Republicans: Not our fault

[Ravi]

No, and why you even asked that question is beyond my comprehension.

Us Southerners have been buying pick ups to haul around the trash we buy at Walmart all along so you can thank us for propping up the economy thus far, but you can't blame retailers if people can't afford to buy anything.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

No, but they made themselves fail.

Didn't you previously support bailing them out? Have you seen the light or something?

 

[del]

I think it is a loan, and not a bail out. Look around, Del, almost every company is starting to falter because of the state of the economy.

These companies are no more at fault for the economy than the airlines were at fault for 9/11.

i never said they were at fault for the economy, but they have continued to build shitty, gas guzzling cars without regard to the environmental and economic impact. they made their bed.

 

[dilloduck]

Didn't you previously support bailing them out? Have you seen the light or something?

His portfolio has a new look to it !

 

[Ravi]

The difference is viability. The deal last night and the deal with bankruptcy is to get to a point of viability. If you can't get to that place, then it's just a welfare program for the auto companies and their workers.

The UAW who has benefits that are greater than their salaries at this point (who else here can say that?) Refused to budge on anything. That issue alone prevented a deal last night. Everyone else was willing to bargain, but not them. Now, why shouldn't they live like the rest of us? Why are the UAW members so much better than us? Why should we, who don't have it as good as them subsidize their intransigence?

I don't think you are correct. The UAW has agreed to take cuts but they wanted a couple of years to phase in the cuts and the Republicans wanted them to do it tomorrow.

You also can't blame the UAW for the failing economy.

 

[Ravi]

i never said they were at fault for the economy, but they have continued to build shitty, gas guzzling cars without regard to the environmental and economic impact. they made their bed.

lol, the environment??? Who are you?

Someone posted the profits from the big three the other day and they were actually operating at a profit until people stopped spending money and banks stopped loaning it.

 

[del]

lol, the environment??? Who are you?

fuck you.

 

[Tech_Esq]

I don't think you are correct. The UAW has agreed to take cuts but they wanted a couple of years to phase in the cuts and the Republicans wanted them to do it tomorrow.

You also can't blame the UAW for the failing economy.

I didn't blame the UAW for the failing economy. And, nice misrepresenting, the Pubs didn't want it now, they wanted a "date certain" in 2009 when the UAW would be willing to make the cuts. The UAW said their contract runs to 2011, thanks.

 

[DavidS]

Didn't you previously support bailing them out? Have you seen the light or something?

Have you been paying attention? My mind changed a month and a half ago when I read an article quoting GM CEO Wagnor saying that bankruptcy was not an option and that by next year things will have turned around. The article was written in 2005.

If GM had been doing fine, had viable business, sales had been great, increasing year by year, etc. and then all of a sudden the credit crunch slaughtered them, I would be in favor of a bailout. But GM has been doing terribly for years and every year they keep saying "Next year we'll be fine!"

Sick and tired of hearing about it.

 

[sealybobo]

I think it is a loan, and not a bail out. Look around, Del, almost every company is starting to falter because of the state of the economy.

These companies are no more at fault for the economy than the airlines were at fault for 9/11.

Did you see this today?



They failed repeatedly to organize the foreign-owned auto plants proliferating down South, even now.

Their political action committee pumped millions -- $1,918,450 this election cycle alone, to be exact -- into the congressional campaigns of Democrats and only $12,500 into Republicans, according to opensecrets.org. In their 1999 contract, they won Election Day off and used it to back their (generally Democratic) candidates, a source of recurring irritation among the southern GOP stalwarts.

They ignored the Republicans, even auto state Republicans, who represent the so-called "New American Manufacturers" in places such as Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama.

Those are the same states whose senators stood astride the $14 billion auto bailout bill Thursday saying, "No" -- imperiling life as generations of United Auto Workers have known it.

Now a federal bailout for Detroit's automakers appears close to dead, delivering a crushing blow to a Michigan economy reeling from high unemployment, skyrocketing home foreclosures and sagging tax revenue. The obstructionists: southern Republicans determined to use a financial crisis to rework corporate balance sheets and rewrite collective bargaining agreements on their terms and timetables.

Paybacks can be hell when business meets politics, as union leaders, their members and tens of thousands of folks associated with the Detroit-based auto industry are seeing clearly in the wrangling to craft an emergency bill to throw lifelines to beleaguered General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

Stripped bare and put in the regional context of union vs. nonunion and domestic vs. foreign, the toughened conditions pushed by Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., are legislative cruise missiles aimed directly at Detroit's business model, the UAW's Solidarity House and 70 years of Big Three bargaining tradition.

Radical change for the UAW

How could they be anything else? Immediately match the pay and benefits of foreign-owned automakers operating in the South, his terms say. Reduce your expectations for Big Three contributions to the barely funded retiree health care fund and take some in stock. Eliminate the Jobs Bank and supplemental unemployment benefits.

And if UAW and company bargainers can't get there by a March deadline -- along with concessions from bondholders, management, shareholders and suppliers -- GM and Chrysler must seek federal bankruptcy protection like almost every other private-sector player would under similar circumstances.

That's tough-minded business, to be sure. Understandable, too, given Detroit's glacial pace of change. It's also a naked attempt to use the credit-induced crisis swallowing the Detroit Three to radically restructure their bloated labor costs, rework their debt-laden balance sheets in 60 days or less and, perhaps, put one or more of them into bankruptcy, if not liquidation.

"I don't think the southern senators understand this isn't a Japanese and Big Three thing," says Gregory Raymond, a member of UAW Local 372 who works at Chrysler's Trenton Engine plant. "It's an American thing. All auto companies use the same suppliers and they're all going to suffer if the supply base goes down."

Except Corker & Co. don't buy it and I'm not sure they care. To him and Republican Senate colleagues such as Alabama's Richard Shelby and Kentucky's Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, the desperation of Detroit and the UAW vindicates the superiority of the nonunion, lower-cost, foreign-owned auto industry growing in Alabama and Tennessee even as Big Auto stagnates in the union strongholds of Michigan and Ohio.

Like the green Democrats in the House eager to coerce Detroit into hybridizing entire product portfolios irrespective of market demands, capital needs or oil prices, the southern Republicans see a win for the home team in subjecting the northern competition to the corporate equivalent of chemo: To survive, endure the painful therapy.

No unions, or more unions?

Detroit Bubble, meet the Bigger America. Cynics might suspect parallel agendas in the South's legislative hammer -- agreement on cost parity by March or bankruptcy. How? Because the auto bosses have long wanted to break the union, the thinking goes, and the southerners are happy to oblige.

But there's another possible outcome here, one maybe overlooked by a GOP wing in smackdown mode. Contrary to the tired stereotypes coming daily from Washington, President Ron Gettelfinger's UAW is well on its way to helping Detroit's automakers achieve wage and benefit parity with foreign-owned rivals operating in the United States.

Come next month, amid recession anxiety, job losses and widespread distrust of business, the union and others like it are poised to reap the political benefit of having bigger Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and a labor-friendly Democrat in the White House.

The president-elect and the congressional Democrats all have signaled a willingness to pass labor's top legislative priority -- the so-called "card check" legislation, which would essentially abolish secret ballots and make organizing easier. Everywhere.

If it passes, I'm betting the first stops on the UAW's southern swing will be auto plants in Shelby's Alabama and Corker's Tennessee, soon to be home to Volkswagen AG's first U.S. plant in a generation.

Let the paybacks begin.

 

[catzmeow]

No, and from what I understand they were actually making a profit and out-performing their Asian competitors of late.

You mean like the ill-fated Hummer line?

 

[Jon]

I'm glad the Republicans stood up and made the right choice. I wish they would have done the same on the bank bailout.

 

[Tech_Esq]

Did you see this today?



They failed repeatedly to organize the foreign-owned auto plants proliferating down South, even now.

Their political action committee pumped millions -- $1,918,450 this election cycle alone, to be exact -- into the congressional campaigns of Democrats and only $12,500 into Republicans, according to opensecrets.org. In their 1999 contract, they won Election Day off and used it to back their (generally Democratic) candidates, a source of recurring irritation among the southern GOP stalwarts.

They ignored the Republicans, even auto state Republicans, who represent the so-called "New American Manufacturers" in places such as Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama.

Those are the same states whose senators stood astride the $14 billion auto bailout bill Thursday saying, "No" -- imperiling life as generations of United Auto Workers have known it.

