Chrysler Deal Highlights The Democrats’ Culture Of Corrpution

You may get tired of hearing this, but it needs to be repeated over and over and over. Back in 2006, the Democrats campaigned on a Republican culture of corruption. Their claim was that they would bring back transparancy and fairness to Washington D.C.

Well, the Dems lied to us. They are more immersed in a culture of corrpution than the Republicans ever were, even more than they claimed the Republicans were. Now, we can see that this culture of corruption extends all the way to Barack Obama and the White House.

The Chrysler bankruptcy deal was supposed to sail through with no problems and Fiat would be the new majority owner at the end. But, the Obama administration didn’t count on a group of Indiana pension funds looking critically at the deal and finding out what was really going on.

This whole deal with Chrysler was about paying off union supporters at the expense of Joe and Jane Average American.

From the Dow Jones Newswires:

Fiat would initially own 20% of the new company, though it would have the option of increasing its stake to as much as 51%. A United Auto Workers health-care trust would initially get a 55% stake, while the U.S. and Canada, which are lending Chrysler $4.9 billion during the bankruptcy, would own 8% and 2%, respectively. Senior lenders owed $6.9 billion would receive $2 billion, giving them a recovery of about 29 cents on the dollar. The Indiana funds own about $42 million of the senior debt. The UAW’s health-care trust has an unsecured claim against Chrysler for about $10.5 billion. In addition to the equity stake in Chrysler that the trust, an unsecured creditor, would receive, it would also get a $4.5 billion note under the plan.

In other words, the UAW, a junior creditor, would be given preference over the Indiana pension funds, part of the senior lenders group. This is why the Supreme Court has temporarily blocked the sale, to look at the legality of this situation.

Giving junior lenders preference over senior lenders is wrong. This is clearly an attempt by the Obama administration to pay off their leftist union supporters through the sale of Chrysler and screw over hard-wroking Americans in the process.

(BTW, didn’t Obama promise to get the automakers back on their feet? Why is he now so hot about selling them off?)

The concept of fairness and the due process clause in the Constitution dictate that senior lenders must be tended to first and junior lenders after that. Obama is trying to turn that around. In other words, he is changing the rules in mid-stream so that his supporters get the greater benefit at the expense of everyone else.

The Democrats’ culture of corruption now adds to Nancy Pelosi, Tim Geithner, Charlie Rangel, William Jefferson and Todd Blagovich the name of Barack Obama.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Pension Funds Ask High Court To Delay Chrysler Sale
Mark H. Anderson
Dow Jones Newswire via Wall Street Journal
June 8, 2009

And another good analysis can be found on-line here:

Don’t Like the Game? Change the Rules
Glenn Beck
Fox News
June 8, 2009

AIG Bonus Furor: Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) Made The Bonuses Possible

Don’t you just love it when a Senator steps on his/her own foot and trips him/herself up? I do. That’s why I am blogging about Senator Chris Dodd and his hypocrisy about bonuses being paid out by American International Group (AIG).

While Congress was working on the porkulus/spendulus bill, Sen. Dodd added an amendment that I am pretty sure he wishes nobody remembered.

According to Fox Business:

That amendment provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009” — which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax. The amendment made it into the final version of the bill, and is law.

So, the Democrats (and a few ignorant Republicans) are all up in arms about bonuses being paid out in strict accordance with a law that they themselves passed!

Can you say CHUTZPAH?

Here are the rules of the Dodd amendment:

Crack down on bonuses, retention awards and incentive compensation: Bonuses can only be paid in the form of long-term restricted stock, equal to no greater than 1/3 of total annual compensation, and will vest only when taxpayer funds are repaid. There is an exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009. For institutions that received assistance totaling less than $25 million, the bonus restriction applies to the highest compensated employee; $25 million to $250 million, applies to the top five employees; $250 million to $500 million, applies to the senior executive officers and the next top 10 employees; and more than $500 million applies to the senior executive officers and the next top 20 employees (or such higher number as the Secretary determines is in the public interest).

Now, why would Sen. Dodd have done something like this? Perhaps OpenSecrets.org can provide us with the answer:

Note that Chris Dodd and Barack Obama were the two top recipients of money from AIG.

Now, people have known for over a year that these bonuses were coming out and a Democrat Senator introduced an amendment to make sure that those bonuses were legal. Why is their such a furor going on over all of it?

It is a distraction from other things, that’s why. It turns out that AIG was used as a launderer to spread money around to other banks. Someone doesn’t want us investigating that so they blow the bonus issue way out of proportion to try and make it into some type of scandal.

As for the outrage, I wonder why there was no outrage when public funds were used to shore up UAW retirement accounts?

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Amid AIG Furor, Dodd Tries To Undo Bonus Protections He Put In
Rich Edson
Fox Business
March 17, 2009

UAW Resorts For UAW Officers: More Examples Of Where The Tax-Payer Funded Bailout Will Be Going

My last blog entry dealt with the hypocrisy of the United Auto Workers and their leadership in owning a resort that consistently has lost money over the years.

But, Michelle Malkin has taken this story to new levels by exposing other projects that the UAW leadership has wasted it’s members’ money on.

From Town Hall:

In May and November 2007, the UAW forked over nearly $53,000 for union staff meetings at the Thousand Hills Golf Resort in Branson, Mo. In September 2007, the UAW dropped another $5,000 at the Lakes of Taylor Golf Club in Taylor, Mich., and another $9,000 at the Thunderbird Hills Golf Club in Huron, Ohio. Another bill for $5,772 showed up for the Branson, Mo., golf resort. On Oct. 26, 2007, the union spent $5,000 on another “golf outing” in Detroit. In May and June 2007, UAW bosses spent nearly $11,000 on a golf tournament and related expenses at the Hawthorne Hill Country Club in Lima, Ohio. And in April 2007, the UAW spent $12,000 for a charity golf sponsorship in Dearborn, Mich. In August 2007, the UAW paid nearly $10,000 to its for-profit Black Lake golf course operator, UBG, for something itemized as “Golf 2007 Summer School.” UBG had nearly $4.4 million worth of outstanding loans from the union. Another for-profit entity that runs the education center, UBE, had nearly $20 million in outstanding loans from the union. … And while the UAW and carmakers cry poor, they’ve operated massive joint funds for years that have paid for lavish items such as multi-million-dollar NASCAR racer sponsorships and Las Vegas junkets. The dire economic downturn hasn’t changed the behavior of profligate union bigs at the front office or the shop floor. Local Detroit TV station WDIV recently caught local UAW bosses Ron Seroka and Jim Modzelewski — both of whom make six-figure salaries — on tape squandering thousands of hours of overtime on such important labor security matters as on-the-clock beer runs and bowling tournaments.

And the idiots in Congress who voted “Yea” on the Detroit bailout still beleive they were doing something honorable.

Let the bums go bankrupt.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

The UAW’s Money-Squandering Corruptocracy
Michelle Malkin
Townhall.com
December 31, 2008

$33 Million Lakside Resort Owned By UAW Exposes Jim Webb’s Hypocrisy

You know, one of the things that really angers me is arrogant hypocrisy. What I mean by that is a “Do as I say, not as I do” attitude. As the proud father of a newborn baby boy, I can honestly say that I will teach my son to never engage in such behavior. I only wish that the full-grown politicians who ride roughshod over us would live by the same rules we teach our children to live by.

To wit, there is an interesting story from Fox News that came out on December 26th concerning a resort owned by the United Auto Workers and financed by the Big Three Automakers through union negotiated contracts.

You all may recall that I wrote letters to my Congressional Representatives concerning the proposed bailout of Detroit. I noted that legacy costs such as the Jobs Bank program were forcing higher costs on the Big Three and that was why they were facing backruptcy. I further noted that many small businesses here in Virginia were in danger of failing but that no one was talking about bailing them out.

Well, I did get a response back from Jim Webb. In his response, he noted that the Big Three executives recieved much higher salaries when compared to the executives of foreign automakers and proposed forcing the U.S. executives to take a parity of salary. It should also be noted that Senator Webb never made one single mention of the plight of small businesses here in Virginia nor did he express any concern their situation.

This brings me to the point of the above mentioned arrogant hypocrisy. If we are to take such a negative view of the American Automakers executives’ salaries, then we must also look at the perks that the officers of the UAW are enjoying. One of those perks is a UAW owned golf course that has bled off $23 million over the past five years.

From Fox News:

Even as the industry struggles with massive losses, the UAW brass continue to own and operate a $33 million lakeside retreat in Michigan, complete with a $6.4 million designer golf course. And it’s costing them millions each year. The UAW, known more for its strikes than its slices, hosts seminars and junkets at the Walter and May Reuther Family Education Center in Onaway, Mich., which is nestled on “1,000 heavily forested acres” on Michigan’s Black Lake, according to its Web site. But the Black Lake club and retreat, which are among the union’s biggest fixed assets, have lost $23 million in the past five years alone, a heavy albatross around the union’s neck as it tries to manage a multibillion-dollar pension plan crisis.

So, if we are to take Jim Webb seriously about his proposal of forcing executives to accept parity of salary, should we not also impose the same standard on the UAW officers who live the high life while the rest of America (most of whom can’t afford to spend time at high class resorts like the UAW does) floats them?

Or how about applying that same standard to Congress and other government officials? Should we not also impose “parity of salary” on them as well? According to the Census Bureau, the median household income in the United States in 2007 was $50,233.00. Thus, government officials, if they truly believe themselves to be the servants of the people and to be in touch with the peoples’ needs, should only accept salaries of $50,233.00 per year. If they are not willing to accept such parity for themselves, then they certainly should not be suggesting that it be imposed upon others.

But I am certain that Jim Webb lacks the integrity necessary to make such a bold stand. He has no problem imposing his standards on others, but will resist to the end any attempt at imposing those same standards on himself.

If any of the bailout money that President Bush released to finance the Big Three ends up floating that resort, it will serve as proof that the Democrats were more interested in repaying the UAW for political support than they were in bailing out the Big Three.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Autoworkers Union Keeps $6 Million Golf Course For Members At $33 Million Lakeside Retreat
FoxNews.com
December 26, 2008

Great News! Automaker Bailout Dies In The Senate!

This is good news for America. The proposed bailout for the Big Three in Detroit has died and for very good reasons. The remaining GOP Senators demanded that the United Auto Workers scale back their demands to be more on par with the compensation given to auto workers employed by Toyota and Honda.

That was a more than reasonable request given the current economic conditions, but the UAW wouldn’t budge and the Dems couldn’t do anything about it.

Associated Press has this to say via MSNBC:

Republicans, breaking sharply with President George W. Bush as his term draws to a close, refused to back federal aid for Detroit’s beleaguered Big Three without a guarantee that the United Auto Workers would agree by the end of next year to wage cuts to bring their pay into line with U.S. plants of Japanese carmakers. The UAW refused to do so before its current contract with the automakers expires in 2011.

Why is such a request meaningful? Because of this:

Congressional Republicans have been in open revolt against Bush over the auto bailout. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky joined other GOP lawmakers Thursday in announcing his opposition to the White House-backed bill, which passed the House on Wednesday. He and other Republicans insisted that the carmakers restructure their debt and bring wages and benefits in line with those paid by Toyota, Honda and Nissan in the United States. Hourly wages for UAW workers at GM factories are about equal to those paid by Toyota Motor Corp. at its older U.S. factories, according to the companies. GM says the average UAW laborer makes $29.78 per hour, while Toyota says it pays about $30 per hour. But the unionized factories have far higher benefit costs. GM says its total hourly labor costs are now $69, including wages, pensions and health care for active workers, plus the pension and health care costs of more than 432,000 retirees and spouses. Toyota says its total costs are around $48. The Japanese automaker has far fewer retirees and its pension and health care benefits are not as rich as those paid to UAW workers.

If the Japanese carmakers can produce cars for only three-quarters of the cost that American carmakers incur, then there is absolutely no reason why American carmakers can’t bring themselves in line with the lower costs.

But the unions are against this, mostly because it reduces their power and because the union bosses will no longer have any justification for their own high salaries nor for the massive donations they routinely make to the Democrat Party.

The GOP was absolutely right to make sure this deal is killed. It will be a day of reckoning for the UAW and for the Dems who have failed to pay them back for their support. Plus, it aims the spotlight exactly where it needs to be pointing.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Auto Industry Bailout Plan Dies In The Senate
Associated Press via MSNBC
December 12, 2008

A Letter To Virginia Senators Warner And Webb, And Representative Wolf

Another bailout? Another failure in the works? Why won’t Congress learn?

