First order of business: Putting managerial staff on Japanese salaries. Yes, that means that GM’s top guy must work for “only” $990,000 a year as opposed to $13 to $15 million.

Explain, please?

Jane said that Territo should be laughed out of the room for what he said during the conversation. I was, I thought clearly, asking Jane to tell us what she said in reply and if she did in some way or another ‘laugh him out of the room’ for the absurdity of his comment.

health care is a necessary expense, when it is not provided either through single payer or the manufacturer, that product must be tariffed

This is equally applicable to any industry. All of them lack this competitive advantage. Make them more competitive by giving all of their employees Single Payer Universal Health Care.

better then that, simply tariff those cars that are produced without healthcare for their laborers.

simple stuff

Obama rightly wants answers to these questions before he starts authorizing checks. And it’s going to be hard to answer them before we know what the government’s role in healthcare is going to be going forward. But finding solutions is not going to be helped by all sides treating this as nothing more than a propaganda war, and auto industry flaks like Territo should by all rights be laughed out of the room for making assertions like “the auto industry never lobbied against higher CAFE standards” (yes, he actually said that).

A-yep. Good for Obama. One of the things the folks touting the Japanese industry habitually leave out is that Japanese workers don’t take it in the shorts each time they go to the hospital.