Would You Buy a Car from Chrysler?

News wrote:
>
>
> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>
>> Oh I forgot Putney's Rule: if a Republican does it, it's a GOOD
>> thing, if a
>> Democrat does the exact same thing, it's a BAD thing.
>>
>> Ted
>
>
> He's a troll. Why validate his posting?

Funny thing though peter pan/jiff - Ted's statement is a lie. He always
says things like that and never acknowledges when I continually prove
otherwise.

Also - I'll put my history on this ng up against yours any day. I am
generally engaging in technical car discussions. The only time I go
political is when trolls such as yourself, who do nothing but talk
politics, say stupid things (frequently) that need to be challenged.

I also notice that when it comes down to actually discussing the issues,
you get into name calling and insults - never willing to actually
discuss the issue. Funny thing about that - that's what trolls do.

Has Obama negotiated the Taliban out of Pakistan yet? They declared
Sharia law in the region they took over this week. Nice, eh? And did
you hear that, with a straight face, he is asking Israel to give up its
nuclear weapons. You can't make this stuff up.

Anyway, you have a wonderful day, peter pan/jiff.

--
Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

Bill Putney wrote:

> I also notice that when it comes down to actually discussing the issues,
> you get into name calling and insults - never willing to actually
> discuss the issue. Funny thing about that - that's what trolls do.
> ...
>
> Anyway, you have a wonderful day, peter pan/jiff.
>

What's this? You name-calling? Sounds familiar.

Have a nice FOAD day, putz-troll.

News wrote:
>
>
> Bill Putney wrote:
>
>> I also notice that when it comes down to actually discussing the
>> issues, you get into name calling and insults - never willing to
>> actually discuss the issue. Funny thing about that - that's what
>> trolls do.
>> ...
>>
>> Anyway, you have a wonderful day, peter pan/jiff.
>>
>
> What's this? You name-calling? Sounds familiar.
>
> Have a nice FOAD day, putz-troll.

You've been calling me skippy - I just thought you liked names of
different brands of peanut butter as terms of endearment.

My statement still stands - you never actually discuss the issues. You
just like to stir crap up and then start the name calling when someone
responds. You know - kind of like trolls.

--
Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

Bill Putney wrote:
> News wrote:
>>
>>
>> Bill Putney wrote:
>>
>>> I also notice that when it comes down to actually discussing the
>>> issues, you get into name calling and insults - never willing to
>>> actually discuss the issue. Funny thing about that - that's what
>>> trolls do.
>>> ...
>>>
>>> Anyway, you have a wonderful day, peter pan/jiff.
>>>
>>
>> What's this? You name-calling? Sounds familiar.
>>
>> Have a nice FOAD day, putz-troll.
>
> You've been calling me skippy - I just thought you liked names of
> different brands of peanut butter as terms of endearment.
>
> My statement still stands - you never actually discuss the issues. You
> just like to stir crap up and then start the name calling when someone
> responds. You know - kind of like trolls.
>


Oh, I see, the way your trollish posts have had anything to do with the
cost of putting lug nuts on at the manufacturer or at the dealership.
Simply asserting your opinion prevails. It all makes sense now.

News wrote:

> Oh, I see, the way your trollish posts have had anything to do with the
> cost of putting lug nuts on at the manufacturer or at the dealership.
> Simply asserting your opinion prevails. It all makes sense now.

Straight up - in all seriousness - the thread is titled "Would You Buy a
Car from Chrysler". With all of the long-term damaging shenanigans that
the gov't has been involved in that directly affect the automotive
situation, discussion of anything to do with what the government is
doing relative to the economy has as mush importance to the OP as
whether or not, or why, it costs as much to get lugnuts installed at the
dealer as it does at the factory (and that's ignoring the absolute
apples and oranges nature of what you were saying on the subject anyway
- I mean, really - you showed some gross ignorance on that little
sidetrack. Geeze).

IOW - what I discussed was directly related to the OP - no less-so, and
arguably more-so, than the cost of putting lugnuts on at the dealer vs
the cost of putting them on at the factory.

--
Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

On Wed, 06 May 2009 06:44:18 -0400, Bill Putney >
wrote:

>Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>>> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
>>>> ...
>>>>> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>>>>> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
>>>>>> ...
>>>>>>> News wrote:
(snip, snip, snip)

just a word or two here.

First, 12 years ago i was a offset printer (i've since had 2 pounds of
surgical steel wrapped around my spine so i can't do it anymore) and
when someone brought up unions my first question was " what about
those of us who decide not to join even though the union may get
implimented?" That question still hasn't been answered. (yeah i admit
it i'm an anarchist. I believe that each community should decide on
what is best for itself, no state or federal overlords needed) So if
someone wants to be in a union, sure go for it, but don't drag me
along.

Second, a couple of things need to be clarified. seperation of church
and state as expresed by Ted didn't come into it's own until the early
to mid 1800's, and then it was because the protastants were afraid of
the catholics taking over. Reading does wonders sometimes. The
Constitutional clause merely states that the federal govt. cannot
choose one religion over another, yep that's right they are all equal.
imagine that. Also on democrate vs. republican. You do know that the
US wasn't a two party state until the late 1800's? right... or do i
need to go into the federals/republican/whigs ect


Third, obama and macain and "x" are the same. They are after politcal
power no matter the party. Look at it this way, capitalism looks
grerat on paper, for that matter so does socialism, but people don't
seem to be able to control themselves and greed is a nasty trait. Be
it greed for money, power or whatever. That's why things are they way
they are. I wish we had another roy rogers today, someone to point out
human failings and keep us honest...

"Bill Putney" > wrote in message
...
> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>>> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
>>>> ...
>>>>> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>>>>> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
>>>>>> ...
>>>>>>> News wrote:
>>>>>>> So let's discuss the issues instead of using Nathan Thurm
>>>>>>> diversions.
>>>> Under current card check legislation, the only difference is that if
>>>> the union organizers get 50% signatures on the cards, the union is
>>>> automatically formed.
>>> Yes - And the workers are thereby denied a secret ballot.
>>
>> So you ARE arguing with a straight face that a unionization drive
>> will get 50% signatures on cards when the employees and the
>> employer don't want a union.
>
> Sure am. It's not freely voting when someone is standing over you
> watching how you vote.

You are right, it's not freely voting.

When the union organizer hands you a card to sign and you don't sign
it then what is he going to do? He can't retaliate in any way since the
company is backing YOU up not him, and if he does retaliate then he
will be fired - and there won't be any support from NLRB since him
retaliating is illegal.

So your right, it isn't freely voting. However your implication, that
the coersion is from the union organizer standing over you, is dead
wrong. The coersion is on you to NOT sign the card.

>
> Do you not understand the concept and the value of "secret ballot"? I
> don't think you're that stupid.
>

Do you not understand the concept of your boss telling you in
private (where nobody can witness it) that you will be fired if you sign
a unionization card, (and publically denying it, of course)?

> Then you know nothing of union retaliation and thuggery. Like I said -
> you're not that stupid. There is a reason we have secret ballots. Don't
> pretend you don't understand that.
>

The NLRB is used by corporations all the time to prosecute union
retaliation and thuggery. In a non-unionized shop, there is NO union
to do this retaliation and thuggery you talk about, there are only
some co-workers who are trying to organize a union, who have to
watch everything that they do like a hawk because the slighest misstep
will cause them to be fired.

We aren't talking about unionized shops with employees who want
to quit the union here. If you have something to say about that, say
so. Card check has nothing to say about that. And sure, I agree that
it is harder to de-unionize a shop that has unionized, than to keep
a non-unionized shop from unionizing. But, it's also harder to unionize
a non-union shop than to keep the union from being broken in a
unionized shop.

The reason for the above really has nothing to do with the union
anyway, it has to do with the principle of self-selection. People who
are strongly opposed to unions tend to avoid looking for work in
unionized shops, and people strongly opposed to non-union shops
tend to look for work at unionized shops. In general most
people seek to avoid change, and that is a truism of the human
condition.

>
> Do you know how much money George Soros makes? Do you know how much money
> Barbra Streisand makes? Do you know how much money Teresa Heins-Kerry
> makes? Do you know how much money professional athletes make? Do you
> know how much money famous actors make? What are you proposing? To
> create a special tax and confiscate their personal property because they
> make more money than you think they should?
>

It' smy tax dollars that support the mechanisms that allow them to make
the kind of wealth that they do. Those people use far, far far more in
governmental services such as laws that protect their copyrights and such
than I do. They are getting the lions share of the benefits of the economy.

As long as their taxes are in cooresponding with the benefits they are
getting then I'm fine with them. But, the problem is that nowadays they
are not. Years ago, they were.

> I do not believe in redistribution of wealth. You do. When you do it
> beyond a certain point, those who have the ideas and are willing to take
> the risk to lose everything with the hope of profiting, when faced with
> the fact that if they *do* succeed, that what they get from their success
> will be confiscated (it will be called taxes, but it will nonetheless be
> confiscation and theft), then they will quit taking the risks, and all
> progress will start. That experiment has been done many times and fails
> ever time.
>

The funny thing though is that 50 years ago when the tax rates on the
rich were far, far far higher than they are today, why then the US economy
was booming and -everyone- even the middle class had a LOT more
buying power.

So I think this argument is full of ****.

