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<...>Notes,

Rather to my surprise, I agree with you about everything, with (I think) the minor exception of CEOs' 'obscene' salaries. A cap on earnings of companies or individuals goes a little too far in the direction of socialism for me. But otherwise--I'm right with ya.

R.




I definitely agree with you on no cap on earnings of companies or individuals. I hope I didn't imply that I was for a cap.

But when a CEO is making millions of dollars per year while the corporation is losing billions of dollars per quarter, I don't think he/she is earning his/her salary. The CEO is paid those obscene amounts to make or keep the corporation profitable. If the company is losing money year after year, with no end in sight, the CEO is not doing his/her job and should not be making that much money. But I think it is up to the stockholders of the corporation to take care of that, NOT the government. I think the government meddles too much into the affairs of business, both to their benefit and their detriment.

I am a self-employed businessman, and I do not want the government meddling in my affairs.

I think the old anti-trust laws, before they were watered down, would have done a better job in keeping corporations competitive with each other, but that's another post and another subject.

I am a moderate, sometimes agreeing with the conservatives, sometimes with the liberals, but seldom with the extremists on either side of the fence. So I end up making "enemies" from both ends

I do know the system is broken, but I don't know how to fix it. I wish I did.

Notes


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<...> Unlike Rush Limbaugh, I desperately want Obama to succeed and if he can clean this mess up even somewhat by applying left wing liberal principles then guess what, I'm right there with them because the Republican free market principles I thought I believed in have done squat. <...>




I too hope Obama succeeds. To wish otherwise is to want to cut your nose off to spite your face.

While I know this country was founded as a Liberal country, I do think the extremists go to far, and I don't see Obama as an extremist. On the other hand, as I posted earlier, the extreme conservatives go too far also. Everything in moderation.

And the Republican free market principles were not totally free-market, but very pro corporate under the name of free market. And the Democrats aren't the answer either.

Here is some things I've noticed about the two parties.

The Republicans tend to steal money from the taxpayers and spend it on international exploits, and the Democrats tend to steal money from the taxpayers and spend it on domestic programs.

The Republicans raise fees (a tax by any other name is still a tax) and the Democrats raise taxes.

And for me voting is a process of selecting the lesser of two evils, and that is a sad thing for me to say.

I'd like to abolish both the Democrat and Republican parties along with the Electoral College and go with a multi-party, popular vote system, even with the problems and run-offs that come with that. I also think the presidential candidate with the second highest number of votes should be vice-president with veto power.

And I'd like to make lobbyists illegal. It's not freedom of speech as they tout, but tacit bribery.

I also think that any publicly elected official, who knowingly uses the office for his/her own personal gain and at the expense of the taxpayers, from president to dog-catcher, should be given a fair trial and if found guilty be either executed or given life with no possibility of parole, depending on the severity of the crime.

But I'm drifting off the subject again.

I want my million dollar bail out because I'm over 50

Notes


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My only beef with GM is about their new electric car - they had an excellent start ten years ago, and killed it. Now they are pretending to be virtuous by developing an electric which isn't even a fully electric - it's a hybrid.




Jeez - they built the car. To replace the batteries would have cost more than the car was worth. They killed it because there was not a business case to continue it. I drove the EV-1 two different occasions. It was a joy to drive, but the batteries just wouldn't last.






They built a car in which to replace the energy source would have cost more than the car? I am an engineer, and if I designed things that cost more to service and/or fix than to replace, I'd be out of business too.

I'm only wondering why they didn't stay with the program. Surely battery technology is/was improving. I'd also like to know why the battery company GM invested in was sold to another company and then folded. I know what happened to the electric trolley busses. There does appear to be a credibility gap around the former big three.

There may not have been a business case at the time, but then one wonders about their foresight. I have a friend who is a chartered accountant - he says that when it comes to technlogy, put the engineers in charge, not the bean-counters - because bean-counters don't see the possibilities in a technology - they only see a bottom line. Strangely, Mr. Bean-counter Waggoner didn't even get that right.

It all comes down to this - Ford, GM and Chrysler had a huge head-start in North America, certainly over the Japanese. They had everything going their way - and it's hard to not think they blew it. GM went from No.1 in the world to bankruptcy - this is a clear sign of mismanagement - not bad luck. I know darn well that our engineers in the US and Canada can compete with the world's best, but it doesn't look like they were given a chance - management faulted on this.

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Glen,

As an engineer, you also know that some things are done for research purposes. The battery tech did not change rapidly enough.

Using your criteria of 'designing things that cost more to service and or fix', the Prius would not be for sale. It is a loss leader. That is, it costs more to produce than what they can sell it for. Replacing a single part on the Prius under warranty puts it even farther into the red.

It is an advertising machine, however - fooling people into thinking that Toyota is all about fuel economy.

We did have an engineer in charge at GM - Bob Stempel. Engineers like to play too much. Beancounters are needed to keep the sandbox the right size.

There is a balance. I don't know exactly what it is.

I do know one thing - I don't know of a single engineer that could have predicted the future in 2007; when GM was making a profit with cars that people liked, priced right, etc. Fortune telling was the skill required. Most engineers don't have that in their back pocket.

The 'blowing it' came in the Roger Smith era. Not Wagoner. Wagoner and his management team are responsible for the investment in the Volt technology - which will be a game changer available to all.

I'm sure it looks easy to diagnose the ailments from the outside. I'm living in Colorado Springs now, and it's easy to see that people just think of cars like they do their big-screen TVs. They really don't care where they are made or who makes them. Without seeing the devastation to a local economy, it's so easy to live in the happy world without that consideration. I know I do it for nearly everything I buy - so I'm casting the stone directly up in the air to come crashing down right on my own head.

So much misinformation is out there substituting as facts; GM vehicles don't last, the Volt is a hybrid, etc. etc. So much armchair quarterbacking. I've just gotta quit. PM me if I reply again to this thread for an electronic dope-slap to my head.

Last edited by rockstar_not; 06/04/09 10:17 PM.
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<...>It all comes down to this - Ford, GM and Chrysler had a huge head-start in North America, certainly over the Japanese. They had everything going their way - and it's hard to not think they blew it. GM went from No.1 in the world to bankruptcy - this is a clear sign of mismanagement - not bad luck. I know darn well that our engineers in the US and Canada can compete with the world's best, but it doesn't look like they were given a chance - management faulted on this.




While they took home obscene salaries for running the great American car companies into the ground.

I wish I could make a salary for doing a job wrong. How many factory workers would stay if they consistently completely failed their job?

I have owned a lot of vehicles in my time, and all except 2 were US built. I bought a 1972 1/2 two cylinder Honda from my sister (nice car 49mpg highway - impossible to replace major parts) and a Fiat Spyder when I got divorced (red sports car for my second puberty). The rest were Ford, Chevy, Olds, Plymouth, and Dodge. I got the best reliability by far out of the Mopar products.

There was a quality problem in the 1970s with US cars, but they fixed that. During that era the foreign cars got their foothold in the US market. Again a management problem. I used to have a neighbor who retired from the Chrysler Corp assembly line. He said during those years the workers could have made a good car if management would have let them, but the assembly line moved so fast that the work could not be done properly by the best workers. So you miss a weld, drop a few screws, do something sloppy in a rush, miss something altogether, and go on because the next car is here already.

As in engineering, most things have to find a balance. The balance between building quality and cost effectiveness is not only in design, but in running the entire company. And when management blows it, and still get millions of dollars in bonuses, IMHO it's a major flaw in the corporation.

Now that we own almost 3/4 of GM, I hope they come out of it OK.

Notes

Last edited by Notes Norton; 06/05/09 06:20 AM.

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Hey Danny

I thought Merle line went
"When a girl could still cook and steal wood"


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How about if we get the politicians to work for $1.00 a year as the folks that came in to help AIG did? At the end of the year we could vote to see what there bonus is, based on how well they did their job! (hanging still an option!)

I wonder how many of those who "just want to serve their constituents" would still run for the job & pay massive amounts of money to get it?

Mick

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Reminds me of Churchill's declension of adjectives: "I am a statesman, you are a politician, he is a political hack."

When is the last time you heard the word "honor" in association with ANYONE in public office? 'Cause that's what it would take.

R.


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Good points, all. As a Detroit guy, I'll say this; a union guy making $30.00 and hour to put in sheet metal screws that a chimp could do.....exsecutives making millions a year sitting on there asses doing as little as possible...making cars that few people actually like.....having way too many dealers......I0's of billions of dollars ( legacy costs) paying out obnoxiously high pention and retirement benifits to both exsects and union folks.

1) Union entitlement.

2) Corporate greed.

Really; it's the same old story. Whats amazing to me is that it's taken this long for the shi.t to hit the fan.

But we need unions to keep the big guys honest so wuddaya do? I got nothin........maybe socialism is the way to go. ( Not!)

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None of us have anything, Swannie. This is the classic old cliche that our form of government is the biggest piece of crap ever invented except for everything else that's been tried. You can't dictate or legislate human nature.
As to some comments above about electric cars and why they should be produced in greater quantities etc. I knew I had read this before but I had to wait until the weekend to look it up. The big thing right now is lithium ion batteries. Has a nice high tech ring to it, right? Ever thought about where the lithium comes from and how is it produced? Check this out Autobloggreen.com There's not only no free lunch here, there's not even a snack. The other question is cost. I spent about a half hour or so searching trying to find the cost of the batteries for the Chevy Volt and nobody's saying what it is but guesses are from $4-17,000. They say the batteries should have a life of around 150,000 miles. Not bad but how many of us keep our cars in good shape for quite a long time? What is the value of a 10 year old car that still looks pretty good but needs that kind of dough to keep running? Regular gas engine cars can be worked on piecemeal, if you want to restore it or just keep it running, you can spend a few hundred here, a few hundred there, do some work yourself, etc. With the Volt or other electric car, when it comes to the batteries it's all or nothing, that's it. Here's another site that goes into this GM-volt.com Note it's not all bad news, there possibilities being discussed that could make this work out but the point is it's not been worked out yet and this is not some kind of wonderful panacea that's been hidden from us by evil corporations that's going to save the planet. Far from it.

