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6-09-09. Beck and a panel including Judge Napolitano(FOX News), Gretchen Carlson and Charles Payne of FOX Business discuss the unconstitutional removal of the private sector by Obama. Gretchen's family was just told last week that after owning a extremely profitable 90 year GM deal ship they have lost their franchise to be a GM dealer. Before this portion of the program you might want to view "Glenn Beck...Obama Czars".
6-09-09. Beck and a panel including Judge Napolitano(FOX News), Gretchen Carlson and Charles Payne of FOX Business discuss the unconstitutional removal of the private sector by Obama. Gretchen's family was just told last week that after owning a extremely profitable 90 year GM deal ship they have lost their franchise to be a GM dealer. Before this portion of the program you might want to view "Glenn Beck...Obama Czars".
At GM, the main cause was the erroneous assumption that growth could be sustained. Their business model relied on there always being more vehicles sold, more revenue coming in and more employees on the payroll than the year before.
When that was no longer the case, (shortly after Roger Smith's tenure began in 1981, and chronicled in Michael Moore's 1989 film Roger & Me) the business began to collapse. Only because it was so large and had so many assets to sell off did it manage to hang on as long as it did.
At Chrysler, the main cause was its cash being siphoned out and deposited into numbered Dubaian bank accounts by Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. Daimler Benz did the same, but the amount now pales in comparison.
Ford has been getting government contracts, bribes, incentives, subsidies and other handouts pretty much since Day One. In the 1940s, they built more Jeeps than Willys.
1986 Isuzu P'up, 177,673.8 miles.
- Hella headlights (highly recommended)
- DOT C-2 back end (also recommended)
- R-12 air conditioner converted to R-406a. Saved ozone and money
- 4.1:1 final drive converted to 3.4:1. Quieter, better mileage but it's a good thing I live in the flat Midwest.
- 9/22/2007, age 21: Still running well when reluctantly sent away for reincarnation, due to body & frame rust.
Last edited by drcampbell; 06-10-2009 at 07:32 PM.
At GM, the main cause was the erroneous assumption that growth could be sustained. Their business model relied on there always being more vehicles sold, more revenue coming in and more employees on the payroll than the year before.
I'll agree with you there.
But most business models rely upon generating more market share. Hey, even the government under progressivism relies upon that. They get bigger, and they take in more money by force from taxpayers to fund the ponzi scheme.
Or one relies upon more efficiency in the product. Impossible to do with higher labor costs that the rest of the market place one is competing in. And hard to do in the face of more and more and more regulation directed at particular segments of profitable markets. I'm not a Chevy guy, but, really, it's too bad as they have had products that sold well and were priced correctly in spite of internal issues related to their costs.
Ford has similar problems.
__________________
Super Dave
2006 E350 6.0PSD
2003 Excursion Limited 4WD 7.3PSD - Sold
1996 E350 Super Duty bus 7.3PSD - Sold
Ford has been getting government contracts, bribes, incentives, subsidies and other handouts pretty much since Day One. In the 1940s, they built more Jeeps than Willys.
That example is almost 2 1/2 years old, long before "bailout mania." The article also speaks more to a "quid pro quo" than a hand-out, per se... the state of Michigan offered them money to keep plants open in the state, what's wrong with that? They didn't go begging for money because they can't run their business (like Wall St, GM, Chrysler, etc).
Almost every car manufacturer, domestic and foreign, receives incredibly huge incentives to build their plants in a particular state. Maybe this article didn't receive much local attention because of that?
It's only a "quid pro quo" if they honor their end of the bargain. Otherwise it's just more corporate welfare.
__________________
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Douglas Campbell, P.E.
1986 Isuzu P'up, 177,673.8 miles.
- Hella headlights (highly recommended)
- DOT C-2 back end (also recommended)
- R-12 air conditioner converted to R-406a. Saved ozone and money
- 4.1:1 final drive converted to 3.4:1. Quieter, better mileage but it's a good thing I live in the flat Midwest.
- 9/22/2007, age 21: Still running well when reluctantly sent away for reincarnation, due to body & frame rust.
