It's this kind of socialist advocacy that drove me from the democrat fold.
Posted by A Former Democrat at October 21, 2005 02:28 PMIt's this kind of heartless name-calling that drove me away from my Republican upbringing.
Posted by idiosynchronic at October 21, 2005 02:33 PMIt's this kind of socially conscious activity that drove me to The Left Coaster.
Posted by iamcoyote at October 21, 2005 02:59 PMIt's this kind of socially conscious activity that drove me to actually like people again.
Posted by tempus at October 21, 2005 03:22 PMIt's this kind of socially conscious activity that drove me to become a Democrat. It is also the thing that helps me to sleep well at night and gives me peace of mind.
Posted by Judith at October 21, 2005 03:57 PMIt was the continuous ripping off of the less fortunate by upper class Republicans that drove me to the Democratic Party.
Posted by A Former Republican at October 21, 2005 04:19 PMit's the holier-than-thou attitude combined with the incessant kleptocracy and deadly incompetence that has me dreaming of a glorious fitzmas.
Posted by benjoya at October 21, 2005 04:22 PMi'm not driving a GM car anywhere...they suck!
Posted by leftAhead at October 21, 2005 04:49 PMWe should never forget that reneging on an agreement to provide health care by a corporation is theft, plain and simple. If the corporation had not promised (contract) to provide the health insurance, the workers union could have negotiated for a different wage payment with which the workers might have been able to procure health insurance. The workers agreed to sacrifice current wages for a promise by the corporation to pay some form of compensation in the future. The corporations reneging is fraud, for not having set aside the necessary funds to pay that compensation. Instead the executives and board decided to pay dividends and bonuses and provide stock options to management. Every damned executive for the last twenty five years should be hit with a fraud charge and the union should go after the executives and he corportion for civil damanges. The discovery will be fascinating.
Posted by PrahaPartizan at October 21, 2005 04:55 PMThanks for the insightful post, pessimist. It has amazed me these past few years that even though healthcare has been one of the top concerns of people in general (even when there's terra alerts), the bush administration has ignored it.
I wonder if the spector of "socialized" healthcare even scares people anymore. Think about flu vaccines -- even excluding the avian variety -- wouldn't it be smart, in our mobile society, to have a national plan, especially regarding children and the elderly? Instead, we have a system (that's a questionable way of identifying it, I know) where people who should get a vaccine have to stress over whether they will be able to.
Another example of a national policy which could be very beneficial is early childhood vaccinations. When all of the evacuees came to Houston from NOLA, their children were allowed to get into schools without records of vaccinations. Of course, this was the right thing to do, but with a national system, it wouldn't even have been something to worry about.
Greed, as in these executives and our politicians, and stupidity, as shown by "Former Democrat" above, are timeless.
At what point in the collapse of this country will the workers, now having nothing for their years of labor, rise up and take care of these Executive "Frankensteins" once and for all? You see, it's not until heads roll in the street that the current "aristocracy" sits up and takes notice. By then it's way too late for all. FDR saved us from this potential avenue, but Germany had no savior, except Hitler. I see no FDR on the horizon for Amerika!
The only thing I have observed to break this cycle of human stupidity is a well-informed, educated electorate and a society with most above poverty and the differences between the haves and have-nots minor. Alas, that is not Amerika today. The cycle will repeat. Hopefully we will learn a little more for what's to follow, but never underestimate the stupidity of people en masse. Will we go the way of 1930’s Germany? The big chance we have to not go that way is Germany’s lesson, still not lost in history. Alas, much of Amerika is ignorant of it’s own history, forget the rest of the world. Many are proud of that fact!
Thank God, or Gore, for the internet, for we might still educate enough in time.
A friend of mine with a background as a probation officer gave me his take on why the GOP doesn't seem to care about public relations anymore. Simply put, they've reached the stage of no return. In other words, when a teen starts committing small crimes they're careful not to get caught. If they continue in said behavior long enough they come to beleive that they cannot get caught. As a result, the crimes committed get worse yet they take less care to cover their tracks. Eventually they get caught and the criminal justice system becomes involved which is where we are now.
Posted by rlp at October 21, 2005 05:53 PMWSJ great Paul Gigi is on TV now. Let's see what he has to say on the topic of GM and healthcare.
"Gm is burdened (x3 or 4) by hc costs, and their employees enjoy such great benefits. GM managers have been running a welfare state."
I'm waiting for Paul or any of them to mention the executives.
"Wow," says Paul, after hearing that all the foreign plants running in the US are non-unionized.
Gawd, it's like listening to a roundtable of muckdogs.
No mention of executives at all. Why am I not surprised?
Oh, the answer is to make sure your kid is smart enough not to take a manufacturing job. So, if you are not as smart as the talking heads, hmm.
Bottom line, it's all nonsense. But think about it, the talking heads that just spewed that crap probably make more than many of us combined.
Gees and now they are "all over" the Barry Bonds Balco thing.
Posted by dorita at October 21, 2005 06:54 PM
don't forget the HMO 'revolution' that was supposed to be the big health care cure-all, but mostly ended up filling the Frist family coffers--after all, good breeding begets good healthcare!
Posted by leftAhead at October 21, 2005 06:58 PMIf GM succeeds in gutting medical benefits for their workers and cuts their salaries as drastically as their planning, with no penalty to top management, then the latter had better live behind very high walls and stay inside.
It will be "Welcome back to the 1880s - your dynamite, sir?"
Posted by palamedes at October 22, 2005 01:07 AM"then the latter had better live behind very high walls and stay inside."
Palamdedes, that's at thought they and a lot of others better start considering.
Posted by Judith at October 22, 2005 05:23 AMwith no penalty to top management, then the latter had better live behind very high walls and stay inside.
It's already happening. A new subdivison of high dollar homes is being built about two miles from my home that has a wall around it disturbingly similar to the Berlin wall. The only things missing are the barbed wire and the guard doesn't have an AK-47 visible.