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Heath, OH Car Consumer Discussions

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by dallasdude1 on Sat Aug 16 20:37:00 PDT 2008

General Motors (whose president once famously declared that what's good for GM is good for America) announced that it was closing 12 of its U.S. plants, eliminating 30,000 hourly jobs, and whacking a billion dollars a year out of the health-care benefits it owes to its blue-collar workers and retirees. Two weeks later, GM announced that it was going to triple the number of cars it makes in low-wage India. At about the same time, Delphi Corporation went even farther. A division within GM until it was spun off in 1999, Delphi is the nation's largest supplier of dashboards, brakes, doors, power trains, and other components assembled by auto companies, hauling in more than $28 billion a year in sales. It announced last October that it plans to close some of its 31 U.S. plants, terminate its heath-care plan and life-insurance coverage for blue-collar retirees, reduce pension payments, and—get this—force its 34,000 hourly workers to take a two-thirds cut in their wages. Skilled workers there, who make as high as $30 an hour, would be knocked down to as low as $10 an hour. Asserting that the middle-class wages and benefits earned by auto workers are unaffordable luxuries these days, millionaire executives have begun the Wal-Martization of auto-making. This is not just another industry, and the severing of the social contract by GM and Delphi is not just another in a long string of corporate downsizings. This is one of our nation's premier industries, a symbol of America's economic vitality and can-do spirit, and a pacesetter for our entire economy. In 1914, only a year after he opened his first assembly line, Henry Ford stunned the manufacturing world by more than doubling the hourly wage of workers on the line. At $5 a day, he explained, they could afford to buy a Ford. Moreover, James Couzens, Ford's corporate treasurer at the time and the man credited with the $5-a-day idea, said: "We want those who have helped us to produce this great institution and are helping to maintain it to share our prosperity." Ninety-one years later, the managerial heirs to Ford and Couzens are disowning any corporate commitment to shared prosperity as they arbitrarily abrogate the good-faith contracts negotiated with auto workers. Today's industry executives are cutting off the top rungs of America's middle-class ladder, lowering the best-paid jobs to a level where employees will no longer have the income to buy the products they make. In the name of "competitiveness" with third-world countries, these executives are creating a poorer, less secure—and angry— working class in our country, stealing the American Dream from millions of people. Their actions raise a number of Big Questions for the future of our society: Around what shall we gather? Learning from early childhood the importance of fairness and sharing is central to our becoming social beings. Indeed, these were the basic values behind the social contract, which pledged that loyalty, productivity, cooperation, and quality work would be fairly rewarded. But these values are nowhere in sight when GM dumps 30,000 loyal workers whose productivity record, according to the very CEO who did the dumping, "has been dramatic," doubling in the past 10 years. These values are also absent when GM shuts down 12 facilities, including two that were ranked among the industry's best in quality and a third at GM's Tennessee Saturn plant, renowned as a model of labor-management cooperation. GM has now emphatically declared that those virtues are no longer to be honored. If our society can no longer gather around the shared economic values of loyalty, productivity, cooperation, quality, and fairness…then, what? The only answer being offered by the elites is "Survival of the strongest"—but that's the law of the jungle, not a social ethic. Why shouldn't workers be well paid? The CEOs (and the compliant media) keep hammering auto workers as the "aristocrats" of labor, claiming that their wages and benefits are excessive and must be slashed so that U.S. auto corporations can become competitive again. A New York Timesreporter, in a tone of tongue-clucking criticism, noted that GM's American employees are earning far more than auto workers "in countries like Mexico and China." Well, gosh— I would hope so! Isn't getting ahead part of the American ethic? What's wrong with a blue-collar factory worker making $30,000 or even $60,000 a year plus health care and a good pension? That's success—for the workers and for America—and it ought to be held up as a model for a well-run economy, not a target of derision. Oh, by the way, how ludicrous is it for the pay of middle- class workers to be attacked by CEOs hauling away millions of dollars each and living in platinum cocoons? What about the abject failures in the Executive Suite? Top management has become highly creative at blaming, reducing, and stealing from its workforce. If management put a tenth of that creativity into designing cars that the buying public might actually want, there would be no need for the massive cutbacks we're getting. Contrast Detroit's performance with the competition. Toyota, for example, makes cars here in America, paying wages and benefits comparable to Detroit's. But its high-quality, goodmileage, reliable cars are selling— American consumers are snapping up Toyotas faster than the company roll them out. Far from cutting back, Toyota and other foreign competitors are opening new plants in America, while the geniuses running GM are trying to shrink their way to prosperity. U.S. auto chieftains do not keep up with market demands or design quality cars. Instead, they run top-heavy corporate structures, engage in fraud (much of Delphi's present financial troubles come from its three-year, Enronish accounting scandal that cost investors more than $1 billion), launch new "turnaround" schemes every few months, rely on money-losing discounts to move inventory, and dump money into silly advertising campaigns to try to cover up their production failures. Then, with revenues down, they demand more cutbacks for the blue-collar workers while merrily giving everyone in the executive suite promotions and raises. Doesn't this cry out for a National Health-Care Program? A constant refrain from the auto companies is that the soaring cost of health care is crushing their bottom line. For example, GM honchos wail loudly that covering their autoworkers and retirees adds $1,500 to the cost of each car. The only answer, they say, is to slash or even eliminate this protection for working families. But wait—before our country callously agrees to yank the health-care rug out from under the middle class, let's consider fundamentally reforming our bloated, bureaucratic, exorbitantly expensive, inadequate and unjust health-care system. Again, check the competition: Japan has a national health program that doesn't leave its populatio

