prices, millions losing their jobs, domestic cars have taken a huge hit.
The evidence points that SOME GM cars are getting much better, but we'll still have to wait a few years before judging whether even GM's newest vehicles are as good as comparable Toyotas in the reliability and build quality department. These newest vehicles are, however, very competent, and do perform as well or better than comparable Toyotas.
rockylee: I personally believe GM, never thought gasoline would stay around $4.00 a gallon thus it took the risk and built some of the finest Trucks and SUV's in the world. With $2.00 gas/diesel prices they would be selling much better.
And if I looked like Brad Pitt, I'd be hanging out in Beverly Hills or Malibu, not posting on Edmunds.com. But we have to accept the world as it is, not as we or GM management wish it would be. Economists and others have been warning for years that gas and oil prices will rise. GM put all of its eggs in the truck basket. It builds excellent large trucks and SUVs. Unfortunately, its passenger cars, with few exceptions, are half-hearted efforts. Not a good strategy in a market faced with volatile gasoline prices.
Mr. Lutz gripes, "Setting lower CO2 limits would equal setting CAFE at 43 mpg (5.5 L/100 km). This is why the sale of the Dodge Viper by Chrysler makes sense, because anyone selling fewer than 50,000 vehicles annually would be exempt (from fuel-economy requirements). So if someone else bought Viper, they could sell to capacity, but Chrysler couldn’t. This is why we are concerned about Corvette. The reason California set the exemption for less than 50,000 units is that it would mean the Hollywood folks could keep driving their Lamborghinis and Ferraris."
He continues to criticize this loophole, pointing out, "Porsche could sell 11-mpg (21.4 L/100 km) Cayennes, but we couldn’t sell 20-mpg (11.8 L/100 km) Chevy Tahoes."
What a joke. Not that Ferrari or Porsche is going to put the big 3 out of business, I just love how the loop whole was created so the elites in Cali can keep their toys, but the rest of us can't. If they cared about GM etc, they could have made the rule to effect the number units produced instead of total production. Guess those elites don't care for Corvettes, and Tahoe's. They want their Ferrari's, Lambo's, and Cayenne's.
economy is that if we really did save our money and pay cash for everything, our economy would probably be less than 1/2 the size it is now, all due to credit...so, if we save for the future, economists say the economy is slowing, which is a bad thing, yet we overspend and that is a bad thing...
I forget who posted this about military bases...but I agree with you, that bases needed to be closed because we had bases where none were needed simply because some Rep or Senator had the power to establish a base in their district years ago...Clinton, altho he "loathed" the military and almost destroyed it, was correct in closing unneeded bases...kinda like having submarine bases in Nebraska...the military is not to make good jobs, it is to defend us, pure and simple...
It also irks me when Congress wants a new jet that has parts made in all 435 districts, but the Pentagon, no saver of money there, actually says it is a weapon they don't need or want...then Congress builds the plane and nobody uses it because they don't need it...
What keeps the two party "system" alive is dumb habit, pure & simple.
What makes it a two party system is the Constitutional Electoral college. If we were a Democracy where you need a 51% majority to win office it would be much more feasible to have more than two parties. I am not saying that the Green party could not get bigger than the Democrat Party. Probably the worst example in recent history of how poorly the electoral system works is 1992. None of the Candidates had a clear majority of the votes. With the other RP from TX taking 19% it was quite clear that he was only in the running to beat George Bush Sr. If you want to be a Libertarian to be a spoiler in National elections that is perfectly legal. You will Never get the majority. There are too many Democrats on the dole that will vote down your very conservative ideas. Too many UAW members that vote the way they are told to vote. It is really simple math.
So Ralph Nader, Bob Barr and Ron Paul can waste good honest people's money on a campaign that will mean nothing unless they are able to throw the election one way or the other. More than likely in a direction they really are opposed to.
We really should carry this to the proper thread. Let the UAW guys lament the BIG 3 going the way of the dinosaurs.
I do believe there is a lot of pork in the military budget. Clinton was very selective in his cutting of the Pork. How many social programs did he cut out as he was cutting defense? Balancing the budget is good. Gutting the military to do it is NOT good. Did the social services budgets go down proportionately to the defense budgets?
Also buying military hardware as a kickback to donors is bad business. Or bailing out the Big 3 to pay for UAW votes.
Actually we voted out our Senator a couple of years ago, Rick Santorum. He is one of the most arrogant person I have ever met. No one has the power or guts to take on Specter. I may not agree with my local representative, Todd Platts, but I do think he does the best he can to look out for the interest of the people he represents.
Regarding the Alaska comment, I think what the Senator did was unethical and just a small example of the corruption that happens in DC regardless of the political party. Unfortunately, you couldn't stop there and had to offend the entire state of Alaska.
BTW, you can't have a deficit and be in the BLACK.
You beat me to the punch. I see plenty of late 80's early 90's Civics and Accords. Not sure when they started making the Camry. Corollas are probably more common. don't forget GM was making more cars then Honda and Toyota were back then so there were fewer onthe market ot begin with.
Wow. The average citizen would have excellent savings, but we'd all be living in modest apartments or sub-1000 sq ft. houses, going out to a nice restaurant would be a rare occasion, and we'd employ Cuban-like ingenuity keeping our 1950s-60s Fords, Chevrolets, and Plymouths going.
As for military base closures - the heavy lifting on that effort was done by the Base Realignment and Closure program, which was started in the late 1980s, before President Clinton took office. The first two rounds of closures or reductions took place in 1989 and 1991, when the first George Bush was president.
The sales results for August are being released today...Ford is down over 25 percent. Wonder if GM's employee-discount program will help its sales. But every time these companies rely on discounts to move the metal, they signal to customers that the sticker price isn't the "real" price.
I smell a bailout coming...what's worse is that, unlike the Chrysler bailout in 1980, which was only granted under stringent conditions, the Big Three are seeking an open-ended commitment from the federal government (i.e., the taxpayers) and, in GM's case, haven't really outlined a solid turnaround plan, beyond cost-cutting and waiting for the new UAW contract to really yield benefits. (Somehow, all of those new products keep failing to reach their sales targets. Just read that the Solstice and Sky, which were supposed to show how GM could quickly develop attractive cars for not much money, are being canned because of lousy sales and hefty losses.)
At least Ford, under Mullaly, has a solid turnaround plan.
The Camry first came out as a 1983 model. Around these parts, I'd say that Camrys and Civics back to about 1992, Accords back to 1994, and Corollas back to 1993 are still fairly common. But not so much the generations before that.
