Obama Aides Take Axe To Chrysler's Budget
(AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
The Obama administration appears to have reminded Chrysler about the cost of accepting government bailouts: with federal funds comes federal control.
A report this week in Advertising Age said that Chrysler wanted to spend $134 million in advertising over the nine-week duration of its bankruptcy. But Mr. Obama's auto-industry task force sliced that figure in half.
Robert Manzo, executive director of Capstone Advisory Group and a Chrysler consultant, testified at a May 4 hearing in bankruptcy court that the task force "believed that it was not feasible to not spend anything on marketing and advertising for fear of eroding the image of the brand." But, Ad Age said, the task force overruled the car maker. (Chrysler's factories will be shuttered for those nine weeks.)
Mr. Obama's Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry includes Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and officials from the Commerce, Transportation, Labor, and Energy departments, plus representatives of the EPA, White House, the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and the National Economic Council. It includes no professional marketers.
Expect bailout-recipient General Motors to be paying close attention.
This is part of a series of moves by Mr. Obama and his aides -- specificially, to exert more control over American businesses -- that has alarmed free-market and conservative thinkers.
One example is the attempt to find ways to regulate pay in the financial services industry -- even at companies that accepted no federal bailout cash. Then there's Mr. Obama's pressure on the health care industry to cut costs (which may be difficult to measure), and the administration's unusual legal assault on Chrysler creditors.
Mr. Obama and his aides soon may have more opportunities to demonstrate how far they're willing to go. As the New York Times reported on Tuesday, men's suit maker Hartmarx is in bankruptcy, and its workers are pressuring creditor Wells Fargo to keep the company intact -- a choice that might not bring in as much money.
Their leverage? Wells Fargo received $25 billion in tax dollars as part of a bailout. So Hartmax employees, as the Times notes, see an opening: "The workers and their union are arguing that Wells Fargo, having received $25 billion in the bank bailout, should keep a 122-year-old American company like Hartmarx in business and preserve some 3,600 jobs."
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See all 63 CommentsTime to bring the military home before the big riots start. No jobs, no peace. No jobs, no peace. No jobs, no peace. No jobs, no peace. No jobs, no peace. No jobs, no peace. No jobs, no peace.
Posted by allylic at 4:08 PM : May 14, 2009
Actually, "drive erratically" is copspeak for "he looked hinky" & is a probable cause reason after the fact.
Still irrelevant.
Still stuck in irrelevant city, it seems.
The bottom line is that in reality, our oil, gas, even our metals are taken from public land, in essence we give corporations the materials they use to manufacture their product, so we really should have asserted control earlier, but at least if we now give our money, then by capitalist conventions, we do own the shares, and as such have the right for our representatives to determine the companies' direction.
Like I said, don't like it? then don't take the money.
Posted by brianbwb-2009 at 8:15 AM
AHAHAh just a hollow stuffed shirt.
McCullagh seems to believe that these measures are not necessary to create workable, profitable companies. Simple math, Mac, if you don't pay megabucks to CEOs, that is that much more money available as dividend, or that much less operating cost. I wonder what part of that he thinks is not good?
As far as the health industry, they either cut costs, or the government, whose role it is to protect its citizens, would be moved to create a public health care system, against which these gouging companies must then compete.
If we do so on a profit-neutral basis, neither making, or losing money, the private concerns won't be able to compete, Mr Obama is trying a last ditch appeal to the greedy, before having to resort to such measures.
I say enough cajoling, lets set up the public system, if they han't hang, then tough titz.
Posted by brianbwb-2009 at 8:07 AM
What an Idiot, see:
The 29-year-old was a Canadian citizen from Ottawa who arrived there as a Somali refugee in the 1990s, The Ottawa Sun reported Wednesday.
Dirie left town three weeks ago in a rental car to drive relatives to Toronto. A week or so ago, he told family members he was going on to Denver for a vacation, the paper reported. http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_10194730
Or
Authorities say they found about a pound of sodium cyanide in a Denver hotel room where the body of a Canadian man was discovered. The man of Somali descent may ...cbs4denver.com/local/burnsley.hotel.death.2.794241.html - 66k
Elected, annointed, same thing. Funny how it is the neos who are the only ones using such outdated terms.
