StrangeSox

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 15, 2008 -> 08:16 PM) I agree here, though I may judge Bush a little more harshly on Iraq than it simply being a "mistake". But this was in fact an assault on the leader of our country, not to mention of the free world - and that is not acceptable at any time, no matter how lousy a President he has been. The perpetrator should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the applicable laws. One thing that was odd, to me, about the incident... after the first shoe, where the hell was the USSS? Why wasn't there an agent there pulling Bush offstage instantly? Seems to me like a failing in security response there to me. They have to operate under different rules on foreign soil, and they're not happy about it usually. I'm sure they felt that room was 100% secure from actual threats, however.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 15, 2008 -> 01:52 PM) The very actions he is undertaking here arouse suspicion where there should be none. If he had just came out and said I did the prudent thing and met with the governor regarding my replacement, there really isn't much that could be said. Instead they went through the back door, with not even direct contacts, but something like 5th party contacts. Why go so far to try to hide your meeting, even before an arrest had been made. and Blago became political kryptonite? Heck he promised us more direct contacts with dictators, yet he won't meet face to face with the governor of his own state, even before his arrest? The more I read, the funnier things smell. Blago's been political kryptonite for a while. Obama didn't campaign or stump with him once and didn't invite him to speak at the Convention, even though he invited many other Illinois politicians. QUOTE (mr_genius @ Dec 15, 2008 -> 02:58 PM) Yea I heard that is a likely possibility. If that's what happened Obama is totally off the hook and basically is making things harder on himself for no reason. Hopefully more details will emerge, but it seems likely to me that they went to the Feds with this info and the Feds said "yeah, he's already wiretapped, we can't believe he is actually trying to do this. Don't worry, we got this."

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Dec 15, 2008 -> 01:37 PM) I think his administration will be different in that it won't be invading countries pre-emptively, disregarding the environment, advocating torture, attempting to privatize 401Ks, taking a dump on our civil liberties. 401(k)'s are private.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Dec 15, 2008 -> 01:14 PM) That by itself really means absolutely nothing, and is 100% acceptable unless Obama was somehow involved in bribes (and from the affidavit it appears he wasn't). I mean, really, what dummy actually thinks a senator leaving to become president wouldn't talk to the governor of his state about a replacement? Obama's a moron for answering the question the way he did, turning this one-day non-story into a week-long or longer story, still about nothing. That's been my take on it. He just wanted to distance himself as much as possible without having to say "Yeah, we talked to him, and yeah, he wanted us to bribe him."

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Dec 12, 2008 -> 03:32 PM) So if GW Bush busts out the magic deficit spending pen (as usual) and the market goes down then I can come back and gloat i suppose. Say I was right, a internet tradition. Just saying that the immediate market reaction isn't really a good indicator.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Dec 12, 2008 -> 02:49 PM) it's up right now, Harry. like propping up corrupt unions is going to be a big boost to the markets. if anything, a passed bailout would have caused a drop. It was down several hundred until talk of the White House not letting them fail began to circulate.

I'm sorry, but that is still not an explanation for a 1.6B disadvantage in labor costs, or why someone with a screwdriver should be paid $80k/ year. You don't think sales would be affected by a price increase of $800? $800 on the cost of a car is a ridiculously huge amount of money when you have that sort of volume. Engineers would kill that have a bonus $800 in the design budget. And its not just high wages that are the problem. Union work rules in the plants are absolutely ridiculous. BTW, the article you quoted stated $2500, not $3000, and there is no actual data given for that number. I tried looking for any other comparison of cost and came up blank.

I'm not going to argue the point about perceived quality, because I agree with that 100%. I still don't see any explanation for 1.6B not being a competitive advantage.

