ahh yes, the government arbitrarily deciding which companies fail and which prosper. This is a moral problem. The only people getting bailed out are the companies that have millions for lobbies. Grannies taco stand isn't getting a dime because she doesn't have a multi-million dollar lobby on her behalf. This is corpocracy at its finest. No bail outs for cars people don't buy, no bail outs for companies executives run into the ground, no bail outs for companies that we the people voted with dollar should fail...end of story.

For once, I do not agree with Kucinich. No bailouts. Let the free market work. Toyota produced an equivalent number of cars to GM in the past year. Toyota was quite profitable. GM was not. Get GM go bankrupt and reorganize. If they can't compete, they should not exist. Someone else WILL fill the vacuum. That is the free market.

First off all, it's not a "bail out" it is a loan.

Second, if you'd like to talk about "small businesses", how many small businesses would you see evaporate with no auto industry to supply goods to?

If the automotive industry is able to declare bankruptcy, they no longer have to honor contracts such as those with the UAW. A LOT of GOP fucktards are pushing for the big-three to fail precisely to dismantle organized labor.

These fucks don't give one shit about "saving the taxpayers money", they are chomping at the bit to once and for all destroy unions for good and for anyone to fall prey to their rhetoric and propoganda is very very dangerous.

I cant help but be split on the issue.

On one hand you have the garunteed collapse of the currency and economy if you let them fall, and on the other, bailing them out is garunteeing corporate rot if you dont force them to change their ways.

They have been held up and floating with their heads held above the waterline for 30 years now, and its just made the ocean fettid, but society has been living off the corpse like bacteria and maggots.

To let it sink would be a disaster, but its a dead body anyway...so I mean, either way you go, you are still fucked.

Shitty situation tbh. GM, C and F need to have a radical re-think of the shit that they are pumping out to the US consumer market, and it seems about 40 years too late to have this conversation, but gas guzzling beasts sitting on 20mpg, while european equivilants are at 60-80mpg is just a joke.

When the politicians who claim to reflect public opinion bandy about the "oil independence" as public policy, you would think that reclaiming an economical auto industry would be priority #1, but noone cares....its all about keeping that dead body up.

Eventually dead bodies fall apart when connective tissues are all gone, and sink when the fat has been consumed.

What then America ?

I'm with Kucinich on this bailout. I'm also in full agreement with the idea that the American auto companies need a huge wake-up call -- but if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not watch the big three unravel right when the economy is as unhealthy as I've ever seen it.

I don't think the Wall Street one was a good idea. I think something needed done, and something big, I just think the form it took, and the way it was handled was typically Bushian -- cling to ideology first, political maneuvering second, paying off friends in the industry third, and if there's time and money left over after servicing those, let's see if we can make a dent in the actual problem we're supposed to be solving.

From what I've read, Dems basically submitted to every one of Bush's demands in order to get him to not veto the bailout bill. That means this one is likely to be filled with bullshit landmines entirely designed to a) prevent the plan from working b) set back environmental and labor issues Democrats care about, and c) give congressional Republicans a chance to stand in opposition to a plan that Bush and Democrats agree on.

If I were just as evil as the average Republican representative, for political purposes I'd pray the Republicans block the damn thing, despite Bush ineffectually trying to convince them to vote for it. Then I'd have the Democrats say "call us when you grow up", and put the House and Senate on recess until Jan 20th. Then have them hit the talk show circuit to loudly gripe about how they tried their best to save the auto industry, but the Republicans stopped them from acting, and that they'll try again when they have more votes and a responsible President.

Part of me hopes that's how it'll play out...but I'd be really uncomfortable leaving things at an impasse like that, because I don't know that GM and Chrysler would make it, and I know their dying would not be good for the country.

I don't get the sense that Republicans give a shit about what's good for the country. If anything, they seem to actively want the American auto companies to die, and the Democrat-supporting UAW with it, impact on regular people and the economy be damned.

I will agree with volumptuous that without bailing out this industry we could experience a major loss for unions in this country. I, personally, am a fan of right to work instead of unions, but I would hate to see A) such a large number of workers without employment and B) the deterioration of the auto industry in the country that invented it.

