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Reader Mail
An Ordinary Mailbag
(Page 2 of 3)
The two things that bother me the most about this are, one, the government has essentially nationalized both GM and Chrysler and then turned the company over to the very union that has destroyed their competitiveness over the last four decades. Two, I'm now being forced to make someone else's vehicle payment where in fact there are no buyers in the first place. I think this is blatantly unconstitutional but hey, when has that ever mattered to government? The first person who says borrowing money to subsidize/buy into the operation of GM and Chrysler isn't forcing me to pay wins a prize.
Government Motors announced a stellar quarter of only $6 billion in losses and an extended shutdown in the not too distant future, but the second and third quarters are likely going to make this look like a cake walk. Even my friends who are fiercely loyal to their "brand" and want to buy "American" are going to have very conflicted emotions when the UAW gets handed ownership of these companies and propped up by the government while they and their businesses suffer the consequences of this economic downturn while helping to subsidize the new owners of the Government Motors Group.
I'm inclined to agree with those that say these two companies are "toast." George Will wrote over a year ago that Detroit and its problems are a microcosm of our larger Nanny State and its pending insolvency. The Government just keeps subsidizing failure at every turn.
Government Motors is losing enough to build four new Nimitz class
carriers a year, or what 168 F-22 Rapters would cost. The market
has spoken. All that is left to do is bury the corpses. I hope
the UAW is happy with their handiwork. They have, after all, run
Government Motors for some time and have now run it into the
ground at the cost of several tens of thousands of former UAW
workers paying the cost so a tiny few can continue to live a
lie.
-- Thom Bateman
Newport News, Virginia
THE DECLINE OF THE WEST
Re: Bill Croke's
The
Map:
Waall (that's the way it's said in the West, isn't it), the left
side of the Rockies is still alive. Just want to let ol' Bill
Croke know that out here in the hinterlands of Oregon this
weekend Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show will be staged in Prairie
City, Oregon. The West ain't dead yet. If Bill would like some
pictures, I've got one of those new-fangled digital cameras
that'll put him right there.
-- William Ferry
MY PAPACY FOR A COMPETENT EDITOR
Re: George Neumayr's
L'Osservatore Romano and the Illuminati:
Sadly, it's been a steady downhill slide in the Vatican media ever since Fr. Guido Sarducci left.
Fr. Sarducci was a beacon of light and hope, a shining star to follow, a tough hard-hitting journalist, the likes of which have not been heard from since.
Come back, Fr. Guido, and be a Guiding Light again!
-- A. C. Santore
CALLING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS
Re: Matthew Vadum's
Conyers Kills ACORN Probe:
Who else is behind the support ACORN is getting from politicians?
This organization has been suspect in 14 States, for voter
registration fraud, to pay for votes. They will receive millions
of dollars from tax payers. Why? Something is very wrong. It
needs a deep hard look.
-- Jim Buhaley
Cleveland, Ohio
BECAUSE HE LIKES DEMOCRATS
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s
The Liberals Are Snickering:
Comments
Leave a Comment
SLG| 5.11.09 @ 7:08AM
Sorry, Thom, but I read somewhere fairly recently that, just like the UN, NATO's become a supercilious "debating society" of sorts. It’s neither equipped nor organized to cooperate and fight. Germany, Italy and Spain, among others, have reached a state that can only be called unilateral disarmament.
NATO fight against terrorism? Doubtful -- unless the EU members are willing to multiply their defense expenditures by a factor of ten (twenty? Thirty? To the nth power?) and sustain them at that level for at least a decade, NATO is nothing more than a hollow shell. Wasting our money - as usual.
Noted that the 2,000 soldiers who constitute the Italian detachment in Afghanistan seem to be using the “kinder, gentler approach; they’re barred by their government from actually fighting (so why are they called soldiers?) in combat – so they “listen to residents’ problems, offer food and medical care,“ ad nauseum. We’ve already heard plenty about fat Germans…
Then -- I recall reading where France, under De Gaulle, pulled out of NATO as a gesture of gratitude, after we had saved-their-bacon once again - - and our United States (innocent to the last) hung in. Until, finally, the Berlin Wall came down and we were, truly, not needed any longer. NATO was irrelevant -- a mere social club that existed as an excuse to maintain a headquarters and conduct lavish conferences. This point was most emphatically driven home when a genocidal conflict erupted on Europe's flank, Kosovo, and NATO -- Europe -- couldn't manage a response….
And not even the painless, proverbial “lip-service” in regard to Iran, North Korea or anyplace else!
Let’s split that sick effort-in-futility. To do otherwise is sheer stupidity, ultra-dumbness!
Yet, to think that our troops would be placed on our own borders? Or utilized with any semblance of common sense? With the Marxist Obama agenda? Laughable. Almost.
Thom| 5.11.09 @ 6:44PM
SLG, I’m not sure what you are “sorry” about or where we disagree. As I said, NATO is a (worthless) “sideshow” but our membership in the Club gets us use of the Club house facilities and that is far more valuable to our interest than the illusion that we are actually protecting Europe any longer or that NATO forces actually have any ability to project any force outside of their home countries. The evidence of NATO’s lack of relevance in the scheme of things is rather blatant for all to see. My salient point is that logistics have a great deal to do with the Clubs we pay admission to and both NATO and our force structure and positions in the Pacific are based on the same realities. For all the claims of some in the Pentagon we really can’t project effective conventional military power much beyond the Continental US or a few hundred miles away from one of our Carrier Battle groups without the use of large well supported land bases for both ground and air units. NATO is the price of admission to the Middle East Operation area.