By STEVEN TAVARES
The Citizen
FREMONT Bay Area electric car-maker Tesla Motors and Toyota will partner in bringing 1,200 new jobs to the recently shuttered Nummi plant in Fremont, says former state Sen. Liz Figueroa.
News of the partnership broke Thursday morning when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made refernce to the deal, but gave no further details. Tesla has been shopping for a site to expand its small boutique electric car company for months. Tesla recently received a $465 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a lower cost electric sedan.
An Associated Press story reported a city councilman from Downey was informed this morning of the decision from Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk. According to the story, Downey’s City Council was prepared to vote on a lease deal with Tesla to replace its own vacant auto plant in the Southern California city.
Figueroa, who is running for Alameda County Supervisor in District 2, which incorporates part of Northern Fremont, says negotiations for the deal have been going on for over two months and believes the news of the possible deal was tightly-held to avoid any political grandstanding. According to Figueroa, the partnership will create 1,200 jobs in a growing sector of the green economy. She did not know how many of those jobs would bring part of the over 4,700 Nummi employees who lost their jobs back to the plant.
The Nummi plant was closed nearly two months ago after the partnership between General Motors and Toyota was dissolved in part due to government intervention to keep G.M. afloat. For the Nummi plant, the news today is history repeating itself. The sprawling plant located next to Interstate 880 sat vacant for after General Motors closed shop in 1982. Two years later, Toyota and GM formed a unique partnership to build cars from both brands that lasted until two months ago. This time around, the auto plant is set to return in a smaller scale, but possibly better positioned for future growth than its predecessor.
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Big deal it was the Inflation Rate that was 13% under Carter and Reagan brought down to 5%. Oh well. The FACT of the Matter is that the U.S. was in shambles under Carter and Reagan cleaned it up beautifully.
Manuel
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Most people would admit that they made quite a mistake when they DOUBLED an unemployment claim (Manuel claimed the rate was 14% at the beginning of Reagan's Presidency, when it was in fact 7%). It might cause them to reassess some of their other claims and views. Instead, Manuel plows along at his three-slurs-a-paragraph pace. It grows tiring.
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Bahahahhaahhaa You are delusional beyond repair. In February 1989 the unemployment rate was 5.4% half of what it was in 1982. The economy was in a shambles because of Jimmy Carter. Reagan couldn't just wave a magic wand in 1981 and 1982 and put people to work. He had to get his policies enacted then implemented. The results are the greatest economic boom in peacetime history. Sorry, Doug a fact is a fact and the fact of Reagan was; success.
Raised taxes for the middle class, you are a moron, if he lowered the top marginal rate the other rates were also lowered. Oh, I'm sure that fact eludes you. You're a complete fool to think that the middle class paid more taxes under Reagan and thus the revenues went up. What a laughable argument. Are you on drugs????
The massive loss of manufacturing under Reagan? Don't be so facetious, technology was increasing, and thus some jobs were eliminated and others were added. I know that you're mentally incompetent, but I've lived here in the Bay Area for a lot more years than you and I can remember all the orchards in Fremont, San Jose, Campbell. As well as the sprinkling of high tech companies there in the 1960's and 1970's. You see Doug I live in reality, you don't. I lived in the 1980's and it was as though Reagan threw open the doors and let the sunshine in and a warm breeze rush through a dusty, musty old house known as the Carter years.
Oh, big deal the unemployment rate during Clinton was 1% lower than it was 10 years earlier. Don't you understand economics? There will be slight flucuations, but it was because of Reagan's policies, that the economy was stable for 25 years. It was stable despite Clinton. Another fact that you intentionally forget is that Clinton's budgets were in deficits until the GOP took over Congress in 1994. Oh wow. Another fact you leave out of your comical arguments.
Obama's policies have not reversed any trajectory of job losses. He's created a permanent 10% unemployment rate. His policies are a failure, he's a light weight affirmative action Marxist who only appeals to those who wish to leach off the producers in America. The only reason he is not as incompetent as Franklin Roosevelt is that the people aren't as gullible as they were in the 1930's. The Tea Party's prove that there are still some Constitutionalist thinking American's left.
Doug, not only are you wrong on facts, you're absolutely delusional in your thinking.
Manuel
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Manuel,
Regarding Reagan policies, you quoted the marginal tax rate for the richest Americans. That is exactly what I said; Reagan massively lowered the income tax and other taxes for the megarich, and raised taxes for the middle class (combined income and payroll taxes) in six of his eight budgets.
Forcing the middle and lower classes to carry more of the tax burden, revenues went up, but government expenditures went up at a much, much higher rate during Reagan's eight years. He left us with massive deficits, and grew the government greatly. Reagan signed every one of those budgets; none passed with a veto override.
The unemploymnt rate during Carter's last year, 1980, was 7.1%. It rose to 9.6% in the second year of Reagan's Presidency, approximately what it is right now, and slowly came down afterwards.
It is noticeable that you fail to address the wage stagnation which took place during Reagan's Administration. Nor do you address the massive loss of manufacturing and other jobs replaced by lower-wage work, thanks to policies lobbied for by the Chamber of Commerce and other shortsighted organizations.
A few years later, President Clinton's two terms saw the unemployment rate go down seven of eight years, ending a little over 4%. The Federal budget was in surplus at the end of the Clinton administration.
Eight years later, Bush had run up the largest deficits in the history of the country, and our economy was in shambles. The free fall started many months before Obama took over; the trajectory of job losses has since been reversed. The unemployment rate is unacceptably high (in other words, about the level it was during Reagan's second full year in office), but a Great Depression has been averted because the people did not follow a President Coolidge with a President Hoover.
The rich have gotten richer, though, so W. accomplished what he was sent to do.
Manuel, you're simply wrong on the facts. Perhaps you're not a liar. To believe that, however, is to decide that you are intentionally misinformed. All this information is out there for you to discover, if you wished to.
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Doug you are such a revisionist it is laughable. No wonder all your type congregate in the furthest point west in the Continental U.S. you're all laughed out of where you came from.
You are the one who has not given any fact for you claims. Just typical liberal nonsense about “terrific people doing valuable work” as a reason for why socialism should be forced upon everyone.
Sorry Doug, but the top income tax rate in 1980 was 70% and Reagan lowered it to 28%. FACT NOT FICTION LIBTARD! FACT; interest rates were 19% when Reagan came into office under 10% when he left. FACT NOT FICTION YOU LIAR! FACT; REVENUES TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INCREASED UNDER REAGAN. Fact NOT FICTION. FACT: unemployment dropped from 14% when Reagan took office to under 8% when he left.
So take your Socialist/Democrat Party talking points, go to Starks local office and have a good hug and cry with the other Red loving, history distorting Commies of his staff.
Of course businesses create stable jobs. Obviously you think a government paid job where someone shows up, does nothing, gets paid, then is given a pension after 25 or 30 years of being on the payroll is a “stable” job. Who do you think funds these government jobs? The TOOTHFAIRY???
Seems your dam of damnable lies has burst.
Manuel
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You were given facts about the falsity of these arguments a while back, with few responses other than boilerplate attacks and misrepresentations.
The decades before 2008 saw a massive governmental drive to deregulate all buinesses; the crash came. Manuel, you are simply wrong on the facts from the New Deal on down, and provide no evidence for your claims.
The only argument you make that I have sympathy for is your desire to see those responsible for the crash to suffer the consequences. You think the common man should suffer the consequences; I believe the oligarchs and those who did (and do) their bidding should be made responsible.
Reagan raised taxes on the middle class while lowering then tremendously for the megarich; now that's “spreading the wealth”, just upwards. Unemployment was often high years into his Presidency; wages did not increase at the rate worker production did. Reagan grew the Federal budget, and defcit, at rates not seen before him.
“Businesses create stable jobs..”? Tell all the people who worked decently-paid manufacturing jobs until the jobs left the U.S. during Reagan's terms. It's called “the rust belt” for a reason.
You know farm subidies continue to this day, right? And that Republicans are often the fiercest defenders of those subsidies?
It's like a crumbling dam; put your finger in a hole to block a lie, and there's three more false renderings of history.
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Sorry, Dougie but the cowards are Stark, Liz, Obama et al because they don't understand history nor the free market and/or fail to take the cards that life has dealt.
It was an over regulated market that drove and created the financial crisis of 2008. If banks and people were allowed to fail, then the stronger more intelligent would have came in and swept things up. Unfortnately, which is always the case with blind liberalism, people were not allowed to take responsibility for their ignorance and the recession is being prolonged by bailouts and increased printing of money.
If people understood why and what happened it wouldn't happen in the future. But what we have is another generation being brought up with the idea that there are no “consequences” for their actions. This isn't just a recent phenommenon it's been with us for close to 70 years.
Like my relatives who owned a farm out in Jackson in the 1930's and Roosevelt was paying them NOT to farm in order to keep prices artificially high. 1933-1953 was 20 lost years for the United States because of failed New Deal policies. We can't afford another 20 lost years by Obama, Pelosi, Stark, et al.
Sorry Doug, but the reforms and economic policies instituted by Reagan in 1981 created the longest peace time expansion of the ecnomy. More in a few months than any New Deal Program did in a few years. Businesses create stable jobs, not government.
Manuel
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I'm glad Liz is supportive of this project; hat's because she cares about the people in the East Bay, unlike our cowardly commenter. It's disappointing that the comments section has become infested by libertarians who appear unable to see facts, understand history or express their arguments in a civil manner.
The “free market” was given near full control of our government and its regulatory agencies in the decades before the financial crash of the summer and fall of 2008, which created our current sky-high unemployment rate. Big businesses failed the people.
An unregulated free market is as disastrous as an economic model as pure communism. An unregulated free market has never worked to create a stable economy or a large, thriving middle class.
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That's why mame, you are what your husbands people call a “putz”. You have no idea how the free market works, how an economy is built, Nothing, or in your people's words “NADA”.
“Green Economy” is a laughable election year hype. It means nothing and will produce nothing.
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I will support Tesla or any other green company into our community that pays good wages and keeps families or indiviuals from being homeless or going on the unemployment rolls. That cost tax payers much more in the long run.
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Nummi had 4,000 workers building a couple hundred thousand cars a year. Tesla will be lucky to produce 20,000. No need to hire all those people. Toyota is putting up $50,000,000 which could be a public relations ploy in case this thing go down the tubes. The taxpayers are the ones on the hook for a $465,000,000. If this car was so great then how come it's not fully funded with private dollars?
Manuel
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Yay! The rich can buy more expensive cars!
Why not give the laid off Nummi employees their jobs back?
Just look at all the rats coming out on this one, taking credit. If it fails, hopefully it wont, they won't be around! Another campaign photo op.
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Pouring more tax money down a rat hole.
Manuel
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