Senators make automaker CEOs look good
Let’s look at the Senate for a moment.
Senators get complete job security for six full years; given how few senators are not re-elected, one can say that they actually have far better job security than that. But even within those six years, they get security that makes tenured university professors look like, well, autoworkers.
Senators get full health insurance, subsidized food, nice air-conditioned offices, free staffers, lavish pensions, and all sorts of other perks. Oh, and a six-figure salary – $169,300, to be precise.
Seems like a nice life.
Oh, but autoworkers, they’re another story. All they’re doing is manual labor. Unlike Senators, who have to sit in a great big room for hours at a time pretending to listen to other Senators, and only get a few months’ vacation every year, autoworkers get to work in nice noisy factories where the temperature only gets into the low triple digits during the summer, and the noise only goes up to airport levels or so. They don’t have to deal with all the backbreaking labor of a Senator, like getting free travel from lobbyists, fine wines and dinners from other lobbyists, or fact-finding tours to Europe.
How dare the autoworkers demand a median wage? How dare they ask for health insurance? How dare they ask for pensions? demand the Senators.
How dare autoworkers ask for their jobs to be kept in North America? Why are they so angry about all the suppliers moving their factories to China?
How dare they have that culture of entitlement?
Much of the criticism, including a considerable amount of unwarranted bashing of American cars in general, comes from a Senator whose state paid hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign companies in return for hosting their factories. Partly because that state was so free with taxpayer dollars, feeling free to do that socialist thing and give ‘em to private industry (or is it only socialist if you get something in return?), huge amounts of valuable farmland was paved over, while square miles of already-paved land, useless for anything but factories now, goes begging for new development. It’s the kind of waste that makes good people cringe, especially as food prices go up, and those same politicians that begged Hyundai and Honda and Mercedes to built on their farmland blame those darned greenies and their precious renewable fuels for food shortages. (We actually haven’t had any food shortages, and a good deal of the rise in food prices could be attributed to higher fuel prices.)
Now, Senators, they have great ideas. They can rescue the auto industry. Here are their wonderful ideas:
- Declare bankruptcy and break the UAW so all those promises to workers made decades ago can be broken, while shafting creditors and shareholders alike. (This idea comes most often from those who profess to have “small town values” or “family values.” I guess their small towns and families are made of shiftless criminals who can’t be trusted to live up to written contracts.)
- Make cars that get 50 mpg, though the sales of current hybrids are low and the Prius, currently the only high-mileage car that doesn’t make substantial sacrifices, just plunged in sales.
- Combine into a single monolithic company, though a large part of GM’s problems is gigantism and Toyota’s having some of the same problems that GM has had for years.
- Instead of having the government loan money, do private loan guarantees.
It looks a lot like the big three made the trip for nothing. One has to hope that they can hold out until the class of 2009 to come into office. These clods could care less. Senator Corker feels bulletproof. He shouldn’t. Nissan didn’t do that well this year.
Anyone familiar with the term “Kabuki Dance”? Essentially, in our English usage it means a drama or a ritual carried out in stylized fashion with predictable results. That’s what happened in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago and that is very likely going to happen again. It is breathtaking the way stupidity reigns up on Capitol Hill. Warning after warning goes out and all we get is humiliation from the same lame set of gasbags that caused this mess in the first place. And nearly no one in the press is saying anything about the billions of tax incentives doled out to the transplants or the fact that the opposing lawmakers have them in their backyard. It seems they are more content with American failure than stopping a great depression.
heres my solution to both the banking and auto situation, and its way simpler than any gov intervention, oversite committee’s and completely
give every LEGAL Natural citizen family in the USA, THAT HAS PAID INCOME TAXES for 5 years in a row a 1 million dollar voucher. 2 blank checks. one check you use to buy an auto OVER $25,000 domestically produced ONLY, that gets at MOST 25 mpg.
whats left, you pay to your mortgage company to pay off your home. HOME ONLY, no business, rental properties or 2nd home. ONLY EQUITY PAYOFF, no intrest, no pre pay penalities, no BS!
Then tell the banking industry world wide,
as from the seinfeld show:
NO SOUP FOR YOU!!!!!!!!
dr
dr
Spot on DaveAdmin. I watched this dramedy live, as I did the first round, and had to double check that I wasn’t watching the Comedy Channel.
Had I been one of the CEO’s, I would have pointed out to the esteemed pompous windbags, that yes, I did fly here on the company dime, as time is money in the real world, and I as a taxpayer, have paid for all your flights of fancy and haven’t received as much as a thank you. Bye the way Senator, What brand of car do you drive ? By the way, would it make some sense to drop the corporate taxrate on us for awhile and maybe suspend federal fuel taxes when retail prices begin rocket skyward again ?
I have also taken notice that the media has and continues to reinforce old sterotypes of the auto industry further adding to the misconceptions. If you have watched most any of the TV news over the past years when monthly auto sales are reported, Chrysler sales increases, were always lost as the last point when the Ford and GM sales were down. Chrysler’s sales performance was continually downplayed, and the stories invariably would almost gleefully report sales increases by Toyota and Honda and now the media has been trying to finish the job by repeatedly reporting Chrysler as “near death”, “barely hanging on”, no wonder they only moved 88,000 units last month. Whose going to buy a car from a company, whose already written off by the TV talking heads.
