Posted on 12/16/2008 9:41:55 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
"GOP to Detroit: Drop Dead!"
So may have read the headline Friday, had not President Bush stepped in to save GM, Ford and Chrysler, which Senate Republicans had just voted to send to the knacker's yard.
What are Republicans thinking of, pulling the plug, at Christmas, on GM, risking swift death for the greatest manufacturing company in American history, a strategic asset and pillar of the U.S. economy.
The $14 billion loan to the Big Three that Republican senators filibustered to death is just 2 percent of the $700 billion the Senate voted to bail out Wall Street. Having gone along with bailouts of Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie, Freddie and CitiGroup, why refuse a reprieve to an industry upon which millions of the best blue-collar jobs in America depend?
In a good year, Americans buy 17 million cars. A more populous EU probably buys as many. Three billion people in India, Southeast Asia and China, four times as many people as there are in the EU and United States, are moving toward the middle class. They, too, will be wanting cars. And millions of them love American cars.
Is the Republican Party so fanatic in its ideology that, rather than sin against a commandment of Milton Friedman, it is willing to see America written forever out of this fantastic market, let millions of jobs vanish and write off the industrial Midwest?
So it would seem. "Companies fail every day, and others take their place," said Sen. Richard Shelby on "Face the Nation."
Presumably, the companies that will "take their place," when GM, Ford and Chrysler die, are German, Japanese or Korean, like the ones lured into Shelby's state of Alabama, with the bait of subsidies free-market Republicans are supposed to abhor.
In 1993, Alabama put together a $258 million package to bring a Mercedes plant in. In 1999, Honda was offered $158 million to build a plant there. In 2002, Alabama won a Hyundai plant by offering a $252 million subsidy.
"We have a number of profitable automakers in America, and they should not be disadvantaged for making wise business decisions while failure is rewarded," says Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
DeMint is referring to "profitable automakers" like BMW, which sited a plant in Spartanburg, after South Carolina offered the Germans a $150 million subsidy and $80 million to expand.
Be it BMW, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Mitsubishi or Hyundai, the South has become a sanctuary for foreign assembly plants, for which Southern states have been paying subsidies.
Fine. But why this "Let-them-eat-cake!" coldness toward U.S. auto companies? General Motors employs more workers than all these foreign plants combined. And, unlike Mitsubishi, General Motors didn't bomb Pearl Harbor.
Do these Southern senators understand why the foreign automakers suddenly up and decided to build plants in the United States?
It was the economic nationalism of Ronald Reagan.
When an icon of American industry, Harley-Davidson, was being run out of business by cutthroat Japanese dumping of big bikes to kill the "Harley Hog," Reagan slapped 50 percent tariffs on their motorcycles and imposed quotas on imported Japanese cars. Message to Tokyo. If you folks want to keep selling cars here, start building them here.
Fear of Reaganism brought those foreign automakers, lickety-split, to America's shores, not any love of Southern cooking.
Do the Republicans not yet understand how they lost the New Majority coalition that gave them three landslides and five victories in six presidential races from 1968 to 1988? Do they not know why the Reagan Democrats in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan are going home?
The Republican Party gave their jobs away!
How? By telling U.S. manufacturers they could shut plants here, get rid of their U.S. workers, build factories in Mexico, Asia or China, and ship their products back, free of charge.
Republican globalists gave U.S. manufacturers every incentive to go abroad and take their jobs with them, the jobs of Middle America.
And, for 30 years, that is what U.S. manufacturers have done, have been forced to do, as their competitors closed down and moved their plants abroad in search of low-wage Third World labor.
It's Herbert Hoover time in here, Vice President Cheney is said to have told the Senate Republicans -- as they prepared to march out onto the floor and turn thumbs down on any reprieve for General Motors.
In today's world, America faces nationalistic trade rivals who manipulate currencies, employ nontariff barriers, subsidize their manufacturers, rebate value-added taxes on exports to us and impose value-added taxes on imports from us, all to capture our markets and kill our great companies. And we have a Republican Party blissfully ignorant that we live in a world of us or them. It doesn't even know who "us" is.
We need a new team on the field and a new coach who believes with Vince Lombardi that "winning isn't everything. It's the only thing."
He has one valid point- what they’re asking for is far, far, far less than what Wall Street got.
Yeah, that was a stupid assertion, about Mitsubishi bombing Pearl Harbor. Those planes were guns in someone's hands. One thing I learned from my grandfather is that French engineers taught Mitsubishi workers how to build those planes. And that's why some of those Japanese workers learned how to speak French. So, the French also bombed Pearl Harbor! As you say, all those workers are long dead.
Why should the U.S. consumer support overpaid union workers?
Amen.
Real free trade (not the phony NAFTA/WTO kind) opens up markets and benefits the consumer, and that is the purpose of the market.
Those are not 'free trade' agreements, they are managed trade between nations.
A true free trade agreement would simply removing all barriers of trade between the nations, not managing them.
You are correct, but regaining a reputation is very difficult once it is lost.
And the Democrats didn't have anything to do with those managed trade agreements, NAFTA/WTO?
The fact is that those union workers would rather see their companies go under rather then make concessions.
The Soviet Union collapsed because it overspent money on trying to keep industries going that were not productive, and we will also.
OK, you made a real NICE statement. Now, back your statement up. Show me proof that there were no carburetors that could get better gas mileage. The only thing that I have found that is a myth is that the Germans built a carburetor in 1936 that went 200 miles. That is the only thing that Snopes can verify as a myth. I have to believe that over the past 60 to 70 years, people built better carbs and fuel injection systems. If you have evidence otherwise, I would like to see it.
