Motown left years ago. The city’s former mayor is behind bars. Unemployment hovers around 14 percent. An emergency loan measure for its automakers died in Washington late Thursday after failing to generate enough support from Republican senators. Oh, and its professional football team is 0-13 for the season.
How much more, one wonders, can Detroit take?
“To me, it’s like piling on,” Gail Taylor, one of the city’s legions of unemployed men, said Friday of the Senate’s decision on the loan measure. “We’ve been through enough around here.”
Make that 0-14. But the Red Wings are still looking good.
It helps if one looks at Detroit from the angle that it is a third-world municipality. If you’ve ever been there, inside 8-Mile Road, you know what I mean.
Everyone looks to Washington to fix it. Why should I pay higher taxes for far longer that I should to bail out three dinosaurs who have blown it and the greed of UAW. I haven’t bought a new American built car in a long time because they didn’t make anything that made sense to own. The corporate structure has rewarded mediocrity and I do not think I nor any other taxpayer should have to pay it. Let them go into chapter 11. Enough of this corporate welfare. If they can’t hack it, then go down in flames. The corporate bigwigs and the union scalpers that get paid to produce nothing but higher prices have taken us all for a ride, and they want us to buy some more gas so they can keep on. NO, I’M MAD AS HELL AND NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE if I remember the movie lines well enough sounds like a good answer to Detroit. I have nothing against the workers, but if I were making what they have been, I think I could retire fairly well. In fact, I already have. So go cry to someone else.
Great idea drummie – who wants to buy a car from a company in bankruptcy? Will they honor a warranty? Please pound those last nails into our coffin faster.
Too bad you haven’t owned an American car in a long time (which contributes to the problem). I am on my third Chevy Impala in a row – and other than oil changes and standard maintence I haven’t had a problem with ANY of them. Roomy, drives GREAT, large trunk, and pretty good gas mileage all in a car under $23,000. My wife drives an 8 year old Chevy mini-van and although some things are starting to wear out now that it has over 100,000 miles on it the occasional repairs to replace belts that have worn is cheaper than a car payment. Before moving back to American cars in 2000, I had a Honda Civic and a Volvo (pre-Ford ownership) and not only did BOTH have more problems than any American car I have owned, but the parts and hourly service charges were double the costs for the repairs compared to my local Chevy dealer.
And since when is a LOAN corporate welfare?
Those ‘corporate bigwigs’ went to college, and worked long hard hours to get where they are. Those UAW members worked hard with their hands to get a share of the profits made by the ‘bigwigs’ and stockholders off the sweat of their brows. People in BOTH of your categories are members of my parish. Both love Jesus. Both contribute to the support of the Church and the poor. Both have been paying taxes ALL their lives (Michigan pays more to the Federal Government than it gets back). It looks a lot different when you are dealing with REAL LIVE people who worry whether they will have jobs next month to pay their mortgages, at risk now so that Southern Senators can make a point to their constitutents, and make up for the mistake of GIVING money to the banks by not LOANING money to the automakers.
Thank you for kicking us when we are down here in Detroit by wishing us to go down in flames rather than giving us a LOAN – which we could get from the banks if the receipents of $700 BILLION HANDOUT would actually open up the credit markets.
GEE, “MAD AS HELL” sums it up about right!
The level of resentment towards the UAW that has been shown in recent weeks really disturbs me. Ok, I get being angry at the union leadership, who have been pretty clueless for the last decade or so, but it also feels like the ire is personally directed to the individual workers who somehow should have…I’m not sure what they should have done to make this all better. Wasn’t it Henry Ford who said that the best way to increase his market share was to pay his workers enough to enable them to buy cars? Guess what, UAW members bought a LOT of the cars they made. When I go back to Michigan, it always takes me a few days to get used to seeing so few VWs and BMWs and Mercedes. I didn’t know there WERE non-GM/Ford/Chrysler cars that regular people could buy until I was in high school. You either had a big 3 or you were a hippie with a VW bug or van with tie-dye curtains.
My dad was in the UAW for 40 years, and yes, he’s getting a pension now and healthcare (which is nowhere near as luxurious as news reports would have you believe). He also owned a modest home in a working-class neighborhood with decent schools, and put two kids through state colleges in the late 80s, after we grew up with a stay-at-home mom who did a lot of volunteer work. Neither of my parents went to college, and my dad worked with his hands on the line for the first 30 years of his GM career, before he got a desk job. My spouse and I have two and a half college degrees between us and solid white-collar jobs, and the one kid we can afford is in daycare so that we can work to afford our rent (my spouse is quite a bit smarter than I am and makes more money than I do). Home ownership isn’t even on the table for us.
Wow, after thinking of all that, you know what? I kind of resent my parents, too – it does seem like they had it easier than I do. So maybe it is time for them to suck it up and face the same diminished expectations that the rest of us have. My dad can take his triple-bypass self down to walmart and be a greeter for $7 an hour and like it, and I guess my mom can go clean houses or something, she’s relatively spry at 67 as long as she takes her asthma medication. They caused this economic collapse, and they should definitely have to pay for it.
“Failing to get enough Republican support”?
No. Not true. Sen Corker had a compromise package/plan and with plenty of Republican support. But the UAW reps simply refused to agree to one key concession – restructuring of pay by end of 2009. It is not that Republicans would not support. It is that the UAW would not compromise.
So to those angry-in-Detroit… the loan was ready and it was on its way… This is not about kicking people when they’re down. This is about the reluctance of many Americans to subsidize a failing business when – and this is the key point – the changes that need to be made for these businesses to become viable will not be made. (Read that last sentence again.) In that case because of intransigence on the part of union leaders.