Like all your other guesses you are of course wrong, I don't lead anything other than my own life.
Ib simplyt advocate that if our country has laws, then there should be no exceptions for anyone. If companies ask for our money, it is the same as buying stock, if we give them more than it takes to be a majority shareholder, then we own the company, and as such should have full right to determine the direction of the company.
The neos suince Reagan have advocated cutting taxes, and giving what assets we have left into private hands, I say if they get money from us, then we own that which we have paid for.
Don't like it? Then don't take the money, son.
Justy more twisting, and it only shows how events in Grenada are the business of Grenada and not the US. By your twisted logic, then because ot the poison bag incident, some other country can use it to justify an invasion of the US.
Btw, regarding the "poison bag" incident in Denver,
This from the AFP:
"...US authorities were Tuesday investigating an alleged plot to kill Barack Obama as he claims the Democratic nomination later this week in Denver, after four people were arrested with a haul of weapons.
The plot was unraveled Sunday after a police officer spotted a truck driving erratically in a suburb of Denver, Colorado where the four-day convention is being held. "The sergeant discovered inside his truck a bullet proof vest, two rifles, ammunition, walkie talkies and drugs," Aurora police detective Marcus Dudley told reporters.
"Additional information was then developed which led to the arrest of others." The suspects were being held on drugs and weapons charges while the alleged plot was being investigated by the US Secret Service which protects the US president and White House candidates and the FBI and the joint terrorism task force."
One of the men arrested had to be taken to hospital after he jumped out of a sixth floor hotel room window in an attempt to flee police, Dudley said."
Against McSame? The plot was against Mr Obama.
Like I said originally, you neos should think before posting BS, because it can easily be checked.
I'm guessing you see yourself as at the lead of some great new society, Kind of like astride a horse with a knights armor holding the red flag to cheering throngs LOL. (Hmmm remides me of a 20th century painting of anoth anointed one)
"Many socialists have the tragic illusion that by depriving private individuals of the power they possess in an individualist system, and transferring this power to society, they thereby extinguish power. What they overlook is that, by concentrating power so that it can be used in the service of a single plan, it is not merely transformed but infinitely heightened. By uniting in the hands of some single body power formerly exercised independently by many, an amount of power is created infinitely greater than any that existed before, so much more far-reaching as almost to be different in kind. It is entirely fallacious to argue that the great power exercised by a central planning board would be "no greater than the power collectively exercised by private boards of directors." There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a socialist planning board would possess. To decentralize power is to reduce the absolute amount of power, and the competitive system is the only system designed to minimize the power exercised by man over man. Who can seriously doubt that the power which a millionaire, who may be my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest bureaucrat possesses who wields the coercive power of the state and on whose discretion it depends how I am allowed to live and work? "
Power struggles can also take place amongst the same party, just in case you didn't know, and at any rate they are that country's business, and still no justification for the US invasion. You are the one sounding like a fool.
Posted by brianbwb-2009 at 7:45 AM
LOL I guess you missed the threat on McCain and the fact that just before the DNC in Denver an man died in a Denver Hotel room from Cyanide Poisning, found with a big bag of poison in his room.
You are the one who asked for the names of countries the US declared war upon that didn't deserve US military aggression, I named several.
You are the one who spent the next posts trying to justify the unjustifiable, I simply showed how your "justifications' were not sufficient to warrant US military aggression, and how every reason you posited had nothing to do with any attack on the US, which is by the "clear and present danger" traditional standard, the only situation where military action is justified.
Yeah it is a bit of a drag, like when GOP supporters called to kill Mr. Obama during the campaign.
Power struggles can also take place amongst the same party, just in case you didn't know, and at any rate they are that country's business, and still no justification for the US invasion. You are the one sounding like a fool.
There are way too may Dealerships in the First place.
Posted by brianbwb-2009
What refute LOL all you have posted is Neo-Marxist spin, not the poverty reality.
Kleptocracy didn't have a chance to creep in son, because the US went in and began a blatant imposition of kleptocracy.
Again you resort to typical neo revisionism.
Posted by brianbwb-2009 at 7:35 AM
Sure what ever makes you sleep at night AHHAHA Now go drink your kool-aid in that socialist Jim Jones commune.
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