Tag: FORD

A few days ago, I posted the New Ford Commercial highlighting a REAL-LIFE customer in one of those interview ambush moments who declared he would rather spend his money on a car company that was all American and did not take bailout money.  It was a classic, and the guy frankly represented the best of the US of A, and its disgust with bailouts, government run enterprise, and the corruption spawned in Chicago, that now resides in DC.

It SHAMED those other two other car companies.

It also SHAMED the administration who in their best Venezuelan moments have done all they could to chain private enterprise to their agenda.

If you followed the link above, you'll note its gone.  The video no longer exists at the address, and has been pulled.  Michelle Malkin reports the new "Attack Watch" site, the newest joke of the Obama Administration proudly declares the successes of the bailouts as an answer to the Ford commercial.  undoubtedly, the pressure is on for FORD leadership to get on knees and beg to kiss the ring of an outstretched Obama hand to be sure.  I doubt pulling the ad will be enough to salve the bruised ego of "the won" and his creepy, crony allies.

Hugo Chavez should be so proud of his protege.

H/T HotAir

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?)

The actual competitiveness of the Big Three never rated highly as a value for the government's restructuring of the industry, and the union has shown it is prone to act cavalierly towards those same companies as they struggle back toward profitability. This is the natural consequence of a "bankruptcy" process that shielded the union from the consequences of its own avarice. Whether out of greed or ignorance, the UAW could still bring these companies down.

I cannot even imagine the improvements I could make to my business If I was given $188,000 per each new employee I hired. I would be able to "blow away" the competition by undercutting them.  I could man the phone sales lines 24 hours a day.  I could invest in new equipment, buy new product, etc...

$188,000.00 is not exactly chump change.. It is about 4 and a half times the national average manufacturing yearly earnings. (Or twice that of the average UAW worker's earnings)  And since my compensation package is even less, I could employ each person for about 6 years..  What the heck.. I would shoot the moon and go for the 5 year plan and pay em more!

Via Climate Depot and Gateway Pundit is this piece from serial liar Michael Moore on his own website: Goodbye, GM. Some of you will undoubtedly feel dumber for having read such drivel, but Moore hailing from Michigan and supposedly supporting union workers here in the state, is gleeful regarding GMs demise, and it is thus worth noting here.

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

 As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy.

We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

But really isn't it much more likely that the universe understands what we're going through as a state and figured it'd pitch in with the appropriate mood lighting and soundtrack?  

Even when there are glimmers that the winter is going to break and that sixty degree days are around the corner, things like the news that the UAW finally agreed to what passes for a concession or two with Ford we're reminded in the next paragraph that there isn't a deal anywhere close to done with GM and Chrysler.

Those "concessions," by the way... they're things like giving up one paid federal holiday, going without a Christmas BONUS at the end of 2009 and suspending annual pay raises.  

I don't think I've ever gotten an annual pay raise myself, but that's neither here nor there and I don't begrudge any employee anywhere in the state from getting whatever he or she can for his honest day's work.  You can get someone to sign on the dotted line, bully for you.  

But memo to Big Labor leadership: Don't lecture the rest of the nation about how rough you've got it at $73.50 an hour when hundreds of thousands of Michigan workers aren't pulling down that much a day.  Especially with work hours, pay and benefits being cut everywhere these days, not just in UAW shops.

Places like... well, read on...

That's the word from this morning's Detroit News, reporting on the evaporation of more than a thousand white collar "jobs of tomorrow" at Ford Motor Credit.  Not manufacturing jobs, not line workers, not the sort of jobs that require a strong back and a hearty work ethic... rather, jobs that deal with numbers and largely require a good chunk of post-secondary education.

Not that those folks will be lonely, though.

Since it began the current restructuring campaign at the end of 2005, Ford has cut 60,500 jobs in North America -- including 13,200 white-collar jobs and 47,300 hourly blue-collar positions.

Or as they say in English... "ouch!"

Not that they're hurting everywhere, mind you.  The Lansing State Journal reports this morning that Ingham county business were relieved to hear that Governor Granholm's proposed state employee job cuts were coming in the Department of Corrections and not the bureaucracy.  All of those Lansing area shops and eateries depend on the red tape brigade to keep the paychecks coming.  In other words, they're in an awfully good place right now.

There are about 14,100 state employees who work in Ingham, Eaton and Clinton counties; nearly 11,000 of them work in Ingham County.

The state now is the largest employer for Ingham County, and many of those employees work in the downtown Lansing area, where they do some of their shopping and dining.

BUT... and stop the presses... in honor of President's Day I've actually found something to embrace about President Obama and his federal administration.

Read on...