FT.com / Companies / Automobiles – GM blames recall on Toyota supplier.

General Motors has blamed a supplier partly owned by Toyota for a faulty car part that led to the recall of 1.3m Chevrolet and Pontiac cars in North America.

Bob Lutz, GM’s vice-chairman, on Tuesday told the BBC in Geneva that the supplier – separately identified as JTEKT, a joint venture between Toyoda Machine Works and Koyo Seiko – had not met “all requirements for reliability and durability”.

If they didn’t meet  “all requirements for reliability and durability”, why were they put onto the automobile?

This is by far, the biggest load of crap that I have seen today…In other news, FORD sales jump; outsells GM...

Ford posts $2.7B profit, first in 4 years – NYPOST.com.

The automaker on Thursday also forecast a full-year profit in 2010. Earlier it had only promised to be “solidly profitable” in 2011.

Ford benefited from cost-cutting, a $696 million profit in its credit arm and popular cars and trucks like the Ford Fusion midsize sedan and Ford Escape small sport utility vehicle. It gained market share in North and South America and Europe, despite the worst U.S. sales climate in 30 years.

Time for Obama to put and end to that nonsense!

In Ohio, Obama vows to ‘never stop fighting’

PAPER: Obama's fortunes set to deteriorate further...
Bernanke under pressure; Faltering support for Fed chief...
Dow Suffers Worst Week SInce Last March...
Obama seen as anti-business by 77% of investors...
Europe welcomes bank plan, won't imitate it...
White House nightmare persists...

RASMUSSEN:
Obama Approval Index: -19
Strongly Approve 24%
Strongly Disapprove 43%
Total Approval 44%

After Stimulus: 49 of 50 States Have Fewer Jobs!
*6 Million Jobs Shy of Administrations' Projections...
Obama trying to boost party money, morale...
RNC Beats DNC in Money Race...
Dems lock Republicans out of committee room: 'They don't know how to behave'...
HealthCare Propaganda On Govt. Website?
House Dems Want Medicare for Everyone...
Administration plans big pay cuts at bailout firms...
Salaries of top executives by 90%...

WHITE HOUSE MASTER TO SLASH EXEC PAY

So far, he’s failing miserably. Consider the following:

• Cap-and-trade legislation had to limp over the finish line in the House of Representatives with the help of a few moderate Republicans, who then caught holy unshirted hell from their constituents. Environmental legislation generally has taken a drubbing in public opinion polls when people consider how costly it is.

• The Employee Free Choice Act may be stripped of its “card check” provision in the Senate, which would effectively do away with secret ballots for unionization elections. Even in its watered-down form — which still includes highly objectionable, mandatory, binding so-called gunpoint arbitration and makes no concessions to employers who don’t want to have to prop up teetering union pensions — it might not pass the Senate. And the leadership of the House has refused to touch it until the other chamber has made up its mind.

• On health care, forget the rage set off by private citizen Sarah Palin tweeting about “death panels.” Forget the misleading talk about whether there will be a “public option.” (The ever-evolving plan is one giant public option, folks.) Forget the angry voters who crowded into the town halls during the August recess. Forget that a number of Democratic senators and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are still not willing to sign on to a bill. Right now, even after Obama’s address to the joint session of Congress last week, it’s possible Democrats don’t even have the votes in the House — where they currently enjoy a 77-seat majority.

It’s entirely possible — nay, likely — that Obama will lose on all three big issues. He’ll probably take that personally. As he has pushed for the passage of his reforms, his public approval ratings have taken a beating, and voters have started to trust the Republicans more than his party on a host of issues.

The question that most political handicappers are considering right now is not “Will Republicans make gains at the midterm elections?” but “How large will those gains be?”

Media Virtually Silent About $10 Billion Union Health Care Subsidy Built Into House Version of Health Care Bill | NewsBusters.org.

….. a $10-billion provision tucked deep inside thousands of pages of health care overhaul bills that could help the UAW’s retiree health-care plan and other union-backed plans.

It would see the government — at least temporarily — pay 80 cents on the dollar to corporate and union insurance plans for claims between $15,000 and $90,000 for retirees age 55 to 64.

Big businesses with union workers are twice as likely to offer retiree benefits as nonunion ones.

Greg Mourad of the National Right to Work Committee called it “a shameless case of political payback,” saying Democrats and President Barack Obama are trying “to force the rest of us to pay billions to cover those unions’ health care.”

Labor advocates say even more funding may be needed.

“It is not enough money,” said former U.S. Rep. David Bonior, a Mt. Clemens Democrat who chairs the board at Washington, D.C.-based American Rights at Work, a labor advocacy group. “That will have to be supplemented to fill the gap.”

…. The health care debate roiling the nation promises an even greater impact in Michigan: It could determine whether the UAW’s gamble that it can insure 850,000 retirees from Detroit’s automakers pays off or goes bust.

Thanks to Detroit’s twin auto bankruptcies and other concessions, the UAW’s voluntary employee benefit association, or VEBA, had to take stock of unknown value for $24 billion in claims, while adding thousands of early retirees to its rolls.

Outside experts estimate the funds have about 30 cents in cash for every dollar of future claims, with no guarantee of what its stock assets will be worth. Lance Wallach, a New York-based VEBA expert, says if the funds “don’t get something, they’re out of business in 12 years.”

