@elephantman

I must give you credit for sheer gumption. You are wrong about every thing. You are on the wrong side of every issue I can imagine. Yet you go on, like the energizer bunny, blindly, blatantly wrong.

How'd Sarah Palin work out for you?

-- Christopher Michael Neill

I give you credit for continuing to mistake me for that law student and blogger who gained fame with his support for Governor Palin. I am not that guy. He is not me. I've made that clear previously, but you are one of the few, so determinedly ignorant, that you continue to not get it.

Remember too that my complaints about things like CAFE are things about which the UAW and the Southern cabal that Salon is now complaining about, were in substantial agreement. It was your team (what team are you on, one might wonder?) the green Democrats from California, Massachusetss and like-minded places, that took their money form the Sierra Club and then insisted on something as dumb as, as unproductive as, and as futile as, "CAFE" standards. A thoroughly responsibility-free way to run a government. Don't tax people's gasoline; tax the automakers, forcing them to make different kinds of cars from what they'd otherwise do in order to make some money.

Maybe, someday, we could discuss this over a drink. You may need a straw.

Maybe the masses of asses who continuously vote against their own interests will finally get the message " Republicans hate the working man" unless he is /she is a low paying , non union worker (ala Walmart). To see those hypocritical Senators pick on hourly workers and retirees, yet say NOTHING about six figured whit collared Wall Street crooks should make any thinking person sick to death.

Why don't they figure in the millions of tax breaks given those foreign manufacturers to locate their factories in those districts. Forget about the 'Pay for Play' in Mich. I would love to know what those clowns got out of those locations. Someone please investigate that.

This is Union Busting in the best tradition of Ronald Reagan.

$9/hour is the difference between the cost (wage plus benefits) of a UAW Ford worker and that of a worker at US-based Japanese car plants.

This $9/hour figure comes directly from a graphic at the link you provide to an NY Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html

In terms of percentages, the UAW worker costs 20% more in wage plus benefits per hour than the worker at a US-based Japanese car plant.

It's fact, not union bashing, to say that erasing this 20% differential would help make the Big 3 more competitive.

At this point, the position of the Unions has become ridiculous. American auto companies have been driven to the edge of bankruptcy by the completely unsustainable health and retirement benefits which the Unions have negotiated for themselves. What Corker is saying is that if the American companies want a bailout, they must reduce union wages and benefits to a level competitive with the foreign manufacturers who operate in this country. If the Unions insist upon uncompetitive wages and benefits, it would be irresponsible to subsidize them with taxpayers' money.

After all they themselves are running the country in a deficit situation. Maybe we should ask the Chinese to put the arm on them.

2004

CEO/average worker salary ratio

Japan: 11:1

US: 475:1

http://www.cab.latech.edu/~mkroll/510_papers/fall_05/Group6.pdf

How about in exchange, the Unions insist that every Southern State gets Washington dollars with parity to what the Midwest gets back. Program by Program. While we are at it, insist that their academic standards are on parity with Northern states, especially when it comes to No Child Left Behind. Let's see how their schools operate once their funding gets cut when they need to stop cooking their academic books.

While we are at it, let's make sure the South gets Disaster Funding at the same rate as the Midwest, and let's make sure no Southern State can insist that Insurance Companies stay in their states at losses while bailing out their hurricanes underwritten by and large, by the Midwest and the Northeast. And let's make sure, once the supply chain collapses, we really remember this when their states fall back into the Depression.

OUR CEO's are TALENTED! Talent I say!

By the way, I voted for you in 1980.

In fact we should set absolute fixed wages for every job in America. As well as all prices, for everything. It would save us the complication of worrying about population migrations for the most part, for economic reasons, citizen.

If the GOP really wanted to help American workers, they would deport all them illegal immigrants so us "most productive workers in the universe" could grab us one of them tasty $4/hour strawberry-pickin jobs, some of which include affordable tent rentals!

Oh, why can't the UAW just shut up and thank God for whatever pennies the overlords are willing to toss over the side of the castle?

but it just didn't work out

CEO/average worker salary ratio

Japan: 11:1

US: 475:1

In other words, a mediocre CEO of a mediocre company makes more on a afternoon of bad duffer golf than any of his minions makes with a year's toil.

Such a sheeple deserves to be shorn. Fleeced, in fact.

Yes I did see Elephantman trying to lump the Dems in as enemies of Detroit for supporting CAFE standards. Those oppossed to CAFE standards were Oil Companies, CEO's of the big 3 and Republicans. So the Dems were hurting Detroit by pushing for higher gas mileage standards? Do you really think this Elephantman?

If the big 3 had been forced to make cars that got over 40 mpg where would they be today?

The Republicans and Oil companies gave us a bankrupt economy and $4.00 a gallon gas. Remember Detroit CEO's, that Oil Companies and Republicanss were on your side when it came to stopping any CAFE standards. Now that Detroit is about to go belly up because of the double whammy of people being broke and not wanting cars that get less the 20 mpg they want some help to climb out of a hole.

Well guess who is standing at the top of the hole kicking you in the face to ensure you don't get out of it?

Oh and on a side note a lot of economic probles our businesses face are because of a lack of nationalized health care. For our businesses to be competitive in any way we need to cut out the HMO's and Health Services companies that leech about 30% from every health care dollar while providing nothing and go to single payer healthcare.