nobody's going to be buying cars for the next year anyway, until the economy gets healthy again. the big 3 will spend the money downsizing, shedding unionized american workers, transferring production to cheaper plants.

what we need is a longterm plan to invest in the automakers for 5 or 10 years (i'm not a guru on industrial finances) and turn around their operations so that they're world leaders when the inevitable shift to electric vehicles comes, be it hybrids, plug-in hybrids, fuel cells, hydrogen powered fuel cells, solar powered, whatever; it's absolutely inevitable for any number of reasons, and somebody's going to make huge amounts of money when it happens, and right now it looks like whoever that is will be resident in China, because US investment will never stand for putting money into something for a few years in order to get a bigger payoff later on, and CEOs don't get paid for that. That's the kind of thing national industrial policy is intended to do. So, right now, we've got idle workers and idle facilities lacking capital and customers, we wouldn't have to start from absolute scratch. Or we could do nothing and sink further towards decayed former industrial region status as a national trait. Betcha we take the latter route.

too bad he never figured that out. hey, remember the time Abdul Qadeer Khan surreptitiously exported nuclear weapons technology from Pakistan to Iran and North Korea and who knows who else? And got pardoned by the Pakistani government, because the populace overwhelmingly proclaimed him as a national hero for doing that? Hey remember when Bush couldn't name who was president of Pakistan? And all the Republicans said "big deal, like that's ever going to be important"? Ha ha, good times, good times.

well that's just because you guys won't let us waterboard him and cheney to get evidence, which is a perfectly legal procedure and not torture in any way.

in 2000, powell spoke to the repubs convention, delivering a jeremiad about their leaving black america out. got a big hand, and of course they ignored it.

same in 2004. (for all i know, he delivered the same address pre 2000 as well)

in 2008, he wasn't even asked to speak. sorry Colin, that ship has sailed.

but if reliability of product were the criteria for keeping the workers' jobs, saving the autoworkers would be waaaaaaay ahead of saving the financial workers. the only industry whose products crash more than the financial industry is consumer digital electronics.

hahaha. like you could trust republicans even after you bought them.

"In October 1980, PATCO [Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization] met with candidate Reagan and explained their issues and concerns to him. He wrote them a letter agreeing to support them and address their concerns if elected. Subsequently, PATCO was one of the very few labor unions that endorsed his candidacy (the others being the Teamsters and the Air Line Pilots Association)." http://www.massnurses.org/labor/education/2006/sept/patco.htm

"Two days after PATCO's illegal Aug. 3, 1981, walkout over pay scales, benefits and working conditions, an angry President ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to fire 11,345 strikers and hire replacements. Only about 500 PATCO members were rehired; the rest are permanently blackballed."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,962487,00.html

top UAW members' wage is $28 per hour.

average GM worker's pay is $39.68 per hour, including base pay, overtime, shift differential, vacation pay, etc. http://www.media.gm.com/manufacturing/handbook/other_benefits.pdf that works out to 64K per year.

where does the bogus 150K/90K number come from? republican fuzzy math. Total labor costs per hour are that $39.68 plus "$33.58 in benefits for each active hour worked" http://www.media.gm.com/manufacturing/handbook/other_benefits.pdf (which is still less than $120k per year, of course)

breaking down that $33.58:

first: legally required benefits like SS, medicare, unemployment, workmans' comp, etc.

second: other benefits; healthcare, pension, disability, etc.

third: payments to retired workers for pensions and healthcare.

note that third item: payments to RETIRED workers. even for a republican it's hard to claim that payments to thousands of folks who were working 20 years ago constitute pay to a much smaller number workers who are currently working. if you wanted to, you could calculate what the annual compensation for those retired workers was, including their current payments, but that's not what's being argued.

GM et al never said they were paying $73 an hour to current employees. They said, their total labor costs were $73 an hour currently worked. "The new cost includes laborers' wages of $29.78 per hour, plus benefits, pensions and the cost of providing health care to more than 432,000 GM retirees, GM spokesman Tony Sapienza said." http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081119/fact_check_autos_labor_costs.html?.v=1

when you exclude those payments to retirees from current wages and benefits, in fact the difference in total compensation between UAW workers and nonunion workers at Toyota or Honda in the south ends up being only a couple bucks an hour.

of course, to a diehard republican, it makes total sense to financially penalize current blue collar workers for payments to former employees, contracted to by the employer. whereas, of course, to cover the retirees' healthcare and pension from federal taxes, would be socialist redistribution of wealth, etc. etc. etc.

(thanks, second city tv)

"there wasn't a used diaper handy"

"oh, of course".

"because there aren't any pies to be found in Iraq any more"

"oh, of course"

"aha! the WMD are found at last!"

the only decent way to choose somebody to get close to is to hang out with them in a bunch of friends and get to know them. that goes for a sexual or nonsexual relationship with either gender.

shouldn't throw shoes.

(no deeper meaning, just a cheap punnish joke)