No more GM for me: I own a GM truck. It has been a great truck. It is the last time I will own any GM (or Chrysler) product.

I will not support a government/union takeover of our industry.

I am with you dude. I also own 1999 GM Topkick C6500 Dump Chassis Truck it is best for me.

Recently GM Recall about 1.3 MILLION Cars due to some steering issue. this recall will effect 2005 to 2010 Chevrolet Cobalts, 2007 to 2010 Pontiac G5s, 2005 and 2006 Pontiac Pursuits sold in Canada and 2005 and 2006 Pontiac G4s sold in Mexico.

Used trucks for sale

Will I buy GM or Chrysler? Maybe I could say that I will never buy a new car, but that is all but impossible. Aside from GM and Chrysler’s venerable bail outs, Ford and Toyota had the largest recalls in recorded history; Toyota recalled 7 million for their accelerator pedals TWICE and Ford recalled a whopping 16 million vehicles EIGHT TIMES over a period of 20 years because of cruise control switches that catch on fire. Toyotas will run forever and Ford (and Mazda) has worked very hard to improve its reliability, but now I fear that they will be the most prone to safety defects.

Honda also delayed a recall of potentially deadly air bags in its 2000-2003 models for eight years, and I also fear for their safety. Nissan is junk except for the Versa, Sentra, and Altima/Maxima, which have been (and still are) excellent models for years. Hyundai/Kia make great cars, but some of their models are getting dated and they have a more limited dealership network. German cars are absolute disasters when they break down and Fiat (and definitely Chrysler) is by far the very worst auto maker in the world.

FYI: Subaru (they’re junk to begin with) is 20% owned by Toyota, Mazda is basically Ford, Suzuki is garbage, and Mitsubishi (also makes dog crap) is virtually going out of business.

As a member of a family loyal to GM for 4 generations, I am here to say that I hate Fords, therefore I will continue my loyalty with GM whether is Obama owned or not.

Tom DeGisi: there is a little less Lord of the Flies than you get in a big school.Yours,
Tom

HA, My life!

I’ve been teaching for about 20 years. I’ve spent 18 of those years teaching at schools considered “Inner City.” Lord of the flies is what you get when you expect it. In my room, It’s more like the “people’s republic of Daniel.”

We homeschool, and my neighbor across the street was a teacher in the public schools. He said when a home schooled kid came into his class they did fine with the work. He also said they were wonderfully polite for two weeks until they learned from the other kids. An important part of socialization is socialization with what. Home schooled kids tend to socialize more with adults, so there is a little less Lord of the Flies than you get in a big school.

Yours,
Tom

Homer: Daniel,
Just to let you know.That attitude, both onyour part and the part of the administrators, is why we homeschool.Both boys test at the 99th percentile, have many friends and get along with everyone from newborn through retirees so I don’t want to hear any of the usual bs about homeschoolers.

You won’t get BS from me about homeschooling. If you and your wife (partner) can handle it, if you are educated and able to find help when you need it, if you have the income from one so the other can stay home and do that, If you have the social background to keep the kids socialized, even though they study in Isolation, Good for you, and good for your kids. No one can do it as well as a well prepared parent. If you do not have those skills, income, etc, then we are the next best option.

Your reply was wonderfully genteel. I really appreciate that.

A disunited union structure? I doubt it would work to protect the workers rights, safety, or wellbeing.

Well, I’ve worked under a disunited union structure. Most people call them consulting or contracting firms. They did a good job of negotiating fair compensation for me and looking out for my welfare. I was very happy to work for them. Consulting and contracting firms who don’t treat their contractors right don’t prosper. Competition between firms and with permanent employees does keep costs down, but contractors are paid well.

Yours,
Tom

ArrowSmith: If you hate unions, you hate America. The unions built American industry and won us WW II.

Actually, if you can bother to check your history texts, the Russians and the Chinese won us World War Two. Well over 3/4 of the German army was tied up in the Russian campaign and some 80% of the Japanese army was tied up in their Chinese conquista

And I am also pretty sure that anti-union Churchill may have contributed. Not to mention the actual US GIs

Daniel: Another duty of unions is to get as much as they can for their members. It is the Owners duty to the shareholders that they not make deals that make it impossible for the business to stay profitable. If UNIONS are making American labor too expensive, do not blame labor, blame management for making the agreements they could not meet and remain profitable.

Unions came to power through extreme violence (or threat thereof) against management and non-union workers. It was those great “socialists” you praise who decided to engage in acts of violence against non-supporters to create their monopoly. Much like a government, most modern unions achieved their monopoly power by threats of force against their competition.

I don’t blame management for signing a union contract when under threat of death, I blame the government for refusing to prosecute unions for their conspiracy to commit these crimes against business owners.

I also blame unions for refusing to renegotiate the terms of their contracts when the business to which they are tied is under significant financial duress. Do you know whose benefits the UAW cut when GM was entering bankruptcy? Retirees, people who didn’t get to vote on the measure. But UAW active members wages weren’t touched.

