funny but true Options

[UNDEAD]

http://msunderestimated.com/SNLBailoutSkit.wmv

SNL did a "Bailout" skit, which has created some rather awkward problems for NBC. They spiked the video and tried to shut it down on the Internet. But aha, there's still some sites that have it.

[Blitz]

LMAO......

ON another topic..... THe government passed the SCHIP bill.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/children_s_health

Next stop socialized medicine..... We are doing great in what is already government controlled (medicare, medicade and social security) Those systems are flush with monies and cause no drain on the private sector that lags so far behind.

I mean Canada and the UK have great systems.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.a...299282509335931


On the Positive side we are closer to a 900 Billion government pork / re-election / power grab bill.

Yes...Yes.... It's all about jobs.... Even though the CBO indicates that only little monies will be spent within the first year to help the unemployeed.

Supposedly it will create 4 million jobs. (on the high estimate) 1.5 million on the low estimate....

Lets have some math fun shall we.... (we will use 3 million jobs for this excercise)

900,000,000,000 / 3,000,000 = $300,000 spent per job
$300,000 / 6 years = $60,000 ( you could pay 3.5 million people 60,000 per year for 6 years...WOW)

900,000,000,000 / 140,000,000 (total taxpyers) = $6,428.57 is you total liability in the 900 billion (why not send the money to you to stimulate the economy.

900,000,000,000 / 95,000,000 (people who actually pay federal taxes ) = $9,473.68 (your real debt because 45 million people already pay no federal taxes.)

900,000,000,000 / $100,000 = 9,000,000 ( number of people who could recieve a check of $100,000 with the "stimulus" monies)

140,000,000 (people) / 9,000,000 ( # of $100,000 check recieptients) = 6.4% of all taxpayers would recieve a $100,000 check, tax free no less!

Math sure is fun..... Stimulating Even....

Have some fun with this and play at home!

The gov't is a monoply, and they are illegal because they have no incentives to get better and only demand higher pay for poorer service. The Gov't should have no buisness in the private sector.

Please... Anyone... Name (1) government run program / service that provides higher quality at a lower cost than the private sector?

Lower cost would = efficient use of monies not 10% growth in cost for 2% growth in services.
Are any budgets in decline?.... Well the military will most likely be... besides that?

[Robert]

Nice clips.
I especially like the 1st one because I can imagine all the Dem's getting a big laugh out of the 1st Bush part, then suddenly getting pissed as they continue to watch the clip.

Something important to point out which goes along with what Blitz said.
This new bill which is supposedly about Job. Does almost zero to create jobs. All it does is create temporary, short term, make work. This is very similar to the work programs form the New Deal era. One small problem, history shows the only reason all the New Deal didn't cripple the US is because WWII happened.
Like it or not, WWII was a huge boon for America.

$83,000,000,000 in "tax cuts" for people who do not pay taxes. More buying votes, more welfare, more socialism, more debt, another step down for America. The liberal dream coming true.

[UNDEAD]

got a kick out of this-

This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Shut up.

[Robert]

Or how about this.
GM is taking $1 billion of their bailout money and using it to build a plant in Brazil.
Latin America Tribune
From the story
"SAO PAULO -- General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker.

According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to "complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012."

So much for the governments claim about oversight on how this money will be used.
Pumping $1billion of US tax payers money into Brazil is really going to help stimulate the US economy.

[Blitz]

Ford's most advanced assembly plant is in Brazil... and running as we speak.... type

Watch the video
http://info.detnews.com/video/index.cfm?id=1189

What is amazing is that they cannot build that plant in the US because of the unions.
No sense in being competative and earning a profit at home... It's all about keeping jobs no matter the cost to the company.....

I guess GM is just trying to catch up with Ford in South America.... At least Ford has not taken any bailout monies.

[Robert]

Ford's most advanced assembly plant is in Brazil... and running as we speak.... type

Watch the video
http://info.detnews.com/video/index.cfm?id=1189

What is amazing is that they cannot build that plant in the US because of the unions.
No sense in being competitive and earning a profit at home... It's all about keeping jobs no matter the cost to the company.....

I guess GM is just trying to catch up with Ford in South America.... At least Ford has not taken any bailout monies.

I've seen that video posted in several discussions about the auto industry. Every time it's brought up, it always pointed out that can't do that here because of the "Unions".
I'll agree the unions share some blame in the current mess the Big 3 find themselves in but only partly and some of it is beyond their control.
Here is another way to look at it.
1) Unions didn't prevent similar Honda and Toyota plants being built here in the US.
2) Something most people are completely unaware of. The Ford plant in Brazil which people claim couldn't be done here because of unions, is actually a unionized plant. You see all those yellow lines painted on the floor in the video? The union made Ford paint those lines as a way to separate the low paid union workers from the even lower paid contract suppliers who work inside the plant.
3) Ford and union bashers spin this Brazilian plant as some type of answer to problems created by the unions. Bullshit, the unionized workers in Brazil aren't much happier with Ford then they are here. Which is why those same Brazilian workers went on strike and shut down the whole plant in 2003
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-27...settled-at.html
4) Of course Ford loved the idea of building a plant in an area which suffered from 25% unemployment.
When people are that desperate, you can get them to line up for jobs that pay less than average an below the poverty line. Which is why those same workers decided to strike when they had the option. They returned to to work after getting an 8% raise which may sound like a lot but it only brought them up to a median wage for the area and type of work. So the real question is who's really greedy, the Unions or the company?
5) Do I even need to bring up the near zero tax rate and lax or nonexistent environmental regulations.
6) Unions have little to do with why this plant was built in Brazil, it was done to protect and supply their Brazilian and South American market. The same way Ford has plants in Europe to supply their Euro markets.
7) Most importantly, the union cost which has devastated the industry has almost zero to do with union wages. The real problem is legacy cost which the companies can no longer afford after continuing to build their business over the last decade+ on a razor thin profit margin. The single biggest reason this plant will be more profitable compared to a US plant is the lack of legacy cost. A tiny fraction of the health care expense when compared to US employees past and present. Then there is difference in cost associated with retirement, which has become a financial black hole for the auto industry.

