Regardless of your view, this is a good thing. But I, for one, do not for one NY minute, believe that throwing money at Detroit will fix Detroit's very serious problems. As a few here know, I know my stuff when it comes to the auto manufacturing issues in Detroit. But the industry needs to survive. More than that, it needs to improve.
The New York Times
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Comments: 38
O.J. finally getting his comeupance!
The Truth about the Auto Crisis
Key Points of the GM Plan
Please read my posting "A Bail Out for the Rest of Us" which I posted a few minutes ago for a much better plan.
And MG has had such a car appearing in 2005-2006.
It was an electric car (not even a hybrid) running 70 miles with one charge. 400 were sold and delivered to particulars in 2006 if my memory is good enough. NO POLLUTION AT ALL.
Nowadays the batteries improved and the same car , slightly modified could help the industry. I thought they were in Washington to ask for help meanwhile retooling and keeping the employees up to the new launch.
However they have been the victims of a lobby through GWB and Schwartzi.
California prohibited their use due to: 1st) a battery default and when this was proved wrong, on based on a stupid computation, I can explain if you wish so and which deals with the input energy and not the energy yielding.
The 400 cars were recovered one by one and simply ... destroyed.
The management obviously did not protected its engineers and blue collar due to "military orders".
IMO, but I insist there, IMO, the management has not been able to feel that the power in place had lost all vested confidence already.
And this is a MAJOR ERROR instead of being prepared to face a new and near future. They were not confident enough into GM power and chose then, I do remember, the "profitable branch": the Hummer.
Neither in themselves as a human being who feels he is right, but remain shying in front of foreigners questioning him.
This why I would fund the industry but fire the actual main management heads (President and CEO at the least)
I will tell you what the key problem is:
I covered auto manufacturing for years, as a reporter. Been to Detroit more times than I can count.
Edward Deming, auto guru, tried to talk to Detroit many times in the 50s. They ignored him. He went to Tokyo and they built a statue commemorating him.
I interviewed him as an old man in the 80s before he died, and his is what he told me - the same thing he had been telling Detroit for years.
"Management needs to listen to those who know most. The plant floor manager - shop floor manager - who runs all the robotics, for example, is the one who should be promoted to the buying and hiring executive - because he or she is the one who knows the most. But that is not the case in the US. The person who is the Sr VP of Manufacturing is some yokel with a business finance MBA and that person continually screws up.
In Japan, one of the key reasons Japanese manufacturing, and German manufacturing, for that matter is much better, regarding automobiles, is that the person with the greatest hands-on know how is also the person who is making the hiring and buying decisions.
Not so in the USA.
Of course, quality manufacturing also plays a big part in this.
United States Americans demanded bigger and better. Loved the SUV> We cannot pass the entire buck on the auto industry. Ellen B
The auto makers fed into a desire big time. They had already cut back in the 70s on size but re-upped that in the 80s.
But size was not the question. Quality is. When I rent an American car - it is always new but the manufacturing is always inferior to the Japanese cars I rent. Or the Toyotas I have owned, which keep ticking longer than a Timex.
The car culture is much the same. A third grid, replacing the second grid of roads and bridges, will cut jobs dramatically, and is the way to go.
Please don't believe the hype about roads and bridges, creating these jobs is not progress. These are not long term jobs, and construction laborers are well aware of that.
The car culture must go, job creation programs must look elsewhere. As usual, the future is not based on the past.
15 Billion for starters to be given to bail-out the corrupt UAW and management. This is ridiculous, only a bunch of corrupt politician goof-balls -very wealthy-goof-balls who caused the financial meltdown are now being given trillions more to pis- away.
We the people have totally lost control of our country and our freedom. We are allowing a bunch of incompetent,immoral, liars,crooks and sleaze bags,take by law 7 trillion dollars and do with it as they please. Our grand-kids are going to pay for our cowardice, why don't we care??
There is only one way I can think of to avoid property tax for an owner, or a renter.
Hope you can find a place to plug in your laptop.
Also, do you notice that watching TV and football, what is still being advertised? Big pickup trucks. I understand the Chevy Malibu is supposed to be a good new car. I have never seen one in a parking lot or seen an ad for one on TV.
The need for automobiles (and workers to design and build them) won't go away if any or all of these companies fail. Another company will pick up the slack and many of the employees.
Hey Congress ... where's MY bailout? I don't even know why I ask. I can't even get my Congressman to respond to my letters! Even if you ask, I won't tell you his name is Joe Sestak (D-PA).
