His campaign thinks he can. Of course, just by campaigning there, it forces Obama to divert resources from other places. I think he’s got a good shot. I’m pretty sure that my GM-employed UAW-member brother isn’t going to vote for Obama.
And it’s true that he would be the first Michigan native in the Oval Office. Dewey would have been had he been elected in one of his two runs (he was from Owosso), and Ford was raised raised in Grand Rapids (and went to Michigan), but born elsewhere.
GM-employed UAW-member brother isn’t going to vote for Obama which is funny, because if Romney had had his way your brother would be unemployed.
There’s no way to know that, but it’s unlikely.
Bullshit. The only thing that kept GM’s factories from being liquidated at auction in 2009 was the Obama bailout.
We know you’ve been spinning that story. No one knows what would have happened with a legal bankruptcy. Plus, you are insultingly assuming that my brother would have been incapable of finding other employment.
Yes, we know exactly what would happen during a bankruptcy. Without debtor-in-possession financing, the company shuts down. The only entity willing to offer that financing was the US Government.
Michigan unemployment was over 10% at the time. If GM, Chrysler and all their tier-two suppliers shut down, your brother’s ability to find work would be difficult at best.
You can make all the assertions you want, but no one knows, and no one will ever know what would have happened with an orderly court bankruptcy.
Umm, just what would the buyers at those auctions have done with what they bought?
Yes, most likely outcome would have been either a restructuring of GM, with broken UAW contracts (in which case, my brother would probably have a lower wage), or a purchase by Ford.
Either way, unlike Chris apparently, some people vote on their principles, and not selfishly on their paychecks. My brother is happy to have a job, but that doesn’t mean that he’s going to let the country continue to be wrecked and looted by these vandals.
Possibly what happened to a lot of GM plants prior to the bankruptcy (such as Central Foundry Division plant in Danville, IL) – strip the machinery and send it to China.
Chris, you didn’t finish:
“… and by now everyone here who refused to drive a Ford would be forced to drive a Chinese-made car.”
There.
Just some words that come to mind:
Pontiac
Saturn
Fiat
Bullshit. The only thing that kept GM’s factories from being liquidated at auction in 2009 was the Obama bailout.
So what? What would be the point of buying the factories without the workers? Usually, such plants keep operating and with GM out of the picture there’s actually the chance that some of the factories might become competitive again.
…yeah well let’s not forget that the bondholders took a pretty serious haircut in that one. They were forced to by a tyrannical government.
Bankruptcy is there, partly, to help a company restructure and become stronger. it allows them to offload destructive set-ups.
GM should have gone bankrupt and then either live or die.
You whine about all those lost jobs – what libs never stop to consider is how many OTHER jobs were lost because of the artificial prop-up (many).
If Gerrib has his way, people will continue to need 33 pages to change their address with medicare. If Romney had his way, it would be as easy as changing your address with the post office.
Except the actual form is only TWO pages long (PDF at link) so Romney’s still incorrect.
That’s a Medicaid change of address form, not a Medicare change of address form, one of which I linked below.
Also, Leland’s link is to the Pennsylvania WaWa controversy. WaWa not only doesn’t require you to provide a change of address form to order their sandwiches, they don’t even require you to order their sandwiches verbally or in writing. You just punch little pictures of sandwiches and toppings.
Two pages a bit longer than that USPS post card you mentioned. Romney was just passing along a story. I guess you can call Romney a liar. So what do you think about Obama’s memoirs?
GIGO. Unless we can track down the very optometrist who made the claim to Romney, we’ve no way of knowing the exact truth of the matter. But that the MSM is willing to examine Romney’s every motion and word under a scanning electron microscope is exactly why this man should be elected to the highest office of the land. We won’t have to wait for some geeky kid like O’Keefe to break the stories, they’ll be on all major networks 6pm in everyone’s living room. 🙂
The optometrist who talked to Romney either had to fill out the 27-page CMS 855I or the 48-page CMS 855B (pdf linke) change of address forms.
