PREFACE
Latest
info I've heard concerning the auto maker bail out is, GM CEO Wagoner has
reversed his previous rejection on bankruptcy, and is gathering legal talent
in preparation of a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy filing.
As with most things wrong in the country, I have a solution for the Bankruptcy judge. Break up GM into multiple corps no larger than Chrysler is at this point. GM stockholders would get 1 share of each new corp for every share of GM issued.
Further, the GM divestures should be forbidden from doing business with any union affiliated with the UAW for the next ten or 20 years.
The congress should take action: charge a tariff on all imported cars equal to the subsidy they recd from their govt, e.g., health insurance.
This would re-introduce the missing catalyst our capital system needs to thrive, competition.
Allow Ford the same terms.
No company should be allowed to grow so big it's "too big to fail."
Excerpted from columnist, Carl F. Worden:
"Sure, I know how many more job losses there will be if the Big 3 file for Chapter 11. It will be a blood bath, but that is the price we have to pay for allowing those free trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT to be passed back in 1994. I warned at the time that the only possible outcome from those free trade agreements would be a reduced standard of living for all Americans, and now you can see how this reduced standard of living is manifesting itself.
For example, lets say the Big 3 are eventually forced into Chapter 11. This will free the Big 3 from the shackles of existing union contracts that require them to pay their workers the equivalent of $75.00 an hour, and it will also free them from their high "legacy costs" (pensions and health care for retirees) by placing those plans under the federal pension insurance program.
What happens then, you ask? Well, the retirees will see their pension payments drop by about 1/3, and the Big 3 will be able to pay their workers $41.00 per hour like Honda and Toyota pay their workers, but it also means reduced personal income for all Big 3 employees, past and present. That translates into the reduced standard of living I've been warning about all this time.
Unless and until those free trade agreements are reworked or eliminated, every American will see their standard of living erode until it is brought into line with the rest of the world economy, and that is going to take a very, very long time."
Carl F. Worden
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Westcott responds:
I would like for America to revert to its successful economic and financial policies that were implemented during the latter 1940's and through the 1950's. You will possibly recall - or research, depending upon one's age - that the entire economic landscape of America was full of progress, promise and prosperity. (Let's call it the Three P's.) Then came Congress, with its political shackles and subsequent vast increase in social programs, which then unbalanced the progress that had been made by postwar policies that didn't acquiesce to the politics; rather instead focused on the reality of progressive economics - economics that worked.
Now we have economics that very obviously don't work - on behalf of those who don't work, which now tilts this country to be embedded in truly inequitable socialism, which has never worked. In others words, a reverse of what did work.
And to think that America went from the international perception of golden sidewalks - for those who would prospect - to filth and destitution, and now the very real prospect of worsening, on behalf of the lazy unwashed, all occurring within a brief half-century in our formerly proud history.
WE MUST LEAD THE WAY TO A RETURN OF AMERICAN PROSPERITY THROUGH NON-POLITICAL AND PROVEN METHODS. AND THE ONLY VIABLE OPTION FOR THE SALVATION OF AMERICA, OTHER THAN OUTRIGHT REVOLUTION, IS THROUGH THE REFORM PARTY USA.
Of course, there is another way: the abolition of Congress. We're headed for a dictatorship anyway.
Bruce Westcott
