Let's Boycott Alabama

It seems that there is a grassroots effort to get a boycott Alabama, in response to the Alabama Senator Richard Shelby’s attempted stonewalling of the bridge loans to the Big Three. Well, it’s big two now, Ford will not be needing the help.

Anyhow, here is a e-mail written by my Mother, who is a spouse of a retired General Motors worker.

Senator Shelby,

I doubt that you read the emails sent to your office but perhaps it will be read by someone who will show you the many emails you are sure to receive, and will point out to you just how wrong you are. There are a lot of derogatory comments that could be made but I prefer to try to point out a few facts that you evidently have not wanted to know. My husband and my father are both General Motors retirees and I know firsthand from where I speak.

Perhaps you think the auto workers are wealthy, making that mysterious $75 an hour that has been bandied about in the media. Unfortunately that is very far from the truth. They have never made that much, even including benefits, and most of them live from paycheck to paycheck trying to make ends meet like most middle class people. If the auto companies go bankrupt as you desire, not only will the auto workers lose their jobs, but also jobs directly and indirectly connected, such as suppliers, stores and restaurants located near the plants and of course it will trickle down to the cities who will lose the tax revenues these plants produce. We are not only talking about Detroit and Michigan but every state that has a plant or plants belonging to the Big 3.

It’s odd to me that you think that two companies that have been in business for over 100 years and one that is over 83 years old do not know what they are doing. If this is true how do you explain the fact that they sell over 50% of the cars purchased in the world and have won many, many multiple awards over the years for their cars? Do you perhaps think that people are just too stupid or uneducated to realize they are buying an inferior product? And the award givers are too dumb to realize they are giving an award to a poorly built, not very innovative dinosaur? Maybe you need to voice that opinion in your next media interview. I’m sure people would be interested to hear it.

You need to come out of your office and meet with the GM, Ford and Chrysler workers themselves. Could you really look them in the face, knowing they have families to support and bills to pay and tell them you think they should join the ranks of the unemployed? Do you think it is their fault that the economy has taken such a downturn because of mismanagement on Wall Street, the banks and yes, the government?

The auto companies and the union are trying their best to jump through all the hoops the Congress is throwing at them, as ridiculous as some of them are. To let them go under will cause a depression like this nation has not seen in many years. I hope you think long and hard about that.

By the way, I fully support the boycott of your state.

Y’all see where I get the writing skills from? I was told that I could post that, as long as I did not sign her name.

Anyhow, if you’d like to join the grassroots effort boycott Alabama. Please go to the Official Boycott Alabama Page.

Alfonzo on The "Declaration of Dependence"

An Excellent Video:

Now, towards of the end of this. He gets off into the weeds about the Unions. I’ll give him a pass on it. Because some of the stuff he says, I kind agree with. But he went overboard with the “They should gotten out from under them years ago…” I disgree with that crap. But the rest of the video is right on point.

Of course, if I was a real butt hole, I could say if it weren’t for the Democrats, his black ass would not have half the freedom that he has now. But to counter that, If it were not for Abe Lincoln, he would be still in chains. So, it evens out. 😀

Still I wish there were more black people, like Zo here who believed this way. But unfortunately most of them got sucked into that stupid socialist identity politics crap. Thanks to tools like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Good show Zo, as always man. 😀

Uh…Hugh?

Replying to this Bunch of Drivel:

As I discussed with economic guru Brian Wesbury on tonight’s show, the GOP should demand a real concession as part of a quick deal to get Detroit cash.  I think the price from the Dems should be a cut in the corporate tax rate for MI- and OH-headquartered businesses to Ireland’s 12.5%.  As Wesbury said, it would spark a huge economic revival in the Wolverine and Buckeye states –just huge.  And the teaching moment would be huge as well.

Detroit is going to get the money now or in February.  So get something worth having, House and Senate GOP.

Uh, Hugh? Has anyone bothered to inform you that you all are in the minority in Congress? I mean, you all had your chance in 2003 till 2006 to stop the economic crisis and you sat around and did nothing. You ought to hope that “The One” does not force the desolving of the G.O.P. and outlaws Conservatism in General.

Somehow, I highly doubt at Tax decrease would even help. We’re in a recession, in case you didn’t know. Of course, being the wealthy radio star and all, I would not expect you to know this.

Thank You for your support

The Following was made by me. It is my feelings towards those who opposed and still oppose the help that the Detroit Auto Industry needs. It might cost me readers, but it is how I feel.

I declare this photo PUBLIC DOMAIN. Feel free to copy it and post it to your Blogs.

Thank you for your support
Thank you for your support

Update: I posted this for one reason and one reason alone, Washington D.C. will hand over 4 BILLION dollars to Wall Street banks and not even flinch, but when Detroit needs help, they are like “You need a plan.” I am not saying that the companies are not at fault. But it just strikes me as pretty damned funny that Wall St. Gets that help and Detroit gets told to go fuck themselves, in essence. So, Yeah, I’m a little pissed off and a bit jaded at this point. Can’t you tell??!

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The Wal-Mart Debacle & Unions

For once, I am going to run against the grain….. 😀

Sonny Bunch over at Conventional Folly is mockingly bringing up that the Unions will try and say that  if Wal-Mart was unionized, that the tragic event in New York would have never happened. (and…yes, that was mentioned in a news article….somewhere…)

As much as this is going to make me sound like a hypocrite. I got one thing to say about that:

Horse-Hockey! 🙄

Union workers might be a great number of things; But Superman is not one of them.  The only thing that the man, who was killed at Wal-Mart, would have been, if we were a Union worker. Would have been a dead union worker. Because those crazy people were not checking for union cards.

I’m a supporter of unions and all. But I’m not an idiot. 😀 😉 😛


Republican Strategist Todd Harris is a liar.

I was just watching MSNBC’s Hardball. I just watched Todd Harris lie through his teeth.

He sat right there on that show and said that the U.A.W’s President was NOT at the “Bail out Hearings”

Uhmmmm.. Todd?

450_ap_congress_081119

Auto industry executives, from left, General Motors CEO Richard Wagoner; Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli; Ford CEO Alan Mulally; and Ron Gettelfinger, president of the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2008

Somebody needs to tell Todd Harris to brush up on his talking points. Because here. He is just flat wrong.

Countering the False Rumor that Auto Workers make $70 an Hour

I am sure that you’ve heard about the Rumor or the Conservative talking point that the Detroit Auto Workers make $70 an hour. The Conservatives will try and tell you that if you figure in all thier benefits, it totals that amount.

There’s only one little problem with that, the math, is quite frankly, wrong.

Well, here’s one reason: The figure is wildly misleading.

Let’s start with the fact that it’s not $70 per hour in wages. According to Kristin Dziczek of the Center for Automative Research–who was my primary source for the figures you are about to read–average wages for workers at Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors were just $28 per hour as of 2007. That works out to a little less than $60,000 a year in gross income–hardly outrageous, particularly when you consider the physical demands of automobile assembly work and the skills most workers must acquire over the course of their careers.

More important, and contrary to what you may have heard, the wages aren’t that much bigger than what Honda, Toyota, and other foreign manufacturers pay employees in their U.S. factories. While we can’t be sure precisely how much those workers make, because the companies don’t make the information public, the best estimates suggests the corresponding 2007 figure for these “transplants”–as the foreign-owned factories are known–was somewhere between $20 and $26 per hour, and most likely around $24 or $25. That would put average worker’s annual salary at $52,000 a year.

So the “wage gap,” per se, has been a lot smaller than you’ve heard. And this is no accident. If the transplants paid their employees far less than what the Big Three pay their unionized workers, the United Auto Workers would have a much better shot of organizing the transplants’ factories. Those factories remain non-unionized and management very much wants to keep it that way.