The UAW created an ideal environment with their political machinations, help elect a progressive union-supporter who would provide financial support if things got tough, then make things tough for the industry upon which they depend. As a result, the Union got more out of the GM bankruptcy – because of their elected official’s disregard for the rule of law and property rights – than “secured” GM bondholders.

The UAW is a very dangerous organization and the Democrat party needs to stop coddling their anti-capitalist policies.

Daniel: Finally, Unions do not decide what cars to build, what kind of cars to design, or how to focus the business or the industry. That again is management’s job. Most of the failure of “unions” is a failure of management.

No, the failure of management is generally a failure of the unions.

Management can’t renegotiate wages, because any attempt results in a strike, causing significant loss in productivity. Then the union thugs harass and assault anyone who the management tries to bring in to cover the shortage. Faced with either a slow corporate death by high union wages and a fast personal death by union thuggery, most management will opt for the former.

Unions don’t decide which cars to build, but they do significantly impact worker performance on the floor. Bad workers aren’t fired by management, because unions protect them. Good workers can’t excel because unions need to make sure that everyone has a job, and efficient work means someone else is less efficient and might have to be fired.

Unions are the ultimate socialist experiment, everyone works and everyone gets paid according to the union schedule. However, they are destroying companies and the most successful employees are those who game the system to work an average of 3 days a week and earn over $100,000.

Good work if you can get it.

tamdar: FJ Cr

Congrats on the FJ Cruiser :) You’ll LOVE it!

gab: I’m planning on buying the 6.2 L Camaro producing 426hp.And the fewer people I’m competing with to buy one, the better.Y’all buy your little bittie Ford Mustangs…

Next year’s Mustang brings back the 5.0L engine. It will produce over 400hp as well, if not more than GM’s 6.2

Corky Boyd: While there is no law that says you have to join a union, the first demand a union makes is for a union shop.

Well, why does the company agree to such demands? That’s how contract law works— if your negotiating partner demands exclusive terms, and you agree to them, then you’re stuck in a contract with exclusivity provisions. The way to avoid it is not to sign that exclusivity agreement.

I agree there’s a certain tension between exclusive contracts and individual freedom, but it goes much deeper than just union shops. If I’m an independent candle-maker, say, and a local retail store wants to sell my candles, it might turn out they can’t because they made the mistake of signing a 10-year exclusive deal to only buy candles from the Council of Snooty Candlemaking Shops, which I’m not a member of on principle. Why is that exclusive deal acceptable, but if they were hiring candle-makers as employees, suddenly a different right-to-work kicks in? Why don’t I have a right-to-sell in the small-business case, too?

astonerii:
Why do you think these companies were forced to make those bad deals? Because the federal and state governments prevented them from Union Busting or replacing union workers with non union workers. Yes, the companies could have closed shop and moved to another state or country, but they had invested billions of dollars in infrastructure that they would have to abandon and rebuild elsewhere.

Labor law doesn’t actually require that. A company that cannot reach terms with its union that it finds acceptable can simply refuse to sign any deal, basically daring the union to accept its terms or strike. And if a union chooses to strike, the company may hire permanent replacement workers.

It’s true that a company cannot fire unionized workers solely because they’re unionized, but it’s a big jump from that to arguing that Ford and GM were forced to sign bad deals in the 1980s; labor law didn’t require them to sign the deals, and they were free to let the UAW strike and hire replacements on the open employment market.

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Lifted trucks for sale

CNG is less powerful than Gasoline, so the car has less pick up (which will be good when My kids learn to drive). There are few stations. They are generally about 5 or 7 miles apart, and usually 2 miles from the freeway. I have never been more than 20 miles from a station (I went to Bakersfield once). I can buy a home pump, hook it up to my gas main, and fill my car at home (and the government will pay me $.50 per gallon for creating domestic fuel).

My union does not require membership. Teachers can be members or not, depending on their choice. If they chose not to become a member, they do pay an agency fee to the union for negotiating the contract, but there are some benefits union members get that they do not get, and they pay less in Fees than we pay in Dues.

As for a bad Steward, being as bad as a bad principal, I don’t believe this is the case. The stewards in themselves have no power except for the power to hold the Principal’s feet to the flame when he is acting in a way that is against the word and intent of the contract. The steward acts as a break to the power of the principal. The problem with bad breaks is they do not CAUSE the car wreck, they fail to prevent the wreck. I’ve worked with Bad Stewards. I’ve been a bad steward! I worked at a continuation school once. We had 3 teachers on campus. I was the only member of the union on staff, so I was the steward. I would say that I was not very good, in that the principal was able to do a lot without my realizing what was going on. I was a poor break to the principal’s power. A powerful steward is unable to make major changes to the governance structure on his own. A powerful principal can.