If I see only ONE 1980's car in the course of a day, almost inevitably it's a Buick Century or Olds Cutlass Ciera. That's not to say those things were paragons of reliability, but they were widely popular back in the day. They also weren't all that sophisticated, so they were pretty cheap to keep running for a long time. Caprices and their like used to be pretty common, but were actually a victim of their own durability, often snatched up on the used car market and turned into taxi cabs, ensuring a harsh life that would ultimately do them in.
I'm in the DC Metro area though, where people tend to trade in their cars more often in an attempt to keep up with the Joneses. So I think what might be happening is that many of these older cars could very well still be running, but have just been traded in, probably traded again, and ultimately wholesaled out to areas where there's more of a market for older used cars.
I've noticed when I go out to less suburban/urban areas, older cars seem to have a higher survival rate. I still usually don't notice that many older Japanese cars, but then these are areas where they probably weren't popular back then, to begin with. I think in the 70's and 80's for example, Japanese cars were big mainly on the coasts, and in bigger cities. But they hadn't saturated the country like today.
Having bought a used 1989 Century to get me by for a few years, they weren't the best car but it did the job. i always say if you need a cheap used car, get an old GM vehicle. They are cheap to buy, cheap to maintain, cheap to insure and anyone can work on them.
That brings up a very good point. California is totally dominated by the Liberal Left. Supposedly Union loving folks. That includes our worthless RINO governator. Yet over the last 15 to 20 years they, the Liberal Left, in CA have done everything in their power to destroy the bread and butter vehicles built by the BIG 3 and the UAW. They have sued them to bring down the SUV and PUs. CA is the largest vehicle market in the USA. How is GM and Ford doing in that state? I can tell you it is not the Green wienies buying the SUVs. They all believe we should be forced to buy a Prius, 100% made outside the USA. So tell me again how the Democrats will revive the UAW? Maybe offer Ya'll jobs in Japan...
My grandparents had a 1989 Taurus LX (back when LX was one of the upper trim levels). It got sandwiched between a 1975 Catalina and a telephone pole, and ended up in the body shop for about a month. During that time, they had a 1989 Century for a rental. I swear, everything about that Century just seemed crappy compared to the Taurus. Even little details like the placement of the armrests, the feel of the switchgear, the sound the doors made when you closed them, etc. The Taurus just seemed like a better car in EVERY respect.
Of course, that was when it was new. This Taurus had the 3.8, which tended to blow head gaskets, and back then they also tended to eat transmissions. Now my grandparents traded it for a 1994 Taurus, well before any major problems cropped up. But I'll bet that Century, as crappy as it seemed in many respects, would have outlived that Taurus by a long shot.
Sometimes, the best new cars don't always make the best used ones. It might just take a decade or more to sort that out, though! :P
NEW YORK (AP) — General Motors Corp. says it is extending its employee discount offer through the end of the month.
GM says it will offer employee pricing to consumers on nearly all 2008 models and most 2009 models through Sept. 30. The program's two-week run was previously set to expire Tuesday.
Employee discounts generally are 10 percent below the invoice price but vary by model.
The Detroit automaker says the discount covers all 2008 GM vehicles in stock except medium-duty trucks. It is also discounting several 2009 vehicles, including many Chevrolet models, Silverado pickups and Hummer H2 and H3 sport utility vehicles.
GM and other automakers are set to report August U.S. auto sales later Wednesday.
Still bleeding, but this is good for the consumer who just must have a GM!
I forgot about the Taurus. i stay away from those cars. The transmissions scare me.
I bought my 1989 Century in 1996 for $3300. I got lucky and a friend knew a used car dealer pretty well. I'm sure he discounted it a bunch for me. I had no major problems with it but not a car I would ever offer to drive anyone around in. "Crappy" describes the interior perfectly. And we wonder why the Japanese cars became so popular in the 1990's......
re-train is still going...my point was simply that it was not hard to see that robots and computers would displace workers at an ever increasing rate, and there was re-training for those who wanted it and saw the handwriting on the wall...
An industry that was virtually unchanged since the early 1900s, based on brawn, not brains, suddenly depended less and less on the brawn that built it...so, 1000s upon 1000s of people, who never depended on their brains for employment, almost overnight found their jobs disappeared as the brawn was not as necessary...
Considering that an entire region of the country, rust belt, was built around this brawn, the need for re-training was obvious to anybody except the UAW...now an entire section of the nation is rusting away, while new auto plants are built while we speak in the South, based on the newest technology...
If the UAW had a mirror and could look at itself, it literally killed an industry while "protecting" jobs for its members...kinda like saving the instruments of the orchestra while the Titanic slowly sank to the bottom...what is even more amazing is that the workers cheer the union to continue on, only exemplifying that the work performed was based on brawn, not brains...if they had the brains to see what was happening, they would not kill the domestic industry out of spite...
rocky, your UAW was necessary in the 40s and 50s, but is now killing its own goose and eating its seed corn...until the union sees what it is doing, the Big 3 market share will only shrink, leaving fewer and fewer UAW folks on the line, while Japanese and Korean plants thrive in the South, making better cars than UAW ever could...
Are Detroit folks so blind they cannot see the obvious???...the only answer must be yes...even rocky thinks Michigan will have a renaissance, when all it will have is the largest funeral known to mankind...
Just read that the Solstice and Sky, which were supposed to show how GM could quickly develop attractive cars for not much money, are being canned because of lousy sales and hefty losses.)
Jan to august
Miata MX-5.....11,700 units Solstice...........9,000 Sky.................7,600
It is not lousy sales that is killing Kappa II (and it is just a rumor). Problem is GM does not have the investment/development dollars to invest in a low volume platform. As we all know money is tight and they need to conserve and use it wisely.
There are plenty of Toyotas and Hondas from the early 1990s around here. The oldest Japanese car I regularly see on the roads is the 1990-1993 Accord.
I do see plenty of Olds Cutlass Cieras and Buick Centurys on the roads. They are cheap to run, cheap to fix and the important parts - transmission and engine - are pretty robust. I also see a fair number of early 1990s GM J-Cars and Ford Escorts on the highway, as well. The bigger GM front-wheel-drive Cadillacs, Buicks and Oldsmobiles are still around, but most often driven by older people who keep them garaged and don't put many miles on them in a year.
Cars that were common when new, and have virtually disappeared now, are the Tempo/Topaz, the Chrysler K-cars and early Ford Windstars.