>> Don't you understand why it is that so many people are ****ed at Walmart
>> for coming into communities and destroying all the ma-and-pa stores? Why
>> so many communities have fought to keep them out? It is because they
>> come in, undercut the small stores, the small stores go out of business,
>> and all their employees come to work for Walmart at minimum wage.
>> Then tax revenue goes down in the community and the community goes
>> to hell.
>
> So you want to outlaw WalMarts? Is that it?
>

No, what I would prefer is to see WalMart carry quality products not
the shlockey stuff. Walmart is like a lot of retailers, they misdirect the
customer tremendously. They do carry some high quality stuff and they
stick it right next to the schlock and the schlock is oftentimes just as
expensive. Walmart is the type of place where you find crap Fram oil
filters next to decent Autolite platinum sparkplugs. As a result the
typical ignorant customer ends up buying as much schlock from there
as decent products - that's why half the stuff you get from Walmart
falls apart a week after you take it home - the other half doesn't, which
is why people keep going back there.

This isn't to say the ma-and-pa places don't also do this too. Frankly
what I want from retail isn't obtainable unless there's a fundamental
shift in education in the US and I'm old enough to understand this.

>> Then people cannot understand why it is that 10 years later nobody in the
>> country can afford to buy cars or homes anymore and the car makers are
>> failing and there's tons of foreclosed homes all over the place.
>
> I don't think WalMart caused all that.
>

No, they didn't, they are a symptom of it, though. Don't get me wrong, the
fact of it is that I like big-box retailers as much as the next guy - the
main reason is that the big box retailers have a complete product selection.

2 months ago for example I ripped out my bathtub and the schlocky
crappy plastic walls and plastic crap plumbing and tore everything down
to the studs, then put in a new tub, brass plumbing, concrete board
and tile on the walls, the works. Everything came from Home Depot,
except for the specialty tools since Home Depot tools are mostly overpriced.

Great deal, huh? Well, the only problem is that Home Depot is
just like Walmart - they carry the real crappy wonderboard right next to
the good hardy board, they have accent tiles like blue glass tiles for
$10 a tile that is double what a tile place charges, yet their generic
almond tiles cost half of what a tile place charges and aren't full
of 1/2 millimeter differences like a lot of cheap tile. They carry the
crap dissolving mastic-alike in the buckets right next to the good
quality versabond thinset that costs a third of the price. They
carry the high quality cast iron tubs next to the cheapie steel ones,
and the cast iron ones are not much more expensive. They carry
the crap plastic tub drains right next to the good brass ones. I could go
on and on but the point is that you won't find a store clerk in the
place that is able to point the customer to the good products on
their shelves - so they sell a lot of schlock. And I have no doubt
there's customers out there who did the exact same project I did
but used the schlock from Home Depot instead of the good stuff and
now their bathrooms are falling apart and they are screaming bloody
murder on how terrible Home Depot is.

Anyway, getting back to the discussion - thie big box retailers are
like the ignorant leading the ignorant which is symptomatic in
this country.

>> When manufacturing leaves the United States because
>> of cheap Asian imports, retail is about all a lot of these communities
>> have
>> left to provide jobs. And if the retail is paying minimum wage, the
>> communities
>> get bled dry. That's why cities like Buffalo NY, and Flint MI are such
>> hell-holes
>> today and many have entire communities of homes that have sat abandonded
>> for two decades. Essentially the entire community ends up full of poor
>> bluehairs surviving off their social security checks, and Medicade-funded
>> hospitals with a small crust of rich doctors in the community.
>
> You just described a socialistic society in which the liberals drove all
> business offshore and then have to force more socialism to "fix" the
> problem. IOW - we need more of what caused the original problem to fix the
> problem.
>
> We're about to go the next step with that with cap and trade - and all
> based on false science. The march to European socialism continues.
>

So you don't think then that the management of GM's stupid decisions
had anything to do with those examples? Have you ever owned an 80's
GM automobile? I have.

>>
>> If the CEO and owners of the businesses are working alongside the
>> employees and making a REASONABLE amount of money - I'll
>> be generous and say, 20 times what the average peon makes - then
>> I have no problem with that. And you know something Bill? If you
>> read the case studies of companies where the workers succesfully
>> de-unionized, that's exactly what you find.
>
> Then great - they should voluntarily do that. But to legislate it is not
> people operating in a free market.
>
>> Card check legislation isn't going to affect these companies.
>
> I object to card check on principle. I know that principle means little
> to people these days. All people these days care about is mandating and
> legislating to get a desired result - free will and fundamental principles
> be damned.
>

The problem here is the race to the bottom.

When you have the kind of society we have today where the population
of consumers has essentially chosen to be ignorant, the companies
that try doing the right thing get driven out of business. That's why we
have anti-trust laws, for example, because we know that governmental
regulation is needed for business.

What we have had happen with legislation is the rich have for way
too long used it as a tool to further their personal ends, and not help
the society in general. As a result, today we have what could almost
be described as a "wannabe socialist" country - one where the laws are
not really socialist but they have gotten far enough along to be doing
damage.

