Schwarzenegger Sides With Obama on Automakers’ Bailout

Sure; and is Schwarzenegger willing to cut his anual income to what those same automakers get (including benefits). He might find that life gets a little difficult with only that income.

George, Why does you round table always have one liberal Republican, three far-left dems and no independents. The bearded kook this week tried to correct George Will’s opinion on the 1930s. Will was right. The elitest FDR gang pissed around by favoring friends and buying votes for 1936. I lived through it. The NY Times fresk is full of loads of crap. Just lolk at his deceptive eyes. He is aanother example of the trash that trys to influence the masses.

George,i heard Arnie mention the auto
workers benefits being high.How about the CEO & his salary & benefits-i’m sure they are more than any world competitor ! I remember Daimler’s CEO was bad 1 million and was SHOCKED at
the top salaries at Chrysler ! How about these Ceo’s are paid to COMPETE
not all the eggs in one basket-SUV,Trucks,crossover,gas guzzler !
Problem is they IGNORE the CUSTOMER !
I remember as a kid,we were “a ford guy-chevy guy-dodge guy”.Then the V.BEETLE
landed,a better built car for a LOT LESS
MONEY,well GM – FORD – Chrysler did not
pay attention ! We taught JAPAN to make better products-the rest of the world followed -While we(workers)were forced
to build CHEAPER at higher prices ! GEE
& now none of our LEADER or CEO’s can
figure WHAT HAPPENED ! I grew up in the 50′s only high school graduate-no MBA
but i have seen this coming for 30 years.I retired as an INSPECTOR (joke)
for a company NOW in MEXICO !!!!

Other countries have national healthcare. Of course their companies pay out less for benefits. We have an empoyer based healthcare system.

Arnie is right they will never deal with the problems if we don’t get some concessions from the labor unions. All retirements should be looked at We have people retireing at unbelievably young ages and living far to long to sustain these benefits and the American taxpayers are breaking under the burden of these liabilities. Look at teachers,firemen,policemen,army personnel,postal employees,federal state and local officials etc. the list goes on and on we need to raise the age where they receive these benefits

I thought Arnie just got back from DC asking them for BILLIONS to help out his state. Seems to me that everyone is heading up to Washington looking for a handout. Schwarzenegger’s opinion is meaningless. This man can’t even run his own state people!! Next!!! NO BAILOUTS FOR THE OBSOLETE US AUTOMAKERS!! LET THEM REORGANIZE IN BANKRUPTCY AND GIVE THE CORRUPT CEO’S UNIONS A DOSE OF REALITY FOR A CHANGE!!!

Dear George,
How can Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger be against Gay marriage AND be for the CalEEfornia Supreme Court overturning the people’s vote on Prop 8?
Please let me know.
JM

Realistic the pay packages of both union and management auto workers is and has been out of whack for a long time. Declining industrys that cannot show profit year in and year out should not keep raising everyone’s wages. It makes no sense. The legacy costs to profits were imcompetently projected so the math just doesn’t add up. Didn’t they use any actuarys and cost accountants like the insurance industry? All americans pensions have been either discontinued or downsized as there has been a restructuring of where the money goes which is now to upper management and stockholders which include some big institutions, endowments, and state pension plans. The worker has lost out on this front, but now to survive the companies still need to be viable. If the ceo’s first responsibility is to work for stockholders interests it will ultimately loot the company. The problem is a structural one. all the financial engineering has gone into generating quarterly bottom line profits, not into long term sustainability and organic growth. The problem is deeper than where the money goes, its how the money goes. We have papered ourselves into a small room in the attic that cannot sustain all interests. We actually have to rethink the American business model, once again. I think housing value also went to the institutions and their investor that package mortgages for the most part to generate returns for them, and like most finanical booms the common man got to participate in it for a while till he didn’t and then got trounced. The truth is there is no way to pay for pensions and health costs for people who retire at 65 and live to 95 unless you put a whole lot more in, both the company and the worker, literally saving 33 percent of their gross income, and that won’t deal with protecting against market risks. So they can still lose their money. What I am saying, is a person needs to save about half their gross paycheck to insure sufficient funds for retirement in a low growth environment and that will decrease consumer spending big time and slow the economy in general. This is what Japanese do, they save a lot of their paycheck as they are simply being more realistic and the truth is they have a very modest, even poor retirement. Basically, whatever you save in your 401k will over 20 years, if they are good years, double and you lose up to half of that in taxes upon withdrawl. So you really only grow your money by a quarter beyond your savings in what you get to spend which questionably keeps up with inflation. Its not a good deal, unless your company puts in a substantial match. Short of putting a match in, its just an inflation adjusted tax deferral vehicle. And this is what our government allowed corporations to give out to the American worker as a substitute for retirement. A lot of company executives and big investors made a ton of money off of this for their own personal fortunes because of the spike in earnings during the changeover. That is over now but the primary problem of how to address workers retirement is still very much with us, with the exception that everyone is a little older with even less time to earn and save what they will surely need.

