President to Appoint Task Force on Autos

So are the automakers happy not to have a dictator overseeing their every move, or will Obama’s ‘task force” simply overwhelm them with rehab directives?

more socialism for corporations.
no different than the republicans

Oh my God..TurboTAx Timmy in another position that he can screw up..America is DOOMED..You seen what his “plan” did last week… There is absolutely no leadership or judgement in this administration
And Yet another Democrat scandal is brewing in the Senate
Democrats “culture of corruption”

Is there one corporation in America that Democrats don’t hate? Seriously. They’ve demonized every corporation I can think of.
Dems are all about building their own power base in government and making people dependent on the government. We all know how government screws things up, and it won’t get better until we have term limits.

This is convient timing. I wonder how long it will take to get these people seated and settled into their offices. T
This buys a bunch of time for the auto makers to get their ducks in a row, which at present, they do not have.
I find it all rather dubious. Lets not forget the President Obama, as the President-elect, had a hand in crafting this bailout for the automakers. I find it alarming that he is changing courses at this late point in the game. Its a little too convient for his buddies @ the UAW.

The clueless leading the clueless.

An auto task force sounds better suited for the task of retooling American car manufacturing than the singular Auto Czar. It’s an exciting prospect that the US will be competing on the global scale for automobile and fuel efficiency. Bring on the American ingenuity and innovation!

Sounds a lot like the Soviet Union. Ford was smart to refrain from taking federal money (although I’m sure the Motherland will impose regulations on it under the guise of regulating GM and Chrysler). If the Motherland doesn’t take Ford over, it will be interesting to see how it performs the two now nationalized car manufacturers.

Sounds a lot like the Soviet Union
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Oh, really? Retooling American car manufacturing to be competitive on the international front? How easily the buzzwords and buzzpoints are thrown around by some . . .

Obama’s handing out tax credits for cars that don’t exist. He cut off tax breaks for higher income people for buying cars- people who might actually buy the cars.
If you want people to buy cars, you incentivize that behavior.
Obama is not serious about it at all.

Kathy; What part of worldwide economic crisis evades your recognition? What good is having the ability to manufacture anything if there’s no one to buy the finished product? It’s not as if we are competing with other manufacturers. No auto manufacturer in the world is selling cars because no consumer feels secure in making an investment. Why do we keep pouring money into a bottomless pit?

We the workforce are the consumers. A government that shows no confidence in us receives no confidence from us. The vast majority of government spending is going to top end of the food chain. Didn’t our president campaign on the idea of a trickle up economy? Why has that idea been abandoned? What good is manufacturing capability if there’s no market for finished products? When the consumers have money to spend our economy will start a recovery. If something doesn’t change soon there will be no surviving manufacturers. The government can’t save them. Businesses need consumers. Only consumers can save businesses.

“Obama’s handing out tax credits for cars that don’t exist.”
Like the Jeep I just bought and can write off the sales tax because of the stimulus plan? I can drive it so it sure seems to exist to me so does the $700.00 saved.

@jhw539 -
Of course, all automakers operate under the same governmental framework. But they obviously don’t all have the same challenges. What common denominator do the the Big Three have that their foreign competition does not? Bad management? People simply dismiss it as such, even though managing those corporations involves placating an obdurate ‘partner’ at every level of strategic planning. . . . A partner which has been contributing politically against the partnership for decades, as some type of insurance. Some symbiosis!
The government is keeping domestic automakers afloat for the sake of organized labor. And it’s using the opportunity to mold these corporations into instruments of the ‘common good.’ It’s payoff time when it should be time for Chapter 11.

“[Obama opted] instead to appoint Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and National Economic Council director Larry Summers as heads of a Presidential Task Force on Autos to oversee the restructuring of the auto industry … designated Geithner to oversee the loan agreements with the auto companies.”
There really is a kind of slapstick quality to the “Obama” organization. A guy who can’t pay his own taxes or “restructure” a visa for a personal servant is gonna “restructure the auto industry” … along with ANOTHER guy who can’t even SPEAK properly?
Maybe everybody in the administration has to be such a creep as to make even the creepy Executive look plausible by comparison … but sheesh.
What these brain-dead poseurs OUGHT to do is let ALL these failed corporations BE failed … and prop up, instead, the people who actually ARE suffering.
With national health and a guaranteed income of some kind (favored by such “socialists” as Richard Nixon over the punitive and bureaucrat-intensive management of the poor), the country could ACTUALLY avoid the chaos to come under these idiots ..
How are people without income going to buy cars? With that 13 dollars? Duh.

