It is generally presumed (based on opinion polls) that the current govt will be turned out of office when the next parliamentiary elections are held (Sept 2009 at the latest), and a govt centered on the main opposition party (DPJ) will take power, but they will have a big mess to clean up.

Can someone compare the annual salaries of the UAW employees (those that are working, exclude retirees) to the annual bonuses given to the leaders of CITI, AIG and the other financial institutions that received the bailout? What % of the annual payroll could be covered by the bonuses?

Thanks for your patience.

Sincerely,

Now that Boxer of CA is Chair, with her constituents pushing for alternatives on energy and the environment, the CA standards have an advocate at the federal level.

The contrast between Inhofe and Boxer kind of crystallize the vast chasm between the outworn, outdated, inaccurate, ideas of the GOP and the energy of the Dems.

Inhofe is like an old Remington typewriter.
Now, Boxer needs to be a Sun.

if california uses a very restrictive pollution model that should actually help detroit

the reason is detroit will have to tool up and compete at those pollution protocol, foreign auto workers might look at california as a negative return

It’s just sickening to watch all of this when 39 out of 40 economists agree that infrastructure spending and saving auto manufacturing is the way to go. Not tax cuts or “foreign buyouts”.

The bottom line is that absolutely everybody is being hammered, no matter how good or bad the quality of their manufactures, because the bottom has fallen out of the entire banking and credit system.

That is exactly right, and is the point we have been trying to make here for a long time. Say what you will about the American auto manufacturers, and much of it is historically deserved, but they, especially Ford and GM, were well into the process of reinventing themselves when the bottom dropped out of the economy and credit markets. Yet they were fileted, gutted and humiliated by a bunch of Republican blowhards (and were not exactly supported by most Dems either I might add) in their callous and unyielding attack on America. They are doing it again in relation to the stimulus bill. It is really hard to understand how anybody thinks their attitudes and actions are worthy of anything but utter contempt, much less justifiable as an honest political position.

But then, I’ve owned two Subarus. GL station wagons. Very good snow cars, but after 5 years they have a tendency to turn into hangar queens. Not just my own experience, either. Consumer Reports said the same thing in their Frequency-of-Repair ratings for years.

These days, I buy Toyota, because both personal experience, and those same ratings, describe a company whose reliability over time is superior across their entire product line.

The bottom line is that absolutely everybody is being hammered, no matter how good or bad the quality of their manufactures, because the bottom has fallen out of the entire banking and credit system.

Of course, leave it to the Repukes to use this to try to destroy American jobs and the American middle class. They’ve pretty much done for that last already.

Next up – America’s formal entry into the Third World. Complete with revolving-door tinhorn dictatorships, nonexistent infrastructure, permanent economic depression, and chronic internal war. Brought to you by the Party of Personal Responsibility, the “Keep America Strong” party.