Now a federal bailout for Detroit's automakers appears close to dead, delivering a crushing blow to a Michigan economy reeling from high unemployment, skyrocketing home foreclosures and sagging tax revenue. The obstructionists: southern Republicans determined to use a financial crisis to rework corporate balance sheets and rewrite collective bargaining agreements on their terms and timetables.

Paybacks can be hell when business meets politics, as union leaders, their members and tens of thousands of folks associated with the Detroit-based auto industry are seeing clearly in the wrangling to craft an emergency bill to throw lifelines to beleaguered General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

Stripped bare and put in the regional context of union vs. nonunion and domestic vs. foreign, the toughened conditions pushed by Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., are legislative cruise missiles aimed directly at Detroit's business model, the UAW's Solidarity House and 70 years of Big Three bargaining tradition.

Radical change for the UAW

How could they be anything else? Immediately match the pay and benefits of foreign-owned automakers operating in the South, his terms say. Reduce your expectations for Big Three contributions to the barely funded retiree health care fund and take some in stock. Eliminate the Jobs Bank and supplemental unemployment benefits.

And if UAW and company bargainers can't get there by a March deadline -- along with concessions from bondholders, management, shareholders and suppliers -- GM and Chrysler must seek federal bankruptcy protection like almost every other private-sector player would under similar circumstances.

That's tough-minded business, to be sure. Understandable, too, given Detroit's glacial pace of change. It's also a naked attempt to use the credit-induced crisis swallowing the Detroit Three to radically restructure their bloated labor costs, rework their debt-laden balance sheets in 60 days or less and, perhaps, put one or more of them into bankruptcy, if not liquidation.

"I don't think the southern senators understand this isn't a Japanese and Big Three thing," says Gregory Raymond, a member of UAW Local 372 who works at Chrysler's Trenton Engine plant. "It's an American thing. All auto companies use the same suppliers and they're all going to suffer if the supply base goes down."

Except Corker & Co. don't buy it and I'm not sure they care. To him and Republican Senate colleagues such as Alabama's Richard Shelby and Kentucky's Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, the desperation of Detroit and the UAW vindicates the superiority of the nonunion, lower-cost, foreign-owned auto industry growing in Alabama and Tennessee even as Big Auto stagnates in the union strongholds of Michigan and Ohio.

Like the green Democrats in the House eager to coerce Detroit into hybridizing entire product portfolios irrespective of market demands, capital needs or oil prices, the southern Republicans see a win for the home team in subjecting the northern competition to the corporate equivalent of chemo: To survive, endure the painful therapy.

No unions, or more unions?

Detroit Bubble, meet the Bigger America. Cynics might suspect parallel agendas in the South's legislative hammer -- agreement on cost parity by March or bankruptcy. How? Because the auto bosses have long wanted to break the union, the thinking goes, and the southerners are happy to oblige.

But there's another possible outcome here, one maybe overlooked by a GOP wing in smackdown mode. Contrary to the tired stereotypes coming daily from Washington, President Ron Gettelfinger's UAW is well on its way to helping Detroit's automakers achieve wage and benefit parity with foreign-owned rivals operating in the United States.

Come next month, amid recession anxiety, job losses and widespread distrust of business, the union and others like it are poised to reap the political benefit of having bigger Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and a labor-friendly Democrat in the White House.

The president-elect and the congressional Democrats all have signaled a willingness to pass labor's top legislative priority -- the so-called "card check" legislation, which would essentially abolish secret ballots and make organizing easier. Everywhere.

If it passes, I'm betting the first stops on the UAW's southern swing will be auto plants in Shelby's Alabama and Corker's Tennessee, soon to be home to Volkswagen AG's first U.S. plant in a generation.

Let the paybacks begin.

And this is what the Dems don't ever seem to understand. There are constituencies that vote or spend 90% plus to one party, so why should the other party give a shit about them. This article is a case in point. UAW spends almost $2 million on Dem election campaigns. Now the Repubs got them by the short hairs and guess what? They aren't sympathetic to their cause, well gee....I fucking wonder why. Maybe because the unions have done every thing they can to tear down the Repub party.