Explain to me how an $800/ vehicle (and at roughly 2M/ year for Ford alone, that's 1.6B a year) isn't a significant competitive advantage, and please justify $80k a year + incredible benefits for unskilled labor. They kept with the big trucks and SUV's because they're cheap and easy to design. It's harder (read: significantly more expensive) to design a small, lightweight car with a direct injection gasoline engine that still meets federal safety standards and has all of the comforts and features Americans want these days. Ford was a big sponsor at U of I where I went through engineering. They used to hire several people out of there every year. By the time I got there, they were lucky to hire one, and most years it was zero. That leads them to recruiting less expensive (read: not as good) engineers, or to cut R&D costs all together (which is exactly what they did). They simply were not hiring new, talented engineers. Honda and Toyota, on the other hand, recruited heavily.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 12, 2008 -> 10:55 AM) Why is it a bad thing for people to earn a decent wage? Especially if the product they make is already priced at a lower price than similar levels of competition? First, $80k is a little more than "decent" for unskilled assembly line labor. It's a bad thing for people to earn far more than their labor is worth because of a union strong-arming management. It's a matter of economics. Their jobs don't really warrant that level of pay, and as we're seeing, it isn't sustainable (many unions are pricing themselves out of work because of their pay scales). Even with their cars priced at lower levels, they were still losing market share every quarter. They could price them lower or pump more money into R&D, but instead they have to pay unskilled labor incredibly high wages. When the people assembling the product make more than the engineers behind the product, something's gotta give. I have blamed management as a major part of the problem repeatedly.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Dec 12, 2008 -> 09:15 AM) What? He's been AMAZING the last three weeks or so. He had one bad punt yesterday in terrible conditions against the wind and with a roll it still netted 50 some yards. What're you talking about? Could just be selective memory but it seems like he's been having a rough year.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Dec 11, 2008 -> 10:47 PM) The funny thing is, Kyle Orton tried to give the game away at the end of regulation and it won't be mentioned by anyone this week. They were what? 10 yards out 7 seconds to go, Orton drops back to pass, no one's open, 4 seconds now, he takes off running, Kyle Orton couldn't run 10 yards in 4 seconds with a clear lane to the endzone and yet he's going for it anyway. THROW THE f***ING BALL AWAY! If the Saints hold him up for an extra 2 seconds time expires and the Bears lose. Luckily they dragged him to the ground with a little time left on the clock. For a game manager Kyle Orton is a really f***ing stupid QB. He's f***ing regressing. Throwing the ball away while in the pocket would be a penalty and they'd run 10 seconds off the clock, right? What's been Maynard's problem lately? It seems like he has several s***ty punts a game now.

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Dec 11, 2008 -> 09:50 PM) i love how this somehow becomes the workers fault. at the end of the day, us automakers designed and manufactured crappy cars. they didn't listen to what the consumer wanted (see Honda/Toyota) and instead tried to "sell" the public on what they made. Can't it be both? Why should someone make $40-hr/$80k-yr plus overtime (plus another $35/hr or so in benefits) to screw on a car mirror?

QUOTE (Texsox @ Dec 11, 2008 -> 07:22 AM) Wait, are they closing their doors? I think they still are closing the factory. http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articl...16_FORTUNE5.htm The end of that article talks about people who have made deposits getting their money back.

The bailout of the Republic workers cost 1.75M. Any chance at all that BoA or JPM ever see a dime of that money again?

QUOTE (lostfan @ Dec 10, 2008 -> 01:35 PM) There already is, instead of hitting reply, click quote on the ones you want to quote (they turn red) and then go to "add reply." I just tried it with this post and BS's below it and I only get yours?

