The WSWS

believes the General Motors bankruptcy and restructuring will further screw over workers.
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The Economy

It remains to be seen whether the "new" General Motors ends up stronger than ever now that it has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
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Miscellaneous

Susan Boyle fears her "career" will go bust even though it hasn't actually begun.

The "dance" group she lost to is utterly without any ability whatsoever. Britain is definitely starved for talent.
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The destruction of GM, especially by Obama, is the most outrageous assault on working people ever committed in this country:

This is a contemptible lie. The bankruptcy of GM will only accelerate the process of deindustrialization, which has been carried out by the ruling elite over the last three decades as it increasingly turned to financial speculation to amass its vast fortunes.

In the Obama administration, the American ruling class has found its most ruthless representative, led by a Democratic president who has gone even further than his Republican predecessor in the assault on the working class. While handing over trillions in public assets to cover the bad gambling debts of the financial elite, it demands unending “sacrifice” from workers. The destruction of the jobs and living standards of GM and Chrysler workers will now be used to set a precedent for sweeping attacks on every section of the working class.

From the beginning, the White House has relied on the United Auto Workers to block any resistance by workers. The UAW—which emerged seven decades ago in the bitter sit-down strikes against the exploitation of GM workers—has been complicit in returning auto workers to conditions not seen since the 1930s. In return for functioning as a corporate-government overseer, the proprietors of this organization are receiving billions of dollars in shares and a 17.5 percent stake in the “New GM.”

I don't see ANY economic recovery on the horizon. It is all fixable, but our on-the-take politicians refuse to have the will needed to fix our structural economic problems.
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You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

I Haven't Written Much About the GM

and Chrysler financial woes, but I am furious beyond belief so-called Democrat Barack Obama would allow it and yet give piles upon piles of money to Wall Street which created the economic mess to begin with:

The ruling class plans to use the assault on auto workers to set a precedent for sweeping attacks on the jobs and living standards of the entire working class. This demonstrates the need for the greatest unity of the working class and the bringing together of every struggle—against unemployment, home foreclosures, attacks on education and other vital services—into a single political struggle. Its aim must be the establishment of a workers’ government and the socialist reorganization of the economy to meet human needs, not private profit.

So tell me Obama really is a "progressive." My ass.

Why

is the UAW silent over Obama's screwing over GM?

Obama is Treating GM Like Shit

because he is a fucking neoliberal, that's why:

I do not understand this. I understand why Boehner, McConnell, Graham, Shelby, and Corker are trying to hurt GM. For one thing, they're basic a-holes. Second, and in a somewhat more sinister vein, they represent states with large stakes in foreign car assembly plants, and they would like to see these European and Japanese manufacturers (and thereby their own states) prosper at the American automobile industry's (and chiefly Michigan's) expense. Third and most important, they want to strike a blow against the interests of labor and destroy the UAW, after which they can go after all the rest of our unions starting with the AFL-CIO.

But what's Obama's problem here? Why is there one standard for failed financial institutions and another for industrial corporations? Why is Rick Wagoner fired when the CEOs and boards of investment banking firms, mortgage brokers and stockbrokers are still sitting pretty, still doing the same things they were doing before, the very things that caused this whole downfall?

GM had no part in causing our problems. Because their core business is so dependent on the availability of credit to their customers, our automakers are among the chief VICTIMS, not the perpetrators, of this mess. Yeah, they focused on stupid SUVs and pickup trucks and let their business in sedans and coupes languish to some extent, but this was to cater to the stupid tastes of stupid American car buyers of recent years. They were selling what we were buying. There is considerable truth to their claim that Americans were not buying regular American cars -- we weren't, even though some of them, particularly mid-size and larger sedans, were almost decent.

I think back to the death of the American compact car, with Ralph Nader wielding the sword on which they were worsted, killing one of the most innovative automobiles, the Corvair, that appeared on the world scene in the '60s just before the car world began its transition away from American dominance. We made a lot of mistakes, some of which were on the part of our automakers and some that had their genesis elsewhere. Remember 1974, when we had stringent pollution controls but the technology had not yet evolved to meet those standards? Our cars were getting 7 to 11 mpg, and when you turned them off they'd diesel for five minutes, burning cylinder heads, valves and spark plugs so their expected engine lifespans were only about 40K miles.

Government added many burdens to the manufacture of our cars, increasing the price and decreasing the stylishness of American cars. All those weird safety mandates for car interiors (really, how many people impaled themselves on radio knobs?), bumper standards, and a million other little mandated nits made our cars more expensive, heavier, less efficient, and clunkier without contributing to sales. Naderism ran, and continues to run, rampant over the industry.

Our government mandated fuel efficiency, but did so meekly, setting standards that easily within the reach of European and Japanese manufacturers because their populations were already buying cars like that. Americans weren't, so those mandates presented quite a challenge, not just technically but as a business issue. Europeans and Japanese do not share our pejorative concept of "wussiness."

Here, a four-cylinder engine meant the Iron Duke and the inability to run with normal cars. Overseas, however, cars like the BMW 2002 and Datsun Fairlady (a.k.a. 2000) ran circles around our Pintos and Vegas and kept up with our Mustangs and Camaros. Here in America, a normal car had a V-8 and that's what we wanted. Sixes were for people who otherwise would be forced to buy used cars. Fours were jokes (and VERY rare on new car lots). This was not easy to modify.

But our automakers remained profitable and dominant on the world stage nevertheless. Indeed, our automakers remained profitable until last summer, when gasoline prices pushed through the roof, and then this fall when people could no longer get car loans due to problems completely outside anything automotive. I can't help but think that when credit once more becomes available to customers then these companies will return to a positive cash flow, like they have known for maybe 98 of the previous 100 years.