What about people who worked extra hard to pay off their mortgage, or who rent?
I like the first check idea ;) SUre makes more sense than going to 1% of the population and giving them back a few million.
I’m beyond disgust with all of this. It’s stinkier and steamier than a rotten pile of… well, you get the point.
The fact is, it is not the labor unions that have crippled the auto industry. If anything, they’re the last thing that’s keeping American cars half respectable. The same trend was observed in the American steel industry. After Taiwan Tin became the norm, and every third world country with a bucket and a flamethrower was becoming an inexpensive source for poured and rolled metals, the American companies began to blame the Steelworkers for their inability to drop prices to such a level that could compete with the ‘other guys’. In reality, the ‘other guys’ could sell it cheaper because their quality control was horrendous or non-existant, their labor was working for 3 cents per hour and paying back 16 cents per day to live in a wooden shack behind the factory, and safety was a completely unknown term. The end result was a quality of product that leaves many wandering through boneyards on rainy days looking for I-beams from a time when ‘people knew how to ring out a beam’, rather than purchase spotty and unsound product at a lesser price, and with a lot less rust on it.
Now, I realize, Toyota makes a fine car, and Honda has spectacular products in both the automotive and general small engine markets (generators and many 2 cycle applications).
But anyone who believes these companies started off this way is only kidding theirself. The success of Toyota and Honda is built on the broken backs of an abused workforce. Even today, while you can be assured that the Toyota Tundra you just bought was made in America, you can also be assured that the fella who installed your IP cluster isn’t making enough money to afford to buy one himself — and he builds the damn things all day.
There is a fine line between Xenophobia and ‘Lookin out for your Own’; I’ll freely admit that, and I’ll also admit it’s a tough line to walk on. But it’s been a long time coming that we actually take a crack at it, because if the big 3 were playing by the same rules as the foreign competition (or should I say – if the foreign competition had to play by the same rules as the big 3), then you would see the same problems running amok within Toyota and Honda.
In the end, you also need to look at what we’ll be losing — The Honda Ridgeline is no truck. And although the little Nissan ‘trucks’ (they’re trucks as much as I’d consider a Ford Ranger a truck) are quite good runners and will last 300k miles, they can’t pull their weight — literally, they can’t. The market for foreign vehicles is ‘business casual and classy with high reliability’ — they’ve never been asked to built a worker, and when they have, they’ve turned to American Engineers and American Industrialists to design that ‘work grade’ equipment.
They might call us cowboys, but only a cowboy can tame a mustang.
Dave, Please post this article on some mainstream websites. The politicos need to see their own hypocrisy in print. Well done!
Thanks!
Your spreading the URL around would be very helpful ;)
I wonder what all the Senators and Congressmen will do when they don’t have their Lincolns do ride in come next year. Well we see stretched Prius’s or Camry’s for them? Or will they really go out on the deep end and demand Maybachs.
Here is what we do, grass roots effort. We as the People take away their power to give themselves raises. Matter a fact we roll their pay back to about $35,000 a year. Demand that We the People, get the same health care benifits that they do, if not we make an amendment that they will have
to go to an HMO of our, the Peoples choosing. Vacations would be only a three week maximum, if
Congress was not in session in D.C. they would have to report to work at their local offices
9-5 just like the rest of us. To save Tax Payers money, thats us We the People, all Senators and Congressmen would have to fly Southwest Airlines, or coach if Southwest did not service that area
they are flying to. All pensions are null and void, the money in the pentions would be used to prop up Social Security, Senators and Congressmen would have a 401K just like the rest of us. If they cry about it oh well they should have saved for their retirment.
This how we need to CHANGE Washington D.C., take the aristocracy out of Congress and make them think more like We the People
Hey Rudy, what’s wrong with Greyhound? It’s green, and it goes everywhere, even D.C. Flying coach would look pretty good to them if they tried a few long haul trips on the bus, say, from Los Angeles! We suffer from the same inflated ego’s up here in Canada. I’d like to make them take dogsleds!LOL!
Be nice if Bush would stop sabotaging the deal. He got everything he wanted and now he’s adding more demands. Personally, I find the idea of Bush’s lackey being able to force companies into bankruptcy to be insane.
The Federal Government itself needs an overhaul.
Since they are so out of touch with mainstreet America, how can they possibily relate to the public at large. Only during election years do that get the slightest idea, of what is really going on.
It would be interesting to see a poll of how many members of congress and the senate actually drive a car or truck, and if they do, how many of those are domestic?
Chrysler’s vehicles are copied in design and function, by so many other competitors, gee must be doing something right?
Looks like those EV’s do actually run, and could be built, question is will the public rush to dealer’s to buy them?
The facts are the standards demanded by government, are beyond the technology of the day.
Perhaps the speaker of the house, and the Senate majority leader, should tour the facilities, look workers in the eye’s, and actually drive an American Car, Truck, SUV.
I believe Senator Reid, suggested ending production of P/U trucks, and focusing on smaller cars with better mileage. Does he know that Americans need to haul and tow? It’s amazing to me that people with so much power and influence, really just don’t have a clue, and they get to decide the fate of our Nation!