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Ralph Nader, The Pinto and Michael Moore - Why Everyone is Mad at the Big 3

Posted by Persnickety Curmudgeon | December 31, 2008 .

Before all the talk about bailing out the Big 3 American auto companies, WJR Detroit radio station host Paul W. Smith made an appearance as guest host on the Rush Limbaugh program. Now WJR is a powerful 50,000 watt station(which means in broadcasts really far) but mainly reaches Midwest Great Lakes rust belt states and Canada - the heartland of automotive production.

Paul W. as many call the the veteran broadcaster, was allowed to interview GM chairman Rick Waggoner. His goal was to let an auto industry leader to make the case to Rush’s listening audience, very large and quite conservative, that American cars are as good as any in the world.

What happened? After the interview, callers blasted the program with vitriolic comments about the Big 3, their cars, their unions, their wages, their benefits, their incompetence and selfishness, and more. Certainly both Waggoner and Smith were taken aback by the whole thing, having no idea the contempt and disgust the rest of the country has for them.

Why is this? Car workers and generally patriotic, they vote, pay their taxes and their good salaries and benefits helped build our middle class, tourist industry, and health care system; we may not have won World War II without them. Where to start?

Well first Ralph Nader wrote “Unsafe at any speed” ostensibly about the unsafeness of General Motor’s Corvair, which revealed quite a bit about how American  auto companies functioned(never mind that his book and his conclusions were very likely inaccurate). Then, the American companies tried to keep foreign competitors who made smaller , better, cheaper and more fuel efficient cars out of the country by hook and crook - quotas and a campaign questioning the patriotism of those who failed to ‘Buy American”

Those who bought American may have bought cars from American Motors(which went out of business) or the Ford Pinto(which occasionally thought it was a Ronson lighter) or many other cars which were frequently recalled.

Then ther was the Chrysler bailout, Michael Moore’s movie “Roger and Me”, some UAW strikes which cost the economy dearly, squeezing of suppliers, cutting of jobs, failure to meet CAFE standards and other things which brings us to today.

Now we have all 3 of the BIG 3, GM, Ford and Chrysler asking for money to bail them out while they do silly things like fly around in corporate jets, overpay their workers, who sometimes get paid to do nothing, over produce cars or put ads in newspapers (as Chrysler recently did) spending taxpayer bailout money to thank taxpayers for bailing them out; of GMAC taking bailout money and using it to provide car loans to people with less than perfect credit to buy over priced cars which are a depreciating asset.

And just when you feel sorry for the workers, you find the UAW trying to appeal the taxes on the $39 million golf course they own and refusing to negotiate wage cuts that might save their employers after going on strike just a few moths before the companies nearly had to file for bankruptcy.

Not taking any sides here and lord knows their are plenty of positive attributes to the Big 3 and the UAW - it’s just The Curmudgeon would like to get through their thick heads that people really don’t like them and they need to understand why and change both the substance of their business and the accompanying PR if they are to survive.

Posted under Money, Wealth and Taxes | Like this article? Subscribe to our RSS feed

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