Be INFORMED

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Busy Week Coming Up In Washington...

  and that is putting it mildly. The 111TH Congress begins on Tuesday in what will probably be one action-packed week.

    President-elect Obama and his family will be arriving  in Washington on Sunday, and Obama will be meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Republican leader John Boehner  on Monday. The topic will be the stimulus package ( $800 Billion ).

   DKos

On Wednesday, Obama will meet at the White House for lunch with George W. Bush and former Presidents Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter.

And what about Vice President-elect Biden? He'll be at the Capitol Building on Tuesday, being sworn in for his seventh term as a U.S. Senator, before handing over the reins to Ted Kaufman.

  But there is more happening this week.

  • 10:00 AM Thursday, January 8, 2009: Confirmation Hearing for Secretary of Health and Human Services-Designate, Former Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.)
  • 9:30 AM Friday, January 9, 2009: Confirmation Hearing for Secretary of Labor-Designate, Rep. Hilda L. Solis (D-Calif.)

   On Tuesday, 98 Senators will be sworn in.

Friday, January 02, 2009

Ford Motor Company Expects Sharp Sales Drop Industry-Wide...

    and they are putting out numbers like a 35% sales drop in December compared to last year. That is a lot of cars either not being made or still sitting on dealer lots. ford also does not expect a sales turnaround for the first quarter this year.

    Ford , the No. 2 U.S. automaker, expects that full-year sales of light vehicles in the world's largest market will drop to near 13.2 million for 2008, down from near 16.2 million in 2007, Ford's chief sales analyst George Pipas said on Friday.

Major automakers are set to release December and full-year 2008 sales data on Monday. Analysts have said they see December light-vehicle sales slipping below the 10.2 million unit sales rate recorded a month earlier.            News Daily

     Is this not a fucked-up deal, or what? With all of these vehicles sitting on dealers lots, we should be able to get a killer deal on a car purchase, with some very good credit terms. You and I should be able to name our price on a new set of wheels. But noooooo...

   Thanks to an un-regulated Wall Street along with a housing bubble going bust, we can't afford to buy the damned cars. For that matter, many of us can't afford to buy to much of anything else either!

   Those of you so-called conservatives who have pushed the idea of deregulation and less government since the Reagan years, I hope that you are happy. To those Democrats who let this shit come into being by being cowards and holding your mouths shut while the Republicans swindled and robbed the middle class and the poorer among us, I say " fuck you".

   Speaking of tight credit and auto's, just a few days ago, GM and GMAC  launched a new program to get buyers into their showrooms to buy a vehicle.

   GMAC  modified its credit criteria so that it could lend to a wider range of potential customers, two-and-a-half months after significantly curbing lending.

Meanwhile, GM is offering zero-percent financing on several vehicles, and rates no higher than 5.9 percent on more than three dozen 2008 and 2009 models. The offer expires on January 5. Many eligible vehicles also carry cash discounts of $500 to $4,250.

The changes came a day after the U.S. Treasury Department agreed to take a $5 billion stake in GMAC, and lend GM as much as $1 billion to support GMAC, in an effort to help ensure that both survive.

   My job has been cut back on work hours and I'm losing money. Where the fuck is my bailout?