If you want a society that's got minimal government intervention and
minimal government regulation then for it to work, the populace absolutely
has got to be educated, and they have to change their buying decisions
to be the best for the long run. That gets down even to things such as
deciding to buy mostly potatos, fruits and vegetables and maybe a
single half-gallon of ice cream at the grocery store, instead of maybe a
bunch of banannas and 3 bags of candy, processed food, chips and
cigarettes. That also means not buying products from retailers you
know are screwing the public on the back end. It means refusing
subprime mortgages when they are offered to you, not buying a
house you cannot afford, not going into debt 5 years for a car, etc. etc.
etc.
In this instance, even though the society has little regulation, the
unscrupulous people cannot get anywhere because nobody pays
them any attention.

If, however, the population wants to be fat, dumb, and ignorant,
then there is really little choice but having the government legislate
everything, because otherwise the unscrupulous people will end
up taking over, cheating most of the public and the society will collapse.
That's exactly what happened with the current depression. Sure,
there were plenty of people like myself who refused ARMS and
subprime loans when we bought our homes back during the golden
years of those things, but we were way, way outnumbered by the
doofuses and idiots and morons. And now those ****heads and
their crap finances, since there are so many of them, are screwing us
over, who did what we were supposed to do.

>> The companies it's going to affect are the ones where the CEO's and
>> owners are making 250 times the amount a line worker makes, and have
>> golden parachutes that guarentee them tens to hundreds of millions of
>> dollars
>> EVEN IF the company loses money.
>
> I'll believe you are sincere when I hear you pusing to have George Soros's
> and professional athletess money confiscated and redistributed by
> legislation. Again, it would be a violation of principle.
>

I want to see those people paying the taxes that are coorespondent with
the benefits the government is giving them to allow them to make that
kind of money in the first place. You can call that redistribution all
you want, but that is BS. If it wasn't for the coddling of the government
those people would either not be around, or they would be around and
what they would be doing would be helping to solve the problem.

>>> Just like GM not being able to implement cost savings if it meant
>>> eliminating requirements for the number of people on the line.
>>>
>>
>> GM and the Big 3 and the UAW are a special case, and do not represent
>> most unions and union employees in the country. And at any rate,
>> GM is UAW's problem now. Frankly, it's been many years since
>> the last of the founding owners of GM died, and GM as a corporation
>> has made the argument "what's good for GM is good for America"
>> so many times in the past, while sticking it's snout into the public
>> trough, that the company should have been handed over to the UAW
>> 20 years ago. Let the UAW fight amongst themselves to figure
>> out how to sell cars profitably and make wages they are happy with.
>> I won't shed any tears for them. In any case, card check isn't going
>> to do squat for UAW anyway since they are fully unionized. Card check
>> will help the rest of the unions who don't have penetration in their
>> industries.
>
> And you just contradicted yourself. At the beginning of this post you
> said "The reality is that in a secret ballot system the results always
> have MORE people voting in support of the union than were willing to
> publically sign cards saying they were in support of one."
>

There is no contradiction here. As I said, the UAW and the Big 3
are special cases. NOW. Sure, maybe 50 years ago when GM was
still run like every other normal company in the country, that wouldn't
apply. But, card check doesn't come into play with the UAW no matter
how they may publically support it, since having it isn't going to result
in any more UAW organizing than what is currently happening.

> So which is it. Or do you argue out of both sides of your mouth depending
> on what the specific point you're trying to make at the moment is?
>
>>>> If that happened in federal elections there would be a riot.
>>> I'm not following you there. If *what* happened in federal elections?
>>
>> If a candidate for the incumbent was allowed to closet up all the voters
>> for 6 hours before the election lecturing them about the advantage of
>> voting
>> to keep things the way they are.
>
> Then fix that part of the problem. Don't fix what you consider a
> violation of one right by violating a different right. That's just
> stupid.
>

You can't fix that kind of problem because the employer is paying
the employee to sit there and listen to the pitch against the union, the
organizer isn't. Any employee makes compromises when they choose
to work at a place. The employee may get steamed at this behavior
and start looking for another job, rather than voting against the employer.
For the few really good employees, they will find another job and
leave. That doesn't help the rest of the employees. As I said earlier,
the majority of the US population seems to have chosen to be ignorant
and stupid about most things.

The Republicans like the ignorant because it's easy to tell them what to do
based on some kind of vetting against the Bible. The conservatives want to
setup some sort of society with no safety nets so that those who
choose to be ignorant end up sleeping in the gutter. The Democrats
want to setup some sort of structure so that those who choose to do
stupid things end up about 2 steps up from the gutter so we don't have
stories about them splashed over the front page every day, but otherwise
want to ignore them. The Humanists like myself want to set things up
so that those who choose to be ignorant will be chained to schooldesks
and force-fed education until they can get a decent score on the SAT.

>
> Fact is that cutting taxes increases what gets collected in taxes. Overall
> wealth increases.
>

So then logically if we continued cutting taxes until there were no taxes at
all the Treasury would get even more money after each cut, until taxes
were only a few cents on each person and the Treasury would be taking
in trillions of dollars a year. What a crock. We tried that and taxes
on the rich are the lowest in history and guess what - the government
is now more in debt than it has ever been in history.