“JUST DO IT CZAR OBAMA.”
Well, He’s already glommed onto the contents of the Treasury for three generations or so into the future.
Usually in dictatorial Treasury grab, many thorny difficulties arise in getting the goodies past the lower tiers of the political class. As seems to be the case with the “Obama” organization, with its open hand to the corporations, its stupd thirteen bucks for the workers, and no-money-for-YOU blabla about “responsibility” for those ALREADY poor.

“while foreign companies assemble cars here”
About a 10- or twenty-year MORATORIUM of auto manufacture — while technology and the hahaha “economy” shake out — is what’s called for. PAY the workers’ mortgages, GIVE em the same health care the abominable Congress has provided its useless self.
Then pave the streets with GOLD, and you’ll still be ahead of The Obama Way … it’s not just that these twerps are fascists, but that they’re such CLUELESS, unimaginative fascists, still trying to recycle post-WWII rhetoric about “unions”, etc. Thirteen percent of US workers are in unions (including the not-really-a-union SEIU).
Maybe THAT’s where the $13 tax cut for workers, and the symbolically-suicidal Porkulus passing on … Friday the 13th … comes from?

Maybee, while foreign companies assemble cars here, it is just a part of the cost of the vehicle. Where the parts are manufactured makes a huge difference in how many American jobs are created. 77% of the parts the big 3 uses are made domestically in the U.S. or Canada while the top foreign company that assembles here only uses 59%.
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What’s Canada doing in the middle of that paragraph?
If the US automakers went away, do you think foreign companies manufacturing here would perhaps use more US-made parts in their products assembled here? Why or why not?
FWIW, I don’t want the US automakers to go away, but my reasons for that are almost entirely emotional. Their business structure is untenable, and their products have a hard time attracting buyers.
There are taxpayers inside the country who are competing with them, and they will be partially funding this restructuring.

“WHY IN THE HELL AM I GOING TO COLLEGE?”
Hopefully to study something medical OR directly food-producing.

“I MIGHT AS WELL GET IN LINE WITH MY HAND OUT BECAUSE I DO NOT WANT TO GET A DEGREE ONLY TO HAVE TO PAY RIDICOLOUS TAXES.”
Don’t look now, but many of the new poor have LOTS of degrees. On the plus side, no income means no taxes.
To medical and food pursuits (post below), you might wanna consider gunsmithing.

Hahaha: David Axelrod, like Cheney before him, has taken to making snotty remarks about “chatter”. Won’t be long now …

I find your assumption that U.S. car workers for Honda would look at saving fellow citizen’s jobs in Detroit as a bad use of their tax money a little short-sighted.
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In the current economic downturn, all jobs lost mean fewer people buying anything, including cars.
Yet their interest is definitely not in seeing their competitors *in particular* have their jobs and companies saved.
If the demand for cars picks up, surely the other companies would rejoice in having fewer competitors to help fill that demand. They could expand, and possibly even hire some of those out-of-work auto employees.
There’s a reason President Obama has resorted to rhetoric about that dastardly Japan not being allowed to be the first to develop the battery-operated car.

GIVE ME ONE GOOD REASON WHY I SHOULD PAY FOR UNIONS, RETIREES, AND HEALTHCARE FOR A COMPANY WHEN THE UNION COULDN’T SETTLE, GOT GREEDY AND THE CEO WAS IRRESPONSIBLE. TELL ME WHY MY TAX DOLLARS SHOULD GO TO A COMPANY THAT NEEDS TO LAY PEOPLE OFF SINCE THE COMPANY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THERE ACTIONS?

Maybe what Oprah MEANT to say wasn’t really “The One”, but “The One-der-Taker”?
She wouldn’t be the only person drowned out by premature cult-clamor from the “Obama” organization’s noisy peanut gallery of press people and hangers-on.

