Running on Empty

Sure make a product that is good & resonable for the average buyer. Make a car that will not be recalled in 3 or 4 years after it has been made. Fix the problems before you send it out to the public & stop thinking for $$$$ you put into your pockets first. Stop paying employees who are not working but still on the pay role. Please don't say this doesn't happen, because it does & has been going on for years. To bad the US auto industry has fallen on hard times. But greed from Union & Upper management levels have hurt the industry. It they would only get back to what it use to be, maybe the American producers will make a full come back.

I have no sympathy for Detroit Automaker MAnagement. They have shipped assembly and manufacture to Canada and Mexico. so much that a Nissan, Toyota, or Honda is more American-made than a Ford, Chevy, or Chrysler/Dodge. This is dispicable, never mind the failure of Detroit Management to offer fuel-efficient options. I enjoy supporting American workers (not American CEOs with accounts in the Cayman islands) and do so by buying cars assembled in USA and with a high domestic part content: again: Honda, Toyota, Nissan.

Hey Detroit, look in newsweek issue of July 7th. There is an ad about a company that helps cars to get 100 mpg. Istall thayt baby, include it in the price and bingo those trucks will fly out the door. Why didn't you think of that a long time ago? Then you wouldn;t be in this position. That is why those engineers makes the big bucks, right?

Man, this Japcrap guy is keeping me in stitches! It reminds me of my sister who swore by her Toyota. Never gave her any problems! And then I reminded her about the time she replaced her alternator. And air conditioner compressor. And fuel pump. As the sweat began to break through her Rising Sun headband, she quickly changed the subject. Bottom line is that anybody who knows anything understands that most cars by most major manufacturers are of fairly high and comparable quality compared to even 10 years ago. If you disagree, then please illustrate your superior knowledge with an argument that contains actual statistics and facts, as well as the words "redneck", "mouthbreather", or "knuckledragger". (Snicker)

Dear olderwiser, McCain's opponent's health care plan will bring the federal government's budget to its knees. Universal, government controlled healthcare works decently in a quasi-socialist, highly homogenous country like Sweden, but it would be a disaster (to the tune of $500 billion dollars annually - Obama's own plan's number) in a country with the population, diversity, middle class vibrancy, and economic influence of the U.S. Look at Canada, a country with a fraction of our population, a fraction of our diversity, a fraction of our small-business initiatives, and whose universal healthcare system is in such a state of bogged down, backlogged, ineffiency that thousands upon thousands of Canadians come to the U.S. to receive medical surgeries, procedures, and treatments in short order that would take upwards of two years to receive in Canada after fighting through a long waiting list. Yes, the insurance conglomerates need to be reigned in, but it must be done in accordance with the singlemost responsible factor in the creation of our powerful economy: private business. We cannot fall into the convenient trap of assuming that a larger, richer federal government will solve all of our problems. Signed, youngeroptimistic

They brought this on themselves........................There hasn't been any really forward thinking since Henry Ford's time. I just hope the Federal governement doesn't step in and bail them out like they did the airline industry, we all know how that's turning out! But the real problem here is that they are publicly traded companies, and therefore the leaders will always be driven by profit. Living for today instead of the future. Besides, American cars suck! Let these companies die off!

Regarding my last post -- sorry, a better link would have been

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/general-motors

This article is depressing:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/general-motors/5

GM's bad management is live on display, in all its 3-D cringe-worthiness.

Rick Wagoner is comparing the Chevy Volt to the Apollo program, when in fact the Bataan Death March would be more appropriate.

Wagoner's analogy is wildly off-base. NASA had as much money as needed to make less than ten of its final product. It had the Mercury and Gemini programs to practice. GM has to make the Volt work the first time for everyone, every time, for years, and in unforseen conditions. It has to develop a nationwide base of trained servicepeople. It has to make the car CHEAP or no one will buy it.

