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• Saturday, December 13, 2008 06:38 PM

  What a Delicious Story

  Now let me get this straight. The junior senator from Tennessee, the only new Republican senator in 2006, (He is the Republican class of 06 and hence a man in a hurry or perhaps in fear of extinction)- a millionaire real estate developer, the guy who received quite a bit of cash in his only Senatorial campaign from foreign car companies somehow ended up negotiating this week's car wreck in Congress? Do I smell a whiff of Blago in all of this? Or are former real estate developers the people we really trust nowadays to get the republic's work done? Oh, this is so delicious!

  Seriously though, can anyone (with a modicum of respectability) explain how the wages of union car workers in Detroit differ from non-union car workers, say, in Tennessee? What do the UAW benefits cost per worker? Do the non-union workers get any benefits? Would we as innocent bystanders, but fellow human beings, want the non-union benefits versus the union benefits?

  Also, if you added up the money in tax incentives, or other state-sponsored gifts to the foreign car companies for their setting up in places like Tennessee, what have Tennessee taxpayers already paid to underwrite these cheaper jobs?

  Last, do the Southern senators have no sense of shame? Sure the U.S. car companies have been overly enthusiastic in meeting the weird car needs of American customers. (This mean gas guzzlers, cool trucks with no mileagel) But hey, we are in the depressing recession already. Do we really need to have

  millions of more jobs lost, workers furloughed RIGHT NOW? What's wrong with a short-term fix?

  —BettyDavisEyes Read BettyDavisEyes's other letters
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