Re: The Dark Knight... [Mr_Shiftright]

by jipster on Wed Aug 06 13:58:55 PDT 2008

The Joker is traditionally a role for hams and he hammed it up pretty good Robin Williams got beat out for the role of the Joker by Heath Ledger. Williams can look pretty creepy, as shown in some of his past movies, as well as being halarious. I think he would have been a great Joker. Having not seen the movie, if my past expectations of big blockbuster movies are any indication, this Batman movie will probably be a flop. It seems a movie built around special effects trumps anything that has a decent script or character development.

Re: The Dark Knight... [kyfdx]

by Mr_Shiftright on Wed Aug 06 13:04:15 PDT 2008

Heath Ledger looks good because everyone else's character was so wooden and boring. He's the only animated actor on the entire screen. The rest are either robots or you could say their lines before they do. The Joker is traditionally a role for hams and he hammed it up pretty good. Too bad he didn't have a better script to play with. There was a lot of "cut and paste" to fill up those 2+ hours. Yes, I meant save $7 DIFFERENCE. Of course, not me, I get senior rate now (whoopie). I would have felt short-changed at $10, but at $6.50 Dark Knight only over-charged me maybe $2.50.

Re: The Dark Knight... [kyfdx]

by KarenS on Wed Aug 06 12:47:18 PDT 2008

But, what's with Batman's voice? Is there a frog in there? Helloooo, that's part of his disguise. :shades: I agree. Heath Ledger's performance was the highlight of the film. I like Maggie Glynnhall(sp?), but this wasn't a great role for her to show off the talent. She was outstanding in Sherry Baby.

Re: The Dark Knight... [ateixeira]

by kyfdx on Wed Aug 06 12:32:51 PDT 2008

Yeah.. that makes sense... I liked The Dark Knight... I figured the Heath Ledger role was mostly hype, but it really was the highlight of the movie.. I'd give it a B-minus.. But, what's with Batman's voice? Is there a frog in there? :surprise:

The Dark Knight

by mackabee on Fri Jul 18 00:52:29 PDT 2008

Just got back from the midnight premiere of the new Batman movie. It was in one word; astounding! If Heath Ledger does not win a posthumous Oscar award for this performance, than the academy is totally blind and stupid, and dumb. Mackabee :shades: