US Automaker Bailout
18 November 2008
So, let me get this straight….
The “Big 3″ automakers — GM, Ford, and Chrysler — are having problems. And they want the US Government to bail them out.
Perhaps the root of the problem is that the Big 3 have been making cars that no one wants for a variety of reasons — poor reliability, poor gas mileage, poor safety ratings, uglier than sin. So we should bail them out so that they can continue to make the same crappy, gas-guzzling, breaking down, road-hog, eyesores as they did before? I imagine that they’ll continue to export jobs to Mexico and Canada, too.
They’ll probably bring the Hummer back. Good move.
The US Government has already approved a $25,000,000,000.00 (stop counting zeroes, that’s $25 BILLION) package to help them retool to make more fuel-efficient cars, which they evidently haven’t used, haven’t gotten, or haven’t used wisely.
I try to buy American, but when I find out that a lot of “foreign” cars like Hondas and Toyotas are actually more American made than a lot of “American” cars, I don’t see the point. I understand that the engine and power-train for my Honda Element were made in Japan, but the car was built here by American workers and has a 60% “made in America” content. Honda Accord: 60%; Toyota Corolla: 50%; Honda Pilot: 70%; Honda Civic: 70%.
Besides, my Honda runs and runs. My mechanic hates it, which I consider a good sign. (It’s not that he hates working on it or anything like that — I don’t bring it in to him enough because I don’t need to.) I recently traded-in my 1998 Honda CR-V with 168,000 miles on it because I felt like it, not because I needed to; I know it’ll run another 100,000 miles easy and hope that someone enjoys the great car they bought.
Best initial quality? Best Subcompact: Honda Fit. Best Compact: Honda Civic. Best Compact Sport: Mazda MX-5. Sensing a trend? Take what you want from this, but I was recently looking at a list of cars made by UAW workers. Only one of them is on the “most reliable” list. Hmm.
So what reason do we have for bailing out the US car manufacturers again?
Circus City
11 November 2008
Last week Circuit City announced they were closing 20% of their stores, including the one closest to me that opened only a few months ago. Monday they announced they were filing for protection under Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
I’m no fan of Circuit City. Then again, I hate Best Buy, too. We all know that the salespeople suck at both places. If you know what you want, you’re just fine and may need someone to point you toward the routers, if they know what that means. If you’re going into either one for advice, do your research before you set out on the trip. The store that’s closing in Parker, Colorado: I predict that when empty the technological know-how in the building doesn’t drop significantly. When CompUSA folded last year I think some of the Geek IQ in the stores actually increased when empty.
Interesting item on NPR’s All Things Considered about Circuit City today. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96875266
Evidently Circuit City laid off anyone “high paid” who actually knew what they were doing while keeping the idiots. At the same time, they paid their CEO a salary of $8,000,000 a year. Best Buy, meanwhile, paid their CEO “only” $4,000,000 a year. (Okay, I’ve bitched about CEO salary enough, but when a company is losing money it’s truly ridiculous that they keep paying their CEO so much.) They also put stores in stupid locations which were cheap and anchors at the time, but now they’re out of the way.
Will Circuit City emerge from bankruptcy? I kinda doubt it. Not unless they really get their act together, hire some people who know what they’re doing, stock their stores properly (seems that the movies are never in any sort of order), clean ‘em up (I always feel like I need a shower after going into one), and can their CEO to bring in someone who’ll make a reasonable salary and bring people back into the stores. When they vanish, Best Buy will have a corner on that market. For a while. Fry’s may just have to go bigger. Or a new player will emerge. Perhaps someone will learn from the mistakes made by Circuit City.
Executive Pay
10 November 2008
Whether you call it a bailout or a rescue or an early Christmas present, our government is giving a huge amount of cash to financial institutions. These financial institutions which have proven time and time again that they can’t be responsible with money. (I particularly like the AIG group that went on a $400,000 junket right after getting the bailout money.)
Part of the language of the bailout is over executive compensation. However, it’s hollow language. It says something like “executive compensation shall not be excessive” or something like that. I imagine my definition of excessive is different from yours and is certainly different from an executive’s definition.
The language should have read something like “the CEO’s total compensation shall not exceed 10-times the total compensation of the lowest-paid person in the company, including contractors.” Make the language concrete, measurable, and fixed. Lowest-paid person gets $30,000 a year, CEO can get $300,000 a year. CEO wants more, fine, raise the salary of that secretary. CEO wants a bonus, fine, give 10% of that bonus to the lowest-paid person.
JP Morgan wasn’t a real nice guy, but this is a formula he came up with. He thought it absurd if the head of a company got more than 10x that of the lowest-paid person. It may have been 12x, but 10x is so much easier to work with. A lot of companies in Japan work on the same idea.
Yet you see here companies that are losing money giving their executives huge pay packages and bonuses. In companies where I’ve gotten a bonus, if the company doesn’t perform, no bonus. Seems fair.
Things the Obamas shouldn’t do….
7 November 2008
Some things the Obamas shouldn’t do on getting to the White House…
- Don’t spend way too much money redecorating. Okay, get a chair or two. But it’s probably fine the way it is, and it just looks pissy and certainly not “of the people.”
- Don’t get a yappy dog. I know you promised the girls a dog — and that’s great – but get at least a mid-sized dog. 50 pounds at least. See if Palin can get you a good deal on a Husky.
- Don’t try to solve all the nation’s problems at once. Do one thing, do it well, then go to the next thing. Prioritize.
- Don’t try to solve something really big and important with a really stupid idea.
- Don’t let the Democrats in congress do stupid crap. If there’s a bill with any earmark in it, veto it. Send a message.
- Don’t invite Kim Jong Il over for dim sum.
And some things they should do…
- Do hire some Republicans to be in your cabinet. At least one. C’mon.
- Do invite John McCain over for a barbecue. Don’t let Cindy get too close to the fire, though.
- That dress that Michelle wore on the night of the election? Burn that. I’ve got no fashion sense whatsoever, but even I could tell that thing was ugly.
- Do hold regular press conferences.
- Do have a press secretary that has a sense of humor. I’m available.
Democracy and Hypocrisy
6 November 2008
Barack Obama won the US Presidential Election the other day. Surely you heard. It was in all the papers.
Interestingly the next day I heard a co-worker say, “He’s not my President.”
In 2000 George Bush won the Presidential Election. Well, kinda. Anyway, he was sworn in as President in 2001. I didn’t vote for him. Didn’t much care for him. that opinion hasn’t improved over the past almost-eight-years. However, as an American, he was my President, like it or not. Not the one I voted for, but he has been my President.
See…that’s how democracy works: someone wins, someone loses. I pointed this out to my co-worker and asked, “So, you only like democracy when your guy wins?”
That really pissed him off. He started to say something, then spun around to face his computer, probably realizing that the argument wasn’t going to work. Or would sound hypocritical.
Interesting other arguments. People who supported McCain pointed out that while Obama won an overwhelming victory by the Electoral College he only won the popular vote by something like 8 million votes. Yet in 2004 when Bush won, he only had 16 Electoral College votes more than the 270 needed and the spread was just over 3,000,000 real votes, yet I recall people crowing about more people than ever before voting for George W. Bush…of course ignoring the point that more people had voted against him than had ever voted against anyone ever before, too. Those statistics the same people didn’t want to bring up this time. Seems that people love the Electoral College when it works in their favor and hate it when it doesn’t. I admit that it’s silly and do hate it, regardless of who won.
Hypocrisy is such fun.
Union Negotiations
28 October 2008
You always hear about strikes and union negotiations arguing for a 5% pay increase over X years and all. (This is in the news with Boeing right now.)
Here’s a union negotiation I’d like to hear:
We don’t want a raise. We want a bonus. If the CEO, CIO, CFO, and Senior VPs get a bonus, we get the sum of their bonuses divided up among our union members, too. They get a total of $10 million? Our 500 union members get $10 million to divide up in bonuses, too. They get 10,000 shares, we get 10,000 shares at the same price.
Seems fair. Love to see it happen.
How time flies….
27 October 2008
Twenty-eight years ago my sister had her first child: Andrea. My sister was just over nineteen, I was thirteen-and-a-half. I can clearly remember standing in the hospital to see Andrea in her first hours of life.
Six years ago I happened to be on the East Coast for work and got to arrange it so that I could go to see Andrea graduate from college in Delaware.
Two years ago my daughter and I took a road-trip to see Andrea get married to a great guy named Greg.
Yesterday evening Andrea gave birth to her first child.
Customer Service
26 October 2008
Customer service really shouldn’t be a terribly difficult concept. Break it down to the basics: take care of your customers or someone else will.
I’ve had a number of expreriences with a local service provider. They don’t have a monopoly, so I have a choice. They provide specialized classes for a certain skillset. In short, it’s a hobby I enjoy. I’ve taken three classes there and each time it’s been a chore to get information out of them.
The first time after signing up and paying online I had to call them to get information on (a) did they get my payment, (b) am I signed up for the class, and (c) where and when is the class, assuming the first two were correct. The classes were to be on three consecutive weekends. However, on getting to the second class, we were informed by the instructor that the third class would be a different date, at a different location, and at a different time than we expected. Weren’t we told? No, we weren’t.
