go figure even a stopped clock is right twice a day

Post #301,004 by boxley 12/12/08 4:30:11 PM Reply	go figure even a stopped clock is right twice a day But instead, the Senate said, we'll give you the loan only if the factory workers take a $20 an hour cut in wages, pension and health care. That's right. After giving BILLIONS to Wall Street hucksters and criminal investment bankers -- billions with no strings attached and, as we have since learned, no oversight whatsoever -- the Senate decided it is more important to break a union, more important to throw middle class wage earners into the ranks of the working poor than to prevent the total collapse of industrial America. http://michaelmoore....message/index.php Indeed
Post #301,018 by Ashton 12/13/08 12:43:08 AM Reply	Sen. Dodd decries niggardly Repo natterings http://firedoglake.c...to-screw-workers/ Senator Dodd Angered by Republican Desire to Screw Workers By: Gregg Levine Friday December 12, 2008 9:22 pm Senator Christopher Dodd spoke to the press Friday afternoon about last nightÂs Republican shenanigans and made some very important points: Â Worker salaries make up a tiny fraction of the financial challenge facing the automakers. Â The UAW had already agreed to achieve Âcompatibility and comparabilityÂ by MarchÂa major concession. Â We still have the opportunity to fix this and the obligation to try. Â It is ÂincredibleÂ that the one demand put above all others by Republicans during this negotiation is that workers, who have already been hurt badly by the declining economy, should take another hit. Indeed, it is absolutely incredible. As Sen. Dodd told NPR on Friday, there was a part of the minority that was Âset on having this deal blow up.Â DoddÂs complexion in this video might be an indication of just how furious he is over this Republican stunt, or it might be the result of bad lighting or a camera that wasnÂt white balancedÂeither way, selfish and cynical Senate Republicans have left us all seeing red. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. -- H.L. Mencken
Post #301,023 by boxley 12/13/08 9:24:04 AM Reply	left a rip snorter on the recently re-elected repo answering machine, will be interesting to see if I get a call back on the parity of insisting that bankers and nabobs get a 40% pay cut or give us the money back
Post #301,024 by a6l6e6x 12/13/08 9:47:09 AM Reply	I have no problem with UAW pay being brought in line with... Toyota and Honda workers pay. Provided, of course, that the management pay follow Toyota and Honda's management pay policies, i.e. no more than 100 times of the lowest paid employee. Also, twice a year, Toyota has given its hourly employees bonuses. It's a culture thing. Heck, the CEO of JAL (Japan Airines) doesn't get paid as much as some of the senior pilots. Alex
Post #301,026 by Silverlock 12/13/08 10:08:27 AM Reply	top exec compensation I think you'll find the wage disparity at Toyota/Honda is more around 40 times what hourly workers make. US based corps top execs? 300 to 400 times what hourly workers make.
Post #301,058 by Ashton 12/14/08 3:43:03 AM Reply	Further.. on the conflicts of interest bizness-as-usual http://www.salon.com...source=newsletter Meet the GOP's wrecking crew Why did a small group of Southern Republicans turn the auto bailout into a demolition derby? Introducing the senators who hate unions and love foreign cars. By Alex Koppelman and Mike Madden Dec. 13, 2008 \| WASHINGTON -- On July 15, Bob Corker was a happy man. "I cannot think of a more exciting day, even more so than Election Night, for me," the Republican senator from Tennessee said in a conference call that day. The reason for his elation was the announcement that Volkswagen, lured by up to $500 million worth of incentives from the state government, had agreed to build a $1 billion plant near Chattanooga, Tenn. That is, not just in his home state, but in the suburbs of the city he once served as mayor. Add VW to Nissan, which already has two plants and its North American headquarters in Tennessee, and you begin to see why Corker was so aggressive this month about trying to block -- or at least dramatically rewrite -- a proposal to float billions of dollars in emergency loans to domestic automakers. Most of the focus during this debate has been on lawmakers who represent Michigan, the home of the Big Three -- Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. But Corker represents the other side of the coin: Tennessee and other Southern states have recently come to depend on foreign automakers and their non-union factories. If you're from those parts, what's good for American car companies may no longer be what's good for the country -- because your economy now depends on their foreign competitors instead. [More ...] {sigh} Impending implosion is not even on the radar for a significant number of "representatives", it appears. 'Course how could a little election suddenly alter the %corruption in this declining corporatocracy? [rhetorical question == Duh.] We may remain as fucked as all the owl-entrails have been telling US. But let's, at the very least ... not feign surprise at predictable machinations of the forces already coalescing to torpedo [remember the Clinton instant-hate from square-one?] as much as can Be torpedoed. Scheisse.. mobs&torches even before Jan. 20?

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