Bob


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Re: corporate greed/union greed...
what is happening is exactly what's supposed to happen.
The correction would have been the co. going bankrupt WITHOUT govt intervention/loans.
They would either change or disappear.
Something would take it's place. (it always does)

Whatever happened to the hydrogen fuel cell car?
I've heard that govt hacks put the screws to it!

Last edited by Mick Emery; 06/06/09 02:44 PM.
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The hydrogen car has the same problem as ethanol - at present it takes more petroleum to create a hydrogen cell or a barrel of ethanol than it saves.

And I think the gov't should have let the banks and the auto companies go bankrupt without aid. The FDIC would have protected the people with money in the bank.

But we don't have a democracy, we have an oligarchy (or a corporatocracy).

We don't have capitalism but corporationalism.

We elect the leaders and they are puppets to the multi-national corporations.

Notes


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I just read that 60 percent of personal bankrupt people in the US are at that point due to medical bills. Unless you are Bill Gates you are 1 illness away from poverty.

Here's an idea. You can get into Canada with your library card and a smile. You can't go home without a passport. So if you don't feel well....

I read about an American goes to England and has a heart attack. They wouldn't let him pay. If I was a sick American I'd jump a plane to England.


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I wish the US would go for socialized medicine. I know there are a lot of people that say it's inferior, but most countries that have socialized medicine have a longer life expectancy than the USA so it can't be all that bad.

IMHO the medical lobbyists pulled the strings of our governors to keep the medical costs in the US so high.

Notes


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Bob:

Good points. Something else to think about - the hydrogen atom is the smallest of all the elements - it tends to leak through everything, particularly when under pressure. The latest idea for keeping your tires from slowly going flat (air molecules do leak through rubber tires) is to use nitrogen. It's a larger molecule than oxygen, and doesn't leak out as fast as air which is about 80 percent oxygen. Propane doesn't seem to leak out of tanks or through valves because is a a long chain (large) molecule consisting of carbon and hydrogen.

There is a rumour here in BC that Ballard (the fuel cell company in Vancouver, BC) has given up on fuel cells for anything but stationary usage - they realized a while ago that hydrogen fuel cell cars weren't practical.


The definition of a corporation that I think is most accurate; "a pile of money with no conscience".

Glenn

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The latest idea for keeping your tires from slowly going flat (air molecules do leak through rubber tires) is to use nitrogen. It's a larger molecule than oxygen, and doesn't leak out as fast as air which is about 80 percent oxygen.

Glenn




Glenn, you are correct about using nitrogen in tires. However I do believe that air is approximately 21% oxygen. I believe you made a typo as air contains approximately 78% nitrogen. Argon makes up the difference to 100%


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I know there are a lot of people that say it's inferior, but most countries that have socialized medicine have a longer life expectancy than the USA so it can't be all that bad.



I would like to see the evidence of that.

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I'm guessing that the reason for that mick is that we have the highest murder rate on the planet by miles and miles. That...and we live hard and party harder...;)

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I know there are a lot of people that say it's inferior, but most countries that have socialized medicine have a longer life expectancy than the USA so it can't be all that bad.



I would like to see the evidence of that.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_Expectancy_2008_Estimates_CIA_World_Factbook.png


Last edited by D. Tuna; 06/06/09 08:24 PM.

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The latest idea for keeping your tires from slowly going flat (air molecules do leak through rubber tires) is to use nitrogen. It's a larger molecule than oxygen, and doesn't leak out as fast as air which is about 80 percent oxygen.

Glenn




Glenn, you are correct about using nitrogen in tires. However I do believe that air is approximately 21% oxygen. I believe you made a typo as air contains approximately 78% nitrogen. Argon makes up the difference to 100%




Mario:

You are absolutely correct - I got the numbers backwards.

So, I'm wondering; if air is only 21% O and 78% N, then how much improvement would there be with pure nitrogen? And would it be cost effective. Most places I go, air is free, but nitrogen would not be, and if you weren't close to a nitrogen filling station, what would you do - dilute the nitrogen, then have to start over again? Cost effective - or a money grab by tire shops?

I have a modest RV, and I carry an air compressor because the tires take 65 psi, and if I develop a slow leak, I'm not stranded.

Glenn

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