To conservatives: how can the government restore the auto industry in a free market? It sounds positively-- liberal! Or pseudo-liberal as harryj says.

It's more liberal than I am.

-- Modified on 1/13/2008 6:17:39 PM

outlawing the auto Unions would not be liberal and then we would be able to be competitive with the other non Union auto companies...It is almost impossible to be competitive when lazy workers are given a free pass under the Unions.

Zin, have you ever read Pirsig's Zen & Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?

You can google the author and background and get some more specifics.

From the backfiles of my many, many unsold story ideas :  an uber-nationalist US president commisions a rogue genetic-engineering project to clone 100s of Godzillas.  The simple idea is that they will all wade ashore in Japan, crush trucks, smash trains, blunder into high-power lines, and generally ravage and wreck havoc upon the Japanese to the point where they are entirely preoccupied with national survival and ain't mass producing  and exporting Toyatas and Hondas and Mitsubishis  to the detriment of the USA Big Three automakers.

As Japan is an overseas producer of much of it's automotive output, the crazed US prez repeats as necesaary with Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico and other export-platform countries of the Japanese transnational auto industry.

He doesn't know what to do with Japanese mutlinational auto production which takes place in the USA.  Totally puzzled, he calls upon ex-president Dubya for what he hopes will be some sage advice.  That's where the story got away from me.  So I popped a Blue Oyster Cult CD into my AIWA [ironically, made in Japan] and listened to "Godzilla"  for days on end.  For inspiration.

Still blocked after all these years,  but my neighbors did express some really  very hard feelings toard me for months on end.

The Godzillas all have big backpacks.  Wherever they go, they collect all the nubile locals, 7 or better on a scale of 10, and return them to the USA.  During the day, they run their expatriate factories, and at night, they satisfy all us horny dudes.

We can even have some of them run gyms to run the fat off the natives.  It's a win-win!  Everybody will live happily ever after.

Where you lost the story was anybody asking Dubya for advice.  Fuck, that's a black hole at best.

And about as ass-backward and out of touch from current culture as I've heard any candidate sound yet! (makes Mitt sound "progressive")

The auto industry has been a cancer on the American midwest for decades, it and it's subsiderary supply chain are by far the greatest contributor to polution and global warming that this nation has ever had! let it die the death it deserves and let's finally buy our cars from companies that can produce a vehicle that can travel 300,000+ miles before turning to shit!

Detroit has been dead since 1972, and has been on artificial life support through government tariffs and massive tax-relief financing ever since!

The last thing we need in america is a reserection of shitty polluting blue-collar union jobs...

WTF is the next stupid idea that's going to fall out of McCian's ass? Restoring the Texas oil boom?? What a fucking idiot!

Clear Channel and all the big corporate AM/FM radio stations will want special government protection & deals to save them from the evil & UNfair business practice of giving the listening audience what it wants; as Sirius and XM satellite radio have.

It has been ONE FULL YEAR since XM & Sirius satellite radio petitioned for permission to merge. It took only TWO goddamn weeks for Congress to allow Rupert Murdock to add the Wall Street Journal to his media monopoly.

 Free Market? BULL..FUCKING..SHIT!!!.  

but the Texas oil boom has already been restored, something about $100 per barrel I heard.

Zin did not post a link and I am unfamilier with the campaign  promise, just how did McCain propose to do this. If by pandering to the unions, then yes it's the stupidest campaign promise I've ever heard, or at least one of them.

Would you really expect a candidate to say anything else when campaigning in Michigan?

MCcain said the auto industry like the textile jobs in SC will never come back but that workers can be re-trained.
 
What Mitt said was dumb saying he will get the auto jobs back . MCCain never said this what he said was practical and far from being stupid.

I know some auto workers, and they work their asses off. The management tries all kinds of shit with those workers that cause antagonism. Yes, the pay is good. They deserve every dime.

I'd say if that's what McCain has in mind, he's really stealing votes through fraud.

Strange that you blame the current plight solely on unions. Management decision through the years have been questionable.    

Unions have done the heavy lifting for both union and non-union workers. Without them, there would be few benefits, no 40 hour week, few if any vacations, rare medical insurance.

The only people who should oppose unions are upper-management, executives. They are the only people who haven't benefited from unions.

-- Modified on 1/13/2008 2:59:59 PM

Wasn't he babbling about increasing the cost of oil until it forced social-change? Simiular to what he's pushing for now with the carbon-tax?

I wouldn't call the current Texas oil surge a "boom" exactly, And I expect it will be rather short lived as they re-strip the dry oilfields for reminents... I doubt we'll be hearing a casting-call for the new series "Dallas, the next generation" (Maybe Bush could play J.R.Ewing in the sequel after he leave the whitehouse for extra cash, since I doubt he'll get to profit from the speaking engagement circut like Bill did)

That's just stereotyping and bigoted
Posted by zinaval  , 1/13/2008 2:53:38 PM   [zinaval has 7 reviews]
"I know some auto workers, and they work their asses off.  Yes, the pay is good. They deserve every dime."

Why don't you ask some of your hard working auto worker friends  what is the policy for the lazy workers .Some of them might be worth every dime but if there wasn't so many dollars spent on a dimes worth of work because of Unions we would have a more competitive Auto industry.



"Strange that you blame the current plight solely on unions. Management decision through the years have been questionable".

If you look at what the Unions demand for their workers and what the non Union companies demand you will quickly see we are overpricing ourselves out of the market.    

"Unions have done the heavy lifting for both union and non-union workers. Without them, there would be few benefits, no 40 hour week, few if any vacations, rare medical insurance"

Unions were great for child labor laws but in this day and age a company needs to be able to weed out the rif raf without fear of reprecussions.



"The only people who should oppose unions are upper-management, executives. They are the only people who haven't benefited from unions."

The only people that should be pro Union are the people who want our auto industry eliminated

You should try beggering yourself before you tell other people to suck in their but and begger themselves.

"Why don't you ask some of your hard working auto worker friends  what is the policy for the lazy workers .Some of them might be worth every dime but if there wasn't so many dollars spent on a dimes worth of work because of Unions we would have a more competitive Auto industry."

A union must give representation to all its workers, that's the nature of it. Laziness, however, is a hard charge for any union to defend. I'd like to add that the companies agreed to those terms, their management and executives are paid very very well, too. If you look at the case of say, Eastern Airlines, the Unions agreed to concessions. Carl Ichann took the concessions to squeeze more money out of it, and then closed the business. Detroit's companies don't look to be doing anything to advance their business. If the UAW gives concessions, how do members know that management won't take that dime and liquidate?

I conjecture that the auto companies in the US might have a worse problem than you think. Maybe they aren't competing with Toyota because it owns all the patents that make their cars so economical and durable? If so, how would Detroit get around that?

I think executives might want to be viewed by Wall Street as out of touch and uninventive rather than doomed. In other words, I think its debatable  that concessions will have the effect you think it will.

Unions just have to be more clever and more motivated to Unionize places everywhere and make their efforts international. I have a few unconventional opinions on this. Given the labor conditions overseas we are having to compete against, do we really want to race them to the bottom? What happens when the Chinese auto industry gets competitive?

Unions might not fit into free market capitalist theory because consumers and labor are thought of separately, and they think of themselves separately. IMHO, that perceived separation is not going to stand as the falling status of human beings as workers undermines their status (and rewards) as consumers.

" What happens when the Chinese auto industry gets competitive?"
 
 I will buy my cars at Wal Mart



If my employees tried to Unionize I would fire them all and hire new .

Unions are responsible in large part for the creation of the middle and the middle class is responsible for the vast fortunes that have been made by business and investors.  It’s the discretionary income of the middle class that fuels our economy.  Low paid workers who barely scarp by don’t have the income to support economy other than the bare necessities.  We only have to look at third world countries to imagine what the U.S would be like without a middle class.  Henry Ford figured it out about a hundred years ago that his workers were also his customers.  At one time he doubled their wages and his business sky rocked.  His operating expenses went up but so did is gross revenue and profit. He became a wealthy man selling Model T’s to working people for about $250.00 a piece while the Duesenberg withered on the vine selling cars that cost about $20,000.00 to a very few.  A strong middle class doesn’t clash with capitalism; it is the foundation of capitalism.

-- Modified on 1/13/2008 5:06:33 PM

We don't need Unions to have a strong middle class..Va.is a right to work State with limited Union dictatorship..And a very good economy..As a youth I crossed many picket lines to work and if I had picketed with the Unions I would not have the luxuries I enjoy  today.

but I do, How do you think I plan on affording the 4-8 year sabbatical I plan on taking from this country in the event that Huckabee or Obama are elected? You obviously have no idea how many millions of barrels of oil are still left in those "dry oilfields" that you refer to.

As usual, Zin makes an outrageous statement that has little or in this case, no basis in truth.

Reverend Sharpton, I'm surprised at you - black holes imdeed!  Don't you realize the deep inbuilt structural racist assumption in that term, especially as it's used colloquially?   Don't let the scientists bamboozle you with nonsense that black is merely the designation for the absence of light and color.  It's the evil white man, again!  C'mon, stay sharp.

I'm brushing this one off and thinking, but it's so obvious, that Dubya's advice to the incumbent Godzilla-wielding Prez is to invade Iraq. [I'm also thinking that Patrick Buchanan might be the President.]  Or Iran.  but it doesn't really move the plot much and certainly not toward  either dramatic or comedic resolution.

I think that's illegal.  But if you want to roll the dice, be my guest.

If your empl;oyees wanted to unionize, and you're that dead-set against it,  I'd say sell the business and enjoy the aggregate fruits of your labor.  Or close down and move offshore [if the nature of busines you're in permits that].  Which is not illegal.

There is indeed much wrong with organized labor in 2008.  But there would be even more things wrong in it's absence.

"He [McCain] pledged to make restoring the domestic auto industry — once the linchpin of Michigan's economy — a top priority if elected president."*

"'I have great faith in the auto industry that they'll be able to meet these ... standards, we'll move to hybrid cars, we'll move to hydrogen, we'll move to batteries, and I as president will do everything I can to help them do that,' McCain told reporters after a campaign event in Warren, Michigan."

Reuters via Yahoo, by Jeremy Pelofsky

Everything as in more of the nothing government is supposed to do??

-- Modified on 1/13/2008 6:19:00 PM

Zin, this is a low, even for you. You have lost what little credibility you ever had.

Read your own fucking link, Romney is the one making those statements, McCain is the one getting booed for trying to inject a little reality into the situation.

Romney? "He" should have referred back to McCain, grammatically speaking, since his name was the previous personal noun. I read the indirect quote and then read back for the antecedent. Oops. There it was at the top of the previous paragraph. AP reporters write sloppy, and I read sloppy. I'd say there was a pile-up on the freeway. Apologies. Still, people here figured that out but I didn't.

But this quote is definitely by McCain:

"I had to give some straight talk," McCain said. "Jobs are leaving the state of Michigan. They have left and will not come back, but we're going to create jobs, we're going to create a new economy. This is the smartest technological place in America. We have the smartest people here. We can do it. We can create jobs here."

Is creating jobs really what the government should be into?

McCain is talking about providing the education and training for new jobs that will replace the old auto industy.

-- Modified on 1/13/2008 7:45:33 PM

I'm not wanting to take anything away from displaced workers, but we do have college graduates starting their careers with $20,000 in student loan debts. Now if he goes to grad school he is looking at $75k debt when he's done. And there's no way to escape that debt.

Any wonder why we have a shortage of expertise and have to attract highly trained people from overseas? (I remember when Reagan first cut Pell Grants too).

Meanwhile, McCain is talking about retraining people who have no careers, who are older and one would guess for something less than $20,000 each when a bachelors' is the least thing needed for a well paying job.

We should be training displaced workers, but it looks to me like we have to be realistically and reform education more deeply than that.    

"We should be training displaced workers, but it looks to me like we have to be realistically and reform education more deeply than that."


Hows the teachers Union for a good example how Unions can destroy a business..    

-- Modified on 1/13/2008 10:02:17 PM

Va. is a right to Work State.. Unions strike we get replacements..Most smart non Union Va.companies require new workers to sign agreement to not organize and various other terms as employment contract..We have some large Unions but we are not overwhelmed by unions and we have a very good economy and a low unemployment rate..Thank You very much..

Today’s unions have “done” for the labor movement in a similar fashion as what the Democrat and Republican parties have done for government. They’ve made control too large and too powerful through graft, nepotism, power grabbing and plain selfishness. Too bad that government isn’t on the same downward trend as are the unions.

Privately funded medical insurance in the U.S. is an unintended consequence of wage and price controls of WWII.

But the “problem” with unions is equally to blame on the management of 20 and 30 years ago. They signed the contracts as well.

At $100/barrel, lot more crude becomes economically viable.

I LIKE MY HUMMER

I like your Hummer too. lol