But neither is 33 pages, so as Chris will argue, Romney is still incorrect. 😀
Then the optometrist filled out the wrong form, because if he was just changing his address he wouldn’t need to use the longer form.
All of which ignores the fact that you can fill out the form online via a wizard.
All of which ignores the fact that you can fill out the form online via a wizard.
Ah well then, I’m sure that will comfort the 80 year old who can’t afford internet, doesn’t know how to use a computer, and is having to move out of their home and into a nursing facility. They can just use the easy internet wizard, rather than what was it… a postcard like the USPS accepts?
I think we have some confusion. Romney was talking about an optometrist filling out a Medicare change of address form required of a care provider. Chris linked a Medicaid form, but one that I think was also for a care provider, but neither would be filled out by someone merely using Medicaid or Medicare, as opposed to providing services.
Oddly enough, taco stand street vendors in Mexico, a highly competitive business, don’t have to fill out change of address forms whenever they move their cart.
Also, in response to Chris’s quip that the form can be filled out online via a wizard, then why bother with the physical address at all? Perhaps state or city business licensing requires a physical address, as would property taxes, but if the provider and the reimburser are both online with cute little widgets, why keep using the US Postal Service? Why keep giant office buildings full of government employees whose job is stuffing checks in envelopes and licking stamps? Why have optometrists employ people whose jobs is opening envelopes and retyping the contents therein?
Romney’s comparison to WaWa is spot on. You walk up to a terminal. You press five or ten pictures. You get the sandwich you want. You leave. You don’t fill out 2 page forms, 27 page forms, or 48 page forms, and you don’t thereafter employ people to print checks, stuff envelopes, lick envelopes, or process the cost of a flu shot like it was an international homicide investigation being handled by six different police forces.
Indeed George. It is a form for the physician and not the patient. And you’re right, it shouldn’t be so much a burden for the physician. Alas, Obama thinks ATMs cost jobs.
If you read the forms, you might figure out that they -are- used for changing address. And they aren’t two pages long.
And it only cost the U.S. taxpayer $163,300 to save each GM job! What a bargain!
A bankruptcy, whatever its outcome, would have been better.
You forget the tier-1 and tier-2 jobs saved. GM and Chrysler bought parts from hundreds if not thousands of vendors, many of whom bought parts from yet other vendors.
I’m not forgetting anything.
That’s a very good point, because taxpayers and bond purchasers never buy anything.
</sarcasm>
GM would have been a stronger company than it is today if it had gone through a structured bankruptcy without government involvement and the American people would be $60b less in debt.
The bailouts and then bankruptcy of GM gave the unions more control over the company but none of the responsibility of running it. It screwed the bond holders out of their retirement investments, regular people that had lent their money to GM.
But even if a person were to contend that government involvement was necessary, there is no reason that the bankruptcy could not have taken place before the $60b in bailouts.
How many GM’s could have been started from scratch with $60b?
Ford was born in Omaha. Used to pass the tourist sign on the way to the mall when I was stationed there.
Chris,
as you seem to be in touch with some sort of cosmic truth and uber intelligence concerning all of life, politics, money and happenings on Earth, what are Saturday’s Powerball Numbers? I need the money.
What a load that guy is.
No, I remember 2009. I didn’t see anybody waving their checkbooks around trying to become debtor-in-possession of GM.
If a plane has lost all engines and is nose-diving to the ground, it doesn’t require Karnak the Great to know that, unless something changes, the plane will crash.
NO, and with the Dumbocrats telling the Unions we’re going to FIX ALL your problems and not ALLOW your union contracts to be renegotiated, no one was likely to pony up to buy in either. But there was never a fire sale for someone TO step in in the first place. Obama stepped in before GM got to bankruptcy court, so we’ll never know what would have happened.
