Miscellaneous News

A cat who alert his owner of a fire a few days ago didn't survive it.
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What in the hell happened to the UAW now that it seems to be in cahoots with industry?
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Stakes winner Broad Brush, 26, was euthanized May 15 because of humanitarian reasons.
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The Economy

Ford workers are giving it their best shot by opposing concessions pushed by their employer.

The Booming Economy

American automakers outlining a massive attack against their workers.

This is a video of Chrysler workers critical of the company's demands.

The march to third worldom continues...

The Economy

The WSWS, not surprisingly, thinks the Obama administration is out to gut the UAW.
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The Booming Economy

The Democrats have unveiled a budget winch to pull the country out of the economic ditch.
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Companies are trying other options besides layoffs in order to save money during these shitty times. Unfortunately, not enough companies are doing this.
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The UAW decides to sell out its workers by foregoing the right to strike.

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The banking industry is poised to ask for MORE handouts with more of them going down the tube.
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Retailer Gottschalks has put itself up for sale and may file for bankruptcy.

Another store I happen to like is about to hit the skids.

More retailer problems:

Hayward, Calif.-based Mervyns LLC, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July, is now liquidating inventory at its remaining 149 stores and winding down its business.

Reading, Pa.-based Boscov's Department Store LLC filed for bankruptcy reorganization in August. Analysts say they are monitoring the York, Pa.-based department store chain Bon-Ton Stores Inc., which has also been struggling.

National chains that have been hammered include Circuit City Stores Inc., which filed for bankruptcy protection in November, said last week it's in talks that could result in a sale or additional financing. Toy seller KB Toys, which filed for bankruptcy in December, is liquidating its stores and will shut down. Goody's Family Clothing announced on Jan. 6 that it was liquidating and on Tuesday it filed for bankruptcy protection.

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Harry & David lays off 100 workers, some ten percent of its regular labor force.
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Auto Industry "Bailout"

The UAW isn't happy it was shut out of the loan deal, but they shouldn't be shocked.

Automobile Industry "Bailout"

Something MUST be done about these assholes who are trying to destroy the American auto industry and American unions. These people are TRAITORS.

Again from that one discussion board whereby the writer rightly says this crisis is inextricably tied to the credit meltdown:

Nobody's buying Hondas or Toyotas these days, either.

Yes, our automakers have some culpability for their current plight. But not totally, and PARTICULARLY not GM. GM tried to move the American auto industry into the 21st century back in the early '60s with some really innovative automobiles, led by the Corvair but also including the Nova and the Pontiac Tempest. Ralph Nader made his name killing off the most innovative of the bunch, the Corvair, a truly fine car, the best subcompact in the world at that time and one of the finest handling off-the-shelf cars ever available in the United States until just recently, and his efforts set back American compact car technology thirty years and allowed Japan to eat our automotive lunch.

A friend of mine had a Corvair and an early Toyota Corona. The Corvair, although five years older, was superior in every way except oil consumption, and when we had a choice we took the Corvair because it was so much more fun and more pleasant to drive. We didn't yet have the hang of aluminum block engines at that time, a problem that also doomed the Vega, an car that was inferior to the Corvair in many ways. The Corona, a '68, was absolutely HORRIBLE, particularly its handling, a problem Toyota didn't solve until 1974.

We also legislatively mandated emissions reduction before the technology existed to accomplish the goals set in the legislation. I do not argue that such legislation was not badly needed at the time, nor do I maintain that American automaker resistance to improvements was a factor in this, but anybody who bought a 1974 American car was left with a great reluctance ever to buy any similar car again. The onset of catalytic converters then made things right, but the public relations damage had been done. And still American technology lagged behind Japan's when it came to smaller cars.

But we also mandated a lot of very weird safety regulations, particularly impacting the design of automotive interiors and adversely affecting comfort. This chased a lot of automakers, particularly those from France and Italy, out of America, and made American cars a lot more dorky compared to their German and Japanese counterparts. Remember, Japanese cars have at their bases the reverse-engineering of German designs, just like Nikons were initially reverse-engineered Leicas. Honda aped BMW, even down to some design specifics like the dashboards. Mazda got its start with the German firm NSU. Toyotas began to negotiate curves when they copied Mercedes suspension designs.

But the rise of SUVs is a relatively recent phenomenon and has resulted largely from marketing. This marketing was augmented in recent years by particularly strange Bush administration policies offering HUGE tax breaks to the purchasers of the biggest and most inefficient SUVs, breaks that, unlike the credits for hybrid cars, are not capped and terminated after the sale of a certain number of units (which Honda and Toyota have already exceeded). It isn't that long ago that "jeeps," which is what we used to call SUVs similarly to the way we call all facial tissues "kleenex" no matter who actually made them, were uncommon and were generally bought only by people who had need for off-road capabilities. Nowadays I doubt that more than 10% of SUVs have ever even been on DIRT roads, much less off-road.

But again, as far as I know, the only automaker actually doing well right now is the AMG subsidiary of Mercedes Benz, because one thing about Great Depressions is that the rich not only still have theirs, they've got yours, too.

But foreign governments ARE rescuing their auto industries, and providing other ongoing advantages to their carmakers as well, most notably their national health care systems that take away from their manufacturers that huge burden that our own industries are expected to bear. Health care alone adds an estimated $1,200 to the price of each American car.

You may have noticed that the chief players obstructing the bailout are from Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina, all home to recently opened assembly plants owned by foreign car companies including Mercedes Benz, Hyundai, BMW, Toyota, Honda and others, whose home countries are heavily subsidizing their carmakers and bailing them out of their current woes with huge infusions of cash. This, my friends, is the very essence of anti-competitive practice, and to have lawmakers from those states carrying out a vendetta against the UAW at the expense of literally MILLIONS of American jobs angers and sickens me.

They bandy about this "$74.00/hr." figure implying that it represents compensation to auto workers. Bullshit! That wildly-inflated figure includes retirement costs for CURRENT retirees no longer working, health care for current workers and retirees, and every other benefit negotiated between the carmakers and the unions. They compare this with a claim of "21.00/hr." average hourly rate for workers at foreign car assembly plants, conveniently ignoring the fact that the retiree population for a plant that only opened in the last decade is far smaller than for the century-old American automakers, and that the plants are largely involved in the mere assembly of foreign-manufactured parts, with far fewer of the higher-paid design and high-tech machine work required to initially make those parts. There are VERY few workers in the UAW earning $148K/yr., even when all their benefits are added into their wages. Furthermore, I doubt that most workers at the MB plant in Alabama are making less than $42K, even in salary alone. The compensation comparison made by Shelby, Corker and others is totally BOGUS.

If it were only car quality at issue, then Honda and Toyota would still be doing well. It is not. New automobile sales depend on the availability of credit, and that availability has largely been curtailed in recent months. American automakers were also hurt badly by $4.20/gal. gasoline last summer, but GM in particular is already deep into the process of retooling for greater fuel efficiency, led by the Volt (which will have an EPA rating over 100 mpg) but including many other models, including the world-class Chevy Malibu. They have also greatly improved their quality, now matching the best from Germany and Japan. It is unfair to blame current management for their plight, a plight shared by every automaker throughout the world.

Foreign carmakers, alas, do not have to deal with obstructionist Republican senators. It will be such a shame if we let these few small-minded, evil-intentioned men destroy the very industry that has played the greatest role to make America a world power. We must not send our automakers into bankruptcy, and we must not allow these rightwing jerks to destroy the UAW.

People should be protesting in the streets over these bastards' actions.

Do you think we are going to get anything passed with these bastards being able to filibuster? No, but they sure are going to make noise about "corruption in Illinois," the latest of which actually began as a Republican plot.

I thought I'd never live to see the day Bush would do something right  as  trying to save the American auto industry. And no doubt many of his advisers believe as Pat Buchanan does that if the GOP ruins the car industry in this country, their party is FINISHED.

Note asshole Corker is from Tennessee, which has foreign-owned auto plants. There is no doubt these bastards are after the unions.

These legislators' careers should be over.

The ongoing debate over the auto bailout has demonstrated the conspiracy of the automakers, the two big business parties and the UAW against the autoworkers. All insist that workers must pay for a crisis that they did not cause, in order to restore the auto companies to profitability so they can once again be a lucrative source of income for corporate executives and big investors who are responsible for the financial catastrophe.

Workers must reject this whole reactionary framework. The alternative to bankruptcy is not never-ending wage and benefit cuts, which do nothing to preserve jobs in any case. Rather, autoworkers must mobilize their independent strength based on an entirely new strategy. The auto companies and the banking system must be taken out of the hands of the wealthy and placed under the democratic control of working people themselves. This requires the building of a mass political party of the working class, based on a socialist and internationalist program, in order to fight for a workers’ government and genuine democratic control over all economic decisions.

American workers being what they are, and the economy being in such horrid shape, won't riot, but if there was ever a justification, this is it.