Given the problems with the 3.8 V-6 and automatic transmissions, I'm surprised that any early Windstars are still running...
GM is apparently losing $10,000 on each Kappa car sold.
I used to work with the financial people on "pricing" our cars. Do not know where you got $10,000 but I guess if you divide the losses at GM with the number of cars sold you would get some number.
Issue is that on a low volume car if you let the investment (tools) get away from you, you can get unprofitable fast. If they are losing that much on each one (which is really almost impossible) then someone pushed it thru w/o a good business case. When you calculate a business case for a car everything goes in including an "overhead" number. There are real hard numbers like parts cost from suppliers, the tooling of those parts divided by the proposed lifecycle volume, development cost, engineering cost, assembly plant /labor cost, parts cost from internal divisions (powertrain, sheet metal, etc.), and the tooling of those parts divided by the volume. Softer numbers are Marketing/advertising/incentive cost divided by the volume, and the "overhead" assigned to your program.
Seems like that is all there was. Anyway if you get the minimum volume you forecasted (which I think they have) and get the price you want then you should make a profit. In this case I doubt if the price is $10k below where they forecasted. I also doubt that they over marketed the vehicles by $10k each.
So if they are losing $10k each it probably means it was pushed thru on a bad business case. But, again I doubt it. That would take an approval by theCSB which would not do that unless it was something real important to image/marketing, like a Prius.
I think that again, GM is just being frugal on the investment money and putting it toward more important programs.
Where did you get the $10K? I mean the cars only sell at about $20k so losing $10k is pretty unrealistic.
Fans of GM's nifty coupes, the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky, should know that they likely won't be around forever.
The Web site GM Inside News says the program to develop the next-generation platform that underpins the cars has been shelved.
The reason? Money.
With GM losing billions, there's no room for money-losing programs. And the Solstice and Sky platform, named Kappa, reportedly loses an eye-popping $10,000 per car. That's on cars where the sticker price starts around $20,000.
Kappa is expensive in part because GM uses hydroforming technology to make many parts, including the frame. Hydroforming is good for making strong parts that are lighter in weight, but it is expensive.
The way GM operates, this wouldn't surprise me a bit.
This was a very "moving" speech from our next president Barack Obama.
"The Rock"
P.S. dieselone - Ilinois, is a lot better off economically than most parts of the country especially Chicago, and you owe a big thanks to people like Barack Obama, who've helped keep that large city prosperous. Chicago, is probably my second favorite large city behind Grand Rapids, MI.
Is cost to manufacture a low volume car such as the Sky or Solstice any higher then $14K (five year time run with new tools and such)?
No idea of the specifics. But I gotta believe it is a lot less than that.
I think the issue here is that if you look at GM over the last few years they have lost a big number per each vehicle but someone could say the same on each vehicle they make.
Again $10k is pretty impossible if they are making their volume. Now if you have a vehicle that you did the analysis assuming 200,000 vehicles per year and you sell 50,000 per year and only keep it alive for 4 years then I could see huge losses per vehicle. But in this case I do not see that situatiion.
Again the only possibility I see here for a huge loss is spending too much on marketing/incentives which I really do not see here. I think they are hitting their volumes.
This was a very "moving" speech from our next president Barack Obama.
When you say Moving, do you mean his lips were moving? You know what we have told you about a Democrats Lips moving. :sick:
Some Day you will see the light. When all the UAW jobs are gone, you are all alone in Michigan. The Democrats in Congress will come up with another energy bill that mandates we all drive a Chery to go along with our CFLs made in China. To be distributed by WalMart who's CEO is Hillary Clinton. Obama will be running for the President of the World. You will be telling your friends down at the rescue mission how much you come to like rice mixed with monkey brains. That is exactly what Obama has in mind for the mindless masses he appeals to.
rockylee: P.S. dieselone - Ilinois, is a lot better off economically than most parts of the country especially Chicago, and you owe a big thanks to people like Barack Obama, who've helped keep that large city prosperous.
So a first-term U.S. senator can be credited with keeping a city that has been around for over 100 years, and was first a major manufacturing center, and now a major service and financial center, prosperous? Who knew?
If that's the case, maybe we need to put him in charge of GM. We might finally get a small Chevy equal to the Civic.
Then he can solve the deficit by turning lead into gold.
But no doubt he will first walk on water and raise the dead....
Why, there's probably nothing that this man cannot do.
I'll bet he can even revive the careers of the surviving Three's Company cast members.
While Obama and Democrats like Al Gore push Americans to buy Econo boxes like the Prius.
There are many things I do not like about Obama but I read the other month that he does drive a Chrysler 300. I sometimes find it difficult to dislike his political views when I think of that.
P.S. dieselone - Ilinois, is a lot better off economically than most parts of the country especially Chicago, and you owe a big thanks to people like Barack Obama, who've helped keep that large city prosperous. Chicago, is probably my second favorite large city behind Grand Rapids, MI.
Well, if a $750 million budget deficit is doing well then okay.
I love visiting Chicago, and do so quite often. I'd never want to live there, as they are taxed to death. 10.25% sales tax!!!! Plus high gas tax and property taxes. That's what you get with crooked democrats running the show.
I think that was a rental for when he gave a speech to Chrysler UAW members He may have done that after he got so much flack for driving a big SUV early on in his campaign. The big question you have to ask. Did he have his tires over inflated? :sick:
The city of Chicago has the highest total sales tax of all major U.S. cities.[32] It is also one of the most complex. 10.25% is levied on all non-perishable goods purchased, while 2% is levied on grocery items, drugs, and medical appliances.[32] There is an additional 1% tax, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA) "Food and Beverage Tax", on food and beverage purchases in the downtown area (These "downtown" boundaries are: Surf Street on the north, Ashland Avenue on the west, Stevenson Expressway (I-55) on the south, & Lake Michigan on the east. Furthermore, O'Hare and Midway airports also fall under the 1% MPEA tax district).[33] Car rentals in the city are taxed at 20%. Hotel rooms are taxed at 15.4%. Soft drinks (packs, cases, or individual bottles) are taxed at 13.25%.
And you want these jack$$s in office. The city should be raking it in after raping the citizens and tourists.