Oh man. We don't have cable/dish so I hadn't seen this. Thanks for posting.
drc - I am curious as to your opinion on the legality of Gretchen Carlson's parent's GM dealership closing. Should there be any clear, published benchmarks for the selection of the dealerships that were picked for closing? Are there any checks/balances/limits on the power of the "car czar" or white house? Do you agree that the white house can just make up the rules as needed?
From the fifth amendment:
Quote:
No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Were Gretchen's parents provided "due process" and "just compensation"?
It's only a "quid pro quo" if they honor their end of the bargain. Otherwise it's just more corporate welfare.
Oh, but I thought keeping the American workers working was good...
To quote...
Quote:
Originally Posted by checkthisout
Spending on domestic infrastructure and pet projects which buys equipment from domestic industry and uses domestic labor is beneficial the country as a whole.
It lifts the entire country up as a group and thus increases the standard of living and wealth for everyone.
The real dangers are when we cave to people who are obsessed with controlling "costs" and start buying stuff from China.
__________________
Super Dave
2006 E350 6.0PSD
2003 Excursion Limited 4WD 7.3PSD - Sold
1996 E350 Super Duty bus 7.3PSD - Sold
It's only a "quid pro quo" if they honor their end of the bargain. Otherwise it's just more corporate welfare.
Oh, but I thought keeping the American workers working was good...
Keeping American workers working is a good thing. But that's not what the State of Michigan got for our $300,000,000.00 "investment".
__________________
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Douglas Campbell, P.E.
1986 Isuzu P'up, 177,673.8 miles.
- Hella headlights (highly recommended)
- DOT C-2 back end (also recommended)
- R-12 air conditioner converted to R-406a. Saved ozone and money
- 4.1:1 final drive converted to 3.4:1. Quieter, better mileage but it's a good thing I live in the flat Midwest.
- 9/22/2007, age 21: Still running well when reluctantly sent away for reincarnation, due to body & frame rust.
Keeping American workers working is a good thing. But that's not what the State of Michigan got for our $300,000,000.00 "investment".
Well, what did they get? You said quid pro quo...
And you say "investment"...but you wanted American workers. This is the progressivism you appear to champion. Or what are you saying exactly? You have no standard by which to claim much of anything. I only see that you sling mud about everything.
__________________
Super Dave
2006 E350 6.0PSD
2003 Excursion Limited 4WD 7.3PSD - Sold
1996 E350 Super Duty bus 7.3PSD - Sold
Actually, I said it was not a quid pro quo. The taxpayers paid but I don't see how we benefited.
Which is hardly surprising. No savvy businessperson would enter into a deal in which someone else came out ahead.
__________________
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Douglas Campbell, P.E.
1986 Isuzu P'up, 177,673.8 miles.
- Hella headlights (highly recommended)
- DOT C-2 back end (also recommended)
- R-12 air conditioner converted to R-406a. Saved ozone and money
- 4.1:1 final drive converted to 3.4:1. Quieter, better mileage but it's a good thing I live in the flat Midwest.
- 9/22/2007, age 21: Still running well when reluctantly sent away for reincarnation, due to body & frame rust.
drc - I am curious as to your opinion on the legality of Gretchen Carlson's parent's GM dealership closing. Should there be any clear, published benchmarks for the selection of the dealerships that were picked for closing? Are there any checks/balances/limits on the power of the "car czar" or white house? Do you agree that the white house can just make up the rules as needed?
From the fifth amendment:
Quote:
No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Were Gretchen's parents provided "due process" and "just compensation"?
I don't know. I didn't know anything about the actual facts of the case yesterday and I think I know even less after watching Glenn Beck.
Much would depend on what the contract actually says, which I'm not privy to. If it included a catch-all escape clause such as “Each party agrees that this contract may be unilaterally terminated by either party with or without reason or cause … “, then there's not much recourse as far as this individual contract goes unless they can show it was a contract of adhesion or make a class-action suit out of it. “Due process” is not rigidly defined in criminal law, even less so in civil contract law, and still less after Kelo et al v. City of New London.
