Obama's Team: "We can repeal that law, amend it, or use an executive order to get rid of that problem."

This appears to be a bit of a distortion -- the speaker claims that he never spoke to members of the Obama administration -- but it's funny anyway, and I'd hate to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

A very big Thanks to Michigan member Mike Partridge who sent in this bit of humor, which was forwarded from a senior-level person at Chrysler. The date on this note was Sunday, July 19, 2009.

Monday morning. I attended a breakfast meeting where the speaker guest was David E. Cole, Chairman Center for Automotive Research (CAR and Professor at the University of Michigan). You have all likely heard CAR quoted, or referred to in the auto industry. news lately.

Mr. Cole, who is an engineer by training, told many stories of the difficulty of working with the folks that the Obama administration has sent to save the auto Industry . There have been many meetings were a 30+ year experienced automotive expert has to listen to a newcomer to the industry, someone with zero manufacturing experience, zero auto industry experience, zero finance experience and zero engineering experience, tell them how to run their business.

Mr. Cole's favorite story is as follows: There was a team of Obama people speaking to Mr. Cole (engineer, automotive experience of 40+ years. and Chairman of CAR). They were explaining to Mr. Cole that the auto companies needed to make a car that was electric and liquid natural gas (LNG) with enough combined fuel to go 500 miles so we wouldn't "need" so many gas stations (a whole other topic). They were quoting BTUs of LNG and battery life that they had looked up on some web-site.

Mr. Cole explained that to do this you would need a TRUNK FULL of batteries and a LNG tank as big as the car to make that happen. and that there were problems related to the laws of physics that prevented them from....

The Obama person interrupted and said (and I am quoting here): "These laws of Physics? Whose rules are those? We need to change that." (Some of the others wrote down the law name so they could look it up.) "We have the congress and administration. We can repeal that law, amend it, or use an executive order to get rid of that problem That's why we are here, to fix these sorts of issues."

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Bush fails yet again and may revive auto bailout!

Last night it was reported that talks about the auto bailout in the Senate broke down because the Unite Autoworkers Union refused to make a serious concession toward solving the real problem in Detroit-automaker profitability(from the Washington Post):

The legislation would have provided emergency loans to General Motors and Chrysler, which have said they face imminent collapse without federal help. The high-stakes talks broke down over when the wages of union workers would be slashed to the same level as those paid to nonunion workers at U.S. plants of foreign automakers such as Toyota and Honda.

Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), the lead GOP negotiator, said the sides were on the brink of a deal on the amendment he had offered. Representatives from the United Auto Workers -- who were present for most of the negotiations -- would not agree to a specific date, Corker said.

"We offered any day -- any day -- in 2009," Corker said.

The UAW IS THE PROBLEM. While lawmakers keep spewing about hybrid cars and quality, our Detroit automakers are building good cars that people want to buy. The problem is that they lose money on every car, roughly $1,500 on each and every car. No business can operate that way and they won't make it up on volume. And it is frankly about time the Republicans stood up to this continued bailout frenzy by this congress and President.

And now Bush wants to bail them out anyway. Is there anyone left in this country that has any confidence in George Bush anymore? If so, I don't know them.

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