The UAW needs to nail these southern senators to the wall.The senators are all on the take from foreign automakers, and they are acting like assholes.

I Have Been Asking This Question

all along, and that's why it is the workers, the rank-and-file, have to always be forced into concessions, yet the robber barons practically get away with murder?

It's because economic policies don't favor the huge majority of people; those in power want to retain that power and enrich themselves further at the vast majority's expense. But if anybody DARE raise the obvious problems, they are accused of waging "class warfare," or they are "envious."

The Booming Economy

The UAW, according to the WSWS, appears to want to give its rank-and-file the shaft.

Automobile Industry "Bailout"

Be wary of any "plan" coming down the pikes, as it is obvious some parties in this matter want to destroy the UAW and thus ruin the standard of living of many workers.

Options are being considered. The industry can NOT be allowed to go under; it's inconceivable.

I, too, get too angry for words when I listen to asshole Republicans who clearly have a death wish for their party in claiming GM and the other auto companies should die:

The idea that they would let GM go down is so outrageous it has me screaming at my TV set whenever I see Richard Shelby or Lindsey Graham talking about how GM brought this all on themselves. Look, the Hummers and the Suburbans (and Expeditions and Rams) were absurd vehicles, sure, but how they got here isn't as important as what will happen if they fall. And remember, the government had some culpability in this, exempting SUVs and light trucks from CAFE standards and cutting CAFE standards up into weight classes, and offering BIG tax credits to the purchasers of the biggest and heaviest SUVs.

But Shelby and Graham are acting particularly nasty and hypocritical here. Shelby represents Alabama, home of the BMW plant that builds its R, GL and M class vehicles -- the big, heavy ones. Graham represents South Carolina, where BMW makes its X-class SUVs and the Z4. If our Big Three go down, their states will benefit from the disappearance of major competitors. I am sure that Graham and Shelby are wholly in favor of the EU's and Germany's bailouts of their auto industries.

And of course, Republicans have long lusted for the death of the UAW.

And how ridiculous is it, all this contrived hand-wringing over the CEOs of the Big Three flying to their hastily-scheduled congressional testimony in corporate jets? What did these congressmen expect, that these CEOs would fly into BWI using coach tickets on Southwest, and somehow that would ease GM's, Ford's and Chrysler's financial woes? Jeesh!

The only trouble with this is people can't afford Mercedes Benzes and BMWs. It's stupid on its face, but par for the course for Republicans.

Shelby, Graham, and any other asshole who proposes death to an industry which would result in a great depression should be targeted for defeat when they come up for re-election.

Automobile Industry "Bailout"

Mitt Romney, who may be a presidential candidate in 2012, isn't as big an idiot as Richard Shelby and DOESN'T say at all the auto industry in this country should die; what he thinks should happen is the industry go through "managed bankruptcy."

That sounds better at first, but then realize the goal is to kill the UAW. Not good.

The WSWS is concerned about that very thing.

The UAW

is about to sell workers down the river again--only this time it is with Ford.

As the World Turns.

Workers once again got sold down the river.
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Is a one-time prominent atheist being exploited by the evangelicals?
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This has to be one of the dumbest articles I have ever read.

Who the hell made you god?
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Prince Charles had somebody unsavory sponge off of him.
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Heather shot off her mouth a bit too much, so now Paul wants full custody of their daughter.
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Oh, brother, talk about an anticlimatic article and interview.
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As the World Turns.

Bucking worldwide trends, Mount Shasta in northern California is getting more glaciers.

I wish that mountain and the surrounding area were made into a national park.
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Hollywood writers will go on strike.
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Meanwhile UAW workers are getting the shaft from Chrysler.
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Slots are seen as no sure thing for Pimlico.
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Long Island schools, likes schools all over the country, grapple with the challenge of an explosion of autism cases.
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Just How

did the UAW decided to screw over its membership in the Chrysler issue?

The Booming Economy Casualty List for 10/17-10/25.

Bank of America--3,000 jobs lost

According to this, the UAW doesn't sound like the auto workers' best friend.

In a somewhat related piece, the auto industry faces turmoil.

Let's Hope

the Chrysler agreement is defeated by auto workers.

As the World Turns.

File this under "no shit."
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With friends like the UAW, who needs enemies?
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The Booming Economy Casualty List for 10/4-10/11.

The UAW once again sells out the rank-and-file union members by agreeing to outrageous concessions like a two-tier wage system.

Could GM

workers actually reject that sellout of a contract?