I would personally gladly pay Chicago's high taxes because a low skilled occupation like a truck driver makes on average in the $20 dollar an hour range in Chicago. I'm not saying I'd like to live in Chicago, but I agree with you it's a nice place to visit and catch a Cubs, game. :shades: I once again will give credit to the pro-union democrats, that primarily run the city for keeping the wages high and I'm sure most don't mind paying a little more in taxes to enjoy the benefits that the city offers in jobs, museums, educational insitutions, just to name a few. The only down side of Chicago, is its traffic and crazy drivers !!! :surprise:
$20/hr in Chicago would be like living in poverty and you'd have to live in the hood. I've got lots of friends who live in the city, my sister lived near Wrigley for several years. She was making more than $20/hr, couldn't afford a car and had to have a roommate to swing rent.
My friend who has a Condo in Bucktown (north side) has a small two bedroom condo $450k 8 years ago and just paid $40k for an additional parking space.
Hey, can't argue going to Cubs games. Took my oldest daughter last month and we had a blast. We generally hit Chicago for a weekend every few months, I just don't know how anyone on an average income can afford anything there. The hotels want $30+ a day for parking etc. The schools still suck, and the homeless are still homeless. I don't see what the Dems have accomplished. Maybe the politicians in Chicago give Dems a bad name, because they are truely crooks.
Well obviously your not going to live in some fancy high-rise but you can live in the burbs. I have plenty of extended family in Chicago, and they are all blue collar except one of my relatives. They aren't living in the hood either.
Well obviously your not going to live in some fancy high-rise but you can live in the burbs. I have plenty of extended family in Chicago, and they are all blue collar except one of my relatives. They aren't living in the hood either.
Yes, you would have to live in the burbs and they aren't cheap either unless you go way out, then your stuck with a miserable commute.
I don't think of Chicago as a center of industry. Why would it appeal to a UAW mindset? Maybe the long history of being linked to organized Crime. Al Capone, Bugs Moran & Joe Kennedy. Carried on by the very corrupt Daley family. That is the atmosphere that B. Hussein Obama cut his political teeth on. He fit right in taking bribes in the form of campaign contributions and cheap land. He fits the UAW's idea of a great choice. :sick:
Obama has collected at least $168,308 from Rezko and his circle. Obama also has taken in an unknown amount of money from people who attended fund-raising events hosted by Rezko since the mid-1990s.
Clinton raised taxes and still generated more revenue. Numbers don't lie. Economics are best left to those who know. That same conservative congress that you give credit to, is responsible for the Bushit deficit.
Universal health care wasn't tried, so hence, you don't know if it would lowered the cost of health care. But it is also fact, that Medicare/Medicaid are using 7% to administer and HMO/PPO/POS and the like are costing 14% to administer. Instant savings, not to mention other cost cutting measures. The big drug companies and big health care companies lobbied and won. We all know that the so called health care providers are ill prepared to practice medicine, however, they do so.
I didn't elected in a representative who lacks moral turpitude and should be ashame. This is a prime example of where capital punishment should be used. Other wise this will go on forever, since there is no deterrent. This type of behavior encourages and breeds more morally corrupt behavior.
Then too the state is oil rich and the residents are far better off than say Michigan. Other than, Eskimo pies, what else do they produce? Michigan makes the Cadillac CTS.
File this all under "Everything Old Is New Again."
"Do we really want another president in the White House that America can't trust?"
An election year ad questions McCain's trustworthiness. No, it wasn't produced by Obama. It was released in 2000, when McCain was running against Bush for the Republican nomination.
"In stump speeches, he argued that Mr McCain's war record did not necessarily make him the best candidate to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces and that his credentials as a conservative were far from what South Carolinians deserved."
"A spokesman for Vietnam prisoners of war appeared on stage to accuse Mr McCain of abandoning them as a politician after he had been released from a Hanoi prison."
Again, Bush directly attacked McCain's "Untouchable" POW status in 2000.
Bush supporters went so far as to accuse McCain of siring a black child out of wedlock.
"It didn't take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.
Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.
Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.
Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?"
Now you would think that McCain would want to distance himself as much as possible from a man whose campaign used his own adoptive daughter as a target against him. You'd think he would distance himself from a man that ridiculed his years as a POW and attempted to smear his reputation. But instead, McCain has not only embraced Bush, but also embraced Bush's "win at all costs" methodology. McCain, like Bush before him, hides behind his supporters who constantly spread lies about Obama and his family, all the while pretending to take the high road even as his campaign spends money on ads comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and making insulting statements like "Hot Chicks Dig Obama."
It's sad that the American public seems to have such a short memory. You'd think we'd get tired of the smears and actually want to learn the truth.
It's sad that the American public seems to have such a short memory. You'd think we'd get tired of the smears and actually want to learn the truth.
And just what is the truth? Is Obama close to the Rezko, Ayers and Wright? Has he denounced them as criminal, terrorist and bigot?
By the way. Obama has encouraged the Rock Star mentality to his campaign. You also forgot to list all the negative campaign between Obama and Hillary. There was a lot of mud slinging going on there. Including claiming Bill Clinton is a racist. Bill will NEVER forgive Obama for that. He will undermine him every chance he gets. Even fellow Chicago gangsta Jesse Jackson Sr. HATES Obama for being 1/2 white. You know what he wants to do to Obama....
I am flat out shocked at how well Sara Palin, delivered her speech. It was one of the best ones I've ever heard. She is a force to be wreckin' with as far as I'm concern but some of her points are a lot different than conventional republican idealogy which is a good thing.
She is a force to be wreckin' with as far as I'm concern but some of her points are a lot different than conventional republican idealogy which is a good thing.
I agree. I have some major issues with both parties which makes it hard for me to vote for either. She is different, and she'll certainly make things more interesting.
I think a lot of people will take notice. She is a truly breathe of fresh air in Federal politics. Plus the husband has 20 years in the Steelworkers Union. He stepped down from his management job back to craft when his wife became Governor. They did not want any conflict of interest as she was dealing with BP his employer for 18 years.
If nothing else it will make for a more exciting campaign. Hopefully she is tough enough to avoid the Neocons in the Republican ranks.
Which points are different than Republican ideology? My wife and I just admire everything we saw and heard last night. Her family, like our family, is not perfect but we do try and do what is right in our view. We seem to come from the same kind of roots, families who worked hard to give their kids the american dream, a chance to make it. I did not hear much about her husbands union experience, did I miss it? AND why did she not talk about her stay at home husband and the support she will receive from him?
As a side note I volunteer at a soup kitchen in Detroit. This is a catholic one that has no requirements to eat there. There is a huge dichotomy in patrons. From the mentally unstable street guys to working guys coming in for a free lunch to reduce cost to families with kids that need help. I would say about 60% would be able to hold a job if they had one. We need to get some business's going to give them the chance to work.