Go figure!

>
> So we go to socialism and redistribution of wealth and the government
> micromanaging businesses and the economy. Sorry - disagree on principle.
>

The government is already micromanaging businesses but right now
they are doing it for the benefit of the large corps and the rich. If you
can
figure out how to bar both the poor AND the rich from interfering in the
political
process for their own ends, go for it!

>> But instead what I'm seeing is entire communities where the majority
>> of jobs in the community ONLY PAY min. wage, or a few cents above
>> it, and everyone in those communities is living in hell-holes. Not every
>> commuity is like that, of course, but way more than should be. And in
>> the meantime the owners of these companies are literally rolling in
>> money.
>
> Oh really? Well, the answer is not the government micromanaging
> everything - that is what got us where we are. With what the socialists
> have in mind, it will be what you described to an extreme. Been proven
> many times.
>

So then what -is- the answer? What do you conservatives have that
hasn't already been tried the last 30 years and failed miserably?

GET A CLUE, PEOPLE WANT TO BE STUPID. That's the
real root reason the housing market collapsed. Jesus Christ!!!

I STILL SEE stupid adverts from the financial sector claimng that
if you save money that at an 8% compounding rate you will have
a million dollars when your 70. What the **** is up with that?
What investment yields 8% out there that isn't high risk - tell me I'd
really like to know!! I saw one of those goddam ads on TV from
a credit union just the other day. The fact is that NO investment
out there that is low or no risk will compound at a higher rate than
inflation - you put your money in ANYTHING other than a high-risk
stock fund, and every year you have LESS buying power since
inflation is outpacing your interest rate. And it's been that way for
years now. And the high-risk stock funds all consumed everyone's
funds last year so if you tried that 8% compounding crap 10 years
ago, why today you have no more money than the guy who threw it
into a passbook account at 1% or whatever ****ty interest rate they
are paying these days.

Yet people are STILL BUYING this crap. You knock them down
in the stock market, take all their savings away though a "market
correction"
and Jesus Christ, 6 months later they are back, handing you their
money and wanting you to do it all over again!! It's ****ing unbelievable!
If that isn't sheer idiocy I don't know what is.

>> If you read the wikipedia entry for card check you have read all
>> the pro and con arguments so there's no point in rehashing them here.
>> I will merely point out that when a professor points out that rising
>> wages are a good thing for the economy, HE is tenured and HE
>> has nothing to gain or lose either way. By contrast when the head of
>> Walmart makes claims that unions are bad, he's motivated by his own
>> personal self interest. So I don't really put any stock in that.
>>
>> You wanna argue economic theory, go ahead. I'll argue with you.
>> But you better use logic to support your points, not quotes from
>> some chamber of commerce.
>
> So it's not good enough that card check is wrong on principle. Because
> the Chamber of Commerce says the stop sign is red and octagonal, the stop
> sign couldn't possibly be red and octagonal. I get the picture.
>

Lawmaking only starts with principle. It very quickly gets into the
muck of application of those principles. I don't like speed limits on
the roads since I can easily prove that I can drive faster than most limits
in a safe manner. However the 80 year old Grandmaw driving over
there can't do this, and we as a society want to allow the 80 year old
Grandmaws to still be able to drive themselves around, so the law
compromises most drivers by setting a speed limit then lying and
claiming that it's set that low because it's "safe"

>>> So - you want those who don't know how to succeed in business to run the
>>> show?
>>>
>>
>> That's not how modern business works and you know it, Bill. If all or
>> even
>> most consumers out there were educated consumers and spent wisely,
>> then companies would be forced to compete with each other on the basis
>> of how good their products were, not on how well they are marketed. But
>> instead the business world is saturated with examples of inferior
>> products
>> putting companies that make superior products out of business due to
>> the snowball effect of marketing dollars. That drags down the quality of
>> life for everyone, even for the minority of educated consumers.
>
> You ain't seen nothin' yet. Let's see what Obama's Chrysler comes up with
> in the way of viable products that the consumer is just clamoring to buy.

This is an area where you have a shift going on, and people can't deal
with it.

What consumers are clamoring to buy are cheap gas-guzzlers that
go real fast with big giant engines that suck gas like there's no tomorrow,
and they want gas to be dirt-cheap to fuel them.

They don't want to buy econoboxes, they don't want to buy electric cars,
and they really don't want to buy hybrids either.

However the fact is that as long as the US is sucking gas like there's no
tomorrow, our oil dependence is royally ****ing over our economy as well
as our foreign policy. And, people don't want that either.

People want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to have the
gas guzzlers and they want to be free of foreign dependence on oil.
That's not possible even if all the oil leases were being drilled, and
the canada oil shale was being fully exploited, and even if it were,
it wouldn't last.

