It’s Election Day north of the border, meaning you can be sure of one thing once all the ballots are counted in the wee hours — no one’s going to be happy.
Regardless of the Great White North’s political carping, we have three automotive topics on which to cast your vote. So sharpen your pencil, step up to the ballot box, and beware of hanging chads.
PROPOSITION 314: Do you support Marty McFly going back in time and altering history so that Ralph Nader never interferes with car safety rules, meaning modern cars will now be equipped with hammocks and dashboard hibachis? (YES / NO)
CEO OF FORD MOTOR CO.: For the first time, Ford is allowing the public to elect its new corner office inhabitant, one who cannot possibly fumble more than its current occupant. Please select one candidate from the following list (LANCE BASS / GRITTY / THAT GUY FROM THE TIKTOK VIDEO)
NEXT SUPERFLUOUS FEATURE: In the interest of consumer research, car companies are permitting a vote on what will be the next superfluous feature that no one wants but everyone includes simply because “the other guy” has it on his car (45″ VERTICAL TOUCHSCREEN / 213 DRIVING MODES / COFFEE MAKER)
It’s up to you, readers. Vote early and vote often.
[Image: Murilee Martin/TTAC]
Good luck my Canadian brothers.
It’s going to be a bloodbath – or not.
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/canada/
Things cannot possibly get any worse politically, adversarially or obstructionally than those in the US. Voters always get exactly what the majority wants.
The majority who voted for President Harrison most assuredly did NOT get what they voted for.
Or the (sizable) majority who voted for Hillary Clinton.
The CBC is just the media arm of the liberal party. I wouldn’t trust any poll they are referring to. At minimum they only polled liberal strong hold areas and if so, all it shows is they have lost 60%~ of support in those areas, which is normal for how terrible Trudeau is and has been.
If they were propping up the Liberals they wouldn’t project a victory for them, they’d predict a Conservative win to scare the left into voting Red to prevent it
They would give them a heavy bias in their reporting and then say its 50/50 and you better go vote! Which is exactly what they have done.
The CBC doesn’t do any polling. It merely aggregates the results of all of the publicly-available polls. Which cover the whole country, not just “liberal (sic) strong hold (sic) areas”.
Please choose one of the following
___Wimp
___Shrimp
O: Can I write in Gregory Peck
P: No
O: How about Margret Thatcher
P: No
……………
O: It’s not who we picked that’s important it’s that we participated.
M: Oh shut up.
My avatar loves this comment.
You’ve got the wrong candidates on CEO of Ford, the correct candidates are as follows:
Adam Tongue (aka Bball) / DeadWeight / Tresmonos / Elon Musk / Giant Meteor
Wow, you really hate Ford, don’t you?
You must not know Adam or Tres, both would be superb candidates. DeadWeight would at the very least burn it down and begin anew.
Tough call. Maybe Robert Farago – he seems idle since he sold TTAG, unless he’s Q, then he’s still idle – for the time being.
Chances are RF is mulling a new venture. He’s that kinda guy. Always thinking.
My QOTD is: where did you find a junkyard with an Alfa, a Nash Metropolitan, a Porsche 928, and two AC-VWs in the same row?
That was Aadlen Bros Auto Wrecking in Sun Valley, CA (Los Angeles area). Now defunct. The property is now a ubiquitous LKQ yard.
https://www.dailynews.com/2015/10/29/sun-valleys-venerable-u-pick-parts-junkyard-to-close/
Lord how I miss Adlen Brothers Junkyard .
It’s all paved over now and just one more insurance pool parking lot .
-Nate
Agreed. Any any mechanical part of value has been stripped for the rebuilding trades before the car is put on the yard!
Prop 314 – NO. Could he derail CAFE and insist on a market based solution? (The car companies want to stay in business, they’ll cater to their customers. FYI I support emissions standards at least right up until DI became necessary to implement them.)
CEO of Ford Motor: Honestly Ron White or Larry The Cable Guy could do better than the current occupant or the candidates put forward.
Features? I’d vote for a K-cup style coffee maker but I have enough trouble keeping the one in my office reasonably clean. Most likely on that list is the “all screen dashboard” with the only interruptions being HVAC vents.
Think Marty could stop off in Dallas on 11.22.63 and foil the Hamburglar’s assassination attempt from the Grassy Knoll?
If were going to mess around on that scale I’d rather see Nixon be successful in implementing universal health care. (Which he was banging around Congress before the impeachment hit the fan.)
WTH? How did I never hear this before?
https://khn.org/news/nixon-proposal/
Part of his address to Congress in 1974.
The GOP was a whole hell of a lot more reasonable back then. Nixon also created the EPA.
The Nixon universal health insurance program was working its way through congress with Ways and means chairman Wilbur Mills was receptive to it. It had an employer mandate where employers and employees paid into an insurance pool as well as Medicaid expansion.
Unfortunately Mills was involved a drunken auto crash into the tidal basin with the stripper Fannie Foxx aka the Argentinian firecracker (see its auto related!) and that as well as Watergate put the kibosh on it.
There were other times in history when universal coverage could have passed under TR, FDR and Truman but were scotched by the usual opposition.
If you watched X-Files, you would know Smoking Man did the deed from a storm drain.
Naw, it was the Comedian.
Careful, when you start unraveling time’s fabric you could end up married to your mother
ew
“The car companies want to stay in business” – One would think, but upon careful observation, there is limited evidence for this.
NO. The invention of the smartphone ensured that we need every single safety device and piece of nanny tech we can possibly develop. Stand at any corner where you have a good view of traffic in your favorite city, and count the proportion of drivers that are looking at their phones instead of the road. It’s often a majority.
MARY BARRA. Just merge Ford into GM. GM gets a better pickup, a better Camaro replacement, and some nice turbo V6 engines. There’s nothing else in Ford worth keeping.
DRIVER CAMS. Teslas are already coming with factory exterior cams. But that won’t hook the core base of social media users. Imagine just talking as you drive, with your car recording automatically, and then uploading the video from an app with a click of a button. Aspiring YouTube stars will all buy that brand of car.
So, go back and prevent the invention of the phone which wrecked society.
Meh. If there were no smartphones, I’d have to be physically in my office every single weekday from 8:30 to 6:30, without fail except for capital-V Vacation Days.
We have computers with VPN ya know.
Our office is located on a busy street near a stoplight-controlled intersection. Cars are queued up regularly all-day-long and it’s absolutely stunning how many drivers are on their phone as they approach and wait for the light.
They just can’t NOT text.
9 out of 10 are female (sorry ladies… just my observation). I guess this is better than texting at speed, but only marginally, and still ILLEGAL.
My route home includes a long queue for a short-duration left turn arrow. At least twice a week I miss a green cycle because some idiot is finger f-ing their phone and didn’t notice the light turned green causing another 5-minute wait for the rest of us.
I want to see more nannies introduced that disable texting apps in vehicles for all occupants until parked. Find something else to do, like paying attention to traffic, or help the driver pay attention. Some drivers around my town need all the help they can get.
I feel better now.
“At least twice a week I miss a green cycle because some idiot is finger f-ing their phone and didn’t notice the light turned green causing another 5-minute wait for the rest of us.“
I’m at the point now where you have 5 seconds to go before I lay on the horn, I don’t even care if I’m as far as 6 cars back, you better have hazards on alerting others you are stalled or I’m going to assume your some Supreme loving – idiocracy fill-in, on your phone.
VOTE GRITTY!!!
Nader is an idiot.
Canadian elections eh – I’m a bit of a nerd and like watching the results on CSPAN.
My Rule for US elections:
Democrats winning is like handing a gun to a monkey – you don’t know the result but you know it will be bad.
Republicans winning is like giving car keys to a monkey – there will be lots of noise and movements but nothing substantive happens.
Bubbles was a speed demon, I hear.
Democrats winning……..the US has been there and did that in 2008.
Oh what a mess that was, for eight, long, redistribution-of-America’s-wealth years. Most taxpaying Americans will NEVER recover from that mess, no matter how high the stock market goes.
Thank Allah we’ve got President Trump today.
Good indication is the VIX, and it’s been UP since Nov 2016.