I get that many of us disagree with you on ideals and policies, h3ll, I expect it. But we didn’t just land here from another galaxy either. We were here when the DNC and The One were promising the unions the earth the moon and the stars prior to the election. And then he delivered it to some of them! Of course, now many others are pissed off that their pet project didn’t get money too though.
But now that Barry Okarnak has had 3 and 1/2 years as the pilot of the Nose Dive Special, he’s the one who could pull up, pull out and build an emergency landing strip costing TRILLIONS OF OUR DOLLARS that has NOT worked. (personally, I don’t think ANY President can do what he promised, but he promised it, not me) Granted, the Solyndra Board, some other green companies, SEIU, and some other unions have done pretty well since January 2009.
But where’s the pay off to the country as a whole Chris?
BHO took an oath to be POTUS for ALL Americans, not just UNION Americans. Or is that a new, protected, hyphenated type of down-trodden minority?
So don’t try to make it look like you saw something we didn’t, please, it’s an insult. (yes, I did insult you, by calling you a ‘load’… but it was outright, I wasn’t sneaky about it like you try to be) There are many of us who didn’t like corporate welfare before Obama got the WH, we won’t like it when he’s gone either.
Overall, someone needs to sit in that chair who can make tough decisions, we’ve not had that in a while. To many of us, BHO’s toughest decisions have had to do with tee times, which star studded fund raiser to attend, or which reporter to tell to shut up.
I’m disabled, I don’t have a degree, so I’m not a constitutional scholar and I could have done THAT!
As a related bankruptcy question for aviation folks, how long is the list of aircraft manufacturers and airlines that haven’t gone bankrupt once or several times, not including those that were directly bought?
The aircraft manufacturer and airline business is notorious for the high levels of government involvement in it. The two leading world manufacturers of airplanes, Boeing and Airbus, are riddled with government intervention. Boeing gets juicy military contracts handed on a platter while Airbus gets all sorts of pre-orders from nationalized airlines and low cost government loans. The airlines get fuel subsidies, use airport facilities paid by the taxpayers, and $DEITY knows what else.
According to Rachel Maddow, Michigan looks like a mit and Romney’s first name is Mitt or Mittens so it could very well go for him. Stunning political analysis over there at MSNBC.
I think Romney should be hammering this theme constantly (and I forget who said it first or I’d credit it) : “that a government powerful enough to give you everything you want is a government powerful enough to take everything you have.” Only add: “And history, particularly modern history, shows us that if a government is powerful enough to take everything you have, sooner or later it WILL take everything you have.”
Chronic State-fellators will always be in denial about the above truths but some on the boderline might realize that if they take even the most cursory look at history, Ominipotent Government ISN’T their best friend, no matter what “Il Dufe” says. And if nothing else, if Romney did say the above, it would be funny to see brainwashed State-cultists like Chris Gerrib running around with their hands clamped over their ears and repeating: “LA-LA-LA . . .I can’t hear you . . . LA-LA-LA . . . .”
Seems to be attributed andor misattributed to Reagan, Ford, and Jefferson.
Both Reagan and Ford are well documented to have said it (or very similar). So Ford pre-dates Reagan. But it isn’t clear Jefferson said this.
Thanks, Al. It’s similar to Albert Jay Nock’s “The State can do things FOR you only in proportion to its power to do things TO you.” Which I quoted in a past discussion on this blog, and Gerrib in effect DID clamp his hands over his ears and say “LA-LA-LA . . . I can’t hear you. . . “
MfK – Only $163,000? Bargain! It cost the UK taxpayer £250,000 (approximately $350,000) for each saved RBS job. And it’s going to cost more, because RBS is apparently again in trouble. And since letting it go down in flames, this time, would mean that the £50,000,000,000 already spent on propping up RBS would be wasted and that would probably bring down the Government…
I think that we all need to stay focused on just who is responsible for the majority of the economic problems at the moment. Sooner or later, they will be brought to account.