I am not mute on any of this. I email fax and call my representatives constantly. We need to let them know we ARE paying attention to what they are doing. We all need to let them know what we think of what they are doing. We need to demand the honest, corruption free House that Nancy Pelosi promised and didn’t even come close to delivering. Same with the Senate, where the system is entirely broken.

I am with you on the 700 billion dollar bailout. What sickened me most is that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd did much worse than Ken Lay and certainly ruined more people who had invested in Fannie and Freddie while they continued to sing the praises of these institutions. They should not only be thrown out of Congress, but should be prosecuted. Of course the Good Ol’ Boys Club protects its own, and they are now giving adviceon how to run a car company.

I am tired of political contributions preempting the good of the American people. Corrupt executives and corrupt politicians should be treated the same – although I think it is much worse when it is a politician. What Frank and Dodd did was criminal and then they had the guts to ask me to bail them out. Because that is what is was – a bailout of crooked politicians and their buddies. And now we are being asked to bailout a group of crooked, greedy UAW officials who fear this will affect their ability to get the card check bill passed so they can bully their way into non-union shops. We need to remind our elected officials that they represent US not the campaign contributors with the deep pockets.

You repeatedly also made it clear why you come to this page. I find it interesting that you “hang around with rational people all day along and then you come to this page to find comedic relief. Then you questioned why I came here.

I can assure you that my fellow PUMAs respond quite well with me and by the tones of most of your responses back from them, I would say that you are in a delusional state.

I’m sorry, why are you on here again?

I felt the same way about the $700 billion bank bailout. I literally cried watching Fox News to see the people walking out of the bank doors with boxes in tow. It was heartbreaking! What really pissed me off, was when it was revealed that after Washington Mutual laid off 35K “working class” employees (with NO severence, might I add) that the CEO who was on the job for a mere 3 weeks got to keep his multi-million dollar signing bonus. THAT IS ABSOLUTELY LUDICROUS.

So, for people to insist that giving these companies billion dollar handouts will solve the “economic crisis” is BS in its sh**iest form. It’s so insulting to us, the tax payers, who have to pay for it. It’s almost like a class war or something; “We can’t help you, laid-off worker who is going to lose your house, but we can help put money in the pockets of the big CEO’s buy new ones”.

It’s garbage and its DEAD wrong no matter WHAT party proposes it (republican or democrat). But sadly, it’s not going to stop until tax-payers demand better from our politicians. We can talk so much crap about their alleged personal corruption scandals, but when its time to talk about what they are doing with OUR money everyone is MUTE.

~Roza

I am against unions for a number of reasons, but to sum it up, generally the only people who benefit from them are the union officials. I was listening to a Senator on the radio (so forgive these numbers they are from memory) who said in 2007 GM and and Toyota sold almost the same number of cars. Toyota made a profit of 17 billion while Gm lost over 20 million. So we lend them money – how does that suddenly make them profitable?

My entire family lives in the Detroit area. I have seen what has been going on there first hand. It was easy to see this was coming. It is a tragedy, because the people who will be affected (the auto workers and their families) are not the ones who caused this. But I have also met people who are in the UAW “job bank” where they can collect 95% of their salary for two years after a layoff. I have met the people who have retired with a pension at 50 and now worry that they may have to return to work.

I wouldn’t begrudge any of these people these salaries and benefits IF the companies were profitable. When a company cannot afford to pay these wages and keep the doors open, the workers from the top to the bottom, must decide if it is better to cut their compensations or lose their job entirely. Coming for MY money for a company that will only lose more money unless things change makes absolutely no sense except to the big Union donors and the Senators who are beholding to them.

“UAW’s membership has plummeted 69 percent, from a peak 1.5 million in 1979 to 465,000 at the end of 2007″ Just figure out the amount of union dues have been lost by the UAW and you can see that is what they are concerned about. They are losing money and power.