What ever happened to letting industries succeed or fail on their own? If we bail out the auto industry, where does it end? And what incentive does ANY industry, state or local government have to be managed correctly, if the Feds are just going to come in and bail them out? And just WHERE do they think the Feds are going to get the money for all of these bailouts? I am so sick of people not taking responsibility for themselves.

It is amazing to listen to Republicans talk about the workers giving up benefits that cost the car companies. He compares the additional cost built into a US made car to a European made car. ALL EUROPEAN CAR MAKERS HAVE GOVERNMENT FUNDED HEALTH CARE that the USA CAR COMPANIES AREE PAYING FOR. ARE THE REPUBLICANS SAYING WE NEED UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE!!

Good to see ABC get a good interview and allow the Governor to speak without interruption. He definitely showed an excellent grasp of the situation and its unfortunate that Washington lacks similar common sense. There simply are too many people who turned a blind eye to what was going on around them and both Washington and Wall Street are not getting sufficiently aggressive to prevent this from repeating itself. The scariest thing is that every few days, there’s a further revelation of financial controls being relinquished in the past 10 years, which helped this catastrophe become even more catastrophic. In reading the latest edition of Bloomberg Markets, there are further revelations of financial controls that SEC head Christopher Cox removed and further imperilled the USA. And even though McCain raised the issue briefly, it seems to have largely disappeared. We need more politicians to be straight talkers like Schwarzenegger and start cleaning up the situation seriously. By Neufeld at http://www.leasinglawyer.ca.

to walkere/2000 I dont think Arnold takes a gov salary, or donates it at least and any other he makes from his own ingenuity and talent unlike most rebot auto workers who have others negotiate their life for them.

The UAW has already made tons of concessions. Auto workers have been screwed for the last 3 decades. The union has already taken a lot of the cost of health care for current employees off GM’s hands and agreed to pay cuts for a lot of the workers. How much more can they give up? I don’t think the unions should be asked to give up anything else until the CEO pay is cut dramatically.

The auto workers have a choice: either reform and take a pay-cut pre-bankrupcy and keep their jobs, or collect unemployment post bankrupcy. Take your pick, because you can bet the average American is not going to buy a car from a bankrupt company, patriotic or not. This point cannot be debated, because when the automakers go belly up, we ARE in a depression!

The thing that gets me ticked off the most is when other Americans say a person is not allowed to make a living. If every worker in these plants made three cents an hour, the company would still go under. It’s not the payroll that’s holding back profits, it’s the fact that you have to make cars that people want to buy. Company mismanagement and lack of foresight is holding back the auto industry. They had the ‘future vehicles’ back during the Clinton era, and they secretly crushed them in compactors. In fact, they had low emissions auto as far back as the 1950′s. No guts, no glory.

hi
there is one more thought for car makers,1 st thing is reduse the total models in to 1/2 nos.freeze the wadges for next 3 yrs once they agree to take cut by 50% and after 3 yrs give them 15% increase in pay .i remember some thing happened before 33 yrs, i bought 1 new car from this big 3 company went to pizza hut for celebrating the new car buy, came out after eating pizza and car will not start, called the dealer he told me starter failed, so what we need to do is simple if any parts fail like this the unit who does work on it , manufacturing it and testing it , will be responsible for it and has to come out all it needs to pay for it including recall of the car to fix it. simple , then see how ,even 1 part comes out, from factory or parts manufacturer, you wil see none.we need to do some thing that is for sure just to saty in business and be comparative to others, i also feel that even toyota is paying too much to workers but it has to do it because it is hard to find
any worker lower that what they pay now, but within few yrs they will find at lower wadges, i am sure. quality control is very important.
natu

George, The auto workers including the Ceo’s ought to be cut back to a normal wage if the want the buy out I know some workers and they are making good money and still living pay check to pay check because they are spoiled with high wages. let them try 6 to 7 dollars the wou’t be driving hummers all the time

Tough Love or Just Tough! The Big Three.
This Will take an Outsider to Realistically and Systematically review every aspect of any one of these Corporations. The CEO’s HAVE TO MANY DISTRACTION TO DO THIS RIGHT. They will be trying to cover their friends along the way! Forget their friends. There is no Family or Friends in this Process. I’ll Start with my Big Fat Calculator. I Would Love to be THE SLASHER and I know How. You Imagine you have a Big SICKLE in an overgrown Field. There are some things to save. We don’t allow the Field to become overgrown again! I am Currently out of work and would do this JOB for a REASONABLE wage. I’m Serious, and Would do this in Everyones Best Long term Interest. Remember there are Plenty of QUALIFIED Scabs out there that would love to have some of these JOBS!

They will be back for more…