Yeah, it was really terrible; shocking I tell you! What have you been smoking?
Pretty sure economic inequality kept going up during those years. So any attempts on income redistribution pretty much had no effect. So not sure how that effected tax payers?
I mean lets do a car reference for the Trump economy.
Your driving a long in a 90’s civic. Slowly fixing it as things break, maybe doing some mild upgrades. It’s got 175k miles and with the right maintenance 250K will be no problem. you sell it off the next owner, says man this things alright but it needs to go faster, does some more small changes then slaps an ebay turbo on and cranks the boost.
It’s faster now for at least a little while. The question becomes will it blow a head gasket, start dropping compression or is it going to succumb to a catastrophic failure. The only real guarantee is they have shortened the time between repairs and likley the overall lifespan.
The SHOCKING redistribution by Obama consisted of… (1) a 2% to 4.5% increase in upper-income *marginal* tax rates (actual change in tax burden was much less) that undid most, but not all, of George W. Bush’s tax cuts for those brackets, and (2) Obamacare Medicaid expansion and subsidies, benefiting a few million low- to low-middle-income people without health care benefits through their employers, that were paid for by said tax increase. The foundations of the republic are crumbling, I tell you!
Back to reality, real redistribution would consist of a proper estate tax, tax treatment of investment income designed to put it on an equal footing with wage income, and European-style social and health insurance programs. Put those things in place and you could even relax a lot of regulations on business, the way Denmark and Norway have (they have much higher taxes, and much lower regulatory compliance burdens.)
For what it’s worth, the only president to increase my taxes since I became old enough to work was Donald Trump. Obama’s tax increase pretty much started right where my income left off, but Trump’s SALT deduction limitation easily swamped his rate cut for me.
the elimination of the SALT deduction just eliminated the subsidy for high tax states. Now that they can’t hide the massive taxes as easily maybe there will be less looting in NY, NJ, CT etc.(but I’m not holding my breath).
And if you want “real redistribution” the IRS accepts checks. feel free to redistribute what you have, but don’t loot what I work for.
Even under the old SALT tax regime, high-tax states almost all provided more to the federal budget than they got back. The “takers” are mostly low-tax states. The SALT cap just intensified that.
People who vote for high taxes should be the ones paying high taxes. Federal taxes should be assessed at a straight three times whatever an individual pays in state and local taxes. That way people can talk about increasing taxes and spending without just seeming like they want someone else to pay for their inability to take care of themselves.
Ah, so the solution to tax “looting” in certain states is to raise taxes on their citizens.
That makes perfect sense. Absolutely.
“but Trump’s SALT deduction limitation easily swamped his rate cut for me.”
Your SALT was that high as a Washington State resident?
Yep. Property tax on a Seattle home + 10.1% sales tax + the deductible portion of high license fees on three cars added up to quite a bit.
…and that little tax screw job predominantly hits people in high-tax states which, as a matter of amazing coincidence, tended to vote for a certain pant-suit wearing nasty woman in the last election, and a guy with a vaguely foreign sounding name in the two elections before that.
Shocking, I know…
Interestingly enough, everyone who offered a comment is correct, albeit from their own perspective.
The bottom line always remains, “How well does any administration do for you and yours?” That goes for the US, and Canada as well.
As for me and mine, I’ll take what the Trump administration has done anytime, anywhere and anyhow over that of any administration during my lifetime, even President Reagan’s.
And I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016.
But I’ll vote for him in 2020, if he runs again.
“How well does any administration do for you and yours?”
Well that might or more probably should include your parents, your children, your (potential) grandchildren and possibly your siblings.
But your reckoning does not seem to account for that.
If you are hoping to make things better for your children and grandchildren, then you have to think long term.
And that is not a `strong point`to put it mildly of the current POTUS, or a great many of his more vocal supporters.
You’re being fooled if you think there’s a future for your children with open borders.
Arthur Daily, if “generational wealth” is what you are referring to, yes I did figure that into my question, because it is MY personal belief that it is up to the current generation to ensure that they have wealth to leave to their off-spring.
And, thanks to President Trump, I think my wife and I have achieved that, i.e. provide a healthy inheritance in the form of real assets, continuing rental income, and folding money.
During the last administration we had serious doubts about achieving our financial goals.
What about education, healthcare and infrastructure? Those require planning and taxation. Or have you accumulated enough wealth to ensure that your children have enough to last their lifetimes.
And the economic ‘up turn’ under Trump is merely following the trend started under Obama. With the exception that Trump is massively increasing the American government’s debt load. Which most likely will lead to either another recession or inflation which will devalue the money that you have accumulated.
As for Todd’s ‘open migration’ claim. Tell that tale to the Indigenous People of North America.
“As for Todd’s ‘open migration’ claim. Tell that tale to the Indigenous People of North America.”
Do you know that you just made my point?
HDC, so…before Trump, your kids didn’t have an inheritance, but thanks to him, they do now.
Sounds like you struck it rich. Mazel tov. May I ask what specific policies and/or laws changed since January, 2017 to enable that?
@Todd but also demonstrated how absurd it is. Unless you are 100% Indigenous, then you are the descendant of immigrants. Most likely only the 2nd or 3rd generation.
Are you stating that they should not have been allowed into North America.
Have you ever checked just how lax immigration rules were for the early part of the 20th century?
Personally I believe that what is happening in the Southern USA is just a renewal of the Mexican-American War(s). Mexico is reclaiming the land that the USA seized from it largely by force of arms.
FreedMike, what really put us over the top was the stock market after Trump was elected. That allowed my wife to enjoy a $7K/month Civil Service annuity after 30 years employment, plus forced payouts of $4K or higher. This is in addition to all other sources of income we have.
And the restructuring of the real estate/rental business started by her father, ensured that our kids and their kids will enjoy an income for life, with a few minor restrictions, like at what age they can start drawing payouts from their trust fund/tax shelter.
When I wrote in earlier comments that NOW was the time to get one’s financial ducks lined up, taking advantage of the Trump effect, that was no bull.
We did it, the Trump effect was instrumental in allowing us to do that, and this will not last forever.
Once Trump is gone from office, so will his economic policies. Whether that be sooner or later.
President Trump has managed to raise the living standard for millions of American citizens, and that in itself is a miracle.
I understand that there are those who did not benefit, but in every situation there are winners and losers.
It’s nice to be on the winning side for a change.
I like it. I love it. I want four more years of it!
Arthur Daily, your points are well taken, and understood. But I’m not a socialist.
The only thing I worry about is the well-being of me and mine.
I’m not interested in providing for anyone beyond me and mine.
Let them fend for themselves.
I had to.
No one cut me any slack.
My failures far outnumber my successes, but I managed.
Some of the impetus for auto safety predated the Nader book by a few years. There was a article or two in the Nation in the late 50’s by none other than Daniel Patrick Moynihan decrying the carnage on American roads and asking why can’t Detroit incorporate safety features in their cars.
Prop 314 – No.
CEO of Ford – Write-in: Mary Barra.
Feature – Coffee maker with heated/cooled cupholder (Peltier–Seebeck effect).
(Moving Barra to Ford would improve Ford’s management team, and improve GM’s management team.)
Yes, Tiktok, coffee maker. With the last, there has to be one of those coolers from FCA to hold creamer.
In 1996 I crewed a sailing yacht for a man with an eponymous private equity investment firm. He sent me to Baddeck on Lake Bras d’Or. My fellow crew was a buddy from college. We were trying to cut down on drinking and driving, so we hired a local to drive us around in an eight-door Buick limo. He took to pulling over and drinking our beers, so we gave up and rented a van.
When we were ready to leave, we wound up taking a ride with someone employed by the garage we rented the van from. He was a fountain of Canadian knowledge, enlightening us to the level of hatred that existed between speakers of different languages. It was pretty odd, as overt racism was something that we’d been conditioned to reject at that point in US history.
I’d seen some shocking stuff between the English-speaking Nova Scotians and ‘the guys from the reservation,’ but it was clear why we’d not met any French Canadians in our travels after the driver spoke of them. Not that Justin Trudeau’s racism is the greatest threat to Canada at the moment, but it is still pretty sorry that the election is remaining in the hands of the backwards. Our driver in 1996 regaled us with stories about how the socialists took control and everything was great until all the jobs vanished. I guess we should have pointed out the obvious to him. Maybe Canada wouldn’t be doomed today.