Still, what would a bailout prove? I remember experiencing a lot of fellow industry people in the tech-industry losing everything after the dot-com bubble popped, and Congress didn't raise a finger to bail us out. And why should they? The market was unsustainable because people were throwing too much money at it without a system of monetizing it. Those who could work through that collapse, did. The industry survived even though a lot of the major companies did not.

GM, Chrysler and Ford are not sustainable. I'm sorry, but let's try not to make this a party issue. This is about private companies not being able to sustain themselves, and I'm sorry if those of us against the bailout oppose your party position for labor, but that doesn't make those of us against it "republicans". That makes us against nationalizing private debt. And, if you were smart, you'd be against that too.

Economy be damned when industries are falsely propped up.

I'm actually a car carrying member of the UAW at a small factory here in PA, and I wouldn't mind at all if this union failed.

Our company is struggling and we recently had a wave of lay-offs. As per Union contract, we had to lay off according to seniority and not ability. This has left us with a skeleton crew have filled with the most useless workers and the hard workers have to take up the slack. The younger crew we had were bright eyed and relentless, and now they're moving back in with their parents while we work overtime. The company also has it's hands tied as to who can move up the chain and into the jobs that require a higher IQ, those jobs also must be offered by seniority and they can't even use the most qualified people to fill them.

As you can imagine, the management is resentful of us and is treating us consistently worse as the year ends. To make matters worse, the union recently raised dues and now we're paying $500 a year, even though our pay raises are on hold indefinitely. State law prevents us from not paying the dues whether we're members or not.

The hard core members tell us that it would be a lot worse if we didn't have a union, and it's hard to argue with them. My take is that the company would still be there and only hard workers would be working. Their take is that after working there 20 plus years, it's the companies responsibility to keep them on, even though they're working less.

I wish I could give more insight, but most of my conversations with them are cut short by their religious fervor on the subject.

^ Thanks for your story Enzoblue, and I am sorry to hear of your companies struggle. All systems have their flaws, and the labor unions are no different. They rarely reward the most talented at their job and reward the most dedicated to the union entity itself. I think, on the whole, they do more good than bad, but in some industries, they have gone to far and make it impossible for things to work as they should..and it seems as if your situation is a tail of this. Here in Texas, we don't really have unions at all, but the "evil" corporate powers haven't stolen our souls yet.

There is no doubt that over time, certain industries would be hurt by the lack of labor unions. I see labor unions as one of the most successful counters to centralized monetary conglomeration in this century. But, they aren't without their evils. That isn't really what we are talking about here though, we are talking about the government taking my money and investing it in a company that is dying. The British government was doing something similar before Margret Thacher. They were dumping billions and billions into British coal. British coal per volume is one of the most expensive coals to mine on the planet as it is deep, more deep than US coal (US is the middle east of coal they say). So, the government kept pouring money into a company that would never be profitable...why? To keep people employed. The problem is they were employed in a failed business model. More over, the skilled workers that were employed there making something no one wanted were wasted on something that no one wanted. The opportunity for them to be used in another more creative role was subverted by government intervention.

There is no doubt, that all the industries that are in trouble now will either foreclose or have to make massive layoffs. This is a bad thing for lots of support industries as well. But, this is the way things work. If you make something that people don't want then the doors of your future will be closing soon. In time, new doors for the skilled workers to go. What it is, is anyone's guess. But the point is the government has no right to invest in a company that I would never in my right mind invest in.

Would you by Ford stock right now? Why? And yet some corpocrat on capital hill is going to for me. He is going to spend my tax money in a company that I would never buy a car from none the less stock in. It is subversive at the very least and tyrannical at the most. As someone else pointed out, the dot com bubble burst and no one cared. Thousands of tech people like myself were hard up for a time. But we are now gainfully employed again making more than we ever did back then. Times will be hard, but the create a situation of hyper inflation will take a bad thing, and make it horrible.

Comparing the collapse of the auto and steel industries in this country to the dot-com bubble burst is stupid on too many levels.

^ Your insight is astounding. There is no doubt that it would be further reaching into the economy at large, but you don't address the issue of it is an artificial support to a failing company. The point in fact is we, the people voted with our dollars that we did not values fords highly. As a result, ford with either HAVE to downsize, default, or the government will oppress all of us that didn't want anything to do with ford cars or investments to bail them out. By what right do they do this? More over, what it does to all of our savings the way it is going about it will cause the economy to tank ever worse. We have seen it time and time before.