>"There are many things I do not like about Obama but I read the other month that he does drive a Chrysler 300."
Of the folks that buy performance type Chrysler sedans in our area, the Chrysler 300 is a favorite among African Americans and older folks. The Charger seems more favored by younger and middle aged whites. Many police departments are replacing the Fords with the Chargers as needed.
With the police it is a performance thing. Most officers I've talked with still prefer the FULL FRAMED ford, but like the "POWER" of the Charger. Wonder why Ford refuses to upgrade the Power of the Police units. :confuse:
Comments
Maybe the Honda and Toyota owners had the good judgement to move to a better place. Just as they had the good judgement to buy a better car.
Kip
When Clinton was initially elected, he was anything but a fiscal conservative. He supported his wife's health care initiative, which would have greatly expanded federal spending. President Clinton suddenly got that old-time fiscal "religion" when the Republicans took control of Congress after fall 1994 elections. He was also helped by a recovering economy (which was recovering BEFORE the fall 1992 election), fueled by the 1990s tech boom. It's easy to govern when the economy is booming.
During those days, Republicans remembered why they were Republicans and forced fiscal discipline on him. But President Clinton wasn't entirely comfortable with that restraint - remember the infamous government shutdown over the budget in the mid 1990s? It wasn't because President Clinton wanted to spend less.
dallasdude: Like the one from Alaska who was taking from the oil companies to remodel his home. He is due in court at about the same time as the general election and was re-elected. Anyone with a sloped head, inset eyes, and who's knuckles drag could get elected there. Talk about Eskimo pie?
Insulting an entire state is hardly a way to win credibility. I can search the roster of elected local, state and federal officials of ANY state in the union - including Pennsylvania - and find some real losers (from both parties).
And the last time I checked, those supposedly dumb Alaskans appear to have a better handle on how to run a state than, say, the residents of Michigan, which is an economic basket case.
Rocky, learn to read what people post, not what you think (or hope) they have posted. I've never placed all of the blame for GM's woes on the unions. In fact, I have specifically blamed management, too.
The difference is that, unlike you, I and several other posters can look at this in an unbiased manner, and realize that the union isn't helping the situation, and in some cases, has contributed to the problems by decreasing GM's flexibility, hampering management discipline on the factory floor (we've posted several comparisons of the daily absentee rate at transplant factories and GM, Ford and Chrysler factories) and insisting on a benefits package that companies cannot afford.
If anyone is absolving a party, it is you, by insisting that the unions are completely blameless here.
rockylee: (don't tell him their is several articles by economist that say otherwise)
You apparently missed the posts where other members completely refuted those articles. (Sorry, Rocky, but most of us don't consider union economists to be reputable sources of unbiased information.)
And please explain why the domestics continue to lose market share, regardless of the level of the dollar as compared to the yen, mark, euro, etc.
rockylee: Or that Toyota, didn't keep it's recalls and other manufactoring defects a secret in the 80's/90's to give a false perception of quality....that I suppose had nothing to do with it, right ???
If a company tries to conduct a secret recall for a SAFETY defect, it has violated the federal law and will face sanctions. And it MUST notify customers directly, or face further sanctions.
All companies - including GM - conduct "secret" recalls for manufacturing defects. Ask someone who has owned a GM V-6 with the defective intake manifold gaskets about how GM stepped up to the plate for that one...if the owner didn't know enough to complain, he or she got stuck with the entire bill for the repair. And this defect could ruin the engine. It cost my parents four figures to get their Park Avenue running.
rockylee: The trade barriers set up in Japan, to virtually eliminate the american cars from their market is all a big lie also I suppose ???
I guess those sales of GERMAN cars in Japan (where they are considered quite prestigious) exist only in my imagination? Or that Ford's controlling interest in Mazda is a fiction, too?
Since the 1930s, the preferred strategy of GM and Ford has been to either set up local operations in a host country, or buy an established company, and serve the market directly. They have not exported cars from North America in large numbers for well over half a century.
Now Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai have taken a page from their playbook and are building factories over here to serve the North American market, because they are designing cars specifically for this market. Which is one reason why they are so succesful - unlike many of the Europeans, they listened to the feedback from American customers and built products that reflected local tastes and conditions.
rockylee: I also suppose that automobiles sold in China, must be made in china, is all a lie as well, right ???
And when you can show me the large numbers of Chinese-made automobiles sold in the U.S., let me know.
rockylee: Or that states give multi-million dollar tax breaks to set up new, modern plants, in the U.S. and buy their politicans from both major party's hasn't contributed to the demise of GM and the rest of the big 3 either.
States give multi-million tax breaks to the domestics, too, when they build a new plant, or modernize an existing one. (The main problem is that the domestics are largely shutting down plants, not building new ones, so they can't receive subsidies for plants that they are not building.) If you think that only the transplants benefit from the largesse of state and local governments, you are wrong.
rockylee: Or such companies, don't threaten or fire union activist that have attempted to unionize the transplants for better wages, working conditions, etc.
We'll need more proof of these accusations beyond what is posted on a UAW website or the "This is what happened to me" that comes from the mouth of a union activist.
Let's just say that some of us, who have followed this issue, realize that these sources are quite often less than truthful.
rockylee: It amazes me that many of you that have never turned a wrench in a factory and have nary a clue to what it's like have all the right answers.
We need to know how to turn a wrench to install a fender or a seat. We don't need to know how to turn a wrench to decipher productivity figures, judge reliability surveys and compare daily absentee rates of various plants.
rockylee: The evidence points that GM, cars are made just as well as Toyota's and in some even cases better but with extremely high energy prices, millions losing their jobs, domestic cars have taken a huge hit.
The evidence points that SOME GM cars are getting much better, but we'll still have to wait a few years before judging whether even GM's newest vehicles are as good as comparable Toyotas in the reliability and build quality department. These newest vehicles are, however, very competent, and do perform as well or better than comparable Toyotas.
rockylee: I personally believe GM, never thought gasoline would stay around $4.00 a gallon thus it took the risk and built some of the finest Trucks and SUV's in the world. With $2.00 gas/diesel prices they would be selling much better.
And if I looked like Brad Pitt, I'd be hanging out in Beverly Hills or Malibu, not posting on Edmunds.com. But we have to accept the world as it is, not as we or GM management wish it would be. Economists and others have been warning for years that gas and oil prices will rise. GM put all of its eggs in the truck basket. It builds excellent large trucks and SUVs. Unfortunately, its passenger cars, with few exceptions, are half-hearted efforts. Not a good strategy in a market faced with volatile gasoline prices.