So, where did this wild figure come from? Jonathan continues:

But then what’s the source of that $70 hourly figure? It didn’t come out of thin air. Analysts came up with it by including the cost of all employer-provided benefits–namely, health insurance and pensions–and then dividing by the number of workers. The result, they found, was that benefits for Big Three cost about $42 per hour, per employee. Add that to the wages–again, $28 per hour–and you get the $70 figure. Voila.

Except … notice something weird about this calculation? It’s not as if each active worker is getting health benefits and pensions worth $42 per hour. That would come to nearly twice his or her wages. (Talk about gold-plated coverage!) Instead, each active worker is getting benefits equal only to a fraction of that–probably around $10 per hour, according to estimates from the International Motor Vehicle Program. The number only gets to $70 an hour if you include the cost of benefits for retirees–in other words, the cost of benefits for other people. One of the few people to grasp this was Portfolio.com’s Felix Salmon. As he noted yesterday, the claim that workers are getting $70 an hour in compensation is just “not true.”

I highly recommend that everyone that comes here, go read the rest of this great article. Because it really puts to bed some of the more idiotic rumors and false information. I mean, I have been raising hell about this whole bailout, but it is mainly because of the utter stupidity that is being parroted by the Far Right and by some of the not so far right. I will say this, that if this is the best that right can do, towards the middle class. They can forget about getting elected in 2010 or 2012. Of course, based upon what I’ve noticed as of late, there is not much hope of that happening anyhow.

I would suppose that there are those who might think, that I do not think that there is any problems with the Big Three. Trust me, I do. I also realize that the unions did get a bit greedy in the last 20 or so years. But, I also know this, that the errors that the present management and management in the past made at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are NOT the fault of the Employees. Nor do I believe that the employees of these fine companies should be punished for the incompetency of these companies. Nor do I blame the employees for the missteps of the Union officials, who were out for their own agendas.

It is just a plain and simple, the Republicans and some Libertarians think that punishing the middle class and allowing those who simply go to work and do their jobs to lose their jobs is perfectly acceptable. I am not one of those people.

In a personal level, my Dad never, ever made more than $21 an hour at his job. He worked for general motors for 31 years. He drove a Hi-lo, otherwise known as a Forklift. He worked for those people faithfully, rarely took off sick, he would work as many hours as they asked him to. Sometimes double shifts, he even worked triple shifts, before they outlawed it. My Father earned his retirement, and now, I have to contend with idiot Republicans, Conservatives and some Libertarians; who want to punish my dad for G.M.’s stupidity. It just is not right.  As far as his benefits go, he’s got some good benefits, but they’re not as nearly as good as they used to be. He used to pay zero for Doctor’s visits and Prescriptions, he now pays a large co-pay for doctor’s visits and prescriptions. I think my Dad has earned every last bit of those benefits, and those Conservative who would want to punish my Dad, I will say to you, what Keith Olbermann said about those in the Bush Administration who knowingly send your Nation’s troops into battle for their second and third terms, despite the fact that some, if not all, are suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome; they can go to hell.

It just seems very hypocritical of this Nation to give Wall Street 700 hundred BILLION dollars, for a damned bailout that did not even really work; but you let the big three ask for a bridge loan and the whole world is like “Detroit can go to hell!” It just does not make any sense to me at all.

Matthew Yglesias and Washington Monthly

Ed "The Tool" Morrissey continues to live up to his name

It seems that my Favorite Madison Avenue Conservative, Ed “The Tool” Morrissey continues his one-man venomous crusade against the middle class, Detroit Auto Workers and the U.A.W.; of which my Father is a member.

He blathers on, in his rather idiotic posting, at the Neo-Con rag called “HotAir” which sums up Ed to a tee. He writes:

The UAW chief, Rich Gettelfinger, has a courageous proposal to resolve the standoff:

“In a news conference in Detroit, Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers, said the Big Three CEOs should consider resigning if that would help win backing for a bailout.”

