Pontiac And GMC May Get The Axe - Autoblog »
Posted By TimALoftis 7 months, 2 weeks ago in Business & FinanceWhen the president tells you to sharpen your pencil and improve your last-ditch survival effort, it's time to grab the big eraser. According to reports, General Motors may ditch its GMC and Pontiac brands to demonstrate just how serious it is. If the auto lines go, GM would be pared back to Chevrolet, Buick and Cadillac, a mere shadow of its former self, but the nameplates might become more clearly defined with the added breathing room. Ford's got its trifecta of Ford, Mercury and Lincoln, so GM would match that setup should it unload Pontiac and GMC in some way, as well as carry through with its ongoing process of shedding Saturn, Saab and Hummer.
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FrankHummel7 months, 2 weeks ago
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The following really SHOULD be clearly and consciously understood by ALL those who now find themsleves grappling with bankruptcies, foreclosures, unemployment, and the general devastation of retirement security-
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The Technological Alternatives ALREADY EXIST and HAVE LONG EXISTED.
To the legion of "good" people who now profess to be so anxious and who dither endlessly about the ballooning national debt, and "creeping (galloping?) Socialism" and the whole pattern of governmental "meddling" in the supposedly "Free Market" economy:
This country has INDEED been LOOTED --- but it hasn't been OBAMA and company who are guilty of that! THEY haven't even been AROUND LONG ENOUGH to have possibly been guilty of that! The claque who ACTUALLY bear the burden of that guilt GO BACK MUCH FARTHER than just him --- and in any case includes MANY more perpetrators than just mere “POLITICIANS”! I submit the crowd that now attempts to lay blame off onto the new generation of leadership / stewardship are really JUST TRYING TO EXPIATE THEIR OWN GUILT.
For instance, most people now seem to generally presume that since the whole "economic breakdown" first "materialized" in "our" marvelous FINANCIAL "sector" (and specifically, real estate), that THAT must necessarily have been the underlying ORIGIN of it. I submit, though, that the REALITY is THIS: "Our" FINANCIAL system really has NOT been the actual SOURCE of the fiscal problems for which it is now being "hung out to dry". Rather, it has simply been USED. And yes, it certainly HAS incurred a BURDEN OF COMPLICITY in --- but NOT really the PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY for --- the much LARGER misdirection of resources and capacities of this society as a whole.
What has been done by the mere financial technical MINIONS (e.g. all those moneylenders who conjured up and “marketed” those "toxic assets") had as its REAL objective (regardless of whether the fact was then or is even now consciously recognized by those who "played the game") the DELAYING and STAVING OFF of the economic collapse that now finally HAS occurred --- in effect "passing the buck" off to the next generation of "leadership / stewardship" --- and the “DEFUSING” of popular outrage that rightfully SHOULD have rebounded in a much more TIMELY fashion on the "political faction" that has been so hell-bent on clinging to "our" little "financial" OIL EMPIRE. And THAT in preference to actually getting serious about IMPLEMENTING the technological alternatives to ACTUALLY WEAN "OUR"SELVES OFF OF "OUR" ADDICTIVE DEPENDENCY ON OTHER PEOPLES' OIL! -
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FrankHummel7 months, 2 weeks ago
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To make matters even much WORSE, such technological alternatives ALREADY DO INDEED EXIST and have LONG EXISTED --- CONTRARY to the notion that has been propagandistically cultivated among the hugely techologically IGNORANT preponderance of most of the "body politic", which has been perpetually beguiled into believing that meaningful change is predicated on hypothetical "exotic, futuristic" NEW developments "in the laboratory" over, say, the next fifty years or so.
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But the TRUTH of the matter is that by the mere application of very OLD technological concepts --- applying to the AUTOMOBILE things worked out MANY YEARS AGO NOW ALREADY in much HEAVIER-DUTY systems --- "we" could LONG AGO now already have easily FLAT-OUT ELIMINATED about THREE-FOURTHS of all that importation of oil to refine into gasoline to fuel "our" automotive vehicular fleet --- had “we” but had the wit and the wisdom to do so!!
Now however OUTRAGEOUS and OUTLANDISH that assertion may sound to many, make no mistake about it: PRECISELY THAT genuinely, simply IS the implication of the “new” ELECTRIC / I.C.E. "chimera" automotive architectural concept --- exemplified by the imminently forthcoming (but now highly BELATED) Chevy VOLT --- or if not THAT, then by its now EQUALLY-far-along EUROPEAN counterpart (jovially dubbed the AMPERE) --- involving BATTERY POWER carrying the car a number of miles (in the case of the VOLT, FORTY), with an internal combustion engine then kicking in if (and only if) the battery runs down. But FULLY THREE-FOURTHS of all personal auto usage "fits" within a forty-mile power budget! You go to the store, bank, doctor, etc., and you come back home AND PLUG THE CAR BACK INTO THE WALL. MOST OF THE TIME THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE NEVER OPERATES!
Actually, BOTH components of the "chimera" are VERY OLD technology. ELECTRIC cars have been around since the EARLIEST days of the automobile. And the I.C.E "fallback" component, involving a petroleum-powered engine that is coupled NOT to an eleborate, troublesome, expensive TRANSMISSION AND DRIVE TRAIN but rather to a GENERATOR that supplies the ELECTRIC drive motors (which are powered by the BATTERY until it runs down) --- is a paradigm implemented on a much larger scale on the RAILROADS and also in the BIGGEST SHIPS on the high seas! Anybody ever hear of the DIESEL-ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE?? The truth is, really BIG-MUSCLE machines have LONG relied on relatively simple, UNbreakable MAGNETIC-FORCE drive elements rather than on complex, fallible mechanical ones --- because “we” simply couldn’t BEGIN to engineer a viable CLUTCH for really HEAVY loads! -
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FrankHummel7 months, 2 weeks ago
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I submit that all the folks who now dither and blather about the "meltdown" in the "financial sector" are in reality BEING DIVERTED AWAY from what really SHOULD be the MAIN object of their exasperation --- which is actually the FAILURE of "our" past MISguided (or maybe more like MISBEGOTTEN!) MIS"leadership" to fulfill its ACTUAL duties and responsibilities to the membership of this society --- which WOULD have been to OPTIMIZE BOTH THE CHARACTER AND THE QUALITY OF "OUR" PRODUCTS, RATHER THAN MERELY MAXIMIZING "THEIR" MONEY!
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Now I wonder just how THAT sort of realization must now weigh on all the folks who have THEMSELVES been lured off into fighting a dirty little "OIL war" over in Iraq, or who may have LOST LOVED ONES therein?? It must be a very HATEFUL reality to have to face. But would it somehow be any "better" for people to just meekly erect a "psychological defensive barrier of DENIAL", letting their RIGHTFUL wrath and ire be "harmlessly" diverted over to and dissipated on mere practitioners of artificial hocus-pocus involving "our" "FINANCIAL SYSTEM"??! Would not THAT actually merely COMPOUND the REAL swindle that has been foisted off on the REALLY aggrieved victims??!
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