The UAW is one of the chief reasons Detroit is in such a shambles. Thousands of GM workers are paid full salary and benefits to not work, all part of the UAW contract. How can any industry be profitable when it has to haul this ball-and-chain around? Until the insane union contracts are renegotiated in light of global economic realities, the bailout money is a mere band aid on a sucking chest wound.

The Big 3 can file for Ch. 11 bankruptcy protection like every other industry in order to have breathing room to recover. But that would nullify all the union contracts and the unions would lose their influence. The Dems are not bailing out GM, Ford and Chrysler. They're bailing out the UAW.

Good riddance to them all, greedy bastards.

IF the 3 die (and although I am most definitely not desiring that even if Wagoner et al's heads are the first on the pikes), these dems will at least have the spine to point to the perps. People like this charming republican who "loves America" so much, he loves it to death.

The loss of all the jobs is going to be huge drag on the US economy, sending it in exactly the wrong direction. In hindsight, this lack of some sort of support for Detroit will look just as foolish as disbanding the Iraqi Army. In principle, both have merit. In actuality, both are insane.

I too have gone back and forth on bailing out / nationalizing the big 3 auto companies. But given the news yesterday of an additional 10 billio going to AIG to cover bets on markets that didn't even have any securities behind them I have come round.

I want to see a Republican senator having to stand and talk from now till Jan 2. Make it a REAL filibuster. I am sick and tired of the country thinking that everything in the senate needs 60 votes to pass. Make them explain for days on end why it's better to pay all the unemployment benefits that will stack up when the manufacturers fail. Then we really will be paying people to not work.

Yes, the top management of the big three automakers have been making stupid decisions for years along with most other short sighted executives in the US.

It only seems that way. The truth is very different. I've touched on this in several previous comments, which I'm considering paraphrasing into a book chapter, with footnotes.

What appears to be stupidity is actually the result of certaom constraints on industry, not so much the unions as getting their strings pulled by the US government, Big Oil, and especially Wall Street. Their CEOs are anything but independent actors. They're in large part told what to do. The auto market can be viciously competitive.

The US auto industry does make mistakes, but not so much in strategic management. Some of their moves over the years have been rather brilliant and have resulted in really spectacular profits. Part of the problem is sustaining profitability when Wall Street is determined to use the industry as a cash cow, limiting reinvestment at the expense of shareholder distributions.

I've found worthwhile research on these issues to be extremely expensive, and you'll find almost none of the real story in the MSM. The general public is seriously, perhaps fatally, ill-informed on these issues, apparently as a matter of long-standing government policies initiated by anti-union conservatives and foreign automakers.

An odd thought process by Andrew Leonard here.

Let's see: GOP senators are influenced only by the cash laid out against them by the UAW, regardless of GM's merits.

On the other hand, Democrats vote impartially without thinking about the UAW cash spent to elect them.

If we subsidize incompetent managers and slacker workers, we will get more of them. Payoffs every six months from now on for no good purpose.

Oh yes, them Union cats that took the corporate jet to Washington to beg. I forgot, see. Yep, and them UAW fat cats forced the automakers into the product choices they've settled on.. trucks and SUVs for everyone. And you believe them fat union cats are just sitting back with glee while the automakers crumble, right? The same unions that will have how many members out of work if all three companies go under? They're the reason why the automakers need money? Wow, I never thought paying employees for their work would make a company go under!

I need to know why you see fit to heap the blame on the unions without mentioning the managers or the executives. Obviously these managers and executives don't get pay raises, benefits, bonuses, or corporate jets to hop around on, do they? They're not costs that ANY company would have to account for. Nope. Its dem unions, and da dems dey support, dur hur hur.

The UAW isn't run by angels, and that isn't what I am saying in this post. What I am saying is that foisting the "chief" amount of blame on the UAW for the mess the automakers are in now is myopic, self-serving, disingenuous, and childish... at best.

Really, I don't understand the political calculus in them opposing the bailout. Most Americans will not ultimately care that much about the bailout but those that do are concentrated in a few states -- Michigan, Indiana, Ohio -- that the Republican NEED to be competitive in. It's simply political suicide. Do they need anymore disadvantages in those three states, in addition to the enormous problems they have in the Pacific West, Northeast, and much of the mid-Atlantic?

The two leaders taking the charge in opposing the bailout -- the Southerners McConnell and Shelby -- really don't seem to understand how these political decisions are only furthering their party's sequestration into the South.

The opportunity to deny the bailout is just too rich for the GOP to pass up -- their condition is certainly the destruction of the UAW, as part of their endless war on unionism to begin with, a key plank in Republican political economy. If they don't support the bailout, the not-so-Big Three go under, and so does the UAW. And if they pass the bailout only under the condition that what the UAW represents is destroyed, they win, too. It's win-win for the GOP, and lose-lose for American workers. Regardless of what they do, the GOP will continue their war on unionism. The question is whether Democrats will let them.