Although camouflage is a natural endowment, it is easier for an octopus to take out one's aggressions in Photoshop, morph these enemies of the people with liquify tools, and show their true faces. Now, if only there were a Voodoo button ...
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
COMING TO A POST OFFICE NEAR YOU
These are the good old boys who refused to bailout the American auto industry. They deserve a prominent place in every U.S. Post Office from coast to coast. Their anti-union, anti-labor views are so perverse, they don’t mind taking down the entire U.S. economy. They would rather support foreign car assemblers in their home states than save our iconic industries ... and an estimated 3.5 million jobs. Criminals! Traitors! Here is Octo's list of public enemies:
SENATOR KIA
Saxby Chambliss (R) Georgia
SENATOR HONDA
Richard Shelby (R) Alabama
SENATOR TOYOTA
Mitch McConnell (R) Kentucky
SENATOR BMW
Jim DeMint (R) South Carolina
SENATOR NISSAN
Bob Corker (R) Tennessee
Although camouflage is a natural endowment, it is easier for an octopus to take out one's aggressions in Photoshop, morph these enemies of the people with liquify tools, and show their true faces. Now, if only there were a Voodoo button ...
Although camouflage is a natural endowment, it is easier for an octopus to take out one's aggressions in Photoshop, morph these enemies of the people with liquify tools, and show their true faces. Now, if only there were a Voodoo button ...
Until this whole (latest) fiasco, I had no idea that foreign car factories in our country were regionally located in the southern sphere so exclusively. Are they unionized? Is there a particular attraction that southern parts hold?
ReplyDeleteSorry - excuse the ignorance. I'm still trying to figure out why I am paying so LITTLE at the pump. And cynically wondering if Detroit & co are gleefully rubbing their hands together with visions of once again being able to foist their back-log of gas guzzling SUV's onto our streets again - & now they have an excuse to combat the environmentalists - they need the cash.
What a tangled mess.
BTW - being a water dweller I liked the watery face the best.
Well this water dweller will be offshore until Tomorrow night and if I see any of those nasties, I'll be getting out the old harpoon -- aaaaarrrrr.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's all in the South, but seeing how an apparent 80% of all vehicles here are "SUV's" ( a term only understood by a few industry people until the last couple of decades ) and seeing as how some of my neighbors have two or three of them and no car at all, and seeing as how virtually all attempts to market domestic small cars in the US have been unprofitable, I have to blame the fatuous fad followers of America who see big, ugly and unstable trucks as a symbol of luxury and status.
In fact even Europeans can't get enough of them. Why blame a manufacturer for giving in to customer demand? We're the idiots here.
Of course it didn't help that the idiots who formulated the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, exempted trucks from the same fuel and safety regulations. Detroit simply put upholstery in these crude vehicles and satisfied the demand for behemoths the CAFE standard was supposed to quell. Why try to cram the family of 6 into a Ford Escort when you could buy a Cadillac truck, just like the Gangsta Rappers do and of course they're soooo cool.
Some countries instead just taxed fuel and taxed big vehicles more and so achieved much better roads and more efficient vehicles and much better public transportation and less urban sprawl, but tax is the scariest word in the American lexicon and so we did this to ourselves and we have nobody else to blame.
That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.
Auto assemblers (pls. note use of the term "assemble" in contrast to "manufacture") from Japan and Germany got sweetheart deals from Southern states to set up shop. No, they are not unionized and their labor force earns about $25/hour compared with $28/hour for UAW workers.
ReplyDeleteThe senators from "Southern Bloc" (pls. note similarity to "Soviet Bloc") states are more interested in protecting local commercial interests than in revitalizing the national economy. If the Big Three go under, they reason, it will mean larger market shares for vehicles assembled in their home districts.
Although Detroit suffers from a huge "Legacy" expense (the cost of pension and retirement benefits which add thousands to the cost of a single vehicle), busting unions over a lousy $3/hour is a wedge tactic.
The biggest problem faced by domestic manufacturers is the scaling down of production to match the size of shrinking market shares. In other words, over production. They need interim cash flow to accomplish this objective, and this issue bears little relevance to differential labor costs.
Hence, my total disgust for the grinches that stole Christmas from hard-pressed American families.
Actually, Fogg, I don't disagree with you at all. My few meagre words above hardly capture the complexity of the problem and the amount of blame to go around.
ReplyDeleteOn energy taxes, especially, we have been woefully remiss. And we will also need a carbon tax if so-called green technologies will ever become economically viable. There will be a huge political fight in Washington over this, but we must win this argument. No choice in the matter.
Damn, Republicans are dumber than mud on energy issues.