Welcome to Flightinfo.com

  • Register now and join the discussion
  • Friendliest aviation Ccmmunity on the web
  • Modern site for PC's, Phones, Tablets - no 3rd party apps required
  • Ask questions, help others, promote aviation
  • Share the passion for aviation
  • Invite everyone to Flightinfo.com and let's have fun

Big 3 Bailout dead in Senate. GOP wanted steep UAW wage cuts, that was dealbreaker

Welcome to Flightinfo.com

  • Register now and join the discussion
  • Modern secure site, no 3rd party apps required
  • Invite your friends
  • Share the passion of aviation
  • Friendliest aviation community on the web
and why is this in the corporate forum?


Perhaps because we are tired of corporate welfare at citizen tax payers expense...


Socialism for the Rich

Truthdig

By Robert Scheer


December 10, 2008


var EmailArticleWindow; function email_article_popup (uri) { if (!uri) { uri = window.location; } var url = '/email/email.mhtml?i=20081222&s=scheer&type=article'; if ((EmailArticleWindow) && (EmailArticleWindow.closed != true)) { EmailArticleWindow.location.href = url; } else { EmailArticleWindow = window.open(url,'EmailArticleWindow',"scrollbars=1,resizable=1,height=450,width=520"); } }
Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig, where this article originally appeared. His latest book is The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America(Twelve).
Let the record show that it was George W. Bush, the rich Texas Republican, who brought socialism to America, so don't blame it on that African-American Chicago Democrat community organizer who made it into the White House. The government takeover of the banking and automobile industries not only happened on President Bush's watch, it was also the deregulatory mania of this president's family, beginning with his father, which took this country into such starkly unfamiliar territory.





What a betrayal of free-market capitalism. And who would have thought that it would be the candidates backed by conservative pundits Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh who made it possible? You actually could trace the destruction of corporate capitalism to the much-ballyhooed "Reagan Revolution" of the movie actor who got his main training for the presidency as a huckster for General Electric, where he honed the message of "getting government off our backs." The revolution of unfettered corporate capitalism led to an era of unfettered corporate greed, which sowed the seeds of its own destruction.
True, the Democrats deserve much blame. The Wall Street runaway wouldn't have happened if President Bill Clinton hadn't cheered it on. The Great Triangulator provided seamless continuity between the administrations of the two Bushes in systematically dismantling the proven regulatory system, introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, that saved capitalism from itself during the Great Depression. The danger with the incoming Democratic president is that Barack Obama has turned to some of the Clinton alums, most prominently former Clinton treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, to get us out of the mess that the Clinton administration worked mightily to create.
At least in the auto bailout there is some talk from the Democrats that the failed corporate leaders must be fired as a condition of salvaging their corporate entities--and stock options. Both political parties are tougher in the auto bailout than they were in the Wall Street rescue, but what do you expect when leadership on this issue is coming from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson? Like Robert Rubin, Clinton's first treasury secretary and now Obama confidante, Paulson came to government service immediately after heading up Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street powerhouse at the epicenter of the banking collapse. For the key practitioners of America's brave new game of corporate socialism, failure has its own lush reward.
It's enough to drive one back to the invisible hand of Adam Smith. Personally, I would rather we took our chances these days with letting the corporations sink or swim on their own without government interference. If tough love was good enough for troubled families cut off the public dole by Clinton's welfare reform, which summarily ended the federal poverty program, why have a poverty program for troubled corporations?
Forget saving the auto companies; let them become Japanese- or South Korean-owned, but sweeten the deal with US government guarantees of extended unemployment insurance, health care, retirement plan protection and job retraining for laid-off autoworkers. Be generous on the worker end, and figure out ways to reclaim the big bucks from the banking and auto moguls who ripped off the American dream. The only reason the moguls are not going to jail for their shenanigans is that they got their supplicants in Congress from both parties to rewrite the laws to legalize activities that should have been judged as crimes.
If we are to have an expansion of government on this scale, we should start with extending health coverage to all Americans rather than with government bureaucrats micromanaging auto companies. Government-insured health care works. All the doctors I see want me to be on Medicare, and not one of them is eager to deal with the medical insurance provided to me as a retiree after thirty years of employment by the Los Angeles Times--insurance now threatened by my once-proud capitalist employer seeking bankruptcy protection. A protection, incidentally, that a bipartisan congressional majority made much more difficult for individuals to use when we get in personal financial trouble.
With the exception of my years as an undergraduate, when I sorted mail late into the night at the post office near Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal, I have never been on the public payroll. Thanks to the Reagan Revolution, and its endgame of socialism for the rich, we all may end up on the public dole, scrambling for droppings from a too heavily laden nationalized table. Socialism for the rich is not the way to go.
 