If you are from Virginia, feel free to copy this letter and send it in:

Dear [Congressional Representative], I am writing this letter to ask you to vote “Nay” on the proposed bailout of the Detroit “Big Three” automakers. While it is true that the American economy has been in a recession since last December, it is also true that we cannot kick-start it by placing yet another burden on the children and grand-children of the American taxpayer, especially a burden of a program that is doomed to failure. As a case in point, I show you the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street that was supposed to fend off a market crash. Not only was that bailout a complete and total failure, but it saddled a $905 billion debt on our children and grand-children. And even beyond that, the pork that existed in that bill was nothing short of unpardonable. After all, those toy wooden arrows, wheat research grants and subsidies for Puerto Rican rum didn’t do a damn thing to shore up the markets. And now, the Federal Government wants to make the same mistake again, only this time with Detroit. There comes a time when you simply must let a business fail. Detroit has reached that time. The legacy costs they have incurred over the years are too much for them to overcome and certainly not worthy of the hard-earned dollars that the American taxpayer will be forced into paying for them. As a case in point for this, I show you the Jobs Bank program that the United Auto Workers negotiated with the Big Three. In this program, workers are literally paid not to work. How long can any business maintain such a ridiculous policy? It is true that there is talk of “suspending” this program, but that won’t help since it means the program could come back and force more legacy cost on the automakers. It needs to be killed completely along with several other concessions to the UAW that have contributed to the legacy costs that are right now killing Detroit. The best way to fix the problem is to allow the Big Three to go into Chapter 11 and re-organize. This is the most viable option as is evidenced by the other big automakers in the United States who have plants in California, Tennessee and South Carolina. None of them are in trouble nor are they asking for any kind of bailout nor are they beholden to any labor unions. If the Big Three want to survive, they should look to Toyota, Honda and BMW as models for restructuring. One last point I want to make. Small businesses all over Virginia are in danger of failing due to the bad economy. Hairdressers are losing business because people don’t have the money to get their hair done as often. Garages are losing business because people are putting off auto repair for as long as possible. Painters, plumbers and carpenters are losing business because people are putting off home repairs as long as possible. But despite the fact that small businesses here in Virginia are in danger of failing, no one has been proposing a government bailout for us. Please apply that same standard to Detroit. Thank you.

A Bailout Update (Cartoon)

Detroit Doesn’t Understand Why The Automaker Bailout Must Not Happen

The bailout for the Big Three Automakers is still being dicussed in Congress even though the bill itself is on life-support. This isn’t because it’s a good idea (it isn’t), rather it is because the Democrats have to pay back the support they got from the United Auto Workers and they want Main Street America to pony up the money.

Running alongside this argument is a spotlight that illuminates what is going on in Detroit and why the Big Three Automakers are in trouble. Unfortunately for the UAW, these revelations don’t make them look good.

From Dan Calabrese of the North Star Writers Group:

To survive in business, you have to make a profit. Period. Nothing else matters. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler don’t do that, so they deserve to die. But if you want to understand why they don’t make a profit, all you need to do is look at two schemes concocted along with the United Auto Workers – the Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) and the UAW Jobs Bank. The two entities work in different ways, but they have one devastating fact in common. Both require the automakers to pay billions to people who don’t do any work for them. The VEBA, which is actually being hailed by Detroit media and civic leadership as a positive measure, is in reality a way for the UAW to protect its retirees from losing their health benefits in the event of an automaker bankruptcy. Negotiated by GM in 2007, it requires the UAW to administer retiree health benefits beginning in January 2010. That’s the part the industry’s defenders keep pointing to – the notion that it offloads retiree benefits onto the union, as if the union was going to pay these benefits out of its own pocket. In fact, GM is required to continue spending $1.8 billion a year through the end of 2009 on retiree health benefits, while also bankrolling the VEBA to the tune of an astounding $24.1 billion so the funds are ready for the UAW to begin administering on January 1, 2010. And that’s not all. GM will be required to make up to 20 additional annual payments of $165 million apiece in order to guarantee that retiree health benefits for UAW members are not reduced at all for 25 years. This is what the Big Three would have us believe amounts to legacy cost relief. But even that is not as outrageous as the Jobs Bank. Established in 1984, the original purpose of the Jobs Bank was to keep workers available during temporary layoffs when the emerging technology of the time was causing short-term displacement of workers. A worker would receive 95 percent of his or her wage for up to two years – again, through a fund administered by the UAW but funded by the Big Three – until a new job opened up.