Mr. Lutz gripes, "Setting lower CO2 limits would equal setting CAFE at 43 mpg (5.5 L/100 km). This is why the sale of the Dodge Viper by Chrysler makes sense, because anyone selling fewer than 50,000 vehicles annually would be exempt (from fuel-economy requirements). So if someone else bought Viper, they could sell to capacity, but Chrysler couldn’t. This is why we are concerned about Corvette. The reason California set the exemption for less than 50,000 units is that it would mean the Hollywood folks could keep driving their Lamborghinis and Ferraris."
He continues to criticize this loophole, pointing out, "Porsche could sell 11-mpg (21.4 L/100 km) Cayennes, but we couldn’t sell 20-mpg (11.8 L/100 km) Chevy Tahoes."
What a joke. Not that Ferrari or Porsche is going to put the big 3 out of business, I just love how the loop whole was created so the elites in Cali can keep their toys, but the rest of us can't. If they cared about GM etc, they could have made the rule to effect the number units produced instead of total production. Guess those elites don't care for Corvettes, and Tahoe's. They want their Ferrari's, Lambo's, and Cayenne's.
I forget who posted this about military bases...but I agree with you, that bases needed to be closed because we had bases where none were needed simply because some Rep or Senator had the power to establish a base in their district years ago...Clinton, altho he "loathed" the military and almost destroyed it, was correct in closing unneeded bases...kinda like having submarine bases in Nebraska...the military is not to make good jobs, it is to defend us, pure and simple...
It also irks me when Congress wants a new jet that has parts made in all 435 districts, but the Pentagon, no saver of money there, actually says it is a weapon they don't need or want...then Congress builds the plane and nobody uses it because they don't need it...
What makes it a two party system is the Constitutional Electoral college. If we were a Democracy where you need a 51% majority to win office it would be much more feasible to have more than two parties. I am not saying that the Green party could not get bigger than the Democrat Party. Probably the worst example in recent history of how poorly the electoral system works is 1992. None of the Candidates had a clear majority of the votes. With the other RP from TX taking 19% it was quite clear that he was only in the running to beat George Bush Sr. If you want to be a Libertarian to be a spoiler in National elections that is perfectly legal. You will Never get the majority. There are too many Democrats on the dole that will vote down your very conservative ideas. Too many UAW members that vote the way they are told to vote. It is really simple math.
So Ralph Nader, Bob Barr and Ron Paul can waste good honest people's money on a campaign that will mean nothing unless they are able to throw the election one way or the other. More than likely in a direction they really are opposed to.
We really should carry this to the proper thread. Let the UAW guys lament the BIG 3 going the way of the dinosaurs.
http://townhall-talk.edmunds.com/direct/view/.f185b68/1461
I do believe there is a lot of pork in the military budget. Clinton was very selective in his cutting of the Pork. How many social programs did he cut out as he was cutting defense? Balancing the budget is good. Gutting the military to do it is NOT good. Did the social services budgets go down proportionately to the defense budgets?
Also buying military hardware as a kickback to donors is bad business. Or bailing out the Big 3 to pay for UAW votes.
Regarding the Alaska comment, I think what the Senator did was unethical and just a small example of the corruption that happens in DC regardless of the political party. Unfortunately, you couldn't stop there and had to offend the entire state of Alaska.
BTW, you can't have a deficit and be in the BLACK.
As for military base closures - the heavy lifting on that effort was done by the Base Realignment and Closure program, which was started in the late 1980s, before President Clinton took office. The first two rounds of closures or reductions took place in 1989 and 1991, when the first George Bush was president.
The sales results for August are being released today...Ford is down over 25 percent. Wonder if GM's employee-discount program will help its sales. But every time these companies rely on discounts to move the metal, they signal to customers that the sticker price isn't the "real" price.
I smell a bailout coming...what's worse is that, unlike the Chrysler bailout in 1980, which was only granted under stringent conditions, the Big Three are seeking an open-ended commitment from the federal government (i.e., the taxpayers) and, in GM's case, haven't really outlined a solid turnaround plan, beyond cost-cutting and waiting for the new UAW contract to really yield benefits. (Somehow, all of those new products keep failing to reach their sales targets. Just read that the Solstice and Sky, which were supposed to show how GM could quickly develop attractive cars for not much money, are being canned because of lousy sales and hefty losses.)
At least Ford, under Mullaly, has a solid turnaround plan.
If I see only ONE 1980's car in the course of a day, almost inevitably it's a Buick Century or Olds Cutlass Ciera. That's not to say those things were paragons of reliability, but they were widely popular back in the day. They also weren't all that sophisticated, so they were pretty cheap to keep running for a long time. Caprices and their like used to be pretty common, but were actually a victim of their own durability, often snatched up on the used car market and turned into taxi cabs, ensuring a harsh life that would ultimately do them in.
I'm in the DC Metro area though, where people tend to trade in their cars more often in an attempt to keep up with the Joneses. So I think what might be happening is that many of these older cars could very well still be running, but have just been traded in, probably traded again, and ultimately wholesaled out to areas where there's more of a market for older used cars.
I've noticed when I go out to less suburban/urban areas, older cars seem to have a higher survival rate. I still usually don't notice that many older Japanese cars, but then these are areas where they probably weren't popular back then, to begin with. I think in the 70's and 80's for example, Japanese cars were big mainly on the coasts, and in bigger cities. But they hadn't saturated the country like today.
Of course, that was when it was new. This Taurus had the 3.8, which tended to blow head gaskets, and back then they also tended to eat transmissions. Now my grandparents traded it for a 1994 Taurus, well before any major problems cropped up. But I'll bet that Century, as crappy as it seemed in many respects, would have outlived that Taurus by a long shot.
Sometimes, the best new cars don't always make the best used ones. It might just take a decade or more to sort that out, though! :P
GM extends employee discounts through September
4 hours ago
NEW YORK (AP) — General Motors Corp. says it is extending its employee discount offer through the end of the month.
GM says it will offer employee pricing to consumers on nearly all 2008 models and most 2009 models through Sept. 30. The program's two-week run was previously set to expire Tuesday.
Employee discounts generally are 10 percent below the invoice price but vary by model.
The Detroit automaker says the discount covers all 2008 GM vehicles in stock except medium-duty trucks. It is also discounting several 2009 vehicles, including many Chevrolet models, Silverado pickups and Hummer H2 and H3 sport utility vehicles.