If you know your stuff about the auto manufacturing then please answer the question (or anyone else for that matter), I've been asking since I wrote the Gather article
"Bailout : Are Automakers Really "Broke" ???". That is, since no one (including the Congress) is asking the question, what evidence is there that these guys are in NEED of one red cent ? I know of no GAO report, IRS audits, OBM, independent think tanks, or one shred of evidence that these guys are indigent as they claim (GM said if they don't get a bailout by New Year's, they'll collapse. I don't believe it.
The only evidence I do see about their financial condition is an immense splurge of advertising for Cadillac, Dodge Ram, Ford F-150s, etc. on Sunday afternoon football games.
This is the behavior of people suffering economic indigency. It would be laughable if it weren't so disreputible, and the Congress didn't seem to be so in cahoots with these
con jobbers. If anyone has real evidence to show automaker indigency, let's hear it !
economic indigency", should have ended in a question mark - (????????)
So today, I get this email...and to me it is calling a spade a spade..because already the Republicans would like to dump this mess on the Union...and its a crock...when each car only takes $800 for the benefits given the workers and their benefit programs...one has to wonder where the other 30,000 dollars go when most of the autos are in the $35,000 range??? That dose not even take into consideration the money paid in interest when the auto company credit company covers the loan...there is a LOT of money at the top that is NOT accounted for...and don't think our President dosen't know it!!!
Subject: Senate to Middle Class: Drop Dead ...a message from Michael Moore
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:36:31 -0500
Senate to Middle Class: Drop Dead
Friday, December 12th, 2008
Friends,
They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers start building only cars and mass transit that reduce our dependency on oil.
They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers build cars that reduce global warming.
They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers withdraw their many lawsuits against state governments in their attempts to not comply with our environmental laws.
They could have given the loan on the condition that the management team which drove these once-great manufacturers into the ground resign and be replaced with a team who understands the transportation needs of the 21st century.
Yes, they could have given the loan for any of these reasons because, in the end, to lose our manufacturing infrastructure and throw 3 million people out of work would be a catastrophe.
But instead, the Senate said, we'll give you the loan only if the factory workers take a $20 an hour cut in wages, pension and health care. That's right. After giving BILLIONS to Wall Street hucksters and criminal investment bankers -- billions with no strings attached and, as we have since learned, no oversight whatsoever -- the Senate decided it is more important to break a union, more important to throw middle class wage earners into the ranks of the working poor than to prevent the total collapse of industrial America.
We have a little more than a month to go of this madness. As I sit here in Michigan today, tens of thousands of hard working, honest, decent Americans do not believe they can make it to January 20th. The malaise here is astounding. Why must they suffer because of the mistakes of every CEO from Roger Smith to Rick Wagoner? Make management and the boards of directors and the shareholders pay for this.
Of course that is heresy to the 31 Republicans who decided to blame the poor, miserable autoworkers for this mess. And our wonderful media complied with their spin on the morning news shows: "UAW Refuses to Give Concessions Killing Auto Bailout Bill." In fact the UAW has given concession after concession, reduced their benefits, agreed to get rid of the Jobs Bank and agreed to make it harder for their retirees to live from week to week. Yes! That's what we need to do! It's the Jobs Bank and the old people who have led the nation to economic ruin!
But even doing all that wasn't enough to satisfy the bastard Republicans. These Senate vampires wanted blood. Blue collar blood. You see, they weren't opposed to the bailout because they believed in the free market or capitalism. No, they were opposed to the bailout because they're opposed to workers making a decent wage. In their rage, they were driven to destroy the backbone of this country, not because the UAW hadn't given back enough, but because the UAW hadn't given up.
It appears that the sitting President has been looking for a way to end his reign by one magnanimous act, just like a warlord on his feast day. He will put his finger in the dyke, and the fragile mess of an auto industry will eke through the next few months.
That will give the Senate enough time to demand that the bankers and investment sharks who've already swiped nearly half of the $700 billion gift a chance to make the offer of cutting their pay.
Fat chance.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
As for the advertising splurge, which continues, on an on, I don't know a single person who bought their car after seeing an advertisement for it. Most people just decide what they want, know what they want, look in the ywllow pages to find the nearest dealership,
and go on down there. The billions spent on advertising is a con job perpetrated by the car companies advertising executives, upon their own companies.