because it is too much government interference, but a few Republican
Senators dictating from Washington how much companies pay their workers
is just the invisible hand of the free market bitch-slapping you while
you are down. Those Senators, btw, make $160k a year and have full
medical and just decided that an autoworker making 50k a year is just
too damned much money. $700 billion for the millionaires and
billionaires who helped create this mess, not a dime for the guys who
make $50-60k a year and whose chief sin is showing up for work every
day.
Granted, I think the car czar idea is bullshit because we should be able to handle overseeing stuff like this with the approximately 50 billion people Congress employs right now without going out and finding someone new. I hate this pervasive attitude of: “Something needs doing; instead of doing it, let’s spend six months on a search committee with multiple meetings catered in while we talk over various candidates for doing it, decide none of them suit, open up the search again, fucking WRITE A JOB DESCRIPTION and haggle over its approval, line up all the processes and lines of communication and make a manual and have it collated and bound in red alligator skin and OH MY FUCKING GOD CAN WE NOT JUST DO THE JOB ALREADY? IT WILL TAKE LESS TIME AND AS AN ADDED BONUS NOT MAKE ME WANT TO KILL PEOPLE WITH A BLUNT AXE.”
It’s not the oversight aspect that bothers me, it’s the total waste of time and money aspect. Remember when Bush appointed a war czar and everybody was like, “Erm, fucko, that’s like YOU last we checked?” Sort of like that. How’s about Congress try overseeing some of this shit for a change? They’re about to go on a three-week break, a break not available to any of the workers they’re talking about, how about they be forced to take a few phone calls along the way?
But this thing where the UAW is somehow responsible for the downfall of American industry is absolutely enraging, and not just because I grew up the granddaughter of somebody who wore coveralls and carried a black lunch box to work every day and came home deaf, big hands black with grease, from the days on the line. It’s enraging because SERIOUSLY, this is what we’re doing?
For forty years the Republican party has been assraping the American manufacturing base because demonizing American cities and screwing American workers is good politics for them. For forty years we’ve seen the results of this, as weeds grow up in the cracks in the asphalt of rusting steel mill lots. For forty years this has been true. And now that it’s coming home to kick them in the nuts, they’ve decided that what was wrong all along was that the people on whose backs are made their chewy little jokes get paid too much money.
With that in mind, hey anybody in Tennessee, how’s about you run against this son of a bitch and I give you some money:
accept wage cuts by a date certain in 2009, putting its members at
parity with workers at auto plants owned by foreign competitors like
Toyota and Honda—many in the Republican South.
The date certain was pivotal to a proposal bySen. Bob Corker
(R-Tenn.) to toughen the terms set in the underlying administration’s
bill, which had cleared the House Wednesday night. Corker demanded
large concessions as well from bondholders to reduce the debt levels on
GM. But the labor provisions were the most contentious, and much as the
UAW gave ground on several fronts, it resisted the date certain demand
as unfairly political.
“What my colleagues would like to see is just a date certain when
something is going to occur,” Corker said before the vote.”We offered
any date in the year 2009—any date, any date, just when will we
actually get there.”
If we do not and I mean completely level this party even worse than we already have there is absolutely no hope for this goddamn country.
A.
Jesus tits, to coin a phrase, there’s ALREADY a date. It’s in 2011, but there’s a date. See recent New Republic article onlinehere, which also demolishes the $73-an-hour myth.
THey won’t give in till they bust the union.
And if Obama signs off or even agrees pre-inauguration to something that screws the Union, after Labor supported him during the election, he’s going to be in some hot water.
I’m trying to figure out how to take it. In all cases, I can’t understand the idea of giving an industry money to restructure without some indication of how it plans to use it. If govt is supposed to become more like business, what bank can you walk into (especially today) and just say “I want money and none of your business what I plan to use it for” (in fact, the patriot act, and associated laws make the banks report your transactions to the govt.)
*) Union Busting (as Virgotex says above)?
*) A lot of the opposition is from states that have so-called foreign auto plants in their state (and for that matter, have granted recklessly loose tax advantages to get these plants to move there)?
*) Another step in the Bush MBA running the govt into the ground while maximizing what his friends take home?
*) Republican destroying govt in a scorched earth policy for the incoming administration
*) Republican destroying the economy in order to show that govt doesn’t work.
In all cases, the folks from Auto industries are going to have a very UN-merry Christmas. Bush’s friends have taken home a load of profits from the finance industry bailout. I’d like to draw an editorial cartoon of Bush (with a gigantic cod piece) watching his oil and finance industry friends counting money, standing under a “Mission Accomplished” banner.
Well, A, I suspect that the Republican votes on this will go a long, long way toward further driving the stake through the heart of the beast.
You think there’s a Republican anywhere who’ll be able to run for major office in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or anywhere else in the northeast after this?
I mean, really, lets say they DID get the UAW to metaphorically shove a broom handle up their own asses. What would that have done to the already economically depressed auto-making cities? You’re gonna take 10,000 workers (just grabbing a number here) and cut their pay, even by just a couple of thousand bucks a year. What’s that work out to? Just for that simple and undoubtedly lowball 10,000 number and that undoubtedly lowball salary decrease, that’s $20,000,000 less going into the economy in those areas. Methinks even Walmart might feel that sting a bit. Not to mention the ripple effects of such cuts (foreclosure crisis, anyone?).
There’s no way that the Republicans come out of this anything but fucked in Michigan and anywhere else there’s somebody who depends on the automakers for a living.
Just when you thought they couldn’t get any dumber, they’re limboing under the stupid bar in the Marianas Trench.
It isn’t just the non-union car makers that take advantage of not having loads of retirees pensions to pay for. It is every industry we have. Take airlines, for example. Relatively new airlines can make money today, while the “legacy” carriers can’t, and that is in part due to the retiree costs born by the “legacy” carriers.
All companies used to maintain enough assets in their pension funds to be able to pay pensions without digging into their current income to do so. But several years ago the laws changed to allow them to fund those pension funds much less generously, and rely on the stock market to maintain the balance high enough. Guess what happened?
I don’t see this as harming the Republican Party at all. The Democrats control Congress, not the Republicans. Since nothing was done, it has to be the fault of the Democrats, not the Republicans. You may not have noticed, but one word that has never been spoken nor written in the MSM, in reference to yesterday, is “filibuster”. It is only we elite, effete, chardonnay sippers, who are aware that the Repubs killed the bailout with a filibuster, or what passes as a filibuster today – a mild threat is all it takes for Democrats to mess their pants and run home screaming for mommy.
In two years no one will be aware that anything happened yesterday other than the Democratic Congress abandoning the auto industry. Besides that, by then we will all be under siege from gays trying to kill off our marriages, and it is only the Repubs who can protect us.
Just to make this even more interesting, here’s a thought pulled from firedoglake: Why (other than union busting) might the GOP want the Big 3 to fail? Because then their debt would be worthless. And who do you think holds the credit default swaps on Big 3 debt? I’m betting it ain’t the union.
if it keeps georgee’s paws off, is this not ok?
The likes of Voinovich are screwed in 2010, and as an Ohioan I will do my part to send him to the same fate as DeWine a couple years ago. The GOP really will be the party of Dixie before too long. If that’s what they want, fine, but throwing in with Dixie didn’t work out too well for the last political movement that tried it.