Why doesn’t Gettelfinger offer his resignation as well?  Why wouldn’t the UAW offer to help by restructuring its contracts with the Big Three, which shoulder far greater labor costs than its competitors, making them less competitive?  It takes a big, big man to offer someone else’s resignation.

Once again, I have to straighten out the four-eyed Neo-Con idiot:

  1. His is name Ron Gettlefinger, not Rich.
  2. He has done more work in his entire life, than you’ll ever hope to accomplish.
  3. Why don’t you do the blogging world a favor and offer your resignation from HotAir.com and from Blogging in General? Better yet; just drop dead. God knows, the world would be a much better place without idiotic morons like you around, that’s for sure.

Sorry folks, I know that sounds a bit harsh, But when this son-of-a-bitch decided to start his crusade against the Detroit auto workers, he declared war against me personally and my Family. Because of this, I will continue to write rebuttals to this idiots writings, until he personally apologizes to me or decides to stop writing insulting Blog postings about my Father, who is a retired auto worker and U.A.W. Member.

I refer to Ed as a Madison Avenue Conservative, However, I know he is not a rich man. But he has the mentality of your typical Neo-Conservative Republican. Of course, for Ed; it is easy to have this attitude. I mean, when you’re basically living off your wife’s disability check and plus getting a nice check from that Neo-Con shill that he works for. It is easy for him to take the positions that he takes.

Meanwhile, people like me, who live in the real world; who have all of $45 in our bank accounts. We know what would happen to this area, if the big three did collapse. This entire area would become desolate, families and individuals would begin to leave in masses. Like they did back in the 1980’s when that big recession hit. Jobs would become nonexistent, like they did during the great depression of the 1930’s.  Thankfully, my Dad’s pension would be protected by the Federal Government, due to laws passed many years ago. But those men and women working those production lines would not be. The unemployment claims would bankrupt our state.

But people like Ed and Mitt Romney, they don’t care. They’ve got their money. They could care less what happens to us middle class folk. Here’s where the jobless rate hits home with me. I have not had a “Day Job” since 2005. Due to high gas prices and a bum car, that either needs to be sold or fixed; I cannot afford to drive to the job offers that I see in the listings, that are up to 50 or more miles from my house. My car has a bad “A Arm” in the steering. I cannot drive the car on the highway, I would be risking smacking the wall at 60 MPH, if I did. Not my idea of good time!  Besides, the car is quite old, as in 1990 kind of old. The money I would be putting into that car would far exceed the value. So, at this point, I am stuck. Unless I find something around here locally. But that market, is a part of the market that’s dried up around here. This is why I am a full time Blogger. It is all a can do, at this point.

Hopefully now, you will understand why I feel the way that I do about Ed, and his idiotic nonsense towards this area.

Update: To the commenter named Joel, who wrote a rather idiotic comment, accusing me of Ad-Hominem attacks. Well, the way see it. Ed has taken it upon himself in engaging in Ad-Hominem attacks against The U.A.W., The US Auto workers, which includes my Dad; and the middle class in general. So, the way I see it, what’s fair is fair.  I am sticking up for those who have no voice, and if that upsets you. Tough Shit! I’m sure there’s plenty of Neo-Conservative Blogs out there, that you can read that just brim with Anti-Union Propaganda. This is not one of those Blogs.

Quote of the Day

Who killed the U.S. auto industry?

To hear the media tell it, arrogant corporate chiefs failed to foresee the demand for small, fuel-efficient cars and made gas-guzzling road-hog SUV’s no one wanted, while the clever, far-sighted Japanese, Germans, and Koreans prepared and built for the future.

I dissent. What killed Detroit was Washington, the government of the United States, politicians, journalists, and muckrakers who have long harbored a deep animus against the manufacturing class that ran the smokestack industries that won World War II.

For once in my life. I am in 100% agreement with a Republican. Click the link to see who it is.