As for the bigger picture, no Administration appointee should ever be permitted more authority than the Executive Branch itself is allowed, but there seems to be little interest in Washington for Constitutional limits of power. That's hardly new: President Truman declared war on Korea (and perhaps China & the USSR) with nary a peep of protest from either Congress or the Supreme Court and historians can no doubt cite earlier examples. Unless powerful people actually defend its principles, the Constitution truly is “just a … piece of paper”.
So we now have a circumstance where the White House is acting as both a bankruptcy judge and the author of an ad hoc piecemeal national industrial policy. I doubt anybody would claim that any one person can reasonably act in both capacities at once, and the whole thing is clouded by the size of GM & Chrysler and the impact their failure will have on the nation. I think it's reasonable for the White House to be stepping in because of the national state of urgency (not quite a national state of emergency) but I think this White House is on entirely the wrong track.
Curiously enough, just 12% of respondents to an unscientific straw poll think that GM's recovery plan is what's best for GM; 88% think either Michael Moore's or Thomas Friedman's plans are more likely to succeed. Doonesbury@Slate - Media Center
Some of the problems and solutions, as I see them:
GM largely got itself into this mess by basing their business model on the false notion that GM would always sell more cars, always have more profits, and always have more employees than the year before. The Limits to Growth was published in 1972 but if anybody in GM's management read it, they apparently didn't think it applied to them and continued accumulating future liabilities without a plan to pay for them. GM started collapsing about the time Roger Smith was CEO and the collapse was well documented in Michael Moore's 1989 film Roger & Me.
Daimler-Benz should never have been allowed to buy Chrysler. For that matter, corporations should never be allowed to be stockholders in other corporations, period. And Cerebus Capital should never have been allowed to send Chrysler's cash overseas.
International corporations need to be regulated more tightly and on a country-by-country basis. Import/export duties and excises taxes should be used to regulate the flow of capital, commodities and other valuable things in & out of the country.
Government should never be in the business of subsidizing corporations. (of course, even as I write, more than a half-billion tax dollars have been transferred or committed to construction of the new Volkswagen assembly plant in Chattanooga) That said, I have to admit that the first Chrysler bailout was a success, albeit a short-lived one.
Government should never be in the business of running corporations, either. (although given the pre-existing errors of massive corporate welfare payments, it's hard to argue that the majority stockholder and the majority source of funds shouldn't get a seat at the table)
Ironically, I am a Green – commonly regarded the “far left” of American politics – and the Libertarians – commonly regarded the “far right” of American politics – will say exactly the same thing. I think that demonstrates the utter uselessness of the “left-right” model to characterize American political philosophy.
We should go back to the tax structures of the 1950s-1970s. When an economic policy works and the economy booms, keep it. Don't mess with success.
More generally, we ought to evaluate what works and what doesn't instead of arguing about what's Constitutional, immoral, anti-American or whatever. Unregulated monopolies, for example, don't work in the public interest regardless of the fact that the Constitution's entirely silent on the topic and the 9th & 10th amendments might be construed to expressly permit them. Likewise, would a sane person really insist that the 7th amendment still says we have a right to a jury trial in a 21-dollar civil dispute?
Corporations should never be allowed to become “Too big to fail”. Much capitalist strategy of late involves blackmailing taxpayers into making unwise investments under the threat of, “If I go down, you're going down harder.” Teddy Roosevelt wasn't exactly a flaming Socialist, but he understood the danger of concentrated capital and acted on it.
So off we go again. Nomex on.
__________________
-
Douglas Campbell, P.E.
1986 Isuzu P'up, 177,673.8 miles.
- Hella headlights (highly recommended)
- DOT C-2 back end (also recommended)
- R-12 air conditioner converted to R-406a. Saved ozone and money
- 4.1:1 final drive converted to 3.4:1. Quieter, better mileage but it's a good thing I live in the flat Midwest.
- 9/22/2007, age 21: Still running well when reluctantly sent away for reincarnation, due to body & frame rust.
Last edited by drcampbell; 06-16-2009 at 02:21 PM.
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