As long as the Big Three are throwing money away on these outrageous expenditures on the unions, they will not be able to make money and therefore will not be able to remain competitive in the market. The Big Three need to go into Chapter 11 to break these wasteful contracts.

But, what of the union leadership?

Read on:

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, who is predictably coming under fire from all quarters for clinging to these perks, held an astounding news conference late last week in which he insisted that none of this has caused the problem. Again citing the struggling economy and the consumer credit crunch, Gettelfinger began howling, “It’s not our fault! It’s not our fault!” It was an eye-opening scene, and surely illustrative for anyone who is just now getting introduced to economic thinking, Detroit-style. If my eight-year-old talked like that, I would send him to his room. In Detroit, this passes for community leadership.

Gettelfinger knows where the groceries are coming from and he knows who is paying for them. As long as he and his union management cronies are making bank off of these deals, they want to keep them in place, even if it means having Joe and Jane Average American pay for it with higher taxes.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

No, Detroit, It’s You Who Doesn’t Understand
Dan Calabrese
North Star Writers Group
November 24, 2008

Another Reason For Opposing A Bailout Of The Big Three Automakers

Jobs bank programs. I doubt anyone can give one good reason why we should pay people not to work. But that is what is happening up in Detroit and one of the many reasons why the American automakers are failing.

The following excerpt comes from a story first published by the Detroit News back in 2005. It should have been a clear warning sign to anyone who read it.

Ken Pool is making good money. On weekdays, he shows up at 7 a.m. at Ford Motor Co.’s Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne, signs in, and then starts working — on a crossword puzzle. Pool hates the monotony, but the pay is good: more than $31 an hour, plus benefits. “We just go in and play crossword puzzles, watch videos that someone brings in or read the newspaper,” he says. “Otherwise, I’ve just sat.” Pool is one of more than 12,000 American autoworkers who, instead of installing windshields or bending sheet metal, spend their days counting the hours in a jobs bank set up by Detroit automakers and Delphi Corp. as part of an extraordinary job security agreement with the United Auto Workers union.

“Extraordinary” doesn’t even begin to cover it. I doubt that other workers in the United States get such a sweetheart of a deal. But, it is the rest of the United States that pays for this program in the form of higher priced cars.

More:

Detroit automakers declined to discuss the programs in detail or say exactly how much they are spending, but the four-year labor contracts they signed with the UAW in 2003 established contribution caps that give a good idea of the size of the expense. According to those documents, GM agreed to contribute up to $2.1 billion over four years. DaimlerChrysler set aside $451 million for its program, along with another $50 million for salaried employees covered under the contract. Ford, which also maintained responsibility for Visteon Corp.’s UAW employees, agreed to contribute $944 million. Delphi pledged to contribute $630 million. In August, however, Delphi Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Robert S. “Steve” Miller said the company spent more than $100 million on its jobs bank program in the second quarter alone. “Can we keep losing $400 million a year paying for workers in the jobs bank and $400 million a year on operations? No, we cannot deal with that indefinitely,” Miller said in a recent interview with The Detroit News. “We can’t wait until 2007.”

Steve Miller got it right. Has Detroit learned any lessons from this? Maybe some small ones. The jobs bank was cut in 2007 under a collective bargaining agreement with GM, but it was not done away with.

Given that the Big Three are going to the Feds begging for a bailout, it was obviously too little, too late.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Jobs Bank Programs — 12,000 Paid Not To Work
Bryce G. Hoffman
The Detroit News
October 17, 2005

No Bailout For The Big Three Automakers

Most of us were pretty adamant that we did not want our tax money going to bailout failing financial institutions on Wall Street, especially since those same institutions were failing due to government regulations that forced them into bad business practices. Here we are several weeks later and it is looking like that bailout is going to go down in history as a huge, $905 billion failure.

