joeware - never stop exploring... :)

I haven’t written anything too inflamatory for a bit so possibly this will be. We shall see. 🙂

Those who know me know I have a special affinity for Ford. My first car was a 1971 Ford Mustang with a 351 Cleveland (yes it makes a difference) big block, my next car was a 1972 Cougar with a 351 Cleveland, my next car was a 1972 Maverick with a 302 (which I took out of a 1986 Mustang GT – and you thought I was only into tearing into the innards of a computer program…), etc etc… plus I have done a lot of work for them in the past and I have just a ton of friends that work at Ford across the world. So I tend to watch Ford news articles closely to see what is happening.

I was googling news and see that Bill Ford made 13.3 million dollars last year after he said he wasn’t going to take a salary. Now you might think that would bother me but it really doesn’t because that is his name on the side of the company. He is going to be rich and have a ton of money whether he does anything for Ford Motor Company or not. I do like that he is giving a bunch of his stock awards to charity. That comes out to something like $5 million USD which is pretty good. It is certainly more (well most likely) than I will ever give to charity so Kudos to Bill, it doesn’t matter to me what he makes versus what he gives, people are lucky he gives anything. That is the whole idea of “GIVING”. You can’t tell people they have to give, that would be called something more like TAXES. So any amount ANYONE ever gives, I think is cool, anyone who has a problem with what someone else gives and they are making that judgement based on… well never mind, doesn’t matter what they are basing it on, they aren’t in any position to make any judgement, just suck it up, shut up, and concern yourself with how many millions YOU donated this year.

Err so. My main point in this entry is something that I caught at the bottom of this article about Bill’s paycheck last year. At the very very end almost beyond notice because by the time you get to it you figure, hey I read the majority of everything else, this obviously shouldn’t matter much… but it did. The article is here.

It says

The filing also says shareholders will vote on a proposal about whether to remove sexual orientation from the company’s equal employment policy. Ford’s current policy says the automaker won’t discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, handicap or veteran status.

Ford is recommending that shareholders reject this proposal, saying it would hinder the company’s ability to recruit and retain employees. The dispute stems from an ongoing dispute with the American Family Association and other conservative groups, which have declared a boycott against Ford over its commitment to nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation.

I don’t know how that got on the ballot as something to vote about but I don’t think shareholders should get to vote on something like that. What happens if it goes through? Does it mean next year will they be voting on whether or not discrimination against various races and colors and ages is ok? This all goes back to one of my favorite busy body groups called the American Family Foundation and them whining because someone disagrees with them and thinks that homosexuals are people. There is no secret here folks, they are, be an adult and go back to living your own life and stop controlling others. Plus the more you screw with them the more you call attention to them and make your parishes wonder about them and maybe question whether or not they should be joining or fighting the anti-gay cause (Answer: you should be fighting the anti-gay cause…why? because something you care about just may be the next thing these wingnuts start targeting and it could be you that is considered the perversion of nature as if that is even possible).

The AFA or any other group in the world should not have any say on whether or not Ford hires people that follow different sexual orientations. It simply isn’t any of their business, someone needs to just say “you know, we have been sitting around here thinking about how you want to tell us who we can and can’t hire and who we should and shouldn’t donate OUR money to and we have decided that the best answer is just to tell you to go F yourself.”  If Ford needs a spokesman on this, they know where and how to reach me, I would be honored to do this on national TV or fly to the headquarters of the AFA to handle it. Heck both even works for me.

If Ford is responsible for putting that up for the vote I sort of see this as a cop-out on Ford’s part which is sad. I could only see it as an out where they can say, see our shareholders all feel we should do this so we should do this. Obviously it is possible someone else forced the issue and required it to go on the ballot. My opinion on this, and you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t want my opinion, is that if the shareholders don’t like how the company is being handled, they can vote by selling their shares. Anyone holding the stock either doesn’t care or is in full support of this in my mind.

Ford is a car company, it should focus on building the best cars they can, not focus on what their employees like to do when they go home after building a car or who they chose to love. If they want to be nice about it when the AFA asks simply say “it is none of your business”. As some folks smarter than I have said “Silence is all a nosey question deserves in response” or “When someone starts a sentence with, ‘it is none of my business but…’ feel free to supply the needed period after the word but, just try not to be excessive with the force with which you supply it”.

I was going to end there but felt I needed to add some more. :)  I recently heard through the grapevine that a good friend of mine that worked for Ford quit because of all of this stuff. He is very much behind the Ford boycott because of the anti-gay stuff and his religious opinion of the whole thing and felt so strongly he quit a job that was paying him probably in the area of $80k-$100k USD a year; possibly but doubtfully more. That isn’t an amazing salary but it certainly isn’t chump change in the US; there are a lot of people who would literally kill to make that kind of money.  

I have to say that that is seriously standing up for your beliefs and can’t say I have ever met anyone else that had done something like that that I was aware of. But then, I always considered Lyle a standup guy who tells you what he thinks and stands behind it… I would be amiss if I didn’t say that I think he is completely crazy for doing that but I fully support his decision and I salute the fortitude to go through with it. I would like to hope that he had something else to fall back on and was already leaning towards leaving Ford and this was just his chance to seemingly make a statement. Regardless, good luck buddy, I hope everything turns out as you hoped. Well I take that back, not everything. I hope everything you work against in the anti-gay agenda stuff completely kicks your ass but I hope everything with you and your family and timely meals and a home works out.

   joe