>> ^blankfist:
I'm sorry, but let's try not to make this a party issue. This is about private companies not being able to sustain themselves, and I'm sorry if those of us against the bailout oppose your party position for labor, but that doesn't make those of us against it "republicans".


I wasn't talking about you, or us lowly citizens. When I say GOP I'm talking Republican party senators and members of congress. I don't know what your political affiliation is, but I would assume you're (I), just as I am.

I would normally be 100% against this bailout, but unfortunately those members of the Senate - Vitter, McConell, Graham, DeMint, Shelby, et al - are using this to destroy the union workforce in this country and to prop up the foreign car companies in their home states (Watch the Rachel Maddow video I just posted to see the connection between all of these senators and foreign auto manufacturers)

>> ^blankfist:
Still, what would a bailout prove? I remember experiencing a lot of fellow industry people in the tech-industry losing everything after the dot-com bubble popped, and Congress didn't raise a finger to bail us out. And why should they? The market was unsustainable because people were throwing too much money at it without a system of monetizing it. Those who could work through that collapse, did. The industry survived even though a lot of the major companies did not.

Difference is, with the dot bomb crash, the industry wasn't a monolithic triopoly, there were thousands upon thousands of fresh upstarts that turned to dust as quickly as they rose up. If we were talking about a similar situation with the auto industry, where most of the companies/products were new and non-essential, I don't think there'd be any talk of a bailout...or a union.

Conservatives (or at least people in Republican jersies, and self-identified conservative Democrats) helped them get too big by never exercising the FTC and having them actually stave off companies from getting "too big to fail" as GM, Ford and Chrysler have.

The same group also prevented government helping these companies take a long view of the global situation -- yes Virginia, I mean environmental issues, fuel efficiency standards, and alternative fuels.

GM, Chrysler and Ford are not sustainable. I'm sorry, but let's try not to make this a party issue. This is about private companies not being able to sustain themselves, and I'm sorry if those of us against the bailout oppose your party position for labor, but that doesn't make those of us against it "republicans". That makes us against nationalizing private debt. And, if you were smart, you'd be against that too.
Economy be damned when industries are falsely propped up.


Why are Ford, GM and Chrysler not sustainable? Could it be that we have bad trade agreements, allowing companies like Hyundai to sell 500,000 cars in the US, while limiting us to 5000 in Korea?

Could it be that every other country with an auto industry gives their companies government support, including both national healthcare as well as protectionist trade policies, and government subsidies?

Could it be that in pursuit of the conservative ideal of "free trade", we're forcing our employees to try to compete with countries with no worker safety or labor laws?

Then there's this little matter about the banks not being willing to give anyone loans for anything, including cars, which makes it a tiny bit hard for these guys to sell anything.

I know you'd rather it not be a "party issue", and that's fine. I just figured I'd lay the blame at the Republican party's feet, rather than saying "conservative ideology" where it probably rightfully belongs, because I always hear that Republicans aren't conservative, and they've been the ones pushing these failed government practices since the 1980's.

But hey, if you want to take the blame for making the environment impossible for the big three to operate as a non-sweatshop employer, who am I to stop you.

If you were smart, you'd be on the side of this argument that's looking to keep people employed, and fix the big three, rather than clinging to the same ideology that got us into this mess in the first place.

You've got a good point about propping up failing businesses, and I think that there should be serious, serious strings attached to any money we loan these guys, and that we ensure these are loans to be paid back with interest, not a big gift basket, like TARP is. Problem is those pesky conservatives (or Republicans as they call themselves) have fought to keep Democrats from adding environmental restrictions and management paycuts/restructuring, while at the same time trying to insert legislation that requires the unions to agree to salaries and benefits below the foreign auto makers. I suppose that's because under their reading of the conservative ideology, telling businesses how to operate is okay if it's to put the screws to unions, but not when management is being made accountable.

These are going to be party issues, and generally speaking, blankfist, I categorize you as being a 3rd party -- neither progressive nor "Republican", the former because it's accurate, and the second because you're as frustrated with that group of howler monkeys as I am.

However, don't try to tell me that Republicans are now high-minded conservatives, because it's a little suspect that they seemed to only remember those principles on Nov 5th, 2008, and they just so happen to lead them to the conclusion that the right course of action is to filibuster everything the Democrats try to do.