You didn build that !

John the world does not need oil for eternity, just like we did not need hay so we could ride horses for eternity. When the time is right the market will bring us what we need. In the mean time why pay more for something that does less? I don't have the answers on war, what we are doing is not working, and yet Obama has followed the same course as Bush. Fighting for fighting's sake is not good, but as Kevin Costner said in dances with wolves, a target does not make a good impression. All I know is if we cannot afford wars, we certainly cannot afford wars and Solyndra which is what Obama has given us.

John, It is one thing to put out a challenge and pay the companies that can meet it. It is another to dictate the solution based on ideology and then fund companies to make it based on political pay back. Obama has proven that we cannot do everything. If we are going to pay massive sectors of our citizens to not work and have healthcare, than we may need to stick with energy sources that are cheap and create government revenue rather than increase business costs and use government revenue to subsidize it because it is not viable yet.

And yet Obama wont let us do either anymore.

I do. I am booked in site #1 at Hattie Sherwood camp ground. I hope we can meet.

Yea, me too. I enjoy exchanging ideas with you. I would like to see that boat of yours. I will be experiencing some of your cold Minnesota weather in the next couple weeks on the way to Victoria BC. I hope the trip is clear sailing, I plan on taking my car, and it is worth an honorable mention in the worst snow cars of all time hall of fame.

OverMyHead wrote: john b wrote: Tell me of an investment guaranteed to provide a positive return. Contributing big to an Obama Campaign has shown to get paid back handsomely with tax payer money. !

I hope mine is in the mail!

I believe it was under Obama that the NASA chief told Al-jeezera that NASA's primary mission was Muslim outreach. Hard to live that one down. Especially when you mothball the shuttles at the same time.

I had not heard about the nuke plants, are they actually building them?

OverMyHead wrote: Lee, The GM bailout only worked for the unions and GM. We the tax payers are still on the hook of 10 billion as of December. The companies creditors were screwed, and they still have not addressed the legacy costs. They will need to be bailed out again in the future. Solyndra losses are estimated at 845 million. That one loss offsets over double Johns reported gains.

It got GM out of the hole but what I did not like about the deal was the goverment wanted to take over most of the companies operations.They said yes and after debt was paid back,GM offered to take back what the goverment took and the goverment gave them the middle finger. That's another reason people need to understand.When the goverment gets involved in anything, the goverment works just like the DEVIL!! Anything the goverment is involved in such as AARP, and that so called republican can not think of his name offering to refinance your home,and it is a goverment program.NO THANKS!! I did not take that into conserdation on John's gains.Should have figured that one out after Obama making idiotic comments about how many jobs created. Yea but how many quit looking or gave up.The actual unemployment rate 14%. But Obama wants to invest... You mean more spending Mr. President..It was hard to type Mr. on that one....

john b wrote: Lee, please explain; "Anything the goverment is involved in such as AARP"? How is the government involved? You are aware t is not the American Association of Retired Politicians. "It got GM out of the hole but what I did not like about the deal was the goverment wanted to take over most of the companies operations.They said yes and after debt was paid back,GM offered to take back what the goverment took and the goverment gave them the middle finger". Dave was right in his post about GM, They haven't paid the debt back. Why should a mismanaged company that drove themselves into bankruptcy with their own money make decisions with taxpayer money. The rusults speak for them selves. The government managed GM much better than GM did, and as a result they are seeing profits once again. They will have a chance to buy their stock back from the government, after that they can make their own decisions.

John the AARP is a false statement.Shame on me.I thought it was a susdairy of goverment but works more as a non profit organization.

The comment about GM is correct.They have paid there debts back in full w/ interest.You can see that here.(Forbes.com) The goverment in that deal wanted to own most of the stock.I think it was around 51%. Which is majority.

67 pages and I guess what you are saying with the talk about Gm is in fact, GM did not build itself, it took some work from us as a nation.

Amazing.


Obama! !

I guess in this instance rewarding failure did make alot of sense.

The owners of the company (stockholders) were not rewarded for their malfeasance in running the company, but that seems to be what you are arguing both for and against? The leadership at GM made the decisions that lead to them not being able to withstand the economic collapse, not the employees who have proven themselves more than capable of producing a competitive product. So why wouldn’t we replace that leadership, the stockholders pick the board, the board provides the leadership. If Mitt and Bain had the money to come in and buy out GM do you not think they would have put in place their own leadership to call the shots? In this case the government played the role of private equity; because there simply was no other buyer willing to take on GM, by all objective measures they did it well.

Ford knows full well that if GM had not survived ford likely would not have survived either due to the heavy reliance on mutual suppliers, that is why they fully supported the bailout of their competitor. Both of them must compete against companies that receive considerable help from governments, including governments that pay their employees entire healthcare and retirement costs how is that a fair market. Sometimes you have to accept reality, China, India, Japan, korea, Germany, Italy, france all consider their ability to make autos vital to the national interest and provide support and sometimes direct ownership of the methods of production. Solyndra died because the Chinese government supported solar production more than our government did.. logically one could argue the failure there was not government intervention but rather not nearly enough. If the argument is to wait for the market.. that argument leads to us buying solar panels from china for the next hundred years. Because while we were waiting for the market they were getting ready for something the whole world could see would eventually happen. So when it happens we are 20 years behind, good luck catching up then. Roads are infrastructure, but so is energy production and distribution, so there again the logic aint logical.

It is apparent GM and the interconnected supplier network is vital to our national interest. Yes another manufacturer and set of suppliers would have eventually served the market, but the transition would have been ridiculously harmful to everyone in the US. The cost in tax receipts, increased unemployment, etc would have been tenfold what we spent on it. The cost to our national security and long term economic stability of crippling the actual mechanisms of production in the US would have been catastrophic. Anyone with even a glancing interest in history knows that GM and their manufacturing capability were fundamental to our win in WWII, and if they saved our arse in WWII I don’t see why we shouldn’t save their arse when lack of regulation leads to the meltdown of the financial system.

It is fun to jump on a soap box and make grand statements of how things should be when one doesn’t have live with the actual consequences, but in the real world the adults have to do what the adults have to do.
Either you allow government to smooth transitions between technologies, or the government has to provide a safety net (which costs much more than easing the transitions), or you experience severe transitions where people die of starvation and exposure, well those that don’t use exercise their second amendment rights to take what their family needs anyway. Those are the three choices in the real world.

BTW about 10% of the green projects receiving stimulus money went bankrupt, not half, and not all.   Anyone who has been involved in startups would know that 10% ain’t bad.

Who agreed to the pension plans? The owners (shareholders) traded future profit for past success. If they did that and got new shareholders to buy them out without taking into account that liability then the new shareholders are the ones that should look to lose. The reality is if you agree to pay benefits you should not pay out dividends when you should be investing to meet your future obligations.   The past employees functioned under the market conditions and negotiated away current pay for future benefit, they lived up to their half of the deal by providing the work that allowed previous shareholders to reap dividends and increased stock prices, why should they now be the ones to be held in harm.   The stockholders are the ones that deserved to be wiped out. They were wiped out. In what world should the government take on all the liabilities to the employees then sell the resources (designs, plants, tools, dealer network etc) to private equity for pennies on the dollar so they can sell it off in pieces and make 500% while destroying the American manufacturing sector- they would be getting paid simply for being rich, not for building, not for taking a risk, but for destroying something it took a century to build up.   Instead the government (us) kept it together greatly increased the value and is now selling stock off in chunks at a reasonable market driven price what could be more fair than that? Far too often people own stock in companies these days without taking seriously their responsibility to see that those companies are well run and the result is that both they (the owners) and the employees often suffer while the board and the management screw them both.   Then when it goes bankrupt we are supposed to favor stock holders over the employees and the vendors? That’s not free market, that’s bailing out the lazy and stupid.

Dave seriously you are arguing that it was the duty of the worker to not get paid as much as they could for providing work, and that rather they should have been looking out for the long term viability of the business?   

That is well frankly rediculous. A free market fundamentally depends on the worker actively seeking to maximize thier return on thier labor. How can you argue against any government intervention in the all powerful free market in one post and then kick out the knees of its most basic tenant (as well as argue in favor of the worker denying thier own instincts of self preservation) in the next!

EVen if they wished to be as far sighted as possible to look after the overall health of the business they certainly had no control over those who chose to squander the resulting fruits of thier labor on things like inflated management salarys and bonuses, and dividends to stock holders.

You propose that the ownership that commmitted fraud by promising the future benefits in exchange for the labor that they did in fact already recieve and profit from are to be protected while the laborers that held up thier end of the deal should have known better and are the real problem?

Out of control unions and the resulting work rules certainly have caused thier share of problems, 80% of my coworkers can and do attest to that daily, but to blame that on the worker who was doing what thier very nature and the market requires them to do while trying to give a free pass to the management that was making hundreds of times what the workers were and actually making the decisions is just plain silly.

I am a Chevy man always have and always will.But Ford runs circles around them in business. They run there operations totally different than Cheverolet.It was awful,just awful when Chevy came out with that,can not think of the name I think it was the Volt.The sticker price was 40 grand for a electric car.They did not do there homework on that one.And they cancelled it within a yr or so.Aint nobody I know even want a electric car.No matter how much he keeps demonizing oil and coal,people are not ready for green energy. I love oil!!

Unions are a huge problem in America!!

Here is money well spent...You will get a kick out of this. DUMB AND DUMBER Just plain wasteful.#3 says $2.2 million spent to install skylights for a liquor store in Montana. WTHECK!! Hell if you going to waste money like that,give it too CCFan for us serious boat enthusiast..