Now, Congress is talking about bailing out the Big Three automakers, General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. I am against this bailout for essentially the same reasons as being opposed to the Wall Street bailout: bad business practices being forced upon the automakers, not by government, but by the United Auto Workers Union.

Plain and simple, because of the lunacy of the union negotiated contracts, American automakers cannot compete with foreign automakers and produce a quality car for the same low price. Thus, Detroit is in big trouble with no way out.

Investor’s Business Daily, giving credit to former Clinton Administration official Robert Riech, goes through the issues that the union brings to American automakers and why those issues prevent Detroit from competing in the world market.

Reich says that if a bailout is to be given, then the unions must be willing to give back many of their contract perks. I say that these same issues show exactly why no bailout should be given at all and the Big Three should be allowed to go into Chapter 11.

From the IBD editorial page:

[T]he companies’ poisonous contracts with the United Auto Workers union have to be torn up. The problem is that the UAW, under President Ron Gettelfinger, remains adamant: No givebacks. This is financial lunacy. Thanks in part to managerial incompetence, but mostly due to pricey union contracts, it costs American carmakers too much to build cars here; they can’t compete. When you fold in health care, pensions, hourly pay, vacations and the rest, average total compensation for a Big Three autoworker is $73.21 an hour, according to data cited by University of Michigan economist Mark Perry. Toyota, Honda and Nissan pay a still-generous $44.20 an hour in total compensation — a cost edge of nearly 40%. Is it any wonder that Ford, GM and Chrysler can’t compete? Or that, after paying their workers, they never have enough cash left to retool?

That last paragraph shows how union contracts are holding the automakers back. The automakers cannot afford to retool because they are doing things like paying laid-off workers 90% of their salaries for not working.

More:

These aren’t temporary problems. They’ve been brewing for decades, as management agreed over and over to labor deals that now financially strangle the industry. Yet, UAW’s Gettelfinger claims the weak economy is to blame for the industry’s woes. Nonsense. As blogger (and former corporate CEO) Jim Manzi notes, American carmakers in 1960 owned 90% of the U.S. auto market. This year, for the first time ever, that share slipped below 50%. Japan’s Big Three — Honda, Nissan and Toyota — make anywhere from $900 to $1,600 in pretax profit on each car they make in North America (mostly in southeastern states, with non-union contracts). America’s Big Three, by comparison, lose anywhere from $400 to $1,500. Truth is, they’re being out-hustled and out-priced in their own backyard due mainly to labor agreements that have driven up costs and become a millstone around their neck.

Chapter 11 will allow the Big Three to tear up those union contracts and start fresh. That is what is needed more than anything else.

Jack and Suzy Welch at Business Week make the case for Chapter 11 as well.

A government handout, however, isn’t the way to make that happen. Washington would impose conditions and promise strict oversight, but it simply can’t push through the kind of transformative change the industry needs. There would be too much political opposition, and regardless, the bailout sums being bandied about—$25 billion of taxpayer dollars, for starters—would only keep the Big Three heaving along, basically as they are. It’s a life-support solution, not a cure. That’s why the boards of the automakers should take the courageous step of putting their companies into bankruptcy. Some creditors might make the case for liquidation, but given the diminished worth of the automakers’ assets, that’s an unattractive scenario. Instead, creditors would most likely opt for the government stepping in as the debtor-in-possession financier supporting the reorganization. Talk about a fresh start. For more than a decade, U.S. carmakers have chipped away incrementally at massive legacy costs. But reorganization would open the doors to meaningful structural change through the renegotiation of contracts with creditors, dealers, and unions. And it would offer better odds of paying back taxpayers.

A bailout is not going to work and it certainly will not encourage the UAW to do the right thing and allow a massive reorganization of the Big Three’s management and production practices.

A majority of Americans were against the Wall Street bailout and it turns out that we were right to be opposed. But the Democrats in Congress are itching to repay the UAW and other unions for their political support during the elections, and they want to repay them with our tax dollars.

We need to send another message to Congress that this bailout is not acceptable. We need to tell Congress that the interests of the American people must take precedence over the interests of a bloated and self-serving labor union.

You can access these articles on-line here:

If No Givebacks, Then No Bailout
Investor’s Business Daily Editorials
November 17, 2008

GM: The Case Against A Bailout
Jack and Suzy Welch
Business Week
November 18, 2008