Posted on 03/29/2009 3:00:21 PM PDT by DrGop0821
Look, I've been against the auto industry bailout since the beginning.
These companies DO NOT deserve tax payer money. These bailouts are nothing but attempts at nationalization which ooze socialism.
Politicians have benefited from Unions for decades. Placating union bosses has been a windfall campaign finance tactic for a number of members of Capitol Hill. And that is the real motivation behind trying to "save" Detroit.
Indeed, the economy has seen better times but Honda, Nissan and Toyota are not panhandling on the steps of the Capitol. Somehow, they are managing to build, sell and profit from selling cars in America.
The biggest reason these automakers are in trouble is simple: It costs the Big 3 an average of $30/Labor Hour (or 60%) MORE to produce a car than competitors like Nissan, Honda and Toyota who build cars in United States plants as well. At 40 hours per week, the average UAW member makes over $150,000 annually in benefits and compensation. Does anyone else think that's a bit much to screw some tires on a car?
What about the so-called "job banks" where laid-off UAW members can collect 95% of their income by doing nothing more than watch TV and drink coffee. The Big 3 will not discuss the exact details of these job banks, citing they are not public information.
How many businesses in this country would succeed by paying 60% more than a competitor to produce a product? How many would succeed by paying people who don't produce a single asset?
Certainly, Rick Wagoner has not performed well as the head of GM, but what gives the President the right to ask a private company executive to step down?
If GM's board of directors made this decision, I would have no problem with it. The Obama Administration is yet again over-flexing its political muscle with respect to private industry.
If Congress and The White House want to put stipulations and regulations on companies receiving Federal aid, fine. But no where in the Constitution does it grant the Executive Branch this kind of control and coercion over private industry.
Tim Geithner unveiled a plan last week, designed to give Treasury Department the ability to take over financial institutions at the Secretary's choosing.
All of this continues the Obama Administration's war on Wall Street. It's a power grab to redistribute wealth, penalize the successful and establish a communistic "equality" among Americans.
Regulation = control and power.
Team "O" wants to destroy free market capitalism. There is ample proof of Obama's war on investors. Welcome to The United Socialist States of America (USSA).
POLITICO reports:
The Obama administration asked Rick Wagoner, the chairman and CEO of General Motors, to step down and he agreed, a White House official said.
The White House confirmed Wagoner was leaving at the government's behest after The Associated Press reported his immediate departure, without giving a reason.
On Monday, President Obama is to unveil his plans for the auto industry, including a response to a request for additional funds by GM and Chrysler.
Unfrikkenbelievable!
Someone needs to post a picture of a picture of Obama with one of his snot-nose snob poses with the caption"Because I Won".
OpusatFR wrote: “Nope. Think again. $55K. The rest is the same as employment in the private and public sector: Company matching social security, healthcare benefits, pensions, holiday and vacation pay, some other benefits that they may or may take advantage of like prepaid legal fees and education stipends.
The UAW is wrong on many fronts, but it doesn’t help to exaggerate the problem.”
Um, wrong. The average company spends the equivalent of 35-45% of a person’s earnings in benefits. Most of these costs now reflect high deductible health plans with some sort of employer-sponsored HSA or FSA arrangement to help employees finance their coverage through pre-tax dollars. Yet the UAW still requires its benefits packages to revert back to 1980’s cost sharing provisions (low co-pays for pharmacy and low deductibles on their plans). The difference is about $20,000 per employee in cost vs. $12,000 for the national average.
Are you high?
“While Toyota was designing the Prius, GM was designing the Pontiac Aztec.
While Honda was selling Civics, GM was selling the Malibu.
When gas was $4.00 a gallon, GM tried to sell you the Suburban and Toyota & Honda sold us fuel efficient cars.
The Union Thugs are not the ones who made the above poor decisions.”
Actually, this is all true. GM has historically been too slow to react to the market. A recent example is the HHR which is a dead ringer for the Chrysler PT Cruiser. When did GM produce its copy of the popular PT? Why, it was the same year that Chrysler announced plans to end production of the PT due to slowing sales.
