Comments on: Big Three Spending Millions On Lobbying

Auto Makers Drowning In Red, But Still Spent Neary $50 Million Lobbying Congress

[mycommentspg]

To answer your question gmcnally2, those type of people apparently don''t exist in Congress! All the members appear to be interested in is their wealth and their family''s and friend''s wealth. As long as the public continues to elect people based on how much money they can spend to get elected, then it will continue. http://mycommentspage.blogspot.com/

[chitown4716]

Notice the article never mentions political affilliation. I wonder why?


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Posted by planet87

Yeah, it also never mentioned how much the banks and financial institutions lobbied Congress for the $700 billion dollar bailout they received.....hmmmmm, I smell a rat!!!

[a_witness-2009]

This all boils down to money and who''s palm gets the grease. You know as well as I do that these Congress persons are going to pass this, knowing full well they are going to get paid under the table for their efforts. Nancy just has to put up a gullible front for the idiots and then go ahead and give the auto makers their money. It is really strange that the other automakers in the US Nissian, Toyoto and such are doing just fine, but they don''t have the money sucking big unions driving the companies into the red.

[planet87]

Notice the article never mentions political affilliation. I wonder why?

[gmcnally2]

We all know this is wrong. We all see that it is a conflict of interests when the people making the laws that govern our businesses are taking millions of dollars from those businesses. PLEASE someone of integrity step up and do what is right for the American people. Are there any honest men of integrity left on Capitol Hill????

[olderthnadam]

Next we will see the oil companies coming to Congress looking for a bailout. With the price of a barrel of oil at $46, they must be losing billions! The old saying is true, what goes for General Motors goes for the Nation. If GM goes under, the nation will go with it. But there should be a cap of $500,000 a year for CEO salaries of all companies.


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Posted by hunterdon6 at 01:53 PM : Dec 04, 2008

it is sad when people think that 6th grade educated autoworkers are what make up the core of this economy


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Posted by jamesm12341 at 01:57 PM : Dec 04, 2008
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If all the highly educated professionals on Wall St. and in Detroit couldn''t see the errors in judgement they were making then what argument can you give me to equate high education with actual smarts. Some of the most educated people in our country have made some of the most truly stupid moves in our nations history.

[hoosierdad41]

No worries about the auto manufacturers donating millions to politicians - The Messiah is bringing change to Washington and soon all those conflicts will end. In all seriousness, how many of you actually believe anything will ever really change in this country without term limits? Set the president, senators and congressman at one 6 year term each and then and only then will we see change.

[olderthnadam]

Electric cars are already viable just not yet cost effective. The Tesla, a pure plug in electric, will go 0-60 in under 4 seconds and go over 200 miles on a single charge, farther than most commuters travel both ways and uses no electricity when it is sitting still (except for lights, air conditioning, and other accessories). Unfortunately it currently costs over $100K. Other than initial cost the only other disadvantages are battery longevity and battery replacement cost. However you only have to replace bad individual cells. As with all technology, as production increases and technology advances, cost comes down and reliability goes up. Natural gas, while probably the best solution for commercial transportation, is not without it''s disadvantages. It is inherently more volatile than gasoline. Gasoline while highly flammable is only explosive in vaporized form while natural gas is already a vapor. Natural gas is similar to propane in it''s properties and I know of a case where a pickup converted to propane exploded in an car wash, leveling the car wash, and killing 2 people. Hybrid electrics are already proving their worth as a bridge between gasoline powered cars and true electrics. The use of electric cars will however require us to spend Billions on upgrading our electric grid which would be money well spent and will also facilitate the bringing online of solar, wind, and geothermal production which is only efficiently produced in our deserts, high plains, and mountainous regions.

[rockdude9]

so........I know this is an article that is trying to point out that auto industries still give huge amounts of money even though they are flat broke,but do this,go to edit on the top left of your browser,on Find on this page type in democrat,NO ANSWER,now thats funny and ironic because this article lists four democrats by name and how much they''ve received,yet doesn''t state what party they are from,now if Michigan was a red state you can bet your life savings this "unbiased" news source called CBS would never shut up about how the republicans have bankrupted the auto industry and more blah blah blah,throw in BDS and that would just be another day at the office for CBS.

[concorde5]

the people in the auto and manufacturing industries can become teachers and engineers that are desperately needed.....whats the problem?

Posted by jamesm12341 at 02:11 PM : Dec 04, 2008
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The problem is that American has NEVER seen even half its population go to college much less most of it. There are not enough jobs for everyone to be an engineer or teacher or computer programmer etc.

We must have a manufacturing sector to support the rest of our economy. The manufacturing sector is what brought us out of the great depression. The manufacturing sector is what gave us the Huge middle class that we had for so long after WWII.

Now that we see the loss of manufacturing we are seeing the loss of the middle class. The rest of the economy is now starting to fall apart because we have sent so many jobs to china.

Why do you think China is seeing an explosion of their middle class now? We sent our middle class manufacturing jobs to them, that''s why.

Wake UP America!

[es48]

The kleptocracy that is running the country now leaves industry no choice but to spend millions on lobbying or be left behind. With the current atmosphere, there is no better way for automakers to spend their money.

