Statement of Senator Obama on $15 Billion Losses by GM

[Hope And Change]

Statement of Senator Obama on $15 Billion Losses by GM

By http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/person/gGRFRY">Josh In Michigan - Aug 1st, 2008 at 9:37 pm EDT

Senator Obama today released the following statement on the news that GM posted a $15.5 billion loss in the second quarter of the year – the third worst quarter in the company’s 100 year history:

“In the past 24 hours, we’ve learned that GM lost $15 billion while Exxon-Mobil reaped a $12 billion profit and 51,000 Americans lost their jobs in the last month alone -- including 8,300 in the auto industry. Our economy has been turned upside down and the country is badly off track. We need a fundamental change in course – an emergency economic plan to provide $1,000 in relief for families and save more than one million jobs from being lost, investments in our manufacturing base, a trade policy that works for American workers, and support for our proud American auto industry as they make the transition to produce the next generation of fuel efficient cars. Most of all, we need a President that will offer us more than political spin about the benefits of ‘outsourcing’ and understands that the economic challenges facing Michigan families aren’t just ‘psychological.’”

Read the Senator Obama's Emergency Economic Plan below.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4385783/Barack-Obamas-Emergency-Economic-Plan">Click here to read Obama's Emergency Economic Plan


http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/joshpenn/gG5TRx">Link

[Barack_America]

1. Obama favors subsidies to the Big 3 to help transition factories over to smaller cars...

Say what you will about corporate welfare, but this plan will go over BIG in Michigan.

[sufrommich]

2. Yes,it will. We are hurting badly.

Hopefully it takes the wind out of McCain's sails here.

[high density]

5. Beats having Chinese cars

Though those are on the way very soon...

[jwirr]

6. And it may be what we finally need to change the kind of cars they

produce. If Chrystler had made that change back when we bailed them out the first time we would all be better off.

[Barack_America]

7. Precisely. Ultimately this may rescue both the state of Michigan and our environment...

I'm sure Obama will have MUCH input into the design and fuel efficiency of those cars, that is, if they want the money.

[doc03]

11. Excuse me, but that was done way back in the 1980's

Chrysler got bailed out by the taxpayers and Raygun slapped tariffs on imported vehicles. I saw this coming again for the last few years, why could I (a high school graduate) see this coming and the overpaid auto industry executives didn't?

on edit: Why is it the workers and us taxpayers always end up getting hurt by the decisions of a bunch of overpaid jack asses?

[Egnever]

12. I ask myself that same question all the time

My answer is usually because we have fostered a society that values yes man and shuns conflict. The boss doesnt want to hear his plans are off the mark and so he promotes the guy who licks his shoes and when the boss is pushed out the shoe licker takes over.

I have seen it time and time again in my jobs over the years and its going to destroy us in the end.

[Coexist]

15. I think we need it - this will save jobs, not fatten CEO bank accounts.

[Cha]

3. This is Gold...and should get a lot of hits:)

Glad to see Obama has forgotten phil gramm's outrageous statement regarding Americans even though the mainstream media didn't see fit to report on his resigning as spokesman for the ever desperate, outsourcing mccain campaign.

This is an excellent statement!

Edit~ Error, you've already Rec'd that thread.

[NYC_SKP]

4. I don't want to see workers punished for the sins of their bosses...

The Bush administration and Automakers should have been ready for this a long time ago.

Instead, the CAFE standards, tax code, and other bad law conspired to encourage more, not fewer, purchases of trucks and SUVs.

The manufacturers were complicit and poured millions into ads to encourage poor choices in vehicle selections.

I'd almost rather see the government let GM die the death it deserves.

Then, provide seed capital to some new innovative auto mfgrs with the condition that they hire any former GM employees...

GM heads and their stockholders can go to bloody hell.

:patriot:

[GoesTo11]

8. It would be wise to not just junk all the assets of Ford and GM

The policy of closing plants and throwing away workers is failed. Better to use the carrot and stick of gov't support to get them to make products the country needs. As a national policy, this makes much more sense. And it's not the same as government picking winners and just bailing out, oh, Bear Stearns type companies. The idea that all we can do is leave companies alone to close or to make what is bad for the country and not good for it - that's Republican dogma, but it is failed. The companies, their plants, their workers, their knowledge and networks are an asset that would cost maybe $100 Billion or more to create. Yes, they're not directed at the right products now, and yes that is the fault of management, but if you believe that government can be part of the solution, this is a time for it.

