Tag: big 3

And we all love trees.  I have four or five of them in my back yard and another in the front.  They produce oxygen, shade, they smell nice, I can burn them to stay warm if my heat ever gets shut off... errr...

In the 75 centuries or 869 quadrillion years this planet has been circling the sun (depending on your source, of course) Earth has managed to adapt and survive just about everything.  Colossal, global floods.  Meteor showers.  Ice ages.  Quasi-nuclear winters.   Human beings.  

Leave it to automobiles to signal the end of all that is, was or ever could have been.  Thank goodness we've got these brave environmentalist crusaders willing to fight pollution whatever the cost.  And thank goodness there are so many of them here in Michigan to enable the Granholm-Cherry administration as they join with President Obama in foisting these massive new CAFE standards on an automobile industry on the verge of permanent financial ruin. Without them we'd have negligibly dirtier air and 50,000 auto workers wouldn't be mapping the best route from their soon-to-be-foreclosed homes to the nearest unemployment line.  And who would want that?

I mean, except for the Michigan Left.  Because according to the Detroit News, that's precisely how many Big 3 jobs are expected to be killed by the Democrats new environmental red (or should it be green) tape.

Nearly 50,000 jobs could be lost in the auto sector as a result of President Barack Obama's decision to approve fuel efficiency requirements for the nation's cars and trucks, according to government documents and a former presidential adviser.

At the same time, the increased fuel rules could cause full-size truck sales to fall significantly without government help, a Wall Street analyst said.

Those trucks, by the way, have long been the last remaining cash cow for the Big 3.  Buh-bye marketability.  Hello pink slips.  

All of this thanks to our elected officials?  

Read on...

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.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson led a crowd of about 200 supporters with chants including "Reinvest in our land" and "Keep hope alive" in Hamtramck. He was joined at the rally by celebrities and several elected officials, including Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.

Stabenow advocated for health care changes and free trade. She likened the area's woes with New Orleans, post Hurricane Katrina.

"The water has seeped in every home. We are here to say, 'We will not go under,' " Stabenow said. ""We need to make sure our companies that are competing with other countries know their country is with them."

issued an executive order that requires his appointees to buy American-made when they purchase their next vehicle. Now, he's negotiating with the city's employee unions to include a "buy American provision" in the union contracts for the upcoming year.

If he succeeds, the order would apply to approximately 800 full-time city employees. The current employee contracts expire in June.

"It's a priority and a must. If something happened to General Motors or Chrysler, I would not be able to pay the high salaries I pay now or keep everyone employed," he said. "I am developing a strategy for expanding my campaign. I would like to see other county officials and school officials embrace the same thing."

If employees want to retain their jobs, they must buy American-made cars.

Who'd have ever thunk, for instance, that in the middle of May, well after the emergence of spring and the not-uncommon 70 degree day, with the planet dying and temperatures soaring while the sun turns the surface into a George Foreman grill, melts ice caps and roasts polar bears in their fur, Michigan's LOWER peninsula would suddenly find itself facing a FREEZE warning that threatens to devastate crops.  The Associated Press sounds the alarm!

Summer may be just six weeks away, but the northern half of Michigan's Lower Peninsula faces the threat of a hard freeze that could kill crops and early-season plants.

The National Weather Service has issued a freeze warning from midnight to 8 a.m. Monday for northwest Lower Michigan and from 2-8 a.m. for northeast Lower Michigan and the Thumb. Frost and subfreezing temperatures are expected in the region lying north of Interstate 96.

Brrrr.  Michigan hasn't gotten that cold a reception since the auto execs asked Congress for federal stimulus funding.  (*RIMSHOT* C'mon... that was awesome, wasn't it?)

Oh, and the bailout cash that they finally did convince the Democrats to funnel into the Motor City?  Too little too late.  

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...

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...

The Detroit News and everyone else report that GM and Chrysler are expected to meet with President Obama's foreign-car driving "auto task-force" to ask for a fresh $21 BILLION in free cash to avoid the scarlet B.  (That stands for bankruptcy.  I shouldn't have to explain these things to you... if you'd been paying attention... heh.)  This is on top of the $17 BILLION they took from the feds late in 2008 and on top of the BILLIONS they've taken and are hoping to take from the Canadian government.  

As the Presidential administrations get more liberal the requests get bigger and there is still no end in sight.  This has out-of-state GOP lawmakers crying foul and even the staunchest Michigan partisan shouldn't have a tough time understanding why.  When does it end?  Is there a bottom of the barrel?  That's why some are urging a merger or bankruptcy.

There's a real debate to be had here.  On paper, in the math world bankruptcy makes the most sense.  Free the companies from the $73.50 an hour employment costs associated with Big Labor so they can compete with other American auto manufacturing plants paying closer to $25 an hour "all-in."  But in real life?  We're talking about literally hundreds of thousands of Michigan jobs that many believe WILL disappear should the Big 3 become the Big 1 or the Big 2.  On top of the hundreds of thousands that have already disappeared under Jennifer Granholm and John Cherry's clumsily catastrophic impersonation of "leadership."

The worst part is, the plight of the Big 3 is only the tip of Detroit's iceberg.  

Read on...