You fail Logic 101. Which surprises me not at all.
You can’t prove a negative. The burden of proof is on you.
Oops, forgot that part. Lived in one myself. Not so bad! However, I stand firm on the tattoos and piercing, and when elected, I shall enforce a national dress code using Obamba's new Nationalpolizei ...especially on Sundays and at ball games. And, as a matter of national aesthetics, any man with more than one tattoo, or a single tattoo larger than 3"X5", any part of which is visible when wearing the mandatory coat and tie, long pressed trousers, shined leather shoes and color-coordinated high stockings, will be shot, if not on sight, while hanging from any hardware worn through pierced body parts. Females under age 11 and under 75 pounds, living below the Mason-Dixon Line, may have their mid-riff section bare during July and August with written permission from any Mother Superior of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. I will however, allow men the smoking of cigars and pipes in public. Women will be allowed cigarettes, but not in public. After all, if elected, I might seek re-election and don't want to come across as harsh or dictatorial.
Now, in re Range Rovers and Hessians
The lamentable shenanigans of the Hessians during the late rebellion aside, you should not buy a Range Rover because they have the worst reliability record since the Yugo and Rover 2000. Look it up. BTW, I am no anti-British car xenophobe. I drove a long series of MGs and still own a Jaguar, all of which gave me weeks of intense motoring pleasure before requiring overhauls.
As Shakespeare hisself once said:
Drive ye English,
Drive ye the best
Drive ye about a Mile,
Hoof ye the rest
What do you mean “nope”? The facts are that Blacks were indeed armed all across Alabama during the Jim Crow years. Check the facts rather than Hollywood movies.
What is your problem? Read all my posts, I OPPOSED THE FINACIAL BAILOUT FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. It’s on this thread. You cannot address even the topic being discussed which is whether or not the Feds should use our money to give it to the big 3/UAW to stall their inevitable bankruptcy.
I didn’t use the word EVIL anywhere in my discussion. Sloth yes, greed yes, evil never said it.
Look if the UAW had any brains, they’d be donating money near equally to Republicans and Democrats. That way, when the congress got to the point that the auto industry should be nationalized, i.e. today, you’d have plenty of votes to get your largess at the expense of the rest of us.
Look, I just want employees who give a damn, who are willing to work, who don’t deliberately work slow, who don’t go around threating their co-workers who do do work and who don’t go around sabatoging the product. In other words, I WANT NON-UAW EMPLOYEES. I’ve witnessed all this crap with my UAW employees at my production facility. I’ve owned American cars. Hence, I know better than to buy the junk you produce.
I’m even told that you guys make a quality product now. Too late, I’m staying Japanese on my next car purchase. If you ever want us back again, I suggest you drop your demands for tax dollars and work with management to fix your failing businesses.
U knead 2 rite komedy.
U knead 2 rite komedy.
For years my best client was a certain Japanese car company which has maintained production facilities in the US for over 25 years (non-UAW).
At the same time I also had an American car company as a client (initials FORD), in whose plants I often was. The difference was night and day. The Japanese company's plant was as clean as a country hospital and nothing left it that was not (A) paid for, and (B) perfect. Deming-model QC was the official religion... and they were fanatics. I have an '89 model of their top-of-the-line vehicle and with 395,000 miles on it, it performs as new, or very close, e.g. burning 1 qt of oil every 3500 miles instead of none.
Pay (and benefits) for workers was as high, or higher than UAW standards. From a union point of view, a less desirable aspect of the labor scene was the use of many temporary workers who were paid less, had NO benefits, and whose hours were limited. However, the UAW was never able to organize and win an election, although given the opportunity often.
Ford, OTOH, could not get anything right (4 years to get the Taurus electrics handled?!) at the time, the only bright spots being its access to euro-tech and a connection with Mazda for engines and other engineering. But I will cheerfully admit that Ford's latest products show a vast quality and design improvement... even though the SOBs stiffed my little company on the last invoice AND DAMN NEAR PUT ME OUT OF BUSINESS!
I distinctly remember telling UAW members that the employees of the Japanese plant reported in 10 minutes early, and conferred with the leaving shift, which stayed 10 minutes longer, to discuss any problems in production and to exchange info. My Lord, you would have thought I was telling them about torture! BTW, if a worker at the Japanese plant made the clock every day for a month, there was a $100 bonus.
Bailout? Hell no. Why can't the Ford Foundation and its anti-American left-wing wackos put up $50 billion or so to bail'ém out. Why me?
I work at a production facility that employs UAW today. Within the past 5 years we have had UAW members set fire to one of our factory areas that caused MILLIONS in damage, including the destruction of a million dollar Government Owned Asset.
Do NOT lecture me about UAW employees and how wonderful they are. One time I made an agreement with the Union to help keep a HARD WORKING union employee employed. The very next day, the union reneged on the deal. Liars. Apparently, keeping good employees around screws with the Union's overriding desire to force my business to have only useless and marginal union performers, thus maximizing union membership. This is not a sustainable business practice for any business save GOVERNMENT.
One time I was asked by one of my Union employees "why I was offering overtime to them and not bringing back her cousin, who was the next guy on the call-back list." I told her the plain simple truth, "that so-and-so was a terrible employee, who repeatedly failed to do his job and caused excessive rework. But worse than that, he spent almost his entire day walking around trying to get other union employees to stop working and produce less. Why do I want to call back a person who actual generates negative value to my operation? I have to bring back 3 people to get 1 persons worth of labor, forget it. Feel free to pass on the message to him that his actions did have consequences, this time around." She looked at me like she had seen a ghost. Perhaps they were used to getting told b.s. before I became their supervisor.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.