Maybe Oprah, as head of HHS, could pull off National Health equal to or better than HR 676 (government-paid health care similar to what the craven clothes-horses of the Congress have appropriated to their already-ludicrously-overcompensated selves).
We know that Oprah’s generous … SHE gave everybody a CAR, after all, on her own dime. Not like THESE crooks. (A “task force”? Give us a break: the only tasks of which these guys are remotely capable: lining their own Italian pockets and making crappy speeches.(
National Health would solve most of the “union” problems, and go a long way to helping citizens BEYOND the political class weather the collapse of corporate capitalism.
Not as many poor and elderly will die for lack of medical/dental care, of course. But if the “Obama” organization’s determined to kill off a bunch of people, let ‘em do it the Chicago Way — mass rub-outs would be quicker, cheaper, AND kinder … and might free up some sub-subsistence housing.
One is confident that the classy Dr. Dean — the more OBVIOUS head for HHS, and a New York uber-WASP in the FDR mold, but unbeloved by Darth Gibbs — wouldn’t mind working under Oprah.

“nobody would bother to take all risks it takes to become rich.”
The only “risk” involved in falling into a tub of butter is that it may be JUST about to … come to a boil.

When the US automakers make better quality vehicles there will be no need to have any bailouts for them. They do need to get rid of the unions and the massive welfare state they created for the retired workers but the bottom line is quality! And to those autoworkers saying that not buying American is unpatriotic – how does buying an inferior product make you patriotic?

CZAR OBAMA, THANK YOU FOR BEING ELECTED. THANK YOU FOR TAKING FROM THE HARDWORKING AMERICANS TO GIVE TO THE POOR. THANK YOU FOR TAKING CARE OF ME. THANK YOU FOR SPENDING TRILLIONS UPON TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS. THANK YOU FOR MY HOUSE, CAR, HEALTHCARE AND THE FOOD. THANK YOU FOR NOT ALLOWING ME TO THINK. THANK YOU FOR NOT MAKING ME WORK FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. JUST KEEP ON HANDING ME MONEY BECAUSE IT WOULD BE TO HARD TO HAVE TO GO TO SCHOOL OR TO WORK. I NEED SOMEONE TO PROVIDE TO ME AND YOU ARE THE MESSIAH. I WILL FOLLOW YOU UNTIL THE END OF TIME CZAR OBAMA. GO AHEAD AND STEP ALL OVER THE CONSTTUTION AND THANK YOU FOR RAPING FUTURE GENERATIONS OF AMERICANS. I BELIEVE EVERYTHING THAT YOU TELL ME AND I CAN NOT WAIT FOR MY HAND OUT.

“Let’s hope Geithner handles this job better than reading the prompters last Tuesday…”
Well, he’s probably DRIVEN a car … or at least ridden around in the back seat of one. How hard could it BE to … hahaha … “restructure” hahaha General Motors?
It’s like a Donald Duck comic, with revolving goofy nephews.

So Obama is still winging it! But it will take Chavez another 20 to 30 years to complete his transformation to socialism! :(
Obama continues to waver between the postmodern equivocator and the fantasy prone globalist image! :(

Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY:
“State governments have unfunded obligations worth $445 billion to subsidize health insurance for teachers, judges and other civil servants after they retire, according to a USA TODAY survey of state financial reports.”
So … how much of Porkulus’ supposed “aid to states” is going toward THIS wicked boondoggle? As long as public employees have to be DESPERATE to keep public jobs because of the health benefits, there’s no way they’re free to blow the whistle on irregularities in how public business is done.
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Human Intelligence,
Yep, Just take a really good look at the the Commonwealth of Taxachusetts!!!
The pensions for state workers, many of them corruptly inflated, are bankrupting that bastion of liberalism!
In Mass, you have Duval Patrick, playing Gilligan to Obama’s Skipper! Massachusetts, the state that just keeps on giving….Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, …. State politicians like Speakers of House Tom Finneran & Sal Dimasi , state senator Diane Wilkerson (bribe bra stuffer), Boston city councilman Chuck Turner