GM and other automakers are set to report August U.S. auto sales later Wednesday.
Still bleeding, but this is good for the consumer who just must have a GM!
Regards,
OW
I bought my 1989 Century in 1996 for $3300. I got lucky and a friend knew a used car dealer pretty well. I'm sure he discounted it a bunch for me. I had no major problems with it but not a car I would ever offer to drive anyone around in. "Crappy" describes the interior perfectly. And we wonder why the Japanese cars became so popular in the 1990's......
An industry that was virtually unchanged since the early 1900s, based on brawn, not brains, suddenly depended less and less on the brawn that built it...so, 1000s upon 1000s of people, who never depended on their brains for employment, almost overnight found their jobs disappeared as the brawn was not as necessary...
Considering that an entire region of the country, rust belt, was built around this brawn, the need for re-training was obvious to anybody except the UAW...now an entire section of the nation is rusting away, while new auto plants are built while we speak in the South, based on the newest technology...
If the UAW had a mirror and could look at itself, it literally killed an industry while "protecting" jobs for its members...kinda like saving the instruments of the orchestra while the Titanic slowly sank to the bottom...what is even more amazing is that the workers cheer the union to continue on, only exemplifying that the work performed was based on brawn, not brains...if they had the brains to see what was happening, they would not kill the domestic industry out of spite...
rocky, your UAW was necessary in the 40s and 50s, but is now killing its own goose and eating its seed corn...until the union sees what it is doing, the Big 3 market share will only shrink, leaving fewer and fewer UAW folks on the line, while Japanese and Korean plants thrive in the South, making better cars than UAW ever could...
Are Detroit folks so blind they cannot see the obvious???...the only answer must be yes...even rocky thinks Michigan will have a renaissance, when all it will have is the largest funeral known to mankind...
Jan to august
Miata MX-5.....11,700 units
Solstice...........9,000
Sky.................7,600
It is not lousy sales that is killing Kappa II (and it is just a rumor). Problem is GM does not have the investment/development dollars to invest in a low volume platform. As we all know money is tight and they need to conserve and use it wisely.
I do see plenty of Olds Cutlass Cieras and Buick Centurys on the roads. They are cheap to run, cheap to fix and the important parts - transmission and engine - are pretty robust. I also see a fair number of early 1990s GM J-Cars and Ford Escorts on the highway, as well. The bigger GM front-wheel-drive Cadillacs, Buicks and Oldsmobiles are still around, but most often driven by older people who keep them garaged and don't put many miles on them in a year.
Cars that were common when new, and have virtually disappeared now, are the Tempo/Topaz, the Chrysler K-cars and early Ford Windstars.
Given the problems with the 3.8 V-6 and automatic transmissions, I'm surprised that any early Windstars are still running...
I used to work with the financial people on "pricing" our cars. Do not know where you got $10,000 but I guess if you divide the losses at GM with the number of cars sold you would get some number.
Issue is that on a low volume car if you let the investment (tools) get away from you, you can get unprofitable fast. If they are losing that much on each one (which is really almost impossible) then someone pushed it thru w/o a good business case. When you calculate a business case for a car everything goes in including an "overhead" number. There are real hard numbers like parts cost from suppliers, the tooling of those parts divided by the proposed lifecycle volume, development cost, engineering cost, assembly plant /labor cost, parts cost from internal divisions (powertrain, sheet metal, etc.), and the tooling of those parts divided by the volume. Softer numbers are Marketing/advertising/incentive cost divided by the volume, and the "overhead" assigned to your program.
Seems like that is all there was. Anyway if you get the minimum volume you forecasted (which I think they have) and get the price you want then you should make a profit. In this case I doubt if the price is $10k below where they forecasted. I also doubt that they over marketed the vehicles by $10k each.
So if they are losing $10k each it probably means it was pushed thru on a bad business case. But, again I doubt it. That would take an approval by theCSB which would not do that unless it was something real important to image/marketing, like a Prius.
I think that again, GM is just being frugal on the investment money and putting it toward more important programs.
Where did you get the $10K? I mean the cars only sell at about $20k so losing $10k is pretty unrealistic.
Fans of GM's nifty coupes, the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky, should know that they likely won't be around forever.
The Web site GM Inside News says the program to develop the next-generation platform that underpins the cars has been shelved.
The reason? Money.
With GM losing billions, there's no room for money-losing programs. And the Solstice and Sky platform, named Kappa, reportedly loses an eye-popping $10,000 per car. That's on cars where the sticker price starts around $20,000.
Kappa is expensive in part because GM uses hydroforming technology to make many parts, including the frame. Hydroforming is good for making strong parts that are lighter in weight, but it is expensive.
The way GM operates, this wouldn't surprise me a bit.
After all, isn't 70% of the car is built using existing GM parts?
This was a very "moving" speech from our next president Barack Obama.
"The Rock"
P.S. dieselone - Ilinois, is a lot better off economically than most parts of the country especially Chicago, and you owe a big thanks to people like Barack Obama, who've helped keep that large city prosperous. Chicago, is probably my second favorite large city behind Grand Rapids, MI.
No idea of the specifics. But I gotta believe it is a lot less than that.
I think the issue here is that if you look at GM over the last few years they have lost a big number per each vehicle but someone could say the same on each vehicle they make.
Again $10k is pretty impossible if they are making their volume. Now if you have a vehicle that you did the analysis assuming 200,000 vehicles per year and you sell 50,000 per year and only keep it alive for 4 years then I could see huge losses per vehicle. But in this case I do not see that situatiion.
Again the only possibility I see here for a huge loss is spending too much on marketing/incentives which I really do not see here. I think they are hitting their volumes.
When you say Moving, do you mean his lips were moving? You know what we have told you about a Democrats Lips moving. :sick:
Some Day you will see the light. When all the UAW jobs are gone, you are all alone in Michigan. The Democrats in Congress will come up with another energy bill that mandates we all drive a Chery to go along with our CFLs made in China. To be distributed by WalMart who's CEO is Hillary Clinton. Obama will be running for the President of the World. You will be telling your friends down at the rescue mission how much you come to like rice mixed with monkey brains. That is exactly what Obama has in mind for the mindless masses he appeals to.
So a first-term U.S. senator can be credited with keeping a city that has been around for over 100 years, and was first a major manufacturing center, and now a major service and financial center, prosperous? Who knew?
If that's the case, maybe we need to put him in charge of GM. We might finally get a small Chevy equal to the Civic.
Then he can solve the deficit by turning lead into gold.
But no doubt he will first walk on water and raise the dead....
