* There was a big announcement today regarding General Motors.
NYTimes:
After three years of settling for second place, General Motors reclaimed its title as the world’s largest automaker in 2011, a year when its sales grew in every region of the globe while Toyota sales were hampered by major natural disasters....
....G.M. said Thursday that it sold 9,025,942 vehicles last year, 7.6 percent more than in 2010. Its closest competitor was Volkswagen, whose sales grew 14 percent to 8.156 million, with Toyota falling to third place....
....The industry’s sales crown means little beyond bragging rights. But G.M.’s ability to climb back on top, only two years removed from its government rescue and bankruptcy, is certain to bolster morale within the company and strengthen the Obama administration’s argument that its bailout of the industry was worthwhile. G.M. was the world’s largest automaker for more than 70 years before Toyota surpassed it in 2008.....
General Motors and Americans should thank President Obama for helping to save the American auto industry and all the jobs that go along with it. In 2008, Mitt Romney (see his NYTimes opinion piece from 11/18/08) said that the automakers should just be left to die. (Of course, this is not a surprise since we now that Romney likes to fire people.) President Obama was right in providing help to the domestic auto industry.
Even Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, was against the auto bailout.
Plunderbund:
John Kasich opposed the federal bailout of GM, saying on the O’Reilly Factor on Fox News at the time:
“Americans will say we don’t mind helping them if they’re going to be viable. If they’re not going to be viable, we shouldn’t throw go money after bad. And so I think the public’s even going to put pressure on them.”
Except that the auto bailouts totally worked. They saved the domestic auto industry in the Midwest and the tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of jobs that go along with it. For the first time since 2006, GM has reported a quarterly profit ($2 billion, to be exact.)..
Let me repeat----
Thank you, President Obama!
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The IndianCountryMediaNetwork has an interesting take on something Mitt Romney said:
....Mitt Romney told a television reporter that “I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”
...Although Romney has repeatedly declined to release his tax returns, he did file a personal financial disclosure as is required by all who are seeking the Presidential nomination. According to that filing, Romney was hired to give nine speeches and was paid a total of $374,327. The least he made for a speech was $11,475, paid by Claremont McKenna College, and the most was $68,000, paid on two different occasions.
Romney’s detractors and pundits on the left have been quick to point out that, to the vast majority of Americans, Romney’s speaking revenues are hardly “not very much.” The average American household makes $49,445 annually, according to the latest U.S. Census data; Romney’s speaking fees are more than seven times that amount.
For American Indians, the $374,000 figure is even more striking: It’s ten times the average household income of $37,348. (Source: 2009 American Community Survey.)....