I agree with what tex, ss2k5, and lost all said. BTW, I think we could use a "multiquote" button to quote more than one person in a reply.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 10, 2008 -> 09:17 AM) Stop on that thought for just a second. Go back to say 10 years ago, when steel was a record low prices, and gas prices were still cheap. The auto companies were making money hand over first at the time. I can not believe for one nano-second that if the management of ANY of the big three companies had gone to the UAW and said "we want you to take huge concessions, so that we can quit making our hugely profitable product lines, and instead replace them with much smaller, less in demand, and less profitable product lines.", that the autoworkers would not have shutdown the entire company with strike and refused to sign the deal. Its easy to say that management signed the contract, but common sense tells you that they had NO WAY to force labor to sign any contract that involved the sorts of givebacks that we are talking about here. Its a pie in the sky theory that holds no water. Now go back a couple steps to when they first agreed to those contracts, before it would have been "givebacks" or concessions. They never had to sign those. I'm not absolving the UAW of blame, either. These are just thoughts bouncing around my head, not factual claims.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Dec 10, 2008 -> 09:09 AM) LINK That's nice and all, but it doesn't really address the issue of conflicting information coming out of the Obama camp. 1. Axelrod says they spoke a little while ago. 2. Details on Blago come out, and include him calling Obama a "motherf***er" for not bribing Blago. 3. Obama camp denies ever talking to Blago about this. Given 1 and especially 2 (why would Blago be pissed if he didn't talk to them?), 3 isn't possible. I think its just Obama distancing himself from the situation without saying "Yeah, he wanted to be bribed and we said no."

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 10, 2008 -> 08:13 AM) Profit is precisely my point - they are still stuck in the idea that their profit model from the late 90's is going to continue to work. It won't. They won't make the extra profit on SUV's because they won't be able to sell nearly as many. I have no illusions about these idiots "caring" about much of anything other than profit. And that is fine and dandy. But if they don't look past the current quarter, they will be dead in the water. These labor contracts are definitely not the only thing handicapping the American car companies. Their complete unwillingness to prepare for the future is also killing them. The other side of that argument is that they essentially had to sell the big vehicle cash cows because small cars just weren't profitable enough, given their labor costs vs. their competitors'. It still comes back to bad management decisions in signing these contracts in the first place, though.

The thing is that this business was apparently failing and had drastically reduced orders. That may not be the case for every window company out there, but that is the case with Republic.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 9, 2008 -> 08:37 PM) Here's the issue with that...almost all of those other factories have started within the past 20 years or less. If I were to compare the number of retirees they have per vehicle produced that they have to cover, they are naturally going to be dramatically lower than the number for a factory that has been operating for 50+ years, because very few of the people originally hired will have worked to retirement age. And given that health care expenditures also rise dramatically as people begin to retire, there is every reason to expect that those same plants will in the future have to assume substantially more costs as their workers approach retirement and have their health care costs go up and begin to actually draw on their retirement plans. Basically, your argument there is that we can just have the companies go out of business every 30-40 years or so when their health care costs get too high, and no one will mind having a large new number of uninsured elderly folks out there, because Medicare will take care of that. The issue with that is even in the future, as retiree costs rise, they still won't be nearly as ridiculous as the UAW costs are because they never signed the ridiculous UAW contracts. Their contracts are universally cheaper, for those working and for the retirees. Your argument is that somehow centralized health care would be cheaper for US consumers in the end (because that is who ultimately pays for the higher UAW costs through increased product prices), which it almost certainly would not be.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 9, 2008 -> 08:27 PM) I agree. So you're now willing to support my government run healthcare plan. I accept your apology. Or how about they just get paid the same that all of the US-based Toyota/ Honda/ Mercedes/ BMW/ Subaru employees get paid, which is still pretty damn good for assembly line workers?

I didn't really know where to stick this, but I found it funny. http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/74932 ECO WARRIORS SNITCH ON BEAVERS FOR 'ILLEGAL LOGGING'

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 9, 2008 -> 07:52 PM) Maybe I'm just too used to the current administration, but I really don't like how this smells, where Axelrod was a few weeks back saying the PresE and Blago had spoken regarding the Senate seat and now is saying he "Misspoke". I'd feel worse about it though if it weren't for that little clip of Blagojevich, um, talking in a less than polite manner about the PresE. Conservative blogs/ pundits were all over this earlier today. I don't see Obama being tied up in this, but that still looks a little suspicious.