It's a sad state of affairs in this country today where anyone who is critical of a political figure in any way shape or form is automatically accused of having a partisan agenda.
@scottcom36: What side is that? We're not saying Huckabee 2012 we're just pointing out that we never heard him say that labor would have to make serious concessions or that Detroit should enter bankruptcy when he was running for president last time. Maybe he did.
Where's the hypocrisy? In the op-ed he offers suggestions on what the Big 3 need to do to turn things around. Do you actually think management is running those companies well? Do you really think all it's going to take for them to survive is a loan of $25 billion, split amongst the 3 of them? No chance.
I think we were posting at the same time. In any event, I don't see how you can say Romney is being a hypocrite. In one instance he's essentially saying "I want them to survive" and in another it's "I want them to survive and here's what it's going to take".
The thing is (or at least how I understand it) it's not a question of whether they can get the loans, but of where the loan money will come from. It's infighting within Congress that niether camp is willing to use "their" money to fund the "bailout" to the automakers.
Take a little from each. Take from the fuel economy / alt fuel fund, and use that to fund the research that they (the automakers) are already conducting, and re-allocate the funds that they are currently using toward the other capital expenditures.
Take a little from the financial industry "bailout", and underwrite financing for new cars. Help people get a loan for a car, so they can buy a car. Maybe they, in turn, will buy more cars, and increase the revenue to the companies that are building cars that the public wants, but can't get financing to buy. It will not help if the automakers truly aren't building anything that people want.
Damn, why pour the Haterade on Mitt? He's not an elected official and lost the candidacy a looong time ago, so who cares what he said? There's no sense in Jalop trying to hold him accountable... Ok, he said what he said and wrote the recent op-ed, but find me a politician who hasn't flip-flopped when was politically convenient and I'll kiss your arse.
@denalijb: Excusing, for the moment, Mitt's most recent political flip-floppery, there is the not so small fact that Mitt's dad George was once head of American Motors. George's managerial actions, at the time, saved American Motors from collapse and paved the way for his later political career. The diapers, the food, the private schools, the legacy position in the Republican Party....all of the advantages that young Mitt enjoyed were paid for by the US Auto Industry. So Mitt's current position represents a giant betrayal, karmically speaking.
Nuthin political about this post at all, just recognition of auto-related doucheness so large that it's visible from space.
@denalijb: The carmakers have injected themselves into the theatre of politics to extract loans. There's nothing wrong with us being political and, in fact, we've done it a lot. However, our intention is to avoid being partisan.
@SCROGGS!!: Mitt also mentioned his dear old dad in that op-ed he wrote a few days back, pointing out that people were still talking about George's turnaround of AMC (actually, Nash-Kelvinator first, before they merged with Hudson) when he was in business school.
Detroit could use a man like George Romney right now-- he wasn't afraid to say that American cars of the '50s reeked of wretched excess, and he was an early champion of the economy car with the Rambler American. But George Romney is dead, along with AMC and the moderate wing of the Republican party that he represented as governor of Michigan. We're left with Mitt, Bob Nardelli and the Jeep Compass. And the more I think about that, the more I want to drown my sorrows in Belgian-controlled Budweiser.
My favorite part of that article is where Romney first tells the auto manufacturers they need to go into Chapter 11 to get out from under their health/pension requirements, and then that they also need to have better relationships with the unions. Okaaaaaaaay.
Yeah, the Big 3 do have some pretty serious pension obligations ahead of them. (Although new auto workers really don't make all that much money thanks to some of the newer UAW contracts.) But it's absurd to argue that the Big 3 should simply junk those pensions without talking about how you're going to help those people out. Do those workers deserve those pensions? That's beside the point--they've spent many, many years working for a company based in no small part on the belief that their retirement would be funded in large part by those pensions.
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But extreme hypocrisy certainly does. Good on Jalopnik.
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Where's the hypocrisy? In the op-ed he offers suggestions on what the Big 3 need to do to turn things around. Do you actually think management is running those companies well? Do you really think all it's going to take for them to survive is a loan of $25 billion, split amongst the 3 of them? No chance.
11/20/08
Umm, did you stop to read Matt's post?
11/20/08
I think we were posting at the same time. In any event, I don't see how you can say Romney is being a hypocrite. In one instance he's essentially saying "I want them to survive" and in another it's "I want them to survive and here's what it's going to take".
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(sorry, sorry)
11/21/08
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Hilary was saddled with her husband's baggage
McCain was too old, it is true
And so Obama turned the red states to blue
But what of the others, who started this election
Those electrifying folks who gave us erections
Of grandstands so they could orate like Biden
And make promises in hopes of luring the undecided
Remember Ron Paul, Giuliani and ol' Huckabee?
It seems only yesterday they were all on TV
Thompson and Brownback like ships in the night
Passed into our consciousness and then out of sight
But there's one candidate, who won't go away
Mitt Romney's so tall, he appears here to stay
Like the Cat in the Hat, or omnipresent Barney Rubble
He spouts Midwestern patois about the auto industry trouble
They should be saved he was once heard to say
Feed them to the wolves, he was quoted today
His flipping has flopped, his logic has stopped
Good ol' Mitt's not liking what GM has wrought
Maybe if we ignore his soliloquies
He'll fade back into abject obscurity
As nothing hurts a politician
More than a mass repudiation
But I doubt that will work
Because even though he's a jerk
The news media need something to tell
And so we'll get 4 more years of this hell
11/20/08
Yep! That is something there....whatever it is.
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Take a little from each. Take from the fuel economy / alt fuel fund, and use that to fund the research that they (the automakers) are already conducting, and re-allocate the funds that they are currently using toward the other capital expenditures.
Take a little from the financial industry "bailout", and underwrite financing for new cars. Help people get a loan for a car, so they can buy a car. Maybe they, in turn, will buy more cars, and increase the revenue to the companies that are building cars that the public wants, but can't get financing to buy. It will not help if the automakers truly aren't building anything that people want.
11/20/08
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"That much, eh?"
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Nuthin political about this post at all, just recognition of auto-related doucheness so large that it's visible from space.
11/20/08
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11/20/08
Detroit could use a man like George Romney right now-- he wasn't afraid to say that American cars of the '50s reeked of wretched excess, and he was an early champion of the economy car with the Rambler American. But George Romney is dead, along with AMC and the moderate wing of the Republican party that he represented as governor of Michigan. We're left with Mitt, Bob Nardelli and the Jeep Compass. And the more I think about that, the more I want to drown my sorrows in Belgian-controlled Budweiser.
11/20/08
Yeah, the Big 3 do have some pretty serious pension obligations ahead of them. (Although new auto workers really don't make all that much money thanks to some of the newer UAW contracts.) But it's absurd to argue that the Big 3 should simply junk those pensions without talking about how you're going to help those people out. Do those workers deserve those pensions? That's beside the point--they've spent many, many years working for a company based in no small part on the belief that their retirement would be funded in large part by those pensions.
11/20/08
11/20/08