In the middle of all the auto industry news on Monday, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm was everywhere in the media. Sadly, most of what the Democrat said was nonsense. Gov. Granholm repeatedly praised outgoing GM CEO Rick Wagoner. Even worse, Gov Granholm assured us that the American auto industry was in the middle of a dramatic retooling for the new millenium.
It’s fine and dandy for the governor to cheer for the home team, but she shouldn’t do so at the expense of reality. The American auto industry has spent the last few decades fat, dumb, and happy. They allowed the Japanese to get ahead of them in the game, not due to some nefarious plot from the UAW but due to their own idiotic inertia.
The U.S. auto industry has felt it would have a license to print money with SUVs and the like, without a care in the world for the fuel efficiency and quality of their product. Their day of reckoning is here. GM and its ilk failed to go into the 21st century, and despite Gov. Granholm’s silliness, it will probably not survive in anything resembling the same form.
Japan has competitive advantages in several respects, particularly with their nationalized health care system. A nationalized health care system in the US would significantly enhance America’s international competitiveness. That is either unfathomable or conveniently ignored by both the right wing and their corporate puppet masters.
Japan also has, along with Germany, China and many other industrialized nations, national policies for advancing their manufacturing and technological interests as countries. Those countries are beating US because the American right wing have been in charge of America’s manufacturing, technology, and science policies for most of the last 30 years.
Where Japan has nationalized healthcare and METI (the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) that works for their nation and citizenry’s interests, the American right wing has magic ponies and discredited economic theories.
The American right wing’s manufacturing policy: hand America’s manufacturing over to Communist China because the labor is cheap, there are no pesky labor rights (and no democratic citizens to complain), and no pesky environmental regulations.
The American right wing’s technology and science policies: ridicule scientists, ridicule peer reviewed science, block education funding, blame teachers instead of supporting them, block science funding, and even deny observable reality.
That doesn’t negate the U.S. auto industries negligence in making bad decisions. The corporate C.E.O.’s went for the short sighted profit of S.U.V.’s while ignoring the better ideas of the craxy lefties who would have insisted they build smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.
Craxy lefties’ ideas have ultimately proved to be both more profitable and farther sighted. And because Japan was listening, they now control a greater share of the global auto market while American auto corps are hanging by a thread.
The right wing’s magic market theories over the last 30 plus year has worked against America’s interests by ignoring and ridiculing the left wing’s repeated calls for investments in education, science, teachers, and even an American industrial policy.
Foreign countries that did invest in education, science, teachers, and national industrial policies have all been out-competing America on multiple technological fronts.
The American right wing’s subservience to a magic market means that America, as a nation, hasn’t responded effectively to the those nations that are working through their respective government’s to promote their national interests.
Maintaining a strong American manufacturing base should be simple to understand for any rational Republican who believes in national security and military preparedness.
There has got to be some rational Republicans remaining, or are all of them voting Democratic already?
Granholm’s praise of Wagoner was no different than Obama openly praising McCain AFTER the campaign for running a good campaign, etc.
It’s called civility.
Obama has been clear that he’s not going to let the car companies fail on his watch. Granholm is a key intermediary between the industry and the administration. It’s clear to most that a deal was cut here, and it’s not prudent to go out and publicly taunt the other guy who took the fall in the deal.
Doing so would be imprudent, foolish and uncivil.
Let’s put politics aside as the American Auto Industry problem is not a political one. At least not 100%.
Was the US Auto industry asleep at the switch when it came to recognizing foreign competition in the 70’s to today? Of course!
Are US auto industry products that bad? No.
Has the US auto industry revamped models, performance, and manufacturing? Yes!
The main problem with GM, as an example, is that you can’t employ 100,000 people and at the same time be responsible for over 900,000 former employees.
How can a company compete when on January 1, before 1 automobile rolls off the assembly line, that company is billions in the hole?
GM could be making the greeeeeenest cars in the universe. Cars that would be the wet-dream of every lefty in the world. It still would not be able to succeed with the existing employee compensation package that is in place.
The US auto product has been FAR from perfect, but the product is not what has destroyed this industry.
