Sigh... Are people just intentionally blind to the realities of what's going on...?

i may have taken a break from posting but it's really hard to take a break from reality... after a long, three-leg flight back from pennsylvania, we arrived only to find that our bags - for a party of five, that would be EIGHT bags! - didn't arrive with us... as we were filing the missing bag report, there was a couple in front of us doing the same thing... as i listened to the conversation between them and the agent i overheard this...

agent: there was a big mess in los angeles today with the tsa... they were inspecting every bag and it's been giving us lots of problems...

woman: yes, and that's what they intended when they did their little stunt in detroit... just because we don't believe in the same god they do... and WE get to pay the price...

oh, fer god's sake, woman...! are you willfully blind or simply missing some critical brain cells...? YOU'RE missing a couple of bags, WE'RE KILLING THEM AND THEIR CHILDREN and YOU'RE angry because WE'RE paying the PRICE...? i bit my tongue because i knew if i said something, there was a good chance i would quickly devolve into an ugly rage and that wouldn't do anything but make things worse...

when is this insanity going to end...?

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

More "I told you so..."

see previous post...

Auto bailout's death seen as a Republican blow at unions
For some Senate Republicans, a vote against the bailout was a vote against the United Auto Workers, and against organized labor in general.

sometimes, it's no fun to be right...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Why did it take so long for everybody to figure out the whole deal was to break the autoworkers' union and the pension fund?

i don't intend to break my arm patting myself on the back, but i called this quite some time back, all the way back to 19 november and again on the 24th... it just seemed too goddam obvious that the entire repub resistance to an auto industry bailout was predicated on pounding the union autoworkers into fine, powdery dust and rendering their pension plan insolvent... well, now EVERYBODY'S waking up to that sordid scenario but, no surprise, perhaps the most eloquent is none other than flint, michigan's finest, michael moore...

Friends,

They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers start building only cars and mass transit that reduce our dependency on oil.

They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers build cars that reduce global warming.

They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers withdraw their many lawsuits against state governments in their attempts to not comply with our environmental laws.

They could have given the loan on the condition that the management team which drove these once-great manufacturers into the ground resign and be replaced with a team who understands the transportation needs of the 21st century.

Yes, they could have given the loan for any of these reasons because, in the end, to lose our manufacturing infrastructure and throw 3 million people out of work would be a catastrophe.

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.

We have a little more than a month to go of this madness. As I sit here in Michigan today, tens of thousands of hard working, honest, decent Americans do not believe they can make it to January 20th. The malaise here is astounding. Why must they suffer because of the mistakes of every CEO from Roger Smith to Rick Wagoner? Make management and the boards of directors and the shareholders pay for this.

Of course that is heresy to the 31 Republicans who decided to blame the poor, miserable autoworkers for this mess. And our wonderful media complied with their spin on the morning news shows: "UAW Refuses to Give Concessions Killing Auto Bailout Bill." In fact the UAW has given concession after concession, reduced their benefits, agreed to get rid of the Jobs Bank and agreed to make it harder for their retirees to live from week to week. Yes! That's what we need to do! It's the Jobs Bank and the old people who have led the nation to economic ruin!

But even doing all that wasn't enough to satisfy the bastard Republicans. These Senate vampires wanted blood. Blue collar blood. You see, they weren't opposed to the bailout because they believed in the free market or capitalism. No, they were opposed to the bailout because they're opposed to workers making a decent wage. In their rage, they were driven to destroy the backbone of this country, not because the UAW hadn't given back enough, but because the UAW hadn't given up.

It appears that the sitting President has been looking for a way to end his reign by one magnanimous act, just like a warlord on his feast day. He will put his finger in the dyke, and the fragile mess of an auto industry will eke through the next few months.

That will give the Senate enough time to demand that the bankers and investment sharks who've already swiped nearly half of the $700 billion gift a chance to make the offer of cutting their pay.

yep, it's blue collar blood they smell and they aren't going to rest until the streets of detroit are running red with the stuff... as i've said before, i'm not a proponent of bailouts, but i AM a passionate advocate of the poor working stiffs that are the backbone of any business, the very folks that get the short end of the stick at every turn...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Another HUGE bank bailout - Citi - goes down while the autoworkers get thrown to the wolves

yeah, i think my original take on why the super-rich elites are so vehemently opposed to bailing out detroit turned out to be more than prescient... if the automakers are forced into bankruptcy, the first thing they will do is go in front of the bankruptcy judge and seek massive union concessions, amend contracts and generally toss the unions out on the street... the second thing they will do is to declare themselves unable to meet their pension liabilities and shove them over to the pension benefits guaranty corporation in yet ANOTHER taxpayer bailout... this entire scenario was written in first draft by ronald reagan when he broke the back of the air traffic controllers union, and was refined during the spate of airline bankruptcies following 9/11...

ask yourself, why is it so easy for citi to get a bailout and so hard for the automakers...? what other rational explanation is there...?

what a crock o'shit...

Federal regulators approved a radical plan to stabilize Citigroup in an arrangement in which the government could soak up billions of dollars in losses at the struggling bank, the government announced late Sunday night.

The complex plan calls for the government to back about $306 billion in loans and securities and directly invest about $20 billion in the company. The plan, emerging after a harrowing week in the financial markets, is the government’s third effort in three months to contain the deepening economic crisis and may set the precedent for other multibillion-dollar financial rescues.

and the crock o'shit do overfloweth...

The senior Republican on the Banking Committee said Wednesday he doesn't believe there will be a turnaround in the troubled U.S. auto industry until its top management is ousted and its manufacturing operations are revamped.

"I don't think they have immediate plans to change their model, which is a model of failure," Sen. Richard Shelby said, a day after the top executives of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler came to Congress to plead for a $25 billion "bridge loan" to avert layoffs and plant closings.

"I think a lot of it will be life support," Shelby, R-Ala., said. "I believe their best option would be some type of Chapter 11 bankruptcy ... These leaders have been failures and they need to go."

and, why, i ask you, shouldn't the top management of citi ALSO have to go...? what, pray tell, is the difference between the super-rich elites who control the u.s. auto industry and the super-rich elites who run the banking industry...? the former has unions and the latter doesn't, that's what... if the automakers go bankrupt, those super-rich bastards calling the shots will still come out whole, the auto industry will still lumber along, but the back of the auto workers union will be broken which, after all, is the fundamental goal of this despicable continuing effort to pound the blue-collar american worker into senseless, silent, obedient servitude...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

'Scuse me, but I have a VERY strong suspicion about WHY there's opposition to an automaker bailout

yes, i'm cynical, but you already knew that...

i was watching cnn last evening where paulson and bernanke were testifying before congress on the bailout... this was interspersed with stories about the big three automakers also scheduled to appear with hat in hand... now, i don't know about you, but i've been watching our - taxpayers' - money being handed out by the billions to banks, insurance companies, investment brokers and damn near everybody else that passes by, and i was sitting there trying to make sense out of why, fercryinoutloud, our super-rich elites, personified by paulson and bernanke, people who've been so free with our money up to now, were suddenly so hard over against helping detroit... then it dawned on me...

what sets detroit's situation apart from the banks, insurance companies, etc...? hmmmmmm...?? think about it... yep, that's right... unions AND a very large, blue-collar labor force... what is it that our elite, corporatist, super-rich overlords hate beyond almost everything else...? hmmmmmmm...? that's right... unions... who works for banks, insurance companies and investment brokers...? hmmmmmm...?? the super-rich power brokers, that's who... why would these people who are so busy feeding at the taxpayer trough pass up the chance to completely destroy the unions AND take out a large swath of the u.s. middle class in one fell swoop...? what a golden opportunity...!

don't get me wrong... i'm not favoring a detroit bailout... i'm just trying to understand an apparent contradiction... why is aig "too big to fail," but detroit, with almost three million jobs at stake, can be flushed down the toilet without a backward glance...?

just sayin'...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments