Auto Workers… Welcome Aboard The SS We Got Screwed By Obama

George W Obama

On Monday, President Obama rolled out his plan to save the failing U.S. automakers and while it has been a prime rib lunch for the bankers, it could be the soup line for many autoworkers, as Obama said no we can’t to the reorganization plans of General Motors and Chrysler.

Blaming what he said was a “failure of leadership, from Washington to Detroit” for bringing the automakers close to collapse, Obama made it clear he is willing to offer some degree of support to General Motors and Chrysler but warned they must restructure much faster or end up in bankruptcy court.

Obama’s experts concluded last week, that the Chevy Volt, the electric car being developed by General Motors is too expensive to survive in the marketplace and declared that GM was still relying too much on high-margin trucks and SUVs, and that Chrysler’s best hope was to merge with a foreign automaker, Fiat. They also decided that GM CEO Rick Wagoner needed to go.

Obama has given GM 60 days to determine what to do about its massive amounts of debt, get concessions from workers, slash dealers and cut its list of auto brands. The company also must prove it can make money in a normal sales market.

Chrysler is pretty much on its own… and has just 30 days to complete its proposed deal with Italian car maker Fiat, or else federal funding will dry up. The administration said it has determined that Chrysler can’t make it as a stand-alone company.

HOPE?

“What we are asking is difficult,” Obama said in his announcement of the auto plan Monday morning. “It will require hard choices by companies. It will require unions and workers who have already made painful concessions to make even more. It will require creditors to recognize that they cannot hold out for the prospect of endless government bailouts… Only then can we ask American taxpayers who have already put up so much of their hard-earned money to once more invest in a revitalized auto industry,” he said.

GM’s new CEO, Frederick “Fritz” Henderson, said Monday after Obama’s announcement, that the government’s increasing demands that GM get debt off its balance sheet means there is a very high risk that the company will have to reorganize through bankruptcy.

Henderson told reporters on a conference call that the company still would prefer to restructure outside of court. “We need to move faster and even deeper,” he said. “Our job is to run with that.”

The unemployment rate in Michigan is currently 12%. Michigan voted overwhelmingly for Obama last November’s election in the HOPE that Obama would help turn those numbers around, but a GM bankruptcy, a Chrysler liquidation and Obama’s plan to close more auto dealerships and factories can only make that figure grow.

Autoworkers… We LGBTI’s feel your pain.

On Fox News Sunday this past weekend, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was asked why there is “currently money in the 2010 budget” to keep enforcing the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy, particularly since Obama has promised the LGBTI community he would overturn it.

Gates said… “It continues to be the law. And any change in the policy would require a change in the law. We will follow that law whatever it is. That dialog though has really not progressed very far at this point in the administration. I think the President and I feel like we’ve got a lot on our plates right now and let’s push that one down the road a little bit.”

So it would now appear that the autoworkers will be joining us LGBTI’s aboard the SS those who backed Obama during the election and got really screwed this week by him.

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• GM’s Rick Wagoner Gone, but Carmaker’s Problems Remain (abcnews.go.com)
• Gates on DADT: ‘Let’s push that one down the road a little bit.’ (thinkprogress.org)
• Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: Why The Holdup? (alan.com)
• Obama unveils auto revamp plan, GM CEO steps down (cbc.ca)