Why, there's probably nothing that this man cannot do.
I'll bet he can even revive the careers of the surviving Three's Company cast members.
There are many things I do not like about Obama but I read the other month that he does drive a Chrysler 300. I sometimes find it difficult to dislike his political views when I think of that.
Well, if a $750 million budget deficit is doing well then okay.
I love visiting Chicago, and do so quite often. I'd never want to live there, as they are taxed to death. 10.25% sales tax!!!! Plus high gas tax and property taxes. That's what you get with crooked democrats running the show.
I think that was a rental for when he gave a speech to Chrysler UAW members
And you want these jack$$s in office. The city should be raking it in after raping the citizens and tourists.
-Rocky
My friend who has a Condo in Bucktown (north side) has a small two bedroom condo $450k 8 years ago and just paid $40k for an additional parking space.
Hey, can't argue going to Cubs games. Took my oldest daughter last month and we had a blast. We generally hit Chicago for a weekend every few months, I just don't know how anyone on an average income can afford anything there. The hotels want $30+ a day for parking etc. The schools still suck, and the homeless are still homeless. I don't see what the Dems have accomplished. Maybe the politicians in Chicago give Dems a bad name, because they are truely crooks.
-Rocky
Yes, you would have to live in the burbs and they aren't cheap either unless you go way out, then your stuck with a miserable commute.
Obama has collected at least $168,308 from Rezko and his circle. Obama also has taken in an unknown amount of money from people who attended fund-raising events hosted by Rezko since the mid-1990s.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/432197,CST-NWS-obama18.stng
Universal health care wasn't tried, so hence, you don't know if it would lowered the cost of health care. But it is also fact, that Medicare/Medicaid are using 7% to administer and HMO/PPO/POS and the like are costing 14% to administer. Instant savings, not to mention other cost cutting measures. The big drug companies and big health care companies lobbied and won. We all know that the so called health care providers are ill prepared to practice medicine, however, they do so.
I didn't elected in a representative who lacks moral turpitude and should be ashame. This is a prime example of where capital punishment should be used. Other wise this will go on forever, since there is no deterrent. This type of behavior encourages and breeds more morally corrupt behavior.
Then too the state is oil rich and the residents are far better off than say Michigan. Other than, Eskimo pies, what else do they produce? Michigan makes the Cadillac CTS.
"Do we really want another president in the White House that America can't trust?"
An election year ad questions McCain's trustworthiness. No, it wasn't produced by Obama. It was released in 2000, when McCain was running against Bush for the Republican nomination.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/2000/02/09/wpres09.ht- ml
"I will not need on-the-job training in the White House."
A McCain ad, noting his years of experience over his opponent. Nope. He wasn't talking about Obama. He was referring to Bush.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/2000/02/01/wpres101.h- tml
"In stump speeches, he argued that Mr McCain's war record did not necessarily make him the best candidate to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces and that his credentials as a conservative were far from what South Carolinians deserved."
"A spokesman for Vietnam prisoners of war appeared on stage to accuse Mr McCain of abandoning them as a politician after he had been released from a Hanoi prison."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/2000/02/05/wbush05.ht- ml
Again, Bush directly attacked McCain's "Untouchable" POW status in 2000.
Bush supporters went so far as to accuse McCain of siring a black child out of wedlock.
"It didn't take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.
Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.
Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.
Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?"
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/03/21/the_- anatomy_of_a_smear_campaign/
More Bush Attacks on McCain:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/28/bush-mccain-2000/
Now you would think that McCain would want to distance himself as much as possible from a man whose campaign used his own adoptive daughter as a target against him. You'd think he would distance himself from a man that ridiculed his years as a POW and attempted to smear his reputation. But instead, McCain has not only embraced Bush, but also embraced Bush's "win at all costs" methodology. McCain, like Bush before him, hides behind his supporters who constantly spread lies about Obama and his family, all the while pretending to take the high road even as his campaign spends money on ads comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and making insulting statements like "Hot Chicks Dig Obama."
It's sad that the American public seems to have such a short memory. You'd think we'd get tired of the smears and actually want to learn the truth.
And just what is the truth? Is Obama close to the Rezko, Ayers and Wright? Has he denounced them as criminal, terrorist and bigot?
By the way. Obama has encouraged the Rock Star mentality to his campaign. You also forgot to list all the negative campaign between Obama and Hillary. There was a lot of mud slinging going on there. Including claiming Bill Clinton is a racist. Bill will NEVER forgive Obama for that. He will undermine him every chance he gets. Even fellow Chicago gangsta Jesse Jackson Sr. HATES Obama for being 1/2 white. You know what he wants to do to Obama....
I am flat out shocked at how well Sara Palin, delivered her speech. It was one of the best ones I've ever heard. She is a force to be wreckin' with as far as I'm concern but some of her points are a lot different than conventional republican idealogy which is a good thing.
-Rocky
I agree. I have some major issues with both parties which makes it hard for me to vote for either. She is different, and she'll certainly make things more interesting.
I think a lot of people will take notice. She is a truly breathe of fresh air in Federal politics. Plus the husband has 20 years in the Steelworkers Union. He stepped down from his management job back to craft when his wife became Governor. They did not want any conflict of interest as she was dealing with BP his employer for 18 years.
If nothing else it will make for a more exciting campaign. Hopefully she is tough enough to avoid the Neocons in the Republican ranks.
Which points are different than Republican ideology? My wife and I just admire everything we saw and heard last night. Her family, like our family, is not perfect but we do try and do what is right in our view. We seem to come from the same kind of roots, families who worked hard to give their kids the american dream, a chance to make it. I did not hear much about her husbands union experience, did I miss it? AND why did she not talk about her stay at home husband and the support she will receive from him?
As a side note I volunteer at a soup kitchen in Detroit. This is a catholic one that has no requirements to eat there. There is a huge dichotomy in patrons. From the mentally unstable street guys to working guys coming in for a free lunch to reduce cost to families with kids that need help. I would say about 60% would be able to hold a job if they had one. We need to get some business's going to give them the chance to work.
Of the folks that buy performance type Chrysler sedans in our area, the Chrysler 300 is a favorite among African Americans and older folks. The Charger seems more favored by younger and middle aged whites. Many police departments are replacing the Fords with the Chargers as needed.
With the police it is a performance thing. Most officers I've talked with still prefer the FULL FRAMED ford, but like the "POWER" of the Charger. Wonder why Ford refuses to upgrade the Power of the Police units. :confuse:
Kip