Tag: Bailout

Mark Steyn at the time correctly called GM a company that provided health care and retirement benefits to hundreds of thousands of policy holders while also happening to make cars on the side. They were doomed.

But, guess who stepped up to the plate (though some of us quite reluctantly?)

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/chrysler-auto-workers-busted_20100923_dk?CMP=201009_emailshare

I've said for almost four years that the Republican Party is at a crossroads, mainly due to fiscal issues. It can follow the lead of the Republican Study Committee, Mike Pence, Jim DeMint, and Jeb Hensarling in its opposition to deficit spending, or it can follow the lead of Ted Stevens, George W Bush, and Charlie Crist in their support for big spending policies. The choice made here, will determine whether the GOP can take the house back in 2010, and the senate back in 2012 or 2014. It will also determine if Obama will be a one-termer. The bailout in 2008 turned the election from a close race to an ass kicking. The fiscal policies in 2006 caused an ass kicking. Democrat-lite policies from the GOP do not work. Why vote for democrat-lite when the real thing is always available.

While I understand that what works in one community does not always work in another, basic principles should always apply, and that they should be less government and more freedom.

Many in the GOP are starting to get that message again with Obama's radical leftism, Mike Pence having a more visible role, Ted Stevens being defeated, and George W Bush being gone. Starting being the operative word. There's still a lot of trust that needs to be earned, and nobody trusts the government right now. That's why we have the tea parties. That's why the calls are flooding the offices. That's why people are involved in politics who have not been involved.

Apparently whatever spending sickness is afflicting lawmakers managed to make it's way onto east-bound I-96, too, and landed smack dab in the FREEP's editorial room.  The same column which they use to caution against irresponsible budgeting (lest our state bond rating be negatively affected) also contains the Ed Board's suggestion that Lansing spend irresponsibly.

The week before state lawmakers' Fourth of July break has frequently been a time when budgets were settled for the fiscal year beginning the following Oct. 1...

A good strategy would be to spread the available stimulus money in roughly even chunks over the next two budget years.

No, a good strategy would be to avoid one-time-fixes.  You know, the kind used by former Republican legislative majorities and lamented vocally for years by the Granholm-Cherry administration?

Because these problems... these massive multi-billion dollar deficits... they aren't going to go away before that bailout funding does.  In fact, they're likely going to get much worse.

The Detroit News reports this morning on an often overlooked budgetary byproduct of massive auto layoffs... suddenly vacant industrial space.  See, the thing about vacant industrial space is that it's vacant.  There's no one there.  In other words, there goes another big dollar source of tax revenue.

Read on...

Big week, boys and girls.  Big week for Detroit, for Michigan and for hundreds of thousands of moms and dads and kids and... you get the idea.  With Big 3 restructuring deadlines lurking here and there dominos are already starting to fall in what will probably prove to be a few of the most important days in the history of Motor City.

The bottom line question, after we cut through the filler and the nonsense and the periphery issues... the heart of the matter is whether or not metro Detroit will survive in any meaningful way.  Heading into the weekend there was a serious chance that Chrysler, LLC could be completely liquidated via Chapter 11 bankruptcy which would have put an estimated 300,000 Michiganders out of work.  Friday deadlines lurked in the distance and the company's would-be-"savior," Fiat, continued to insist on significant UAW concessions.

And they got some.  THANK GOODNESS meets OUCH (probably).

Read on...

Actually, that's not true.  It has EVERYTHING to do with selling pizzas.

About a month ago, the Ann Arbor based pizza giant started an ad campaign that sought to capitalize on the growing public distaste with this "bailout" business and featured the Michigan job maker walking down the streets (and onto the front porches) of Washington, DC, offering main street his own form of bail out.  Delicious pizza at a cheaper price.

(It should be noted... I am a pizza fiend.)

This morning, instead of specifically hawking his pies, Brandon, also the Chairman of Detroit Renaissance, a nonpartisan organization comprised of the best and brightest business minds in the region, is featured on the editorial page of the Ivory Tower where he takes a swing, not at Congress and Wall Street, but at the politicians in Lansing and the monster of a business tax climate they've created.

And, refreshingly, he doesn't do it with the venom and the vitriol that we're so used to from politicians... he does it by identifying the problems and proposing solutions.

I don't normally do this but I am going to quote the article... ahem... liberally:

Read on...

I did an op-ed piece about a week ago on Obama's heavy-handed, central planning, statist-inspired canning of Rick Wagoner, then-CEO of General Motors, among other things.  At that time I used as my illustrative video the "lyric video" of John Rich's "Shuttin' Detroit Down."

Just because I know that there are some country fans (besides me) in RightMichigan-land, I thought that I'd post the official video, which premiered this past weekend.  I know that it doesn't have all the zip and flash of autobots and decepticons, but I happen to think that it's pretty cool.

Feel free to comment on either this thread or the original op-ed.

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