Decision 2010: Vote, Or Watch Car Sales?
Tomorrow, you have two choices:
1.) Go vote.
2.) Watch the real time reporting of October new car sales on TTAC.
What should you do?
Go vote.
Automakers have strong opinions. Stronger than some candidates. Some report tomorrow, as it is the custom. Some wait until Wednesday.
About a dozen brands including Hyundai, Subaru and Volkswagen are planning to stick to Tuesday, the same day American voters will determine which political party will control the U.S. House and Senate and 37 state governorships, reports Automotive News.
Chrysler, GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda and several others will wait until Wednesday. With the big names reporting a day later, it should remain interesting until the last number is in.
But there will be a first: For once, Volkswagen won’t be last to report.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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A friend of mine once said, "Don't vote. It just encourages them." I believe that every ballot should have "None of the Above" as a choice. If None of the Above gets the most votes, hold the election all over again with the original slate of candidates ineligible to run. This would eliminate having to choose between bad and worse.
I can both brush my teeth and get to work in the morning, so I don't see any reason I can't both vote (takes about 15 minutes) and check in on TTAC.
I'm going to vote just so that I can have the pleasure of voting for Sander Levin's opponent. Political ideologies aside, he expected me to believe that his last name had nothing to do with his son's appointment as Deputy (now Acting) Director of Michigan's Dept. of Labor and Economic Development.
I don't even know the name of the person running against him. I don't care. Levin tried to bullsh*t me to my face. This was after he was 45 minutes late for scheduled meetings with his constituents at an event his office was co-sponsoring. When I said something about him being late, his response was "I was doing something very important". Maybe I should have asked him exactly what he was doing. In any sense "doing something very important" = "my constituents' time doesn't really matter, I'm important", so screw him, I'm voting for the other guy. Taxpayers have supported the Levin brothers and their families pretty well for at least a couple of generations.
When I was growing up in a middle class neighborhood in Detroit I had a US senator as a neighbor, Pat McNamara. Carl Levin sits in the seat he held. Pat entered politics after he was 50 and had worked as a mechanical contractor.
Sander Levin worked very briefly as a lawyer before entering politics. His son Andy has never worked in the private sector, going through a series of jobs working for labor unions or being appointed to political patronage jobs, like his current one. Andy moved from Washington to Michigan in 2006 to run for state senate. He lost. Three months later Jenny Granholm named him to the $124,000/yr + bennies job. He's never worked in the private sector but he's now in charge of economic development in Michigan and his father thinks he's highly qualified.
Andy Levin lives in Bloomfield Township. While it isn't Franklin, Bingham Farms or Grosse Pointe, it's still home to some of the most expensive real estate in Michigan. It's a hell of a lot fancier neighborhood than the one Pat McNamara lived in.
I'm tired of a ruling class that believes in hereditary privilege and feeds us bullcrap. Political ideologies aside, throw the bums out. The truth is that Sander Levin has a pretty safe district and my vote for his opponent will be thrown away. At least I have the comfort of knowing that Granholm is term limited and Rick Snyder, who's in a different party will most likely win, so Andy Levin's cushy job in Lansing will be over in January.
"There's class warfare, all right, Mr. (Warren) Buffett said, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."