Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics Bailing out the auto industry - yes or no?

This story is fascinating!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/10/AR2008121001679.html?hpid=topnews

All those neopseudocons who wouldn't buck the President for 7 years now won't fall in line behind him. Conviction or convenience? Serving the nation or running for re-election already?

And aren't these the same people who pushed through the credit card company welfare act, you know the one that made it virtually impossible for common ordinary schmucks like you and me to declare bankruptcy; forcing us to go through credit counseling and get into a payment plan instead? Now they want to use the bankruptcy system to resolve the auto industry's issues?

And aren't they the core of the folk who insist we not have activist judges? And now they want bankruptcy court judges to fix the economy?????

I know, I know, consistently is the hobgoblin of little minds!!

You had to ask? I've been watching and listening to the House hearings yesterday and now the Senate.

If nothing else, the speeches are definitely campaign speeches. Barbara Boxer brought herself to near tears. A shameless debacle.

A small aside to this GM thingy... Seems that I remember that GM borrowed $14 Billion Dollars about four years ago, to bring their pension plan up to standards required by the PBGF... and that at the time they had been behind in funding the plan by 24Billion...
(Was in the same year that Congress passed a "holiday law" that allowed all companies to stop paying into the PBGF for a year in order to improve their profits.)

This whole scene is very, very ugly.

There has been considerable discussion on this thread about the amount of Pension Benefits that are involved in developing the numbers for GM. Like it or not, these benefits were legal requirements and were supposed to have been paid for along the way. The fact that the management sidestepped their obligations to do this (and the government failure to call them to task) is one of the reasons why I feel such animosity towards the management, who took the money to pay their own salaries, and the congress who took the lobby money to overlook the legal responsibilities.

As far as GM is concerned, the bailout monies should not go towards continuing bad management, but towards the pensions of the millions who may lose their retirement money, when the PBGF goes broke.

IMHO, if the automakers don't receive a bailout, it would be a great start to a new paradigm, since there are surely enough wise investors who would not let the market for 15 million cars/year slip by without putting the manufacturing complex back to work.

It would be nice to see the good old boy network shut down and to begin a new management team. I believe the bailout money would be better spent on bridging the income for the workers, while a court ordered bankruptcy operation begins.

Exactly how I see it. While the demand for automobiles will continue to decline, there is still a market for them. If GM and Chrysler are out of business I guarantee you that either Ford, Toyota, Honda or VW would pick up a few of the existing plants and move more of their production to the US to make up for the dissapearance of GM and Chrysler.

Some plants will get closed down forever... but those plants are on the way out whether GM and Chrysler are in business or not. Demand for cars is not what it was 5 years ago. Cars are lasting a lot longer and people don't buy new cars every 2 years anymore.

Actually, if one wishes to avoid the fallacy of vicious abstraction, the quote should be "Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". Of course, since you are referring to pols and such in general, one should not expect a consistency of principle from basically unprincipled persons, should one?:-)
Yours,
Issodhos

There is a monument to the union entitlement view sitting in the northern edge of Michigan's lower peninsula.

http://www.blacklakegolf.com/

"Black Lake Golf Club is the newest addition to the UAW’s Walter and May Reuther Family Education Center, situated on 1,000 heavily forested acres along the southeast side of Black Lake, one of Michigan’s largest inland lakes near Onaway, Michigan."

A very nice and delightful round of golf, in a wonderfully scenic setting in the midst of a living memorial to the man who, more than any other individual, drove the American auto worker into obselescence through over-reaching in union negotiations.

And it is costing its members hugely, depleting the union's coffers to cover the annual operating cost of the center!
http://wot.motortrend.com/6293732/m...ion-loss-over-past-five-years/index.html

Ah, the UAW! The poor, downtrodden driver to bankruptcy. Not to ignore the complicity of the company executives, but a very clear example of over-extending the workers' rights!

Barbara Boxer cries easily, and holds one of the safest seats in the Senate, having set a record in 2004 for the most votes ever received in a contested election.

Perhaps like a number of multimillionaires, she was thinking of the state of her stock portfolio?:-))
Yours,
Issodhos

Had I intended to quote the material, I would have done so, in accordance with the several style manuals that address the point. Here is one that is on line and available for your future reference.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_quote.html

It would surprise me, but perhaps you are not familiar with the word paraphrase.


Paraphrase: "a restatement of a text, passage, or work giving the meaning in another form"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paraphrase

My posts invariably comply with these models of proper attribution. You may wish to save this post as a reminder in the future so that you do not misunderstand my purpose and are able to differentiate between a quotation and a less rigorous conveyance of meaning similar to a known passage.

Correcting another's paraphrase, absent a spelling or grammatical error, is a presumptuous endeavor.

Oh yes. However, the key to paraphrasing is to maintain the same meaning in another form, else a casual reader may be misled. Bad for effectively communicating, doncha agree?;-)
Yours in gramatical solidarity,
Issodhos

She also happens to be a damn good Senator!