I have some trouble understanding the view that holds that these companies will remain unprofitable after the credit crisis is solved. The whole concept of bailing them out is to keep them solvent, and meeting their obligations to their workers, retirees, and creditors until individuals can once more arrange to purchase their products. It is not that their products are undesirable -- GM in particular is now selling highly desirable automobiles throughout its entire range. A very strange aspect of the conditions of this bailout is the possible elimination of Pontiac, whose G8 (an Aussie-GM Holden design) is as desirable a sedan as is built by anyone including MB and BMW, and Saturn through whose dealers the excellent GM-Germany's Opel cars are rebadged and sold. These seem to be the kind of cars we're trying to get.

I don't have an American car but we are seriously considering getting a Chevy Volt -- we saw it at the auto show and my wife loved it -- when the time comes to put our Prius out to pasture. I just hope that there IS a Chevy when the Volt is due to hit the market, and the chances for its survival might be enhanced if we stopped so publicly talking our automakers down and treating them, their employees, their retirees, their suppliers, and their stakeholders so roughly even as we coddle the robber barons of finance whose unbridled greed created their distress.

It's all because Obama and his advisors are in bed with Wall Street. It's the same old shit, different characters.

Miscellaneous News

A grade-school booklet depicting loggers in a bad light got at least one logger upset.

After all, the ignorant author who wrote it trashed an entire occupation.
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Prop 8 opponents marched in San Francisco's Castro district to express their view the constitutional amendment should be overturned by the state's high court, and never mind if it did, the court would probably be doing it illegally.

After all, slavery in the United States constitution was not overturned by the courts but by constitutional amendment. Prohibition was repealed not by a court ruling but by another constitutional amendment. That's what is really needed here, but the political pressure by the LGBT groups may be hard for the high court to ignore.

The high court's hearing is this morning.

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New UI claims dropped a bit last week.
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If GM is allowed to go under, it could have absolutely devastating effects on the economy.
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A golden eagle survived when it crashed head first into a truck windshield.
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The is one for the lunch hour: A 92-year-old woman "delivered" a 60-year-old baby in one of the rare cases of a lithopedion or "stone baby."

Snip about this interesting phenomenon:

According to a 1996 paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, only 290 cases of lithopedion have ever been documented by medical literature, the earliest being that of a 68-year-old French woman Madame Colombe Chatri who, when autopsied after her death in 1582, was found to be carrying a fully-developed stone baby in her abdominal cavity. Chatri, whose abdomen was said to be “swollen, hard and painful throughout her life,” had been carrying her stone child for 28 years.

The mean duration of a “stone pregnancy,” according to the Journal article, is 22 years. Some women, such as China’s Huang Yijun, have carried their calcified fetuses for more than 50 years.

How could a woman walk around with a stone baby for years and years and not realize something was amiss?

“In some cases, there would be symptoms of an early pregnancy and then they would go away,” says Burger. “The women would just think they just lost a pregnancy and wouldn’t think any more of it.”

In other cases, a lack of money or medical resources comes into play. Huang Yijun told reporters she didn’t have the money to have her fetus removed after doctors told her it had died inside her in 1948. So, she simply “did nothing and ignored it.”

Here are a couple of Google images of "stone babies" for your viewing pleasure:






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The Booming Economy

If we are not in an economic depression, we are damned close to it. From the WSWS:

Long-Term Unemployment Up 37 Percent in One Year

Facing Bankruptcy Threat, General Motors to Slash Thousands More Jobs

US: Mass layoffs, Cutbacks Signal Further Disintegration of Detroit Public Schools


Neither one of the major party candidates will do one goddamned thing about it.

It's Heartening

to see some workers stand up to the corporate hacks who want to destroy the middle class.

Why did unionized workers allow the Reagan administration to declare a class war on them?

Unfortunately, the UAW caved.

This is bad:

The creation of a voluntary employees' beneficiary association, or VEBA, that Gettelfinger said will cover retiree health care benefits for the next 80 years.

GM agreed to fund the VEBA near 70 cents on the dollar, sources said. That's significantly more then the 65 cent contribution the company originally pushed for.

*GM will implement a two-tier wage system for workers not doing core manufacturing jobs. The lower tier will be as little as half the current $28-an-hour wage for an hourly worker. The new wage structure would apply to new hires, not current workers.

*The automaker will make 4,100 temporary workers permanent employees paid at the lower rate. A special attrition program offering workers buyouts or early retirement would help clear out senior workers and make room for the new workers.

*Also part of a deal is a trade-off in which workers will give up cost-of-living adjustments in exchange for no increases in medical premiums.

*The agreement would include modifications to the controversial jobs bank program in which laid-off workers receive pay and benefits. The changes will expand the geographic area in which workers would be required to take a new job if one is available. Under current rules, workers are allowed to remain off the job and in the bank unless there's an opening within 50 miles of their old job.

*Signing bonuses, meanwhile, could help win ratification of a contract. The payments would be $3,000 to start, followed by three years of lump-sum payments equal to 3 percent, 4 percent, and 3 percent of their annual pay in the last three years of the contract.

The two-tiered wage structure is in fact a disaster, regardless of the mention the jobs affected are not "core" jobs. The union should have NEVER agreed to this.

Give the corporations an inch, and they'll take a mile.

The WSWS

comments on the GM strike, the first of its kind in some 30 years.

The Booming Economy Casualty List for 9/14/9/24.

American autoworkers are pissed off as negotiations drag on and on.

They are on strike today, talks resume tomorrow.
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Economy.

Negotiations continue between the UAW and GM.