This is all about the old straight white guys who feel they are entitled to everything. They all need to be flushed as well as the whole patriarchical system (AKA the good old boys club)and the patriarchical religions that keep them in power.

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In fact, they need to GO! This is about our manufacturing base. This is about protecting the very few manufacturing jobs that are left that allow a family to earn a decent living and have decent benefits. This is about allowing one-in-ten jobs in this country to remain. This is about not letting China buy General Motors in order to gain a foothold to sell their cars in this country. This is about not allowing India to buy Chrysler in order to sell their cars here instead. It's about not letting South Korea to buy up Ford Motor Company.

It's awfully strange that when the Financial Institutions came to Congress, hats in hand, asking for the Federal Government to SAVE WHITE-COLLAR JOBS, the answer was, "No Problem!" But when the Auto Industry comes to ask for help saving BLUE COLLAR JOBS, the Republics scream out a very loud, "No Way!"

I think they should save this industry, get rid of the current management as a condition of the loans, and let the WORKERS RUN THE OPERATION! They know better than anyone what needs to be done. Let them do it.

Cut out the fat. Not the meat.

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How did the executives of Behr Stearns, AIG and Goldman-Sachs arrive in Washington? Or did they even have to go there since their boy, Paulson, was there ahead of them?
What dipshit thinks that all of these companies don't own private corporate transportation? It is disingenuous and hypocritical to think and write that it might be otherwise. (Shocked, we're shocked at this fact!!)
The big three represent,literally, millions of jobs. The jobs of working and middle class people in America (up to 1,000,000). While those who are benefiting from the "Wall Street Bailout" represent merely thousands of the extremely wealthy elite, those who George Bush once described as "his base."
The loans proposed for the auto manufacturers are based and contingent upon strict criteria and performance standards. Meanwhile Paulson's budies' bailout money is none of our damn business.
Thanks, but I'd rather support loans tied to conditions, which will keep my neighbors working rather than free money given away to wealthy wastrels who pose as the elite of our society...

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If you are making $10,000,000 a year and working, say 2,000 hours a year, your salary is $5,000 an hour. As a stockholder in a big three auto company I would be VERY upset if these guys were wasting their time sitting around commercial airports in order to "save" the ten or twenty bills it costs to fly the pool jet to DC, or to make some kind of symbolic statement to impress morons such as the writer of this article.

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...is the UAW. The repubs have been trying for decades to break unions of all types and this crisis is a perfect opportunity to do in the UAW. With no unions involved in the Wall Street crisis they give away $700 billion, no conditions. No questions about the astronomical salaries and bonuses to execs or how they got to their hearings. But when the auto companies ask for a relatively meager $25 billion, its another story. The big difference is that if they let the auto companies go under, they have effectively destroyed the UAW. This is class warfare.

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The absolute best part was when one of the congressmen asked the whole group if they approved the bailout, how many of them were going to SELL their jets? No one raised his hand and the congressman said, "Let the record show that no one responded in the affirmative."
3 Jets, $60,000, for ONE TRIP. And these guys hop on and spend that $20,000 per trip dozens of times a month. Wonder how big their expense accounts are.

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Why are the auto companies having trouble? Right now, the main reason is that people cannot get loans. They can't get loans because of the subprime mortgage crisis. That is the Wall Street bankers doing. So they get $700 billion and people still are having difficulty getting loans. Where is that bailout money going? Who knows? It is all cloaked in secrecy. If it is because it takes time for the bailout to have an effect on lending, then what is wrong with giving out loans to tide the auto industry over until this happens? Remember we're talking about a LOAN.
And how about southern states giving out billions in incentives to foreign auto companies to locate in their states? Do they offer the same to U.S. manufacturers? Hell no, that would mean (shudder) introducing unions into their "right to work" states.

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Are we allowed to jettison these "Fat cats" and still bail out the workers who will lose their jobs if we don't? We're talking so many people and that will make a big hole in the work force in this country.