Unfortunately, when you try to explain this to the average person in the
US, their brain sticks between 2 competing desires and goes into deep
freeze. Then they rationalize it by thinking "well, I'll just get
everyoneELSE
to buy a **** econobox and ride the bus so there will be enough gas for
ME" In other words, it's somebody else's problem. This is that ignorance
thing again.

If the US was composed of educated intelligent consumers, people would
have gone to electric vehicles back when GM was leasing the EV-1,
GM would have never cancelled that product, and by now all passenger
cars sold in the US would be either electric, for use in urban or suburban
areas, or hybrids for use in rural areas.

But, the US is not made up of intelligent and educated consumers!!!

The Republicans were given this problem when RayGun got into office
since the Iranian hostage crisis was a direct result of our need for oil
and it was why we were in that country in the first place. They have
had 20 years to do something about it, and their only answer has been
to try to use up the oil even faster.

The Democrats have an answer - which is to put everyone into
hybrid econoboxes and move the auto infrastructure over to
electric cars, or hybrids that can be recharged off the grid. They
know the consumers won't like it, but when 911 happened it became
clear to anyone educated that until we eliminate our use of oil as
fuel, and get undependent on Saudi Arabia, we cannot do anything
about it. Saudia Arabia is our largest oil supplier and the hijackers
came from there. And it's a dictatorship so it's not like the Saudi's
cannot simply go out and shoot people - they know who all the
hijackers families are, and if they wanted to retaliate they could
have done so in a way that would have guarenteed that no Muslum
would have ever bothered the US again.

So, your going to see EV's forced down the people's throats and
in another decade when the gasoline distribution infrastructure is
largely dismantled, gas-powered guzzlers with huge engines won't
even be viable as a product anymore since you won't be able to
fuel them anywhere.

Sure, it would be GREAT if the US consumers voluntariarly
went to EV's. But they won't because what's good for the
society at large is INCONVENIENT for the individual. There
are A LOT of problems in the world that are like this, and that
the only way to solve them is to force inconvenience on individuals
for the good of the group. Such as my speed limit example.

> The thing that drags down the quality of life for everyone is the
> government micromanaging every aspect of our lives.

No, the thing that drags it down is BAD micromanaging. Like
the Republicans sticking their noses into marriage and doing all
they can to ban gay marriage.

I'm married and I don't feel my marriage is going to be threatened
by a bunch of guys going and wearing wedding dresses and pretending
to emulate what my wife and I have. If they want to go do that
and claim their married, it doesn't bother me. Why are the
Republicans so threatened?

> Wait until we have cap and trade.
>

We won't as I already explained.

>> The people on top of things are largely there from luck. You cannot
>> seriously
>> argue that people like Nardelli know how to run Chrysler, hell -I- could
>> do
>> a better job than he did, hell YOU could do a better job than he did.
>> Geze,
>> Home Depot fired his ass as far as they could
>> when he screwed them over, the guys flat out incompetent. He was
>> probably screwing the sister of one of the Cerebus board members to be
>> put on Chrysler.
>
> So who would you have make those decisions of who "lives" and who "dies"?
> Who decides how much money Soros or Streisand or you or me keeps? And
> based on what - political ideology?
>
> The more free the market is allowed to be, the less gaming of the
> artificial restraints there can be.
>
> Research how Raines made 90 million in 6 years by gaming the Fannie Mae
> system based not on free market rules but by artificial crap created by
> government. Then come back and tell me what's wrong with the system.
>

Research what happens to an economy where only the wealthy can afford
to buy homes and everyone lives in slums I mean tenements I mean apartments.

After a lifetime of paying a mortgage, Joe Sixpack has something he can
at the very least, reverse mortgage to get a little income to use when he
is too old to work anymore and still needs to eat. The Republicans want
to take even that away from him. They would see everyone in apartments,
with the rents fattening up their Henry F. Potters, then chucked out into
the
snow when they were too old to work.

>
> People who had no business getting loans for houses they couldn't afford
> got loans for houses they couldn't afford - period.
>

I agree. So, how about making home-flipping a felony?

>> Do you actually know what the 2007 default rate of loans made in, let's
>> see,
>> massasschuetts banks that were under the CRA was? I'l tell you. ONE
>> POINT EIGHT
>> PERCENT. compared to FIVE percent for all other types of loans.
>
> I don't know - but I highly suspect that you're cherry picking your
> information.
>

Well then start researching the default rates on CRA-controlled loans and
compare it to the non-CRA-controlled loans. Your going to find that
they are lower.

>
> To you the whole Constitution is a Republican talking point.
>
> The Constitution does not say what liberals like to imply what it says
> about church and state by the use of the loaded phrase "separation of
> church and state".
>
> I dare you to quote what the Constitution says on the subject and then
> show how it says anything like what you and the liberals claim it says.
>
> Basically you and they are FOS on the subject of what the Constitution
> says on that.
>

The constitution by itself is meaningless, it only has meaning when you
consider the 200 years of laws and court decisions (particularly the
US Supreme Court decisions) that have redefined what is in the
Constitution. When I talk about the constitutional separation I'm
not talking about a few words lifted out of context, I'm talking about
the entire body of US law that has mostly separated church and state,
with a few notable exceptions (like for example the marriage
ceremony) This is what the evangelicals want to reverse. Most of
the rank-and-file evangelicals would prefer to see this overturned
and all governmental policy vetted against their version of The Bible.

That is why I said those people are the worst of the snakes the
Republicans need to clean out. No need to get bent out of shape
about it, I'm not accusing you of being in that group. But it's pretty
established that many of the Republican Party planks - like the
whole gay marriage thing and abortion - are there because of them.
These issues end up diverting attention from the real issues like
spending too much money which Bush did during his 2 terms.
Oh yeah, I guess I just realized why those planks are there.

>> Yup, anti-regulation. as in no regulations on the banks. Good, good.
>
> We've covered that already. You're dishonest.

OK then speak your mind. Do you want more regulation of banks or less?
More regulation of Freddie and Fanny or less?


>> Equating torture of a single guy over a period of a few days, who has
>> a small amount of easily verifyable information to the
>> systematic torturing that was going on for months and years at Girab
>> and Gitmo and other CIA secret prisons we don't know about is
>> rediculous. Espically when so many of them were never charged
>> and let go after they figured out that they didn't know anything.
>
> You are ignorant on the subject. A bombing in CA was stopped because they
> waterboarded the guy. They only had hours to prevent it. So now, if a
> similar situation would happen again, hundreds or thousands would die.
> Thank you President Obama.
>

What part of

>Equating torture of a single guy over a period of a few days, who has
>a small amount of easily verifyable information to the
>systematic torturing that was going on for months and years at Girab
>and Gitmo and other CIA secret prisons we don't know about is
>rediculous

do you not get?

>>
>>
>> Don't kid yourselves. If McCain hadn't selected a bimbo for a running
>> mate he would have won. He nearly did. You don't realize how many
>> people are out there who voted against Obama simply because he is
>> black.
>
> And of course *NO-ONE* voted *for* Obama because he was black, did they.
> Orders of magnitudes more than voted against him for that reason.
>

That I doubt. We will see in 2012, though. But I predict if there are no
major screwups, Obama will win that one in a landslide because the
retrogrades will finally have to admit even to themselves that a black man
can actually govern the country.

> Again - you do yourself a dis-service by such comments against Sara Palin.
> Why is it liberals always do that when they disagree with someone? Seems
> like they can't let their arguments stand on their own.
>

Bill, even a lot of the conservatives cringed when she was selected.
I could spend 10 pages simply repeating arguments against her that
originated from conservatives. But I'll be gentle and simply say that
the Republicans got payback for the Swiftboating of Kerry that they
did. Kerry may not have been a great President but what was said
about him by the swiftboaters was a pack of lies.

Let me propose this for your consideration. The Republicans played
very dirty pool by impeaching Clinton over a friggin blowjob, and in
exchange were handed the remains of their tattered party by the
American people 8 years later. 911 happened on Bush's watch,
Iraq War no-WMD's happened on his watch, the economic meltdown
happened on his watch. No matter what good he did (and I am
one of the few that think the initial invation of Iraq was needed, where
Bush failed was in not exiting Iraq a year or two later) history will
look back on him as one of the worst Presidents ever.

In my view, things are "even" between both parties. I won't go so far
as to say the Democrats were responsible for destroying Bush, but
they certainly managed to stay out of the way of him killing himself.
Yes we have Obama now, but you had RayGun in '80 I propose that
after some internal housecleaning - and you guys made a good first
step for yourselves by getting rid of that snake Specter, the Republicans
will be ready in 8 years to have a FAIR fight. You guys let some of
our members have some blow jobs on the side with consenting members
of the opposite sex, and we will let some of your members have
bathroom sex with members of the same sex - and neither of us will
make a big deal about it. Sound fair? ;-)

Ted

Bill Putney wrote:
> News wrote:
>
>> Oh, I see, the way your trollish posts have had anything to do with
>> the cost of putting lug nuts on at the manufacturer or at the
>> dealership. Simply asserting your opinion prevails. It all makes
>> sense now.
>
> Straight up - in all seriousness - the thread is titled "Would You Buy a
> Car from Chrysler". With all of the long-term damaging shenanigans that
> the gov't has been involved in that directly affect the automotive
> situation, discussion of anything to do with what the government is
> doing relative to the economy has as mush importance to the OP as
> whether or not, or why, it costs as much to get lugnuts installed at the
> dealer as it does at the factory (and that's ignoring the absolute
> apples and oranges nature of what you were saying on the subject anyway
> - I mean, really - you showed some gross ignorance on that little
> sidetrack. Geeze).
>
> IOW - what I discussed was directly related to the OP - no less-so, and
> arguably more-so, than the cost of putting lugnuts on at the dealer vs
> the cost of putting them on at the factory.
>

Oh, I see, simply asserting your opinion on the comparative cost of
installing lugnuts prevails. It all makes sense now...

> wrote in message
...
> On Wed, 06 May 2009 06:44:18 -0400, Bill Putney >
> wrote:
>
>>Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
>>> ...
>>>> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>>>> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
>>>>> ...
>>>>>> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>>>>>> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
>>>>>>> ...
>>>>>>>> News wrote:
> (snip, snip, snip)
>
> just a word or two here.
>
> First, 12 years ago i was a offset printer (i've since had 2 pounds of
> surgical steel wrapped around my spine so i can't do it anymore) and
> when someone brought up unions my first question was " what about
> those of us who decide not to join even though the union may get
> implimented?" That question still hasn't been answered. (yeah i admit
> it i'm an anarchist. I believe that each community should decide on
> what is best for itself, no state or federal overlords needed) So if
> someone wants to be in a union, sure go for it, but don't drag me
> along.
>

Well, I have a proposal for that but I don't think you will like it much.

For any business that unionizes, employees who wish to opt-out of
the union may do so. Since they are opting-out, they no longer
fall under the collective bargaining agreement and thus any additional
wage or benefit increases negotiated by the union, they won't get.

I told you, you wouldn't like it.

If you really don't like unions, then become a manager.

> Second, a couple of things need to be clarified. seperation of church
> and state as expresed by Ted didn't come into it's own until the early
> to mid 1800's, and then it was because the protastants were afraid of
> the catholics taking over. Reading does wonders sometimes.

Yes it does. Here's a quote for you:

"when church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not
at
all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded
together,
no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued."

I imagine you think that quote was made by a secular leader. No,
sorry, it was by the Rev. Isaac Backus, the most prominent
Baptist minister in New England in his day

I imagine you also think this quote dates from the early to mid 1800's

Sorry, it dates from 1773.

The Founding Fathers were well aware of the separation of church
and state principle. As you say, reading does wonders.

> The
> Constitutional clause merely states that the federal govt. cannot
> choose one religion over another, yep that's right they are all equal.
> imagine that. Also on democrate vs. republican. You do know that the
> US wasn't a two party state until the late 1800's? right... or do i
> need to go into the federals/republican/whigs ect
>

How much percent did Ross Perot poll? There's always been plenty
of political partys and even in recent years 3rd parties have been
powerful enough to act as spoilers at times. Particularly in state
races.

>
> Third, obama and macain and "x" are the same. They are after politcal
> power no matter the party.

Why is this a problem? It just means they are ambitious and people
who aren't ambitions certainly aren't going to be running for President.
Would you rather have a President so unambitious that he spends
4 hours a day kicked back smoking weed?

The problem is what they do with that political power after they get it,
whether they misuse it or not.

> Look at it this way, capitalism looks
> grerat on paper, for that matter so does socialism, but people don't
> seem to be able to control themselves and greed is a nasty trait. Be
> it greed for money, power or whatever. That's why things are they way
> they are.

Things were a LOT worse a few centuries ago. People may
be greedy, they may be lazy, they may be ignorant. But, the
majority of them do want to do what is right, and do understand
what good and evil are. If they didn't, we would still have
slavery and all the rest of the bad things in history.

Of course, this is speaking mainly for Westernized societies.
Russia is an enigma - but Russians are a lot closer to Westernized
thought than they are to Eastern thought. Give them another
century and they will be just like us.

Eastern thought is rather radically different but they are
starting to understand, adapt, and adopt.

African societies are mostly a mess, but that's to be expected
considering what the rest of the world has done to Africa over
the years. However, at the least, we aren't being troubled by
suicide bombers out of that continent so they have some idea
of what is right, at least. And, they are making progress, and
they WANT to make progress.

The Mid East, though, those societies are mostly no different
than they were 2000 years ago, and that -includes- Israel. I
personally feel that that area of the world is the millstone around
the rest of the world's neck. It is very ironic as the Mid East is
the birth location of human civilization. There was a time many
thousands of years ago where humanity was far, far more advanced
there, than anywhere else in the world, and was higher than
any other humans anywhere else. Today, their attitudes to
people, to each other, to the rest of the world - to them, life
is meaningless, cheap, and expendable. It is no wonder that
Jesus came from there, nowhere else had a greater need. And
as for progress, that area is retarding, not advancing - and the
people there are perfectly happy about it.

Ted

Bill, just to get further offtopic, have you ever visited the part of London
named after you?

DAS

To send an e-mail directly replace "spam" with "schmetterling"
---
"Bill Putney" > wrote in message
...
[...]
>
> IOW - what I discussed was directly related to the OP - no less-so, and
> arguably more-so, than the cost of putting lugnuts on at the dealer vs the
> cost of putting them on at the factory.
>
> --
> Bill Putney
> (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address
> with the letter 'x')