[Schema Thing]

9. Can we get some kind of agreement that the Big 3 will stop being dumbasses?

Even just verbal? Maybe a very public news conference where the CEO's stand in front of the world and say "if you help us survive, we'll quit being fucking morons who act as if we didn't know the world was changing. Thank you for your benevolent socialism"?

[KittyWampus]

10. Has Obama released a "statement" about McCain's son leaving the bank?

[girl gone mad]

13. It needs to come with a salary/bonus cap..

for the CEOs. These greedy fools teamed up with the Republicans to lobby against CAFE standards and for tax breaks on heavy vehicles when they should have been embracing the higher CAFE standards and working with the Democrats to get a national health care plan passed. Now they can't compete against Japan, which has national health care and high fuel efficiency standards. The doofuses at the top got rich with their short-sighted plans, but now they want to be saved from their own bad decisions. They'll need to give up the massive salaries and be forced into other concessions, like closer scrutiny of their lobbying practices. Anything less would be a moral hazard.

[Canuckistanian]

14. You know, if I were a GM executive, I'd be pissed at the oil companies

After all, I'd scuttled MANY projects for green, high-mileage and electric cars just to please the oil companies. I pushed the SUV's and the low-mileage gas guzzlers.

Now that the oil companies are at the highest profit level in human history, I'm struggling to survive.

I'd be re-thinking this "strategic partnership".

[AwakeAtLast]

16. I have wondered why we haven't heard this from the Big 3

More M$M burials? :shrug:

[Hope And Change]

17. Obama vows tax credits, aid to automakers for hybrid cars

Senator Barack Obama speaks out on his plans for "New Engery For America and Michigan" in Lansing Monday. (Charles V. Tines / The Detroit News)

Obama vows tax credits, aid to automakers for hybrid cars

Gordon Trowbridge and Mark Hornbeck / The Detroit News

LANSING -- Barack Obama today set a goal of 1 million plug-in hybrid vehicles on American roads by 2015, and offered tax credits to buyers and a "major commitment" to help the domestic carmakers meet the goal.

Those and other efforts, Obama said in a mid-day speech at the Lansing Center, would allow the United States to end its imports of oil from the Middle East and Venezuela in 10 years. And, he said, it would re-energize Michigan's struggling domestic carmakers.

"I know how much the auto industry and the auto workers of this state have struggled over the last decade or so," Obama said. "But I also know where I want the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow to be built: not in Japan, not in China, but right here in the United States of America. Right here in the state of Michigan."

Plug-in hybrid vehicles such as Chevrolet's Volt are domestic automakers' leading strategy for meeting the demand for higher fuel economy and to cut carbon emissions from autos. GM has set the ambitious goal of making the Volt available to consumers by 2010, though developing battery technology to meet that goal is proving difficult.

Also today, Obama proposed selling 70 million barrels of oil from America's strategic petroleum stockpiles. He said that move could help in the short-run to drive down gasoline prices that now top $4 a gallon. Previously, Obama opposed tapping into the reserves, located in caverns in Texas and Louisiana.


more...

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080804/METRO/808040391/

[Median Democrat]

18. How Should I Put This? Detroit Should Have Done This Yesterday!

Instead, as discussed in the documentary, "Who Killed The Eletric Car," Detroit spent all of its time and effort trying to establish that alternative fuel cars could not work, generated even more pollution (long smokestack argument), were not profitable, and people did not want to buy them. Then, Detroit hailed fuel cell technology as an excuse for not building and marketing electric cars that could be built right now.

I think Obama's plan is great. The ideas have been around for awhile, but it would be great to have a President endorse them. If that means subsidies to the Big Three, then I am willing to tolerate that. Still, its amazing that Republicans have been fighting theses measures for so long, or that our auto makers spent the early part of the decade pushing bigger and bigger cars on us like the Hummer and the Excursion. In the meantime, Honda and Toyota developed hybrid technology.