Land of Oz

Auto Bailout

Here's some random thoughts about the automotive industry bailout. Not all are my independent ideas, but here's my thinking:

It's not an automobile industry bailout, it's a Detroit automobile industry bailout. There is a difference.

The business plan of Chrysler, GM, and Ford is broke and throwing more money after bad isn't going to fix it.

I read somewhere that GM is something like $60 billion in debt now - what good is a &25B loan going to do?

Even if they don't have that debt, GM and Ford are burning through a few billion a month. $25B will last them until roughly April when they'll be broke again.

I know the UAW workers will be hurt - but no matter what happens, bailout or no bailout, the UAW is going to be hurt. Hundreds of thousands of workers are losing their jobs every month in an assortment of industries (DHL just laid off 10K) and nobody helped them out.

GM needs to consolidate and trim their brands. Do we really need Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Daewoo, GMC, Holden, HUMMER, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn and Vauxhall? I'm guessing way over half of those vehicles are basically the same anyway.

The USofA needs to push mass-transit and smaller, more energy-efficient vehicles and should look at tax breaks and other monetary incentives to the public for using them.

So you know what? I have no idea what to do with the so-called Big 3 that isn't going to hurt a lot of people very badly.

And just as an aside, retirement is no longer something to really look forward to. The cost of everything is skyrocketing, any financial savings plans are dying and pensions are being modified into non-existence and jobs are paying less and less. The houses that could have been a pension fund are worth poop and no one has the money to buy it from you even if you could sell it to supplement the savings that went down in flames along with the house equity.

Labels: government, gripes

VA

I gripe an awful lot here, but once in awhile I do give an attaboy. I'd like to give one to the Veterans Affairs hospital in Saginaw (Aleda E. Lutz VA Medical Center). While I normally use a civilian doctor - mostly just annual checkups - I have used this VA hospital off and on over the years. When I first retired here, I was going to school and used the hospital for a few health odds and ends. Some eye stuff, a heart workup and some other problems. I never had any less that excellent care from everyone here.

The last couple of months brought me to the VA again. A few weeks ago, I managed to put a 2" brad through my finger with an air gun. Luckily it missed all the important stuff and healed pretty much on its own. I did however head down the VA emergency room to have it looked at where I got a tetanus shot. I was seen quickly and professionally. Today I went down for a flu shot. When I arrived there was a sign saying they were on lunch until 12:30 which was another 30 minutes. The welcome desk made a call, and directed me down to another office where I quickly (and painlessly!!! - really!) got my flu shot.

This place really does good work.

Labels: government, michigan

Vets

Just in case you've missed it, with the election and mortgages and gas prices, the casualties since the war began (3/19/03): 4197

Labels: government, military

Government Bailouts

First let me say that I think the government does have a role in helping out society. I lean towards a certain socialist program in things like health care, mass transit, education and the like. I'm not however so sure of the government's role as a business bailout well. It's one thing to dump a few billion into better meals at schools, but something else altogether to dump those billions into a rundown factory. And we are talking a bunch of billions here.

Like, billions and billions, all the way up to trillions actually, of dollars being tossed around as part of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) - (To Any Rooting Pig). AIG insurance just got another $40 billion for a total of around $150B (as near as I can tell anyway). The automotive folks want $25B on top of the $25B they already got and I just read that Detroit is looking for $10B. Something like $250B of the TARP funds are going to 67 banks.

American Express (who keep sending me credit card applications) wants $3.5B and Fannie Mae wants even more over the $100B they already got since they lost $29B this quarter. Just how much money can the government (who is us, by the way) keep shoveling into companies who are running into the ground?

I personally don't have a clue here. It doesn't seem right to keep pouring billions into a failing business. To me, since it's failing, it must be doing something fundamentally wrong. On the other hand, it sucks because while the CEO will make out no matter what, the peons working the assembly lines and manning the phones are well and truly fucked when the company goes under. And since they're out of money they won't be spending any to buy other stuff which means more companies going under. It kind of makes you wonder how anyone survived the olden days when credit was as unavailable as it is now (said oozing with sarcasm and irony). In the mid-seventies I had a hard time getting a credit card - and that was while in the USAF making steady money. Now I probably shred half-a-dozen credit card applications a week, and I in 1996 going back to college, fellow students - with no real job - had credit cards to burn. But with saving account interest rates at 1 percent or under, why would anyone save.

Labels: government, michigan

Sex & Violence

I'm a Netflix user and one of the last DVDs I rented was a Tales from the Crypt: Season 1. I can't say I enjoyed it all that much. The stories were pretty cliche, with the bad guy/gal doing something bad to someone and then getting their just rewards by the end of the episode. I often read the reviews and this was no exception. The Netflix listing made this NR, for not-rated. Of course, there's always those people who think something like this would be good as a baby-sitter. And of course, they're going to complain about the DVD soon after.

But what they complain about is always the language and sex. Tales from the Crypt uses the F-word pretty often and, horrors of horrors, occasionally shows a bare boob - or two. It should be noted that this volume also contained a wife slamming a fireplace poker into her husband's head, a slightly deranged executioner electrocuting a slew of victims (one of whom had a bared breast, so I suppose she deserved it), a newlywed chopping her newly betrothed into bloody bits with a battle axe, and a doctor transplanting the nine-life organ into a guy's head.

But you know what? The only complaint for the kiddies was the bare-boob (and quite a nice boob at that) and the profanity. The blood and guts, and hacking and slashing, and shooting and burying didn't seem to be a problem. One of our problems in this country is that we seem to be more accepting of murder and violence than sex. OK, I don't have any kids, so I really don't know how I'd treat my own, but I do think I'd rather have my kid run around naked than chopping up people with an axe.

Labels: crime, movies

Nov. 4

In many ways, it's pretty amazing that the USofA manages to stumble along seeing how we are stuck what happens every four years on November 4. Honestly, how many people today actually know enough to make an educated guess about which candidate to vote for? Have you read any of the comment blogs that accompany many of the news stories about the election? The amount of misinformation is mind-boggling. And have you noticed how much of it IS ALWAYS IN CAPS? As if capital letters will make it true. I normally don't even try to read comments that have all those capital letters.

I'm pretty well-read and not a total moron, but I really haven't a clue about which candidate is truly best for the nation. I'm going to make my best guess in a couple of hours, but what is it that makes me responsible enough to choose the leader for this country? I try to look at everything and toss whatever seems to be on either extreme. Both Obama and McCain have published or uttered their share of bullshit and lies. What I did was pick a couple of important topics and try to figure out which one of the liars will best support it.

Do I think my vote makes a difference? Not really. If after work, I was to stop at Macdonald's instead of the polls, I don't think anything would be politically different tomorrow morning. At least not for the president. My vote isn't even for him. It's for somebody, who I don't know, who may or may not cast his vote for the person I think I'm voting for. How can you even be sure your vote is physically counted? That machine I slip my ballot into could just as well count my vote towards the socialist party for all I know.

Someone, I forget who, once said, "the power isn't with the voters, it's with the vote counters."

Labels: government