Friday, January 1, 1904
Will history repeat? I spent 34 years in automotive quality management in the U.S., Canada and Mexico including VW when they were in Pennsylvania for eight years.
VW moved into a closed Chrysler plant. Japan started selling cars and trucks in the U.S. The American manufactures could not compete for price, gas mileage or quality.
The UAW that is trying to get into VW kept striking for higher wages and benefits, driving up prices until American cars were no longer competitive. The foreign manufacturers began to build their cars here but not in Detroit. Take a drive through Detroit today and see all the boarded up or burned down homes and businesses. Some of the areas are like a ghost town. I know I would never want to move back.
That could be Chattanooga someday when China starts selling cars and trucks here. I remember hearing at many U.S. plants that the Japanese cars are no competition for us. Some of those plants are closed today. There are many reasons for the decline of the American automotive business. The UAW is right near or on the top.
NORMAN LOWE
The hubris of a recent graduate with a B.A. in political science questioning Dr. Charles Krauthammer?
He didn't do his research? Maybe because Krauthammer lived it. I suspect the questioner was born after 1990 and came to the party a little late!
I was born way before the 1947 U.N. partition of British Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state.
Israel accepted their state, but Palestine did not and threatened to push Israel into the sea before they would accept their "state."
Some would rather send bombs into Israel than have peace. Israel does not send suicide bombers into Palestine to kill innocents and children, why do extremists Palestinians think it OK to do it to the Israelis?
Intolerance is a terrible thing!
RICHARD EDEN
Why do we have military forces? So we can get involved in more wars, not primarily so we can defend ourselves, our allies and our legitimate global interests.
Why do we have an economy? So we can give away food that someone else has paid for.
Why do we have drivel merchants and cliché peddlers like David Cook and Clay Bennett reaching for cheap shots like the brass rings on an old-fashioned merry-go-round? Why do we have editors? Someone please tell me, then I'll know.
JOSEPH A. REHYANSKY