You can have your union, Daniel. I’m cool with that. But don’t force me to join and don’t call me a scab if I don’t want to strike. Don’t prohibit other unions from competing with your union. And if the School Board decides they don’t want to buy any labor from your union that’s too bad.

It’s all about freedom, which is the opposite of what the laws in your union state provide.

I never want to join a union. Don’t make me join and I won’t make you quit.

Oh, and BTW a bad union steward is just as big a pain as a bad principal. They don’t call ‘em union bosses for nothing.

Yours,
Tom DeGisi

Screw that. I’m not going to refrain from buying the vehicle I like the most, just because someone I don’t like might benefit slightly. My purchase is a drop in the bucket to whoever you may be talking about, whether it’s Obama or the Unions or Japan, but it’s a big freaking deal to me. So I should weigh the factors accordingly. And do what’s best for me. Because I’m the American whose economic well-being I care about the most.

Second, since most of the members here are lawyers, you must know that fiduciary duties do not always allow you to do what you know is right. I worked closely with the Union rep at my last school. He had to defend several bad apples to the best of his ability because it was his job. His cog in the system had to run backwards sometimes (Any defense lawyers here ever have to defend someone who did not deserve a defense? Any Prosecutors have to provide the defense what they needed during discovery, even though it meant letting a guilty man go free? Unions have to do the same thing. Their duties are to the members, not anyone else).

Another duty of unions is to get as much as they can for their members. It is the Owners duty to the shareholders that they not make deals that make it impossible for the business to stay profitable. If UNIONS are making American labor too expensive, do not blame labor, blame management for making the agreements they could not meet and remain profitable.

Finally, Unions do not decide what cars to build, what kind of cars to design, or how to focus the business or the industry. That again is management’s job. Most of the failure of “unions” is a failure of management.

My School district has informed the teachers that they are expecting us to take a 15% pay cut next year or they will have to fire about 15% of the staff. The only problem I see with this is they will not open their books so that we can see that they’ve made all of the cuts necessary before the cuts hit the classroom. I personally have identified about $300,000 in waste in my school site. I have hardly looked. I am SURE there is much more there. The last 2 times the state gave the school district a COLA, they spent the money on items other than salary. When the union asked them where the money went, we were not given answers. Personally, I am willing to strike in order to force the district to show and justify every dollar spent. I have 20 years in. Another 10 or 15 and I will retire (assuming the state pension I’ve paid for is still around). I have been offered jobs out of Education for 3 times my salary (I refused because I didn’t want to work 75 hours a week, 52 weeks a year). I’ve been awarded a “Most Inspirational Teacher” in Los Angeles award twice. I would like to think I am one of the good ones. The fact of the matter is that LAUSD has trained me, paid for my education, Paid my salary. Now that I am at the peak of my career, I am as good as I am ever going to be, I am leaving (once the Economy improves so it is likely I will make my 2 years and 1 day to make permanent status). I will go to any other school district in the county and get more money.

Even in “right to work states” (where enforced unionism is banned), if you work for a company with a strong union, you will find a lot of unpleasant things happening to you if you are among the few not joining. The simplest is ostracism, no one will talk to you. Beyond that is vandalism and whatever they can do to make life unpleasant.

Obama is trying to make the glory days of the fifties return, where unions extracted high wages for less work from companies protected by distance from competition. But the world has changed. Norman Augustine former CHMN/CEO of Lockheed Martin and Chair of the President’s (Bush)Education Task Force calls the change the “Death of Distance.” A phone call to someone overseas cost tens of dollars in the 1950s, now it cost pennies. The internet means you can order a part from Germany or Taiwan, pay for it by credit card and have shipped by Fedex to your home in less than two days. The protective insulation distance once gave, has disappeared. We must now compete with the rest of the world. Costly manufacturing hampered by antiquated union rules and shop practices, simply won’t allow us to compete.

Companies will either go out of business or have to recieve endless subsidies to keep their heads above water. GM and Chrysler are sopping up money with no end in sight. Already they have received $80 billion and just last week GMAC got $3.4B more. This in gratitude to the UAW who supported Obama.

Where is the money coming from? From borrowing and running the printing presses. If we don’t go bankrupt as a nation, it will come from our children.

The looters will get nothing from me except for one special finger.

Oh, and the reason I bought my Nissan (made in TN)? I like a company with the cojones to have an odometer that doesn’t roll over until you hit a million miles.

I Callahan: I Callahan says:
If GM is ever going to get out from the government’s stranglehold, they’ll have to sell more cars. They won’t sell more cars if the people on this board are a representative sample of the people who won’t buy GM cars because they’re owned by the government.
I understand why people feel as they do, but why is everyone missing the irony here?

Ummm…maybe you missed the point. It’s too late for GM; let this be a lesson to the next companies crying to Washington, hat in hand. I wonder if Congress is paying attn, or if this is just “teabagging” to them.