Whereas Wagoner should be apologizing profusely for not having started the Volt program five years ago, instead he and others supply an endless stream of soul-crushing motivational speeches. The real brunt of this failure is being borne by the engineers, who admit, "???We???re counting on home runs every single time, and quite frankly, we???re hitting doubles right now." It's not the engineers' fault!

The right way to have gotten the Volt off the ground would have been to commit to its success years ago, and make those little successes that finally add up. What management wants now is a Hail Mary to cover for their previous hubris and laziness.

For comic relief, check out Bob Lutz. He seems to be the kind of guy who would appreciate a Harley-edition F-150. Unfortunately, he's also GM's vice chairman.

Did you know that if McCain is elected you will have to pay income tax on the value of the medical insurance that your employer gives you? Worse still, he is offering a tax break for people who pay their own insurance, BUT only $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families.

Let's say you have a family of four. Your insurance policy costs would be at least $1,500-2,500 per month under a self-pay plan, which cost more than employer group plans. So, you pay $18,000 -$30,000 per year for insurance, and you get to deduct only $5,000 of that. If you paid $25,000 for you insurance, you would be out of pocket $20,000 per year. This is FAR WORSE than the current system, where if you are self employed you can deduct 100% of you medical insurance costs.

So, if you're not self employed, you would stick with your Employer's plan. Employer plans for a family of four have a value of $900-$1,500 per month totaling 10,800-$18,000 per year. Surprise! On April 15th, you owe tax on all of that as INCOME to you. Say your bracket is 25%, and the value of your Employer medical plan is $14,000. You will OWE THE IRS an additional $3,500, and that's ON TOP of whatever monthly premium you already pay to your employer for your insurance.

Many analysts say that McCain's new rules would encourage employers to stop offering health benefits. If that happened, then far fewer Americans would be insured than are insured today, because what family of four can afford $18,000-$30,000 out of pocket per year for self-pay health insurance?

Furthermore, McCain's plan does not require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions of people who self-pay their insurance. People under employer group plans have all of their pre-existing conditions covered. This is a hugely unfair aspect of the current system. Insurance companies can afford to cover the pre-existing conditions of the much larger pool of people with group insurance, but they refuse to pay the pre-existing conditions on the smaller pool of self-pay customers. They have been allowed to price gouge the self-pay customers, which is a form of market manipulation that should be illegal.

So let's say one of your kids had diabetes and you have high blood pressure, then your employer stops offering insurance. You now have to buy your own, but you and your child are INELIGIBLE due to pre-existing conditions. Oh, yeah, they will let you buy the insurance, but you can't use it for any pre-existing condition until you have paid on time every month for two years. And you know what happens at one year and 11 months? You get a letter saying your policy has been cancelled. I have many patients this has happened to.

McCain's plan SUCKS.

It does nothing to help middle class working Americans afford or obtain medical insurance. In fact, it makes the current system WORSE.

What's the big deal? The Gas we use comes from overseas, most of our consumer buying is for foreign made goods, the only thing we produce is suckers to buy all this junk... and of course we excel at creating Christian Preacher to extract any remaining monies we marketing trafets might still have!

Detroit will either have to create fuel-efficient vehicles or topple completely, but a lot of the blame for this can also be attributed to the American buying public, who snapped up massive, over-heavy trucks and SUVs for years at the beginning of this decade before the price of oil started to rise.

And this is the way it should be. America's selfish appetite for gas-guzzling monsters has damaged our environment horribly and contributed to health problems for millions, and will only continue to do so in the coming decades.

People can call me anti-American all they want, and I don't give a rat's ass about their knee-jerk, ignorant, motor-show patriotism. I woke up this morning with my hands blue from breathing problems caused by smoke from the California wildfires, which have been horrendously exascerbated in recent years by environmental damage. I don't care if people post 1000 "you can't blame CO2 emissions for that, wildfires are a natural disaster", because the extent of the wildfires and floods this year has been anything but natural.

Wake up and realize that your NASCAR-driven *** culture is starting to destroy people's health and lives, you idiot motorhead shits.