The United Automobile Workers union and members of Congress were unable to reach an agreement over wage concessions. Some members of Congress proposed that wages of U.A.W. members be lowered to compete with those of workers at non-union U.S. plants run by foreign automakers like Toyota or Honda.
Roben Farzad, a senior writer and columnist for BusinessWeek magazine, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the future of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler and how overseas auto manufacturers are benefiting from the confusion surrounding these automakers. He also explores wage rates for workers and the role of foreign automakers in the rejection of the bailout package.
Let’s review: the Bush White House (amazing in and of itself) reached a deal with Congressional Democrats (wonders never cease but Congress acted) on a $14 billion rescue package, and the compromise passed the House with a bipartisan majority (hey government worked for a change). But never fear, the voices of unreason still can obstruct at their will in the US Senate. Senate Republicans, led by Senator McConnell, Senator Corker, Senator Shelby and Senator DeMint, not only opposed the measure, but refused to allow a vote on the bailout unless a series of unreasonable demands were met.
The Democratic leadership in the Senate, hoping to stave off a political disaster and the fast collapse of the American economy (no I don’t think that hyperbole because a quarter of a million jobs are after all a quarter of a million jobs), went along, and agreed to Republican demands to cut the wages and benefits of the membership of United Auto Workers as soon as the UAW’s current contract expired in 2011. The GOP, led in this case by Senator McConnell Senator Corker, Senator Shelby, and Senator DeMint, said that wasn’t good enough — autoworker wages had to be cut in 2009, or else no deal. And so the deal falls apart and at least one of the Big Three is now poised to collapse. So much for the GOP belief in the sanctity of contracts.
So does the GOP put the interests of Toyota (plants in Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama), Nissan (two plants in Tennessee), Hyundai (a plant in Alabama) and BMW (a plant in South Carolina) above that of the American worker? It appears they do.
How delusional is Robert Mugabe? Well today, he claimed that Zimbabwe did not face a cholera epidemic even as South Africa designated one of its northern regions a disaster area due to the number of people crossing the border to seek treatment. So far 800 Zimbabweans have died. How many more must die before we act? Mugabe must go.
Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, declared his country’s killer cholera outbreak under control yesterday, even as neighbouring South Africa designated one of its northern regions a disaster area due to the number of people crossing the border to seek treatment.
Nearly 800 Zimbabweans have died since August from cholera, which has spread rapidly and with unusually high fatality rates due to the country’s crumbling water and health infrastructure.
“I am happy to say our doctors have been assisted by others, and the WHO [World Health Organisation], and they have now arrested cholera,” Mugabe said in a televised speech yesterday.
But the claim was met with immediate scepticism by international agencies. The WHO said on Tuesday that the number of reported cholera cases, currently 16,403, could rise to 60,000 in a worst-case scenario.
Responding to Mugabe’s comments, a spokeswoman for the UN Humanitarian Affairs office said “the figures speak for themselves” and that she hoped that a joint UN and government effort “will contribute to halting the effort”.
“Christmas is about more than religion, it’s also about love and families, not to mention shopping. Two men or two women can form a family too these days, even one with a child.” — Frank Van Dalen
A Dutch gay group it has planned a “Pink Christmas” festival for the first time in Amsterdam, featuring a manger stall with two Josephs and two Marys. The live Nativity is scheduled to begin December 21. Other attractions in the 10-day festival include parties, an open-air market, gay-themed films, an ice skating rink and religious services on December 25.
ProGay group chairman Frank van Dalen said Monday the event is intended to increase the choices for homosexual men and women during the Christmas holiday week.
“Right now, there’s not much to do,” he said.
The festival will also encourage people to think about homosexuality and religion, Van Dalen added.
Some Christian groups protested. The organization Christians for Truth said the idea “mocks the core concepts of Evangelism.”
“By putting Joseph and Mary down as homosexuals, a cracked human fantasy is being tacked on to history from the Bible,” the organization said in a statement urging the city and organizers to cancel the event.
The manger, with actors playing the parts of Joseph and Mary, goes on display Dec. 21.
Van Dalen said it was not intended to be offensive, but was meant as a “wink” at heterosexual assumptions.
“Christmas is about more than religion, it’s also about love and families, not to mention shopping,” he said. “Two men or two women can form a family too these days, even one with a child.”
Usually, they will put central in front of it for full force. Central planning is the latest conservative epithet in the wake of President-elect Obama’s bold and sweeping proposals for revitalizing the increasingly moribund American economy. Here’s Robert Tracinski, the editor of The Intellectual Activist:
The real story of the bailout of the Detroit auto industry is not simply the waste of taxpayers’ money on failing enterprises. Rather, the real news is Congress’s apparent confidence that the way to revive Detroit is to impose central planning on the auto industry. This would be done by appointing a “car czar” empowered to “act as a kind of trustee with authority to bring together labor, management, creditors and parts suppliers to negotiate a restructuring plan. He or she also would be able to review any transaction or contract valued at more than $25 million.”
The term “car czar” is not quite right. As a metaphorical description of the bailout, it evokes the right location–Russia–but the wrong era. “Car commissar” would be much more exact. Perhaps he will begin his work by issuing a five-year plan for the revival of the Big Three.
After all, it’s Frei Marktwirtschaft Uber Alles. The free market will provide an answer. How bankrupt is this line of thinking? Not as much as it should be. The nation and the health of the American economy is being held hostage by recalcitrant elements of the Republican party who in pursuit of some perverse ideological point about “free markets” and “limited government” seem willing to let an industry that directly employs a quarter of a million Americans and indirectly contributes to perhaps another five million jobs collapse. It is as if they want the country to fail. The truth is they want government to fail but are they are willing to let country fail to achieve such.
Carla Robbins of The New York Times and Gideon Rose of Foreign Affairs magazine join Martin Savidge to discuss the weeks top stories.
This week the discussion includes US plans to move more troops into Afghanistan, Pakistani leader Asif Ali Zardari’s claims that he is taking steps against terrorism amid questions about his governments effectiveness and Zimbabwe’s continued cholera crisis.