Say, come to think of it, maybe you could sell it on ebay.

Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and all the lesser Democrats now want yet another bailout as payback for a big push for Obama by Michigan and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. This is true idiocy. As long as Detroit’s auto makers are hostage to the UAW and enabled to operate with a 1960s business model that was only profitable when they owned the U.S. car market (in excess of 80% compared to less than 20% today), they will forever be back, asking taxpayers to subsidize their bloated abominations. It is, plain and simply put, an unsustainable model and they will predictably be back, incessantly needing more taxpayer bailouts to stay afloat.

TARP was set up to assist foundering banks and Wall Street brokerages. To use those funds for anything else would be the supreme “in your face” to taxpayers who massively were against a bailout anyway. (Try getting TARP approved today with the 20/20 hindsight we have now and it would be soundly defeated!) If you and the Republicans in Congress, who have enough votes to stop this travesty in the Pelosi-called lame duck session, allow TARP to be adulterated via a TARP amendment the Democrats need to divert those funds to the Big 3, this will have YOUR fingerprint on it and be on YOUR watch. When it goes awry, as surely it will, the history books will record that it was YOU that drove the nail in the coffin of the meltdown and created an outcry of cronyism. Mr. Obama, Ms Pelosi and all their sycophants would also no doubt label this as “the fitting legacy orchestrated by George W. Bush” and “the exclamation point on eight years of failed economic policy.”

When Ronald Reagan, a hero of yours, mine and much of the adult populace of the U.S., fired the striking Professional Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO) in 1981, after first giving them an ultimatum to return to work and release the choke hold they had on U.S. commerce, he made a statement to the citizens of the U.S. that no one should have the power to bring this nation to its knees. Well, Mr. President, it’s your turn, your supreme opportunity to make that same statement as your legacy. It will be painful at first but mostly in Michigan and on the left side of the aisle in D.C. where none of them particularly appreciate you anyway. Your approval ratings are already low so you have little to lose yet much to gain. Let Mr. Obama’s fingerprints be on this one and history will saddle him with this never ending boondoggle, already at $50 billion in government loans and beseeching you to feed the monster.

Mr. President – this is your shining moment. “No” is a complete sentence. The bailout of Detroit is wrong and you know it. It will not work. The meltdown did not cause the abysmal failure of The Big 3… it merely brought 30 years of bad management and union inefficiencies into focus. Take a poll today of all U.S. citizens and I’m guessing 90% would vote “NO” on a bailout of Detroit. Those same people would ask you: “What happened to the focus on saving homeowners from foreclosure? How did TARP funds and this debate get diverted to Detroit?

Detroit is working their spin that this will negatively affect 3,000,000 workers. Making the wrong decision affects another slightly larger group, 75,000,000 homeowners, already screwed royally by the Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi liberal freight train… the very failed social engineering experiment known as CRA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, subprime mortgages and bloated executive pay of criminal CEO’s like Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson and the boards of their two government disasters.

An iconic voice from the 1990s, Susan Powter, built her weight loss empire on a saying: “Stop The Insanity!” It’s time, Mr. President. Please do NOT let them do this. It is just wrong.

http://mortgagemeltdownblog.com/

I suggest you read the entire thing.

The Twilight Zone
I thought surely I would wake up today, scan the headines, read some articles and discover that sanity had returned to Washington. Not to be…
Honda, Toyota and others employee about 113,000 American’s who make about 4 million cars each year in Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee without the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. None of these states voted for Obama and this is important to note.
Which brings me to the boondoggle of all farces… GM, Chrysler and the UAW union. The crisis facing Detroit is being blamed on the current financial crisis and credit crunch when in fact their downturn has been decades in the making. GM enjoyed some of their best years ever, selling a record number of cars in the credit bubble buildup of the past 3-5 years yet they still lost money and their net worth at the end of Q2 2008 was a negative $57 billion! They were already insolvent and losing $1 billon per month!
The Big 3 have been dead for a long time, unable to change their business models due to the stranglehold of the UAW that renders their cost structure as far too rich to turn a profit. The UAW negotiated:
1) superlative medical benefits that virtualy no one else has with zero deductibles or copays
2) guarantees on their pension plans via the Fed’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp
3) unproductive and unprofitable plants kept open that employ UAW labor and are producing small, ugly cars that no one is buying.
4) the UAW Jobs Banks that pays workers for not working
There has been zero talk amongst politicians to address those and other UAW contracts that hold the Big 3 respective heads under the guillotine yet those same politicians are screaming “too big to fail” and “not bailing out Detroit would allow the unthinkable!” The Big 3 are also saying of course that “bankruptcy is unthinkable and not an option.”
It is insanity to throw taxpayer money at Detroit because it is a blank check… a bottomless pit with no end to the largesse or the avarice of the Big 3 and the UAW. Michigan’s democrat Governor Jennifer Granholm, Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin, along with Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Charles Schumer and a host of others are in the headlines every day since the election, stating “Detroit must be bailed out”, The Big 3 cannot be allowed to fail” and “TARP funds should be used to bail out GM and Chrysler.” (Did I mention that Michigan voted for Obama?) By the way, whatever happened to using the funds to assist homeowners facing foreclosures? A significant portion of the TARP funds were to be used to assist those people. That charter seems to have gotten lost in the cries from AIG, AmEx, GM, Chrysler and others “too big to fail.”

Barack Obama was in Washington yesterday to meet with President Bush, ostensibly to discuss the transition of power, address homeland security and terrorist activities that threaten the U.S. from around the world. Instead, Obama says his priority was to discuss Bush’s endorsement of using TARP funds to bailout GM and Chrysler and “was disappointed that President Bush was non-committal, that there was more style than substance in their conversations.”
Perhaps President Bush is reluctant to add to Obama’s rhetoric of his “failed economic policies of the past 8 years” as Obama opined relentlessly over the past two years of his campaign. Perhaps President Bush doesn’t see bailing out Detroit as a smart move for all the above reasons. Perhaps President Bush foresees criticisms and claims of cronyism if he were to endorse an unintended use of TARP funds for car makers. (See my post of November 6, titled “Not Even With a 10 foot Pole” that explains the cronyism.) Perhaps it is time for the very inexperienced President-elect to step up to the table after his January inauguration and push his own chips and political reputation to the center of the table and declare “all in.” Perhaps it is time Mr. Obama realizes the scope of the very large stakes that Michigan (I want to make sure that I mention that Michigan voted for Obama.) is demanding him to orchestrate. Mr. Obama will soon realize how very easy it is to cheer and criticize from the cheap seats. Maybe he and Nancy Reagan can have a seance and ask The Gipper or Rod Serling for some guidance.

http://mortgagemeltdownblog.com/?p=841

I think it’s more engineering and design, because you’re absolutely right: one of my all-time favorite cars was a result of the Chrysler/Mitsubishi interaction of twenty or so years ago, and it was built in Montana; a Mitsubishi 3000. Same car as the Dodge Stealth. (The Eclipse was the same car as the Plymouth Laser and Eagle Talon.)

Built by Americans, and splendid cars. My 3000 ran for eleven years, during which time it didn’t spend eleven minutes in the shop for other than the routine. I sold it to someone who collects them, and it’s in everyday use in Florida. It’s now 16 years old, and continues to be a specimen of mechanical perfection. I wish I had it back.

Japanese design and engineering, American workers.

On the other hand, I leased a Ford Explorer for a little business in 2002. Leased it for three years, 39,000 miles. In the course of that 39,000 miles it needed new front-axle spindles thrice because the 4-wheel drive crapped out; it needed a new compressor and a whole set of new guts for the air conditioning; all new electronics for the 4 wheel drive shift process (they finally figured out it was lousy electronics that was leading to those new sets of spindles); it needed a new heater core; and the electronic problems ultimately spread to the transmission.

Fortunately I had bought the extra warranty. It cost over $8,000 in extraordinary costs to keep that thing on the road for 39,000 miles. Didn’t cost me a dime – but how’d Ford do? When I turned it in I asked the guy at the dealership what they were going to do with it. He figured convert it to razorblades: Ford was already so far under water with it there was no way to get out, why make it worse?

It strikes me that’s not a great business model they have going, there…

The Iron Butterfly (my spouse) owned a Chrysler Sebring some years back. Beautiful car. Finally had to Lemon Law it out of our life. And Chrysler fought about it – they said it couldn’t be subject to Lemon Law because even though it was out of service for half its life, it was never for the same thing twice! (Fortunately the arbitrator had a sense of humor. He looked at the Chrysler rep incredulously and said: “And you’re seriously advancing the argument that you think that’s a good thing?”)

My first car was a Fiat 850 Spider, followed by a Fiat 124 Spider – which endured for a decade plus. (The Fiats were reliable every way except electrically, and the problems were dopey, never serious.) Then a bunch of Subarus became the business cars – I think I had six of ‘em over the years – and all ran like Swiss watches. The weekend cars remained Italian, and were occasionally troublesome, but you sort of expect that. Silly stuff from hand-built cars. (My mechanic says: “no two of ‘em are ever wired the same way – though they’re better these days. Up until 1995 you could throw away the manuals and wiring diagrams, they were meaningless. Too much Grand Opera on the speakers in the factory, everybody was singing along con brio. Made the wiring very spur-of-the-moment.”) Since then, a series of Hondas – all of which have been perfect – and a series of Mazda’s, perfect except for the introductory year of the RX-8 when they brought back the rotary engine. It had such deeply embedded engine mapping electronic problems (one of four in the country with the problem, and Mazda knew exactly who and where we were) that Mazda took them back as matter of interest so they could study them, and told all four of us: “here’s a new one.” Don’t know how the other three are doing, but mine’s been perfect since.

So… lotsa furrin cars, one impossible, most fine, many perfect; two American cars: both imposible crap. It would be good if it were otherwise.

If you haven’t read Alaska is turning a page at the Hedgehog Report; you must. Fascinating history as families who have long been associated with the state continue to hold sway. Palin as governor is remarkable in how she changed all that. Also do you…

Along the way, something leaped out of the shrubbery and I nailed it! I thought it was a deer, but after I pulled over and ran back, I saw that it was an obama.

I’d never hit one of those before. I walked back to my car to inspect the damage.

Underneath the street lights, the entire front of the car suddenly now sported a perfect sheen! Spotless and gleaming as if it had received a new paint and wax job, Just like new! But when I opened up the hood, everything inside was shattered and worthless, totally non-functional. The little that looked usable couldn’t be made to fit together into anything coherent at all.

A bunch of liberals immediately gathered around and started admiring the sheen. I ended up walking home.

I’m quite happy with my American car. I’ll be even happier if it keeps on going for five more years.

Foreign cars that are “made in America” are mostly assembled here from parts made abroad.

About $1400 of the price of an American car is due to employee benefits.

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger got a 2.3 percent raise in 2006, a year after taking a pay cut, a federal report released Thursday showed.

Gettelfinger earned $145,126 and received $13,405 in allowances and official expenses for a total compensation of $158,530. His 2006 salary was still slightly less than he made in 2004 — $145,466 — after he and other officers took a 2.5 percent pay cut in 2005.

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070622/AUTO01/706220303/
April 13, 2007

As others have said, out of crisis comes power. The banks nationalized. The auto companies will be next. This is the way to fast track the socialist takeover of this country. And the door will have been opened voluntarily.