Let me guess...you are pro-union? By the way, you are comparing apples and oranges. :uzi:
I fail to see how that is comparing apples to oragnes. And dont go pulling out some Voodoo economics to rationalize your response. I don't give 2 sh!ts about the unions. I just find it amusing how so many union members vote GOP. It's the same as all of us corporate pilots voting Carl Ichan head of the NBAA. Finally, you wonder why this is in the corporate section 2 posts after you posted this one. Why did you respond to this in the 1st place. I guess my post p!ssed you off because you assumed I was pro union, and now you want to know why it's in the corporate section.
 
I fail to see how that is comparing apples to oragnes. And dont go pulling out some Voodoo economics to rationalize your response. I don't give 2 sh!ts about the unions. I just find it amusing how so many union members vote GOP. It's the same as all of us corporate pilots voting Carl Ichan head of the NBAA. Finally, you wonder why this is in the corporate section 2 posts after you posted this one. Why did you respond to this in the 1st place. I guess my post p!ssed you off because you assumed I was pro union, and now you want to know why it's in the corporate section.

H25B,
I agree with you. Some people will never see the light. They are the same ones that STILL believe we are liberating in Iraq.
 
The Big 3 need to go into Chap 11 to restructure. If we give them $14B now, they will burn through that same tax-payer money and enter Chap 11 a few months down the line anyway...

GM and Chrysler and managed by incompetent boobs. They deserve to downsize. Ford has $18B in cash - clearly Mullaly from Boeing is managing it better than the others. The UAW is out of whack with reality - especially when employees of Japanese car manufacturers based in Alabama do the same job for $30 less per hour - THAT'S LUDICROUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
The Big 3 need to go into Chap 11 to restructure. If we give them $14B now, they will burn through that same tax-payer money and enter Chap 11 a few months down the line anyway...

Did you feel the same way about the round of legacy airline bankruptcy filings post-9/11?

GM and Chrysler and managed by incompetent boobs. They deserve to downsize. Ford has $18B in cash - clearly Mullaly from Boeing is managing it better than the others. The UAW is out of whack with reality - especially when employees of Japanese car manufacturers based in Alabama do the same job for $30 less per hour - THAT'S LUDICROUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alabama workers don't work for $30 less hourly pay than UAW workers. The UAW "cost per hour per employee" is higher because it includes health care and pension obligations to retired workers....obligations which the newer foreign-owned competition doesn't have due to their relative late entry into the US market. As such, the parallels between foreign manufacturers and the Big 3 with low-cost and legacy airlines is one worth noting and considering.

I also find it somewhat telling that the GOP Senators from Alabama are the biggest opponents to the bailout...considering their state stands to gain handsomely from the collapse of one or more domestic automakers.
 
Let's face it--the U.S. is a country of screwups. Sure there are exceptions but the same people who can't manage to get 6 Chicken McFragments into a box and give you a regular Coke instead of a Diet are the same ones who make these cars--or manage AIG. Just different diplomas.

No one gives a crap about doing a good job anymore--AND no one cares!

If we flew airplanes like most companies are managed and like most employees work, it would be raining aluminum.

And the most worthless individuals end up getting elected.

I really don't care if they bail out the Big 3 or not, the die is cast on our future. Stick a fork in us, Goldman Sachs owns our asses now and the Constitution is as irrelevant as cave paintings in AZ.

TC
 
Did you feel the same way about the round of legacy airline bankruptcy filings post-9/11?



Alabama workers don't work for $30 less hourly pay than UAW workers. The UAW "cost per hour per employee" is higher because it includes health care and pension obligations to retired workers....obligations which the newer foreign-owned competition doesn't have due to their relative late entry into the US market. As such, the parallels between foreign manufacturers and the Big 3 with low-cost and legacy airlines is one worth noting and considering.

I also find it somewhat telling that the GOP Senators from Alabama are the biggest opponents to the bailout...considering their state stands to gain handsomely from the collapse of one or more domestic automakers.


Where does it end BoilerUp? Should we bail out every industry impacted by the economic crisis? Housing industry? Hotel industry? All of the airlines? Should we use more debt to cover for bad management mistakes or a complete lack of risk management? What ever happened to risk management and preparing for worst-case scenarios?

Anyone who feels that the UAW package is acceptable (including the provision that someone can stay home and accept 95% of their pay for two years - it's called the "Job Bank" I believe) is seriously OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY. The Big 3 have been industry laggards for years. The last American car I owned broke down constantly - I bought Japanese and have never had any issues. And my car was probably built in Alabama.

In the end, we shouldn't use my hard-earned tax dollars to merely DELAY their Chapter 11 filings... Ford appears in better shape ($18B in cash) because it was probably managed better. How many brands does GM offer? Too many. You do not reward bad behavior because the systemic changes that are required NOW will be delayed...
 
Big questions.... any answers...

Corporations are not democracies. How do we as employees and citizens ensure that corporations are run effectively? Because if corps are not run effectively it seems we all pay for it in many ways.

How do we as citizens ensure that our elected officials are smart and effective? Because these elected officials seems to be highly intertwined in the bail out rescue of the corporations that are not run democratically that effect so many employees and citizens.....
 

Latest resources

Back
Top