Which can be disabled, FYI. My 2003 Saturn didn’t even have one, nor the OnStar option.

I think that if Obama is serious about “reforming” (deforming) the industry, he’ll be throwing the union under the bus. At GM, for example, contract workers have been used for decades to bypass the union costs. Temporary agencies like IPG foot the cost of the benefits (decent) and offer limited retirement options, like a 401K (which they used to match up to 100% before Obama stupidly took away their incentives for doing so).

One of my brothers worked at the GM training grounds for almost a decade as a full-time temp. He worked for Ford under the same temporary agency, then went to Chrysler. He came in with several years of experience as a certified mechanic, an engineering degree, and excellent technical writing skills – and a lower salary than a union worker.

I expect Obama, since health care is the #1 bargaining subject for the unions, will use the auto takeover as leverage for pushing his national health care plans.

“It may be that Obama can take on the UAW contracts in a “Nixon Goes to China” way that a Republican couldn’t. Just a thought.”

On perceptions, I think you have it backwards… Nixon, as a republican, could get away with normalizing relations with China because he was an anticommunist and it would be better accepted as pragmatic.

A Reagan could type could bail out industries better than a lefty for the same reasons. In your world (maybe not you but the people around you) there might be big issues regarding the too cozy relationship between republicans and business.. But in the mainstream (re: not just here) there are problems with the state (the providence of the left) getting too close with business. I still think it is a center ‘right’ country. Reagan did make loans to Chrysler and helped Harley Davison. I don’t remember a lot of mainstream dissent to it. Let’s look back in two years and see how this works out for Obama (re: not just with the people here, but with the general public).

PS
Reagan also pulled a Nixon and got along well with Gorby… with relatively little hair pulling and fret because he had good anti communist credibility (re: a Carter could not have pulled it off)…

There is no reason to “save” GM. People are still buying and driving cars made in the US; it’s just that the cars are made by Japanese or German companies that are better run than GM. At one time, New England was the world center of textile manufacturing. It isn’t any more, but that doesn’t mean we stopped wearing clothes.

Captaining GM is a lot like captaining a supertanker, bill: you cannot turn it on a dime. If the ship is on a collision course with a rock 4 miles ahead, the ship will hit it no matter how you turn the helm. The UAW contracts and Federal laws under which GM, Chrysler, Ford have been laboring have been in effect for decades and are decades-longer commitments. GM has retirement, healthcare and pension responsibilities for one million retirees. 19 of each 20 people GM supports with $ no longer work there!

What are your ideas on fixing GM, bill? Betcha you ain’t got any.

And, Oh yeah: GM’s situation will eventually be mirrored by the Federal government: as its doles enlarge, it will have fewer and fewer taxpayers supporting the entitlement and wealth-transfer recipients. How ya gonna fix that, bill?

That points to bankruptcy procedings like some of the airlines have done recently.

The country needs failure to work. Failure is what makes capitalism better.

Capitalism is the people choosing who gets what resources.

When companies restructure they can compete better. We can’t prop up failing ideas. The president of this country cannot subvert the law of the land and compete against Ford. This is unlawful in my mind. Yes, I’m only a citizen.

We can’t pour billions into a competitor of Ford and have America succeed in the Auto industry. Good decisions and competing products and productive workers are what make a great company. Not rooms full of paid and unproductive people.

As for his abrupt, unexpected departure: that’s the way CEOs like to treat ‘human capital’, these days. He ought not to have been surprised.