Fast forward a couple of months to the next class. This class was to be a two-night class. The first night class was supposed to be a lecture portion while the second was in the field. Again, I signed up online and then had to send a follow-up e-mail later to see if they’d gotten my payment and was I signed up. Two days before the class I was called and asked if I could attend the lecture the next night — a day early — because the instructor had other plans on the originally planned night. Now, I understand that things come up, but the event the instructor had planned was a gallery opening, so I’m pretty sure this didn’t come up at the last minute. And knowing the instructor, I’m pretty sure he told the school about it much earlier than when I was getting the call.
Next class. Just a night outing on October 11th. The weather turned bad and the Director of the school called me about two hours before I was going to leave to say they needed to reschedule. This, alone, stands out as the one time they’ve managed to have something resembling customer service. Sure, I understood, and could I take the make-up on the 18th; they were planning make-ups on the 18th and 25th. Something then came up for me and I rescheduled my make-up to the 25th.
Now, the class that was originally to be on the 11th we had planned on all meeting at the school at 6pm and then car-pooling to the actual location. So, last night, October 25th, I got to the school exactly at 6pm. At which point I notice that the other cars there are empty, the school is locked, and no one is around. After trying to figure out what to do for a bit, I call the school I’m sitting outside of and it forwards to the director’s cell phone. “Last I heard we were meeting at the school at 6pm.” “You didn’t get the e-mail?” Of course, I didn’t get the e-mail. I suspect I didn’t get the e-mail because none was ever sent.
So she gets me in touch with the instructor who’s waiting at the place where we’re supposed to be doing the class. He says it seems that a lot of people are late and I should hustle on over, which I do. I meet up with him and he’s shaking his head because there were supposed to be “eight or nine” students and, so far, four have shown up. He calls the Director and gets the message that she hasn’t heard back from anyone. I imagine that’s because, like me, they didn’t get any e-mails either.
For the record, this has all been about The Denver Darkroom, a photography school. I, for one, have taken my last class there. The instructors are great, but the office staff can’t seem to get their shit together to take care of their customers. I imagine that someone else will.
A Flat Tax Proposal
23 October 2008
Lots of people pooh-pooh flat taxes, but let’s consider this idea.
- Let’s let everyone keep 100% of the first $30,000 they make. Since the federal poverty level for a family of four is $20k, that seems fair.
- 50% of all valid charitable contributions are taken off your income. Give $100, take $50 off your income.
- After that, 15% of your income goes to the feds. Period. Done.
That’s it. So if you make $30,000 a year or less, you pay no taxes. If you maks $30,001 in a year, you pay $0.15. If you make $100,000, you pay 15% on the $70,000 ($10,500).
If you make a salary of $100,000 and then make $30,000 profit in the stock market — regardless of whether you bought the stocks the day before or ten years before — your income is $130,000 and you pay 15% on the $100,000: $15,000.
No child tax credits, no capital gains, no marriage-penalty or gain. If you give $100 to a charity, that’s $50 off your income. No deductions for anything except the first $30,000 of income is free. If money changes hands, it’s income. If your dad dies and leaves you $100,000, that’s income.
Voting
18 October 2008
By whatever deity is listening, I’m tired of it.
I’m tired of the bickering, I’m tired of the lies, I’m tired of the negative campaigning, I’m tired of each side claiming the other side is doing more negative campaigning. I don’t even watch that much television — probably less than two hours per week — I can only imagine how bad it is for the folks who suck on the glass teat on a daily basis. I usually listen to NPR in the morning on the drive to work and basically have retreated to listening to my MP3 player in the car at all times I’m so sick of it all.
When it gets right down to it, I was sick of it all before the conventions.
I have a dream. Maybe, someday, someone can be elected on the basis of how little they clutter up the airwaves and can actually just talk about what they want to do as president or senator or dog catcher. Maybe their each and every flaw can be accepted by the rest of us who also have flaws. Let he who is without sin broadcast the first attack advertisement. And this from a guy who is about as religious as Bill Maher.
For all I hate it, I’ll be voting on November 4th. I’ve explained to my wife — who can’t vote because she’s a Canadian — that in the 24 years since I became eligible to vote I’ve voted in every election, no matter how minor. And I can count on one hand how many times I’ve voted for someone rather than voting against someone. It’s usually like picking the best horse in the glue factory, but I do always vote. The government doesn’t ask for my opinion all that much, the least I can do is give it to them the once every two years that they do ask.
So no matter how scummy I find the candidates, no matter how much I realizer they’re lying about what they’ll do or won’t do, no matter how ineffective I realize the office is, I’ll vote. And you should, too.
My name is David Reed and I approve this message.
Next Page »