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Good morning!
Today’s quote is from a 19th century theologian: “Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.”
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back to top36 Comments to “Whirled Views 12.5”
How much money do the execs in Detroit make compared to the managers of auto plants in Alabama or other parts of the US? I wonder who would hire any of the car CEOs if they were let go from their bankrupt dinosaur companies? If the UAW folks so love tightening lug nuts or installing glove boxes, surely they could load up the truck and move down to work for Honda or some other firm? Surely making $40 per hour they’ve set aside some money to rent a Uhaul?
The more I hear about this bailout scheme the greater my anger. Let’em declare Chapter 11 and write memoirs or case studies in managerial ineptitude.
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A friend of mine makes $90k a year on a Ford assembly line. He’s willing to take a $10/hour pay cut today, and readily admits he couldn’t make that kind of money doing anything else.
What else could this unskilled guy do for $40/hr? Nothing.
How many unskilled, available guys are there who could do this guy’s job? Many.
If they’d let the market work, this thing will sort itself out. If they give money away, nothing important changes.
If the automakers were smart, they’d be pushing for tariffs. I haven’t heard anyone mention it, but a combination of tariffs and new leadership saved a once-doomed Harley Davidson.
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I hope I’m not repeating someone else’s post. I just saw this and had to share it. It’s bound to make you chuckle.
Beware of the Doghouse
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Today’s quote sounds a lot like another guy:
“We have met the enemy, and he is us.” – Pogo -
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Pogo as a theologian – who knew?
Sawgunner,
I’m right there with you on the Auto bailout. Why should the CEO’s of failed companies make so much money? My pay while working on cars was always tied to my performance – why isn’t theirs? Let ‘em take their lumps. We’re all having to adjust, why should they get rewarded for failure?
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On the “Layoff” thread yesterday. A newspaper closing was mentioned. And an article in this week’s World mentions papers and magazines cutting back. Drudge says that more than 30 local newspapers are up for sale.
In our local paper, there’s an article with the headline:
Group: Palin not only candidate with donor-funded duds
The article starts:
“WASHINGTON
Turns out Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin wasn’t the only candidate with donor financed duds.”
But the article had nothing to do with Sarah Palin, the story wasn’t about Palin at all. It was about five other candidates who, some for good reasons, had bought clothes/accessories with campaign funds. Far down the article it says Palin returned the things after the campaign.
I wonder if these two things are connected?
I suspect some are writing themselves out of a job, and will blame something else.
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Stubob,
You can’t “let the market work” and “call for tariffs” can you? Is that limiting the free market?
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Prohibition ended 75 years ago today.
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Chas,
nor has he paid for them.
I read the same or similar article. It also said that former Democratic primary candidate and Obama’s choice for Commerce Secretary received $150,000 worth of free flights on private jets. He hasn’t returned the flights,
Although a hot button issue, the salaries of CEO’s is largely irrelevant. Those who receive a dollar a year (it is often illegal to work for nothing) but receive stock options in the company should receive high incomes, since it is directly tied to the profitability of the company. Even if all top CEO’s foreswore their salaries the net gain for stockholders, the company’s bottom line and the public at large would be negligible. And what about the salaris they pay pro atheletes and Hollywood stars?
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O.J. Simpson’s lawyer is asking for leniency because his client is a “first-time offender.
First-time offender?! Oh, what a hoot!
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Adios (7) — You’re right. I didn’t mean to imply that there was a cohesive plan involving both free markets and tariffs. I mean that, on the one hand, a truly free market would sort these things out while, on the other, automakers wanting to protect themselves from foreign competition should push for tariffs, using Harley as a precedent.
Better yet, they should suggest new tariffs as a source for the $34 billion they want.
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“Prohibition ended 75 years ago today.”
I’ll drink to that.
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Hey all. Just checking in with my standing prayer request: houses are just sitting on the market in our town. I haven’t even had one looker since my husband moved up to TN to take that transfer.
Please pray for us that we’d have wisdom to know what to do (drop price?) or that God would send a buyer soon. I’ve already signed up for classes next semester!
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Gas at Costco was $1.67 a gallon; our new driver: “I’ve never seen gas prices so low!”
Better yet, milk was two gallons for $4.25 yesterday at the grocery store. I haven’t seen milk so cheap in quite awhile!
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I think I’ve been driving long enough to remember when gas prices broke the $1-per-gallon milestone. Shocking. But I did fill up yesterday for $1.87, which seemed unbelievably cheap.
The tumbling of newspapers has more to do with the advent of the Internet than anything — an explosion of more immediate and varied news sources, all available for free on an entirely new medium, has served to scatter news consumers far and wide, and mostly away from the quaint habit of picking up a rubber-banded newspaper off their front lawn to read “old” news that was filed 10 hours earlier at best.
Subscriptions and ad revenues have plummeted. A once very profitable business, newspapers no longer are a very attractive acquisition for most owners.
So here we are, trying to play catch up in the computer age. All newspapers are putting more and more emphasis on their online product — at my paper, we reporters are not only still covering our beats and writing traditional stories for the print editions, but we’re filing and updating for our web site throughout the day, blogging (sometimes on off-topics, I do a pets blog which has nothing to do with what I cover generally as a beat reporter) — and twittering and face-booking and …. well, you name it, we’re trying to do it all.