This is a loan, not a gift. When you relieve a bank by buying their bad assets, it is a gift.

Nacy Pelosi recently said, "It is ridiculous to ask American taxpayers to support an industry that is handing out millions of dollars in bonuses while it is losing billions of dollars". Was she talking about the banks or the automakers? It must have been the car builders because she ramrodded the bank bailout through. After we supported them with trillions, they hoarded the money forcing thousands of companies to close and tens of thousand of people to lose their jobs, continued to foreclose on our homes, continued to charge us loan shark rates on our credit cards, and continued to pass out millions in bonuses while flying around in corporate jets.

You would think that our legislators could loan out 50 billion instead of trillions so that millions of us could keep our jobs.

http://ewebsmith.com/gov/autobailout.html

[concorde5]

We must save our manufacturing sector! The loss of manufacturing jobs over the last 20 plus years is one of the main reasons we are seeing our economy crumbling now.

Wake Up America! Save the Auto Industry, Save American Manufacturing! Stop sending jobs to china, stop letting business owners hire illegals!

[lochlan-2009]

The car they showed was battery operated only, they even commented that most trips were less than 40 miles and would be no problem. I have seen and read about most of the hybrid cars, right now they are nothing more than toys.

Posted by d7767w

Was this a converted porsche etc.. Those are homebuilts made by tinkerers in their garage. Electric cars are not being offered on mass scales to the public, yet (that starts in 2010). The tax incentives are going to be how they encourage people to get into these $30-40,000 vehicles.

[craigh9]

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE - someone explain to congress that asking auto management and labor to work together to solve this matter through negotiating alterations in the current contract is USELESS!!!! IT WILL NOT WORK!!! GET A CLUE!!

THE ONLY WAY to MAKE THEM WORK TOGETHER to truly solve the issue is BANKRUPTCY. The UAW contract ceases to exist so negotiation is based on basically a blank sheet of paper. Overseers comein to slash management and assure decisions arre made SOLELY for the benefit of the company - NOT THE CEO"S AND SUCH!!!
This is so simply and yet the politicians can''t bypass the opportunity to get their face on TV trying to REASON A SOLUTION.
Chapter 11 is the solution! USE IT PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE

[be_real]

Big Three Spending Millions On Lobbying


ARE WE F#%ING KIDDING!!!!!!!!!! THEY SHOULD CHOP THEIR BALLS OFF.......

[hunterdon6]

Next we will see the oil companies coming to Congress looking for a bailout. With the price of a barrel of oil at $46, they must be losing billions! The old saying is true, what goes for General Motors goes for the Nation. If GM goes under, the nation will go with it. But there should be a cap of $500,000 a year for CEO salaries of all companies.

[Renegade.Rivers]

think that if the big Three spent as much money and time on thier problems as they have flying back and forth to Washington and trying to get money from the Govenment. They probably would have solved thier problems and wouldn''''t need any bailout.

Posted by slingonewmex

None of them flew to Washington this time they all drove.

[lochlan-2009]

I want you to remember the year 2010 and see how many are sold. Who needs a 600 HP. car or one that goes from 0-60 in 3 Sec.

Posted by d7767w

Don''t worry, I am counting the days until the 3rd quarter of 2010. I have plenty of shares in GM guaranteeing the corruption of our government. You are right, no one needs 600 horse power, this is all torque though. The Tesla does 0-60 in 3 seconds because of the torque that comes from an electric motor. BTW, a fill up on the Tesla is about $5. The electric car with a generator on board is sticking around, I guarantee. We could have had it a decade ago, but people don''t seem to get that the car companies and the oil companies are the same people (if you owned the car companies would you buy as much of the oil companies as possible, and same the other way around). When GM sold the patent rights to the NiMH to Chevron, there was your proof. Oil prices went through the roof after that (so they could suck up huge amounts of cash for the oil companies), and the EV1 were shreaded to pieces. The U.S. and western Europe are going to be electric and nuclear. South America is going to be ethanol. China, India, etc. are going to be the new home for oil, coal and natural gas. The patent for the NiMH is up in 2014, so they had to move now, before they really got behind the eight ball. But they''re there, and advertisements for the Volt are already playing on the radio for a car coming out a year and a half from now.

[concorde5]

I work for an investment banking firm and I was against the bailout of wall street. We should help the auto industry because that will save many jobs for the average working guy. I have absolutely no sympathy for the rich fat cats on wall street who produce absolutely nothing.

They use money to make money. That only benefits the few at the top. I would much rather see our government do something to help blue collar americans for a change.

Yes, the auto industry needs to change the way they do business and they types of vehicles they produce. But we must keep in mind that the auto industry is America''s Industry. That is the only thing we have left that we produce. We can''t become a nation of shoppers, we must keep our manufacturing sector.

We have let Wal-Mart and wall street fat cats send manufacturing jobs overseas. We can''t ship every job to china.

[TexGEOas]

Any member of Congress who has taken money from the auto makers SHOULD BE REQUIRED TO RECUSE THEMSELVES and not to participate in the hearing or the decisions!!! It is prima facia BRIBERY if they do.