…. The $10 billion is aimed at a growing gap between the skyrocketing cost of care for early retirees — ages 55 to 64, too young for Medicare — and what President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats promise will be less-expensive coverage once, and if, the much-debated reform measures kick in several years from now.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Quote of the day.

“He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary.

He sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Africa to talk about international development but does not have anyone running the Agency for International Development. He has invited major powers to a summit on nuclear nonproliferation but does not have an assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation. He has vowed to improve government efficiency but does not have the chief performance officer he promised.

‘If you’re running G.M. without half your senior executives in place, are you worried? I’d say your stockholders would be going nuts,’ said Terry Sullivan, a professor at the University of North Carolina and executive director of the White House Transition Project, which tracks appointments.”

Look how it was sold

President Barack Obama and administration officials declared the program a success Thursday, saying it has revitalized the ailing auto industry and finally brought reluctant car buyers back to dealership lots. Originally a $1 billion program, Cash for Clunkers was boosted to $3 billion in early August after heavy customer demand nearly depleted its funds in just one week.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the program has been “a lifeline to the automobile industry, jump starting a major sector of the economy and putting people back to work.” He said the department was “working toward an orderly wind down of this very popular program.”

Too bad those people need to be paid, otherwise, it would have been a success.

But it has also created problems for dealers, many of whom have yet to be repaid for the clunker deals they have made. Under the program, dealers take rebates of $3,500 or $4,500 off the price of a new car in return for older, less fuel-efficient trade-ins that are sent to the scrap heap. They then must submit a 13-page application with proper documentation of the sale in order to get repaid.

That has left many dealers with unpaid claims worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“It has brought in some traffic that we would not have had, but if you don’t get paid, it is all for naught,” said Alton Owen Jr., sales manager at Owen Ford in Jarratt, Va. His dealership won’t be offering the clunker deals this weekend because it has yet to be repaid for 21 sales.

Obama and LaHood pledged that dealers will get their money back. But government data shows that many claims are still outstanding. As of Thursday, 457,000 sales worth $1.9 billion had been received. About 40 percent of those claims have been reviewed, but only $140 million, or about 7 percent of the claims dealers submitted, have actually been paid.

Government officials said there were no plans to extend the program again. The Monday deadline was set to avoid surpassing the $3 billion funding level, given deals that may be made this weekend and those that are still in the pipeline for approval.

Applications for rebates will not be accepted after the Monday deadline, administration officials said. The Transportation Department cautioned dealers about making sales this weekend, advising them to make sales only where the buyer’s paperwork is clearly in order and can be submitted immediately for repayment. Dealers will be able to resubmit rejected applications after the deadline.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Joltin’ Joe whiffs on his own curveball.

After watching their stimulus package fail to stimulate and an increasing number of Americans wondering whether President Barack Obama has the first clue on economics, Vice President Joe Biden steps back into the fray to rescue his partner.  In a New York Times op-ed, Biden argues that voters have misunderstood Porkulus.  It wasn’t intended to deliver a big “jolt” to the economy, Biden says — apparently forgetting what he himself said last month….

…Biden says that the administration’s progress has been right on target.  Yet Biden just three weeks ago today told ABC News that the White House had misread the economy…

….As for the “jolt,” Jonathan Adler at The Corner and Mark Silva at Swamp Politics note that just a couple of weeks before that, Biden was Joltin’ Joe when it came to the stimulus…

…All of the above links come from the White House web site.  Maybe Biden would like to do a little research at the office before attempting to build the next ridiculous cover story for the failure of Obamanomics.

But don’t worry, they will do a better job with running GM!

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Big Labor insolvent?.

‘We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama,” declared Andy Stern last month, and the president of the Service Employees International Union wasn’t exaggerating. The SEIU and AFL-CIO have been spending so much on politics that they’re going deeply into debt.

That news comes courtesy of federal disclosure forms that unions file each year with the Department of Labor. The Bush Administration toughened the enforcement of those disclosure rules, but under pressure from unions the Obama Labor shop is slashing funding for such enforcement. Without such disclosure, workers wouldn’t be able to see how their union chiefs are managing their mandatory dues money.

….

Alarm is coming even from inside the AFL-CIO — specifically, from Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, who sits on the AFL-CIO’s finance committee. Bloomberg News reports that he is circulating a report claiming the AFL-CIO engaged in “creative accounting” to conceal financial difficulties heading into last year’s Presidential election. As recently as 2000, the union consortium of 8.5 million members had a $45 million surplus. By June of last year it had $90.6 million in liabilities, or $2.3 million more than its $88.3 million in assets. “If we are not careful, insolvency may be right around the corner,” Mr. Buffenbarger warned. …

As for the SEIU, as recently as 2002 total SEIU liabilities were about $8 million. According to its 2008 disclosure form, the union owed more than $156 million, a 30% increase over the $120 million it owed in 2007. Its liabilities now equal more than 80% of its $189 million in assets. Net assets fell by nearly half last year, to $34 million, from $64 million in 2007. The debt includes an $80 million loan the SEIU took out in 2003 to purchase a new headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. But the liabilities also stem from political spending, including at least $67 million last year on political and lobbying expenses, twice what it spent in 2007.