I’ve enjoyed doing a lot of the new things online, especially the pets blog which taps into one of my personal interests and hobbies. But pet blogging sure won’t pay my bills if the “day job” dries up. And it certainly could.
I’m leaning on trusting in God’s Providence in the meantime, which realizing big changes may be ahead for me.
Shoulda listened to my folks. “Civil service,” they told me. That’s the ticket.
Or working on the Ford assembly line, perhaps? Sheesh, $90,000 a year?? Who knew?
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‘while’ realizing big changes may be ahead…, that should have read Oops. It’s too early for me!
But it’s a vacation day for me today — I’m off with a friend for some Christmas shopping at the Pomona fairplex in LA.
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THIS JUST IN:
Pastor Rick Warren says that, since “God puts government on earth to punish evildoers,” the US would be justified in “taking out” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Hey, why not? On September 14, 2001, President Bush declared at the National Cathedral — a nominally Christian edifice — that “[America's] responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.“
Uhh, guys? There’s this small matter of jurisdiction … There’s plenty of evil to address in in our own back yard. We don’t need to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
(Sigh. Whatever happened to the good ol’ seeker sensitive Rick Warren? What, is he trying Fallwell’s mantle on for size?)
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Hey EYG,
I was going to e-mail you yesterday and ask how the moving plans were going, but the day got away from me. I’m sorry there isn’t any action on that. Remember God is still sovereign.
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Frank- One has to wonder, no? As much as I agree that “Iminajihad” has to go, we have no business going after him. What would we do if some Muslim decided our Pres was “evil” and came over here to take him out? We would attack/invade yet another country over it, probably bring on another world war.
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CCC, that ad reminds me of the time I was going through the line at Wal-Mart with my husband. I had just bought a new mop and after the cashier rang it up, I picked it up tenderly and said to my Husband, “Thank you for my birthday present.” If looks could kill I’d be a widow and the cashier would be in jail.
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CCC, That was one of the neatest commercials I’ve ever seen. And a good warning that Christmas and birthdays are dangerous times. I was thinking of getting my wife a new iron for Christmas. Maybe I should rethink that.
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Chas,
Yes, you should. I’ve just been reminded that I once bought my wife a pocket knife (and a cookbook) for Christmas. That was 23 years ago…. and I haven’t lived it down yet. Ah the lessons learned as a young husband….
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Thanks Stubob, that makes sense.
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Thank you Cheryl D.
Still nothing and I remind myself often that God is sovereign. I can’t hear it enough, believe me. I hate being separated from Michael. Fortunately, he’s coming home for 2 weeks over Christmas.
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Report: 5 Blackwater Guards Charged For Iraq Shooting
WASHINGTON — Five Blackwater Worldwide security guards have been indicted and a sixth was negotiating a plea with prosecutors for a 2007 shooting that left 17 Iraqis dead and became an anti-American rallying cry for insurgents, people close to the case said Friday.
Prosecutors obtained the indictment late Thursday and had it put under seal until it is made public, perhaps as early as Monday. All who discussed the case did so on condition of anonymity because the matters remain sealed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/05/report-5-blackwater-guard_n_148882.html
Our country doesn’t have enough problems, and now these paid mercenaries go creating more enemies -
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I have been posting black humor jokes about the coming Greater Depression.
The word Depression is sneaking into news reporting. It was on the cover of the New Republic.
An official of Chrysler said if we don’t get a bailout, US may go down to a Depression.
Now Wall Street Journal blog says
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/12/05/defining-depression/
Defining Depression
Friday’s dismal November jobs report brings the old joke to mind: A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose yours.
The truth is that there is no good rule of thumb for a depression, like the two quarters of consecutive GDP declines that many people use for a recession. And unlike recessions, which are semi-officially declared by the National Bureau of Economic Research’s business cycle dating committee, there’s no arbiter to say that an economy has fallen so hard it’s in a depression.
In the old days, what we now call recessions used to be called depressions. The word recession only came into common use after the Great Depression, in order to distinguish garden-variety downturns from that epic crash. Sort of like the World Meteorological Association retiring a devastating hurricane’s name.
That said, with the economy in the midst of what may be its worst downturn in the postwar period, it is worth thinking about what it would take to dust off the “depression” moniker.
Follow link for rest.
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The Bush Depression? He already had one recession. This is his Depression.
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It will be interesting to see what happens to both Clinton and Bush.
I think they both will have surprises in store for us.
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CCC- I saw that video today. It is funny. But my wife is the kind that would put me in the doghouse for buying her jewelry, as it is too expensive. Besides, all she wears is her wedding/engagement rings; not even earrings adorn my beautiful bride.
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If the Good Lord wanted holes in a woman’s ears — He’d a put ‘em there!
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If the LORD had wanted airplanes he would have made them for Adam and Eve, not to mention electricity, shoes, phones you name it. Certainly you can grasp this concept, or maybe you can’t –
Maybe the so called ‘holes’ aren’t in the ears, but in…….
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Peter, I love the way you talk about your wife.
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RPN, I imagine you’re joking, but, I just think of Queen Esther and how her natural and cultivated beauty was used by God to save his people. I am pretty sure she wore earrings.
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Thank you, EYG.
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Yes, EYG. I was joking….
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