In my defense, people who state they are fooled by the lies of the left often sound like they’re being sarcastic to the sentient.
I used to live on the border with New Brunswick (could see it out my front window) and had lot’s of friends from NB and NS. Canada sure does have a lot of regional bias, much like the US. (Midwest, vs deep South, vs Coastal cities etc.). Eastern Canada seems to identify much more with England for example.
As far as socialism goes, Canada’s economy has done pretty damn well overall. But Eastern CA for what ever reason has had major economic issues for a long time. Unlike the East Coast of the US, they never had huge population growth along the seaboard etc.
That might be the biggest example of ‘fake news’ that I have read today!
Yes there were ‘Two Solitudes’ between English and French speakers. But ‘hatred’ hardly.
Quebec is more European than North American and Quebecois are quite proud of their social programs and government enterprises. The economy in Quebec is quite robust.
And Trudeau is a product of Quebecois, and Scottish ancestry. He is not ‘pure wool’ Quebecois and in fact his father is not particularly liked by ‘pure wool’ Quebecois.
As for Canada being ‘doomed’. Funny how we have more freedoms than citizens of the USA, less government surveillance/scrutiny of our lives, far less chance of being a victim of violent crime and an exorbitant amount of natural resources.
Reading through the comments brought a sincere question to mind. Why do folks laud the way Europe, generally speaking, does things, but are seemingly unwilling to move there to enjoy what they perceive to be a better system and/or benefits? If I wanted the US to be like Europe in this area, I’d move there instead of trying to change the US. It’s like asking someone who likes the car they drive to change to a car they never wanted nor liked.
Well if you have friends family etc here, it’s much better to change where you are. You also may have trouble getting citizenship.
It’s more like trying to change your job. People ask why you try to change policies in the company you work for. There really are several reasons, one is geography, If you live in an area with few large employers just changing jobs is hard unless you move, Next is culture, if you like most of the parts of your job but the health insurance sucks it makes sense to try and at least attempt to change it before you leave, and I guess last I would say you have the changing the world effect. It appears form data there more often we change jobs the more benefits etc get cut. Back in the 60’s and 70’s companies attracted and maintained workers with long term benefits. Now many have the benefits targeted towards a certain type of worker with more immediate but less long term benefit. Or to put it another way, Do you run from your problems or stand up to them.
Well there is the language difference. Very hard to transfer when you don’t speak the language.
Then their are immigration requirements.
Finally the USA was more like this from FDR’s election until approximately the 2nd year of Reagan’s first term. Incidentally that pre-Reagan era coincides with America’s most powerful/affluent periods, with the exception of immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union. The aftermath of which the Bush administration badly botched.
So…if another country is doing something that works for it, the best thing is to move there, versus perhaps trying it here?
Put differently, in domestic terms: if state ABC cuts taxes, then everyone should move there, versus asking their state to do the same.
Non-argument, if you ask me.
Thanks mopar, Arthur and Mike for your thoughts. I get where you folks are coming from and it does hold weight for sure. I guess for me it’s cool to try to effect change, but it seems foolish to bitch and moan after trying if it turns out that it wasn’t “the consensus view” (to quote Oh Brother Where Art Thou/Everett) to make that change. People need something/anything to talk about indeed.
@THx: In effect are the mass migrants/refugees not attempting to move to where they believe things are better rather than attempting to change and improve things in their ‘own’ nations?
And what should we do to help them, a) allow this mass migration, b) intervene in their nations domestic politics to force change, c) provide large amounts of financial assistance in order to help create change or d) close or borders and ignore the problems in their nation(s)?
I understand you angle, Arthur. If one has tried to effect change to the extent one feels they have done all that can be done, then leaving is but one option. The other would be to accept those “unchanged” things and move on with life laboring under those things one finds unacceptable. To complain without making an effort is silly. To adapt after expending the effort you feel you have within you is wise. That adaptation may be moving – or not. Thanks for your thoughts.