Yes, the car companies had years to change their raping ways and they thumbed their noses at all of us. So, I say dump all of the guys who showed up in their company jets in their thousand dollar suits and give the money to the workers to keep the machinery going.

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Here we are in the midst of one of the worst -- if not, in fact, THE worst -- economic crises in history. Let's say we did "bail" these guys out: What good would that do? No one is buying cars. And, moreover, no one is buying American-designed gas-guzzlers.

Do we have to resort to a Gerald Ford-style "Buy American" campaign to salvage a corrupt industry whose products lack imagination and innovation, and only add to our energy woes?

The problem here is the ol' Marxist "overproduction" problem of Capitalism. We have car dealers going out of business because they can't sell the fucking things. The only ones who are selling at all are the Japanese and some European makers whose vehicles get decent gas mileage and actually live longer than your dog.

I feel sorry for the million or so workers who are going to be hurt by this. But consider the fact that more workers than that are already hurting just in the last 4 months (approximately 1.2 million I hear). I am not arguing that this makes it OK, only that trying to save one "sector" of what is really one unified economy that doesn't really have any such sectors will not do anything to stem the disaster that is already upon us. We are going down, and we are ALL going down together. Let's help each other -- one on one -- as we can, and work to get through this as a country.

It's time to sober up, hold Obama's feet to the fire, and FORCE government to start taking care of THE PEOPLE, not crooked institutions run by self-delusional sycophants who only care about themselves and their old boy networks of fraternity brothers.

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By using your computer to rant on Alternet or Huffpo? All the while using your printer, cell phone, microwave, tv and everything else in your house made in China? Yeah, commenting on WalMart while on your Chinese computer makes a hell of a lot of sense!

Granted, WalMart as a company sucks (not the worker bees who are no doubt thankful to have a job at all), but if you truly cared, you'd be living in a handmade cabin or teepee somewhere without any electronics at all. Oh, and be sure and make all your clothes, Xmas gifts, bedding, utensils, etc, etc by hand as well, with handmade tools. And get that garden growing!

I personally don't shop at WalMart, but I sure as hell don't begrudge the folks who do because they can't afford to shop anywhere else. Like Target or Best Buy or even high end stores like Saks don't sell goods imported from China or Taiwan or Vietnam or Mexico or anywhere but here. Please. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees! You can't have it both ways - or maybe we can.

Let the Chinese people make a buck or two and make sure that if we bail out the moribund American auto industry (which in some way will ultimately need to be done with a LOT of strings attached) and use Americans to work on products that the auto industry, as Michael Moore pointed out last night on Larry King, should be making - light rail, energy efficient vehicles, etc. Then it's a win-win all the way around.

Again, as MM said, FDR put the auto industry to work making the needed planes and tanks that were, unfortunately, needed at that time and there will be plenty of jobs to go around.

Anyone that remotely believes overseas jobs are coming back is beyond self-delusional. Like it or not, a global economy is here to stay - and it will without a doubt expand. Going back to the 1950s isn't an option anymore (thank goodness - ask women or any minority). Trite, but true, we're all in this mess together and the sooner we learn to deal with it in a constructive manner the better instead of pointing fingers and casting blame.

Our infrastructure is in such horrendous shape that starting a CCC like program to deal with that alone - while putting people to work is just one example of something that can be done. Expand the peace corps. Get realistic instead of complaining endlessly on blogs that will fade along with the sunset, it's time to think positively and come up with ways to help the world populace, not just Americans. If it's not too late.

I'd just be happy to have the extremely nice and polite Indian customer service workers get some training to get my Apple (made in China) computer software working properly!

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....GM and Ford bonds, so if they go under I will be in trouble. But the CEO's should show up at work wearing burlap bags and eating cheap sandwiches until this is over, then upgrading to what the assembly line people wear and eat. In other words, fuck 'em, and make them see what regular people have to do.

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