GOP and Saving the Auto Industry

PL I agree with your assessment here, but don't be too hard on Ken!

Like most of us, (and me specially if all my initial posts were aired ) we sometimes say things in the heat of emotion that we would never say normally.

Many times I have accused/insinuated some of the posters of beliefs that were not accurate, and a few of these posts even made it to the thread. Thankfully tho', many more never made it that far.

I have occasionally spent 15-20 minutes responding to a post and when proof reading it had the HS tell me to scrap it. Most of the time I listen, but every now & then I'm too heated up to hear, so the fires get fed.!!

Not good, and hopefully, when this is the case, I will calm down & come back and apologize.

Anyway, my point is that we are all human and fly off the handle at times; specially if/when a real "HOT BUTTON" is pushed.

I most certainly DO agree with this statement tho':

I would also love for those few who try to derail any thread that is critical of their "pet" to answer the points made, or stay off the thread.

Yes I know this is a "debate" board, but the type post I'm referring to IS NOT DEBATE. It's nothing more than a smoke screen to cover their inability to refute the criticisms of their "beloved".

Yes, I also know that I can't stop you from posting, so if you want to chide me for my stance, at least pick something that I have ACTUALLY said; or reasonably implied.

But if you feel the need to flame me for what you READ into my post, feel free. I'm perfectly able to ignore you - no hard feelings, just reality, as your opinion means squat to me.

 

I think from the nature of the OP in the closed thread that it was clear that I was discussing the government's involvement in saving the domestic automakers. I don't think there would be any disagreement over private involvement.

I think you are smart enough to understand what I was referring to, PL. For some reason you seem to relish making gratuitous personal attacks toward me.

 

How is asking for you to back up your accusations with proof a "gratuitous personal attack"?

IMO opinion you owe Pastor Larry an apology for this slanderous accusation.

 

Anyone can read the OP and the linked article therein to know what I was discussing. Anyone who has followed this issue knows that most GOP members of the House and the Senate voted against government involvement in loaning money to the domestic automakers. There is no doubt that I was referring to government, not private, efforts.

If anyone owes something it is PL who should retract his unwarranted personal attack against me at the top of this page.

 

One thing is clear, there is no evidence that the GOP is against saving the auto industry. Such statements are overly broad and unrealistic. They are not even against government help (when they should be) they are however against government help without immediate union concessions.

 

I agree. I am not aware of anyone making such a statement.

I see no problem with union concessions being made over a period of months instead of immediately. Hopefully, such a position that the GOP has advocated will no longer hold sway in the U.S. Senate under its filibuster rules with diminished GOP membership in the new Congress.

 

I believe the unions have to be broken in order for America to be competitive in the global market especially during the current crisis. The bailout deal begins this process in my opinion. I support it.

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For UAW sacrifice or surrender?
Members' wages and benefits will be slashed under federal loan deal
By Peter Whoriskey
The Washington Post
Sat., Dec. 20, 2008
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28323341/
For decades after its founding in 1935, the United Auto Workers stood as a powerful model for the American labor movement, an influential organization that historians credit with uplifting living standards for all working Americans.
But with the announcement of the federal loan deal yesterday, the union found itself being forced into concessions that some described as tantamount to surrender.

The $17.4 billion federal loan agreement does keep the domestic auto industry alive. But the terms of that loan also insist that the wages and benefits for union workers be lowered to "equal" the average of nonunion workers, specifically, those at the U.S. plants of Nissan, Toyota and Honda.
Those and other concessions would essentially erase the significant distinctions between union and nonunion auto workers, and the lack of such union worker advantages would render moot the union's fundamental purpose, some industry analysts and labor experts said.

It was the financial crisis, as well as the domestic industry's slippage against foreign automakers in the United States, that forced the union to acquiesce, albeit reluctantly, union leaders said yesterday.

 

If the unions are broken then I expect in the next couple of decades for living standards in the United States to degrade to the level of third world countries, certainly at least to those of second world countries.

 

You might want to check the op

 

And you, Pastor Mitchell, might read the article in the other thread which my comment was related to:

" To hear Southern Republicans tell the story, the financial burdens facing Detroit’s automakers are self-made troubles to be settled by the laws of Adam-Smith capitalism.

“We don’t think it is the role of government to intervene,” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told the Fox Business Network last week. “We need to let the market and the laws work the way they are already in place.”

Yet this argument — that the government has no business interfering in free markets — ignores an increasingly frequent tradition among Southern states, which have fronted billions in local taxpayer dollars in the past two decades to attract foreign auto plants. Those incentives, arriving in the form of tax breaks, training for new employees and even land, have enticed BMW to South Carolina, Mercedes to Alabama and Nissan to Tennessee. The result of the government subsidies has been the steady emergence of the South as an auto-manufacturing powerhouse. Some are dubbing it the “New Detroit” – a region where real estate is cheap and the labor’s not unionized.

Not coincidentally, these Southern states are represented by the same coalition of GOP senators who led the fight against the recent Detroit bailout proposal. "

- www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=55856

 

One thing at a time. You said you know of no one who made such a statement. I simply referred you to the quote in the op. How you jumped to this I don't know.

 

You are not making any sense. If you want to debate me, then debate me straight up - like a man. Stop going around by Laura's house to make a non-point.

I have noticed that some right-wingers in this forum are more and more refusing to debate specific issues, choosing instead to argue over personalities, phrases, names, and generalities. I guess that's all they can do anymore since their ideology is now in such disrepute with the American people.

 

From the closed thread " Southern States Gave Auto Companies Tax-breaks and Cash for Training" that provided the statement that is the tpoic of this thread:

Well Ken, since you agree that saying, "the GOP is against saving the auto industry" is overly broad and unrealistic, will you please own up to previously stating the same and apologize to Pastor Larry for your unkind characterization of him simply because he asked you to produce proof for your overly broad and unrealistic statement?

 

Nope. PL is an intelligent person(he dodges and weaves too much in debates not to be ) and knew I was referring to government involvement. Since he has never ever won a debate with me he refuses to debate the real issue in this thread and instead resorts to attacking me personally.

PL owes me an apology, not I to him.

 

Please state for me the topic of this thread.

 

The point is being totally missed. There should have been no bailouts by the Republicans or Democrats with our tax dollars for either the first 850 billion for the thieves on Wall Street, or this for the auto industry. It is a free market. Let the market take care of it. It makes it quite clear, as was said in the election, there is no difference between the liberal Democrats and Republicans.

 

Ken, you once said that the politics board here was making you very nervous; or something along those lines.

Based on a few of your latest posts, I think you were (are) correct, & I would advise you to lay off this board and coffee for a few days before something pops.

 

This here closed thread about most GOP members of Congress opposing the federal government giving short-term loans to the domestic automakers:

www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=55856

 

1. You aren't gonna run me off. So there. I am not afraid of you right-wingers in the least. The whole lot of you are in such disrepute politically nowadays I am surprised that ya'll dare to show your faces in this forum, so to speak.

I believe the comment you reference was made back during the campaign. My side won and your side was trounced. So I ain't nervous about anything now.

2. I have drank one whole cup of coffee in my entire life just to prove to myself I could do it. I like the smell of hot coffee but I can't stand the taste.