While the executives at GM are surely to blame for these errors, the UAW has been right there.
Having said all that, I still think its scary for the US Government to step in and influence the removal of a corporation’s CEO. There’s something very scary about that.
I do not hold the UAW blameless in this mess, but they are not charged with the responsibility of maintaining the long term solvency and prosperity of GM.
However, the Board and Executives at GM have failed to read the needs of the American consumer for the last 40 years. Instead, Japanese auto executives understand the American consumer and can predict near future economic realities. The Auto Executives in Detroit are a bunch of Bozos.
And if the auto companies are going to take Federal Dollars they are going to have to contend with the consequences of being nationalized.
ping
You are missing the bigger picture.
BO is taking over the private sector.
Bush never did that, nor wanted to....
And what would you call the 60 Billion that Bush gave to AIG or the 20 Billion he gave to the auto companies?
Yes, Socialism is bad, even when done by a Republican president.
Yes, Obama is a Socialist
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Stop it. He is not a Socialist. He is a Communist. Just stop call it what it is. Please.
He’s an obot!
And what Political-Economic moniker would you attach to Bush for giving 60 AIG, a Trillion to the banks and Wall Street and 25 Billion to the auto companies?
The CEO only had to quit in order for the company to get a bailout; turn down the tax money and figure it out without stealing our tax dollars. If he was that good then he would have had the confidence and knowledge of how to bring the company through the crisis. The fed bailout is what I believe is unconstitutional because it is forcing taxpayers to buy into failing companies and even if the companies do well and “pay back” the funds the taxpayer will never receive a cent back. It is theft of public funds by the government.
HOW? By the same authority always used:
In 1944, Ludwig von Mises published one of his least-known masterworks: Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War. Drawing on his prewar experience in Vienna, watching the rise of the National Socialists in Germany (the Nazis), who would eventually take over his own homeland, he set out to draw parallels between the Russian and German experience with socialism.
. . .
The difference between the systems, wrote Mises, is that the German pattern “maintains private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary prices, wages, and markets.” But in fact the government directs production decisions, curbs entrepreneurship and the labor market, and determines wages and interest rates by central authority. “Market exchange,” says Mises, “is only a sham.”
. . .
Mises’s account is confirmed by a remarkable book that appeared in 1939, published by Vanguard Press in New York City (and unfortunately out of print today). It is The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism by Guenter Reimann, then a 35-year-old German writer. Through contacts with German business owners, Reimann documented how the “monster machine” of the Nazis crushed the autonomy of the private sector through onerous regulations, harsh inspections, and the threat of confiscatory fines for petty offenses.
“Industrialists were visited by state auditors who had strict orders to examine the balance sheets and all bookkeeping entries of the company or individual businessmen for the preceding two, three, or more years until some error or false entry was found,” explains Reimann. “The slightest formal mistake was punished with tremendous penalties. A fine of millions of marks was imposed for a single bookkeeping error.”
Reimann quotes from a businessman’s letter: “You have no idea how far state control goes and how much power the Nazi representatives have over our work. The worst of it is that they are so ignorant. These Nazi radicals think of nothing except ‘distributing the wealth.’ Some businessmen have even started studying Marxist theories, so that they will have a better understanding of the present economic system.
http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=54&sortorder=articledate
He knows more about cars than Franks or Obama.
At the time, it was thought it would help.
Bush was nowhere near the socialist Obama is...get real.
He wants to put us under the auspices of the UN...Bush fought that tooth and nail.
That's funny, I do not recall a time when I thought that the Nationalization of American Industry would help.
But apparently, last September and October some "conservatives" did think that is was a good idea to nationalize industry.
And what Political-Economic moniker would you attach to Bush for giving 60 AIG, a Trillion to the banks and Wall Street and 25 Billion to the auto companies?
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Created crisis and panic. When the dems took control of the house and senate, that’s when it all went downhill fast.
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