I see definite concessions being made by GM management and its union workforce. What I do not see is the bond holders coming to the table. The threat of or actual bankruptcy may be the only way to get these monied interests to share the pain. Unfortunately bankruptcy could kill what demand there is for GM vehicles.
Please cut her some slack. Michigan was the microcosm of what we ended up with in Oct 08. She spent her first term cleaning up after the Engler administration let the highways and streets and building project sit for 2 terms and try and work his way into the national spotlight as a compassionate conservative who reduced Michigan’s budget. Then she had the economy and housing market go south, and had one of Michigan’s largest non-Auto employers move out of state. She has to be politic and play the game, or else she’ll be replaced by a loony Republican like Hokestra or DeVos.
God lord. Did joaquin actually make a bit of sense?
Craxy lefties’ ideas have ultimately proved to be both more profitable and farther sighted. And because Japan was listening, they now control a greater share of the global auto market while American auto corps are hanging by a thread.
And for some hilarious reason you think this has to do with “lefties ideas.”
It’s very simple. Look at the per hour cost in North America:
GM: $81.80 an hour
Toyota: $47.00 an hour
left wing’s repeated calls for investments in education, science, teachers, and even an American industrial policy.
Yeah right. We’ve dumped hundreds and hundreds of billions into that black hole also known as the Department of Education and for what? So our kids can still lag behind other industrialized nations in basic areas like reading, math and science. Federal spending on K-12 education has increased nearly 138% since 1985.
Of course we know the left supports freedom and choice. For everything but schools that is. Every study done shows that kids who benefit from school choice programs do better than their peers who do not.
When liberals start to embrace school choice (and in effect telling the unions to go eff themselves) and stop keeping kids locked in shitty schools, I’ll take their calls for more “investment” in education more seriously.
The hourly wage rates cited here are untrue and have been disproved many times.
It’s very simple. Look at the per hour cost in North America
The average UAW worker makes $55/hour.
And you wonder why I’m so dismissive of the right.
Jay: Of course we know the left supports freedom and choice. For everything but schools that is.
And just what is preventing you from putting your kids into any school you want? Some “leftie” standing in the doorway proclaiming “No choice today, no choice tomorrow, no choice forever!”?
Jay, what is preventing you from putting your kids into any school you want?
Jay demands a government handout before he’ll be forced to send his children to a school!
Jay, citing repeatedly debunked myths (above) doesn’t help your arguments.
It’s also difficult to take you seriously as you are a self identified gun waving extremist. It suggests that you are insecure and you need to feel that you are a threat in order for you to feel safe. It’s the kind of reaction that children who weren’t loved by the parents often have.
Considering the right wing used fear for political purposes for most of the last eight years (the very definition of terrorism), don’t you think you could at least holster your gun?
Gun waving terrorists don’t make good right wing spokespeople. It hasn’t work out well for black sheet clothed Taliban and it wouldn’t work out well for white sheet clothed extremist’s that think it’s appropriate to call an African American adult male a “boy.”
Come down off the ledge, Jay. You clearly have moments of lucidity. Work with those. Try to love yourself (and no, I don’t mean by stroking your gun, remember, it might be loaded).
SDM: Jay, what is preventing you from putting your kids into any school you want?
News Reference: Jay demands a government handout before he’ll be forced to send his children to a school!
That’s what I expect, yes. Jay whines about the left being opposed to school choice when really his objection is that they aren’t willing to pay for his kids’ private school for him.
Was just looking to see if he’d try to claim otherwise. Lets see if he returns to this thread, shall we?
There is already “school choice” on many fronts. You can, as News Reference said, send your child to a private school. If you are dissatisfied with the public schools in your town and are unwilling or unable to pay for private school, you can a. homeschool or b. move to a place with a better school district. Sometimes the better school district is blocks away. Even within large cities there are top rated and low rated schools.
There is another radical thing you can do- c. sacrifice for your children. If you want to send your kid to a higher rated school, you can do without the new SUV and family trips to Disney, as well as the 60″ LCD Tv. I know couples who live in cramped apartments in good school districts so that their kids can excel. J and his ilk however don’t wish to make that sacrifice, asking the rest of the taxpayers to make it for him.
Lets see if he returns to this thread, shall we? Anyone? Anyone?