For the record, I'm a strong union supporter in theory but am the 1st to admit they have done less than good job in the practical application when it comes to collective bargaining.

[UNDEAD]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/10/caf...ouse/index.html

[Robert]

Damnit you beat me to it. I was just about to post the same link.
Pretty powerful critique coming from a democrat an a huge Obama supporter.

People should be freaking out about this so called "Stimulus" plan passing. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently predicted, in the long run this plan would be worse than doing nothing at all.
The CBO predicts the actual average growth from this plan would only be 2.75% in 2009 and 2.5% in 2010 with very little job growth.

[UNDEAD]

its really scary when your starting to see bread lines in Florida. big companies like DHL just packed up and left. The fact im going through some legal woes i thought of going and getting a 3rd job and every rest or bar i went to had 30-60 people waiting to interview.Scary.

[Robert]

And it gets better.
Even as they work to cram this piece of shit down the throats of America's tax payers via scare tactics.
They are already working on a new $1.5 Trillion bailout package for the banks. I guess that 700 billion 2 months ago wasn't enough.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7880969.stm

BTW Obama supporters were quick to point out to a small boost in the markets when Obama appointed Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary. Any small initial gain in the markets when Geither was named as Secretary was completely lost today when market analysts voiced their concerns over his proposal, sending the markets down 4%. It was almost painful to watch his press conference where he was unable to answer questions about how his proposed changes would benefit the financial industry.

[UNDEAD]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090210/ap_on_..._wh/economy_rdp

[Blitz]

A little reality check for the recession...
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/its...ion_really.html

Does everyone forget the higher unemployment, huge interest rates, overbearing taxes, and the energy crisis in the late 70's and early eighties?

The real crisis is the % of gov't spending in relation to GDP.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20t...tury_chart.html
This is what is putting the government debt, and the interest on the debt will be crushing in the future.

Bush 2. started at 1.7 trillion and the last budget was 3.0 trillion.
Any guess on Obama's budget? 4.0 trillion? More ? Less?

We cannot spend our way out of this, they need to repeal sorbanes oxley, and restructure the accounting laws that the banks were forced to do from the whole Enron mess. We should at least try suspending the laws, and determine if this helps at all rather than printing money.

As far as the Brazil plant.
Yes it is used as a strawman against the unions.
However , I believe none of the Foreign automakers plants are unionized.

The Legacy costs are killing the big 3.
The Jobs bank is as well. http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0.../A01-351179.htm

I'm sorry, but any industry should be pushed (by the consumer) to build new technology and innovation to deliver a better product with better cost, and with greater speed to the consumer.
If you have an anchor like the union demanding exactly what a person can and cannot do you cannot deliver and be competative.

Just try and go to a trade show and move a wall in a booth, hang a light, carpet, anything, and see what fine the union hits you with for taking away a job. because you wanted to get it done before the show was over.

The unions were a great thing when people were getting crushed in machines on a daily basis, we now have OSHA monitoring all of these things.

[Robert]

As much as I hate Obama, I want him to succeed because his failure would be America's failure.
With that in mind I have a little bit of advice for him.

If you go around telling everyone the sky is falling, then don't hold a press conference to explain your plan to prevent the disaster, it's bad.
If you then hold a press conference but only refer questions about your plan to the next press conference, it's worse.
If you then have your Treasury Secretary hold the press conference where the questions you've put off are are suppose to be finally answered, but all he does is lay blame and offer empty answers to basic questions, it's beyond stupid.
Then all you've accomplished is told people they should be scared and then proved to them that they should be because it's obvious no one has a real plan.



For Blitz,
You're correct, those more modernized plants in the US ran by Honda an Toyota are not unionized.
My point was these foreign companies have no problems coming into the US offering good pay an benefits
without constant crying about environmental standards and union wages.
I completely agree with you about the job banks being stupid but the fact remains the companies entered into a contract with the unions to do this. It was the company who continued to offload work knowing full well this would be the result. The unions put this clause in the contract to prevent job losses from automation and outsourcing but it was the company that made it happen.
BTW that article you linked to is old, job banks were almost completely done away with during the last major round of contracts.

[Genocide Junkie]

There's a reason those new Honda and Toyota plants are in the South. It's no accident that they ended up in non union areas. It's a shame we'd rather lose jobs than to work for a wage that we can live on... says a lot about where we are now.