Detroit Paper to Congress: You Cannot Turn Away

Tasha Cherry Bad News for 2009 The headlines today offer a grim reality for 2009. Stock markets are in a crisis and no doubt that it will hit 7000 by year’s end. Companies like circuit city are using the pension of its retired employees just to stay afloat. The failing of our banks and credit systems ripple down and affected many other sectors of the U.S. economy; the sector at the forefront today is the automotive. As congress listens to the automotive companies few understand the impact of what it would mean for them to fail. Collectively Ford, GM and Chrysler employee over 200,000 employees and is responsible for hundreds of thousands of pensions. Not to mention the companies that makes the parts for the big three. Job loss is 533,000 and the unemployment rate is 6.7 verses 6.5 in October that brings the number to date, negative a million, the largest drop since November 1974. That’s the worst in 34 years, while we are hitting historic numbers one can only assume that our worst days are ahead of us. As the news rally around the distressing information my question is why we aren’t rallying around possible solutions; this seems to me to be about survival not striving in the U.S. economy. Are the answers that we are looking for right in front of our face? How can we recognize the right solutions and not fight against the very things that will help us out of our crisis. The News reports that some are terrified that if we don’t get the housing and credit market under control that this could become worst that the recession. However, I know that God allowed my family to make it through the recession; I know this because here is sit and if he did it for them he will do it for us. While, I don’t presume to know all the answer I will share with you some practical things that I am doing. I am on a 7 day a weekly menu my parent often spoke of how they had fried chicken every Sunday. I change my menu every month but it’s the same concept; this is practical because you can go to bulk retail stores like Sams Club. You can also save cooking time by cooking that day’s menu for the whole month. An example would be if you wanted to make spaghetti sauce for the month. After you make the sauce you can vacuum seal them and when you are ready to cook them you just put the bag in a pot of boiling water and it will ready in a matter of minutes. Another thing that can help is to go through your budget and try to buy extra items every month. You might also want to invest in buying seeds for your spring or summer garden or even to trade. Reply

Thank you for taking the time to read this. GM has a major delema in which hundreds of thousands of vehicles are made with defective engines and GM refuses to address them. Imagine this, you have a new GMC/Yulon XL, leather seats, third row, 4WD/Auto etc $36,000+. It has under 60,000 miles and should be under warrantee. When you start up the gas engine in the morning, it sounds like a diesel, and you swear to God the pistons ae going to come out through the side of the engine. This last about 20-30 seconds or 2 blocks when you drive it, normally. This effects all the engines made by GM. I have had my SUV in the dealers only to be told this is normal and even though the sound and extemely loud knock is there, GM says it has no adverse effects on the engine. I will send you links showing the problems with the GM engines. Like one engine manufacturer told me, "There is no such thing as a good knock". We, the public need help on this and need this info to be brought to the CEO's attention of GM in front of everyone so that this repair can be fixed and the public can move forward so we and our families can feel safe in our vehicles. Here are some of the links; http://www.pistonslap.com/tsb.htm http://www.complaints.com/march2002/complaintoftheday.march12.13.htm GM refuses to take care of this problem that they are very well aware of it. So what incentive do we have to purchase another GM product? After this article came our about the defective engines our resale value dropped dramatically (-$15,000) so it was useless to turn the vehicle in for a newer one. Kind of a catch 22. And we, as the public, are held hostage about this issue with the defective GM engines. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Can you spare some time to help us here? Shouldn't we take care of the first problems before we start creating more. You just can't walk away from the public by avoiding the obvious. And you wonder why we buy overseas vehicles. Bye Bye GM, Bye Bye Reply