"Well if you want to pee on my organization, now it's time for us to pee on your organization," is what those pols are looking at. The unions don't like it, maybe they need to get a little dose of reality and start listening to their membership, a lot of whom are repubs and start doing a little representative supporting. Cuz right now, there isn't a single Repub that owes them a thing.

 

[Ravi]

Let the paybacks begin.

I have to agree with a lot of this. The Republicans have wanted to destroy the unions for years (so much for keeping government out of the market, huh...here they want to dictate what employees can be paid, it's quite funny). And I wouldn't put political payback to a couple of states past them, one of them being Michigan, since Michigan has pretty much turned their backs on the GOP (look how the GOP treated New Orleans when they had a Dem Gov and Mayor). But even if they think they are helping Toyota and Honda take over the automobile market, I'm not so sure it will work. Toyota isn't doing so well itself, BECAUSE of the economy. It will be interesting to see if Japan bails out Toyota and Honda if need be.

 

[Ravi]

You mean like the ill-fated Hummer line?

No, that wasn't one of their profitable lines...at least not after the under-endowed snapped up the first production run.

 

[Tech_Esq]

I have to agree with a lot of this. The Republicans have wanted to destroy the unions for years (so much for keeping government out of the market, huh...here they want to dictate what employees can be paid, it's quite funny). And I wouldn't put political payback to a couple of states past them, one of them being Michigan, since Michigan has pretty much turned their backs on the GOP (look how the GOP treated New Orleans when they had a Dem Gov and Mayor). But even if they think they are helping Toyota and Honda take over the automobile market, I'm not so sure it will work. Toyota isn't doing so well itself, BECAUSE of the economy. It will be interesting to see if Japan bails out Toyota and Honda if need be.

So the Repubs should allow the unions to try to destroy their party, but the they should stand by and do nothing? Perhaps blithely ignoring the fact that the unions are peeing on their leg?

Is that about right? Well, it sounds like, as Reverend Wright would say, "The chickheeeennnnns arrrreeeee cominnng home to ROOOOOSSSSST!!!!" Roughly translated.

 

[WillowTree]

So the Repubs should allow the unions to try to destroy their party, but the they should stand by and do nothing? Perhaps blithely ignoring the fact that the unions are peeing on their leg?

Is that about right? Well, it sounds like, as Reverend Wright would say, "The chickheeeennnnns arrrreeeee cominnng home to ROOOOOSSSSST!!!!" Roughly translated.

dayyyyyumm I love it when yer mad..

 

[sealybobo]

And this is what the Dems don't ever seem to understand. There are constituencies that vote or spend 90% plus to one party, so why should the other party give a shit about them. This article is a case in point. UAW spends almost $2 million on Dem election campaigns. Now the Repubs got them by the short hairs and guess what? They aren't sympathetic to their cause, well gee....I fucking wonder why. Maybe because the unions have done every thing they can to tear down the Repub party.

"Well if you want to pee on my organization, now it's time for us to pee on your organization," is what those pols are looking at. The unions don't like it, maybe they need to get a little dose of reality and start listening to their membership, a lot of whom are repubs and start doing a little representative supporting. Cuz right now, there isn't a single Repub that owes them a thing.

Just remember the last part of that story.

Let the paybacks begin.

Come January 20th, 2009, we'll be in charge. Remember how evil Tom Delay was to Democrats when he ruled? We haven't forgotten.

 

[Tech_Esq]

Just remember the last part of that story.

Let the paybacks begin.

Come January 20th, 2009, we'll be in charge. Remember how evil Tom Delay was to Democrats when he ruled? We haven't forgotten.

You don't need to threaten, we already know how evil you fuckers are. There was never any doubt what the needledicks were going to do when they got back in charge. That's why 56 million people sucked it up and voted for McCain even though it gave them gangrene of the finger to do it.

 

[Ravi]

So the Repubs should allow the unions to try to destroy their party, but the they should stand by and do nothing? Perhaps blithely ignoring the fact that the unions are peeing on their leg?

Is that about right? Well, it sounds like, as Reverend Wright would say, "The chickheeeennnnns arrrreeeee cominnng home to ROOOOOSSSSST!!!!" Roughly translated.

Now the unions are destroying the Republican party? That's too fucking funny.