Tag: CAFE

You see, everything the current president and his accomplices stand for, is about removing choices from the individuals and business.

The latest bit is in the way which he wants to affect the automakers' output.  Like the social engineering the left so eagerly embraces, it deems an outcome without regard to the input.  By simply snapping one's fingers or putting a pen to page a person is made whole, happy, and healthy.  And in this case it automatically engineers the next generation of automobiles.  First we have:

Abracadabra.

54.5.  FIFTY FOUR point FIVE miles per gallon shall be the standard, and specifically the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard. As these motivational references below allude, he must be freaking magic.  Wave a wand, snap the fingers, touch the nose, or wiggle the ears, the pixie dust is flying.

and

The Democrats have arbitrarily agreed to mandate an increase in fuel economy standards that will add $1,300 to the up-front cost of every vehicle produced in Michigan.  (As Jacob points out in BofB, the cost is likely to end up being much higher.)  That's one mighty push in the back while two of the Big 3 are bankrupt and essentially stand on the edge of insolvency.

Granholm, Cherry and President Obama are taking the nation's most fragile industry, an industry that is having an impossible time selling her product and in one fell swoop DRAMATICALY increased the barriers standing between cash-strapped consumers and the purchase of a new automobile.  

Add to that this morning the news that the Feds are preparing to essentially buy GMAC via a fresh $7.5 billion "stimulus" that grants the government control of the financing giant and that General Motors is sliding faster and faster towards it's own personal Armageddon complete with total government control and the news couldn't get much bleaker for struggling Michigan families and the folks stuck in an unemployment line that stopped moving years ago.

And no one has even mentioned those proverbial spin-off jobs.  At least not until this morning.  The Ivory Tower covers the angle and reminds folks, fuel efficiency requires light-weight parts and technology that does not yet exist as it eventually must.  R & D and dramatic changes in production come with a cost and require significant cash investment that hasn't yet materialized.  Additional thousands of jobs are this morning at risk in new and scary ways.

The new standards come at a time when suppliers are cutting their staffs to stay afloat and doing their best to maintain their budgets for research and development.

"The first thing we need to do in this country is to get auto sales back up to a level where we have sufficient cash and profitability in the supply sector so we can afford to make these moves to more fuel-efficient engines," said Jim Gillette, director of financial services at CSM Worldwide...

Parts makers have the technology to meet these new standards, Gillette said, but "whether or not they're going to get the financing sources to expand to meet the production requirements is another question."

C'mon, Mr. Gillette, that's what Uncle Sam is for.  And if the Democrats don't like YOUR particular supplier they'll just let you and your jobs die while they funnel billions in "free money" to your competitors.  That's the new American way.

Jennifer Granholm and John Cherry yesterday sold out Michigan.  I wish there was a more polite way to put it.  They stood by and nodded their heads in approval while the federal government lined up the state's biggest industry against a massive firing squad of new regulations and bureaucratic price gouging.  Might as well have pulled the trigger themselves.

Imagine the candidate looks you square in the eye and promises, sincerely, that if you vote for him and send him to Washington, DC he will kill your job.  Yours, specifically and individually.  He will target your industry, he will target your employer and he will implement policies that will just plain get you fired.

Probably not the best campaign strategy, but what do I know.  I'm not a UAW member.  Let's take a survey.

Show of hands, how many of you would vote for this candidate.  Why don't I see any hands?  Anyone?

OK, new question... how many of you would vote for this candidate, scribble him a check and volunteer on his campaign?  Still nobody?  

See, you guys and girls aren't team players.  If you were United Auto Workers members each of you would have both hands in the air and you'd be waving them around wildly, or you would if you were being honest.

Read on...