gunnut69

wow what a post. interstates were built and are maintained to mobilize armed forces should that become necessary. other uses,while important, are secondary to that.they do fall properly under federal funding,for obvious reasons. usage taxes such as tolls would be insufficient.any increase in gas taxes would lead to less usage and further reduce usage revenue. national and state parks: really? lumping all this together?there are several designations under each heading but ok. ill address national parks. national parks are meant to be set aside and kept pristine for generations of americans to come,and to preserve the splendor found in our beautiful nation. theres no way to accomplish that and make them totally self sufficient unless your idea of beauty is billboards for miles and hundreds of tacky shops in roadside trailers. dont know if you ever drove through the smoky mountains when it used to be run like that but its much nicer now. education???? yeah good idea lets let the already struggling states handle education on their own.we should be setting higher standards nationally if we want to continue to at least compete in development of technology globally. there are changes that need to be made but no rational person can really believe this is one of them,imo. federal and state cops lumped together with the army???REALLY????????? the armed forces protect the nation,the cops enforce the law. these are two very,very different functions. it is in fact illegal for the army to be used for law enforcement,although the nat. guard has been used in the past.privatizing the cops? its been done man. it was done long ago and was such a failure that it led to the current system. once again no rational person...... drug laws do need to be reformed. drug use should be treated as the medical problem it really is and not a criminal act. theres no rerason for any drug to be illegal for a medical doctor to prescribe should he choose to. it should also be legal for a doctor to maintain a drug addict. these would be good steps in addressing the ever growing and incredibly expensive so called "war on drugs" .prostitution and gambling already are legal on the national level.

this is the guy obama shook hands with that time remember? they even did the "friendship" handshake and chaves said he had extended that same friendship to bush but was rejected. then chavez gave obama a book on how terrible the u.s. was and obama sat down and started looking at it. remember that? remember how everyone said "whats the big deal? thats what world leaders do when they meet,they shake hands" if bush had done that it would have been a different story."bush is sucking up to this horrible dictator because he has oil". to answer your question,yes i can believe it. its par for the course for him.he starves his own people. they only grow to about 5 feet tall because they are undernourished. but hey gas is 25cents a gallon and its a socialist utopia lol.

the decline in manufacturing in the us has been going on for decades now and presided over by all presidents of both parties. i know many would love to think bush did all this but that just isnt the case. it really started about the time of the end of the vietnam war.not one president has done anything but accelerate it.obama will be no different.for years candidates on both sides(obama included) have said that small businesses are the driver of the economy,and it is true. its also very unfortunate. small businesses are growing as a percentage of the gdp because large manufacturing companies are leaving in bunches.it is the absence of these manufacturing jobs which provided pensions,insurance etc. that small companies ,as a rule, dont provide that has caused the so called health care crisis and most of the other problems we face today,domestically anyway. the auto bailouts were a mistake as were the bank bailouts. that has been my opinion since day one. reason being they are a temporary respite,not a solution to our problems. your dad having a job has nothing to do with pres. obama. that is,unless he works for the govt.

so what you are saying is basically "dont hate the player,hate the game". lol such a cop out,from you i expected better. pattern bargaining was a great tool when all the players were unionized.i cant see how it will help us compete with toyota and honda though. keeping costs high for the big three just helps the imports maximize profits. we are indeed in a very difficult situation. the only solution i see is to build quality cars and trucks in the us at a profit.not equal(or hopefully superior) to the quality of the unionized big three competitors,but the imports. if we dont do that nothing else matters.the last round of mods. to the contract would have done nothing towards that end, we probably agree on that much.

whats the point here brother? you bought a car with a good title,right? the guy you bought it from acted in good faith i assume. proving this car stolen will only cause you to be out the car and the money you spent on it,unless you prove it stolen and then keep it at which point you commit a crime. some things are better left alone.

we export technology among other things. they do build cars in china. why not make our trade policies on imports the same as our trading partners? in other words we levy the same 100% tariff on japanese cars as they do on our cars. why not require wages and benefits for foreign workers producing goods for sale in the u.s. to be equal to the market where the goods are sold instead of where the labor is bought? then maybe foreign laborers could afford to buy some of our goods. you know, the way its supposed to work.

it is my understanding that our health insurance is funded by ford. in other words humana or bcbs just administers the plan. ford doesnt actually buy a policy,they just pay the bills and the insurance companies administrate it .ford doesnt pay premiums,in other words,they pay the dr. bills and pay the insurance company a fee for handling the paperwork basically. if i am wrong on this i am sure someone else will point that out lol.

well of course ford makes money. of course they make money "off of us" as you put it,just like every other company profits from the labor of the people they employ.its a good thing too because thats the only reason why they operate. everyone should know where i stand when it comes to concessions etc so i hope noone misunderstands when i say this. to me this as obvious as saying "ford makes money",maybe because ive worked in two union shops in the past that both made money and also closed. anyway sometimes whether or not the company makes money isnt as important as if the company can make more money somewhere else. i do agree that now is not the time to be afraid.thats obvious as well because its never a time to be afraid. as bad as it is to act out of anger,its worse to act out of fear.what is there to fear anyway? hard times? if you hired into the auto industry thinking there would never be hard times,well,you should have been paying better attention i guess,because you got fooled.

you bring up some interesting ideas.it seems to make sense.i dont know if its all true but it doesnt really matter. what we need to do is build quality cars and trucks that people actually want to buy.none of these other things mean dick if we dont get to selling some cars. some of it is beyond our control but in spite of all the bullshit thats going on we all need to keep our eyes on the prize so to speak and build the best vehicle we can every day. when ford can make some money again all these other issues will sort themselves out. kinda like the so called health care crisis. if we still had or are able to somehow bring a healthy manufacturing base back to our country and our economy that problem would wither away and die.

people buy cars that they like and that they believe are reliable. PERIOD. do you think that all those god damn kias are selling because people just love korean auto workers???no way.

more accurate to say that we arent being asked to give up any MORE pay and benefit cuts at this time. we are being asked to agree that next contract wages are maintained at a equal level to all competition. i guess though if you believe that wall street responds somehow to "pr" or that anything we could ever give up would earn union auto workers good press on any large scale, i guess im just wasting my breath.

pattern bargaining was really useful to us in the past. what it really does is insure that all the uaw auto companies operate under the same rules and wages so none has a competitive advantage over the other in areas of wages or other compensation. now non-uaw companies arent just bit players in this game anymore. we dont have to worry about competing against anyone more than toyota,honda etc. with more players entering the game all the time.short of getting them organized pattern bargaining wont help us against them. what role do you see it playing in this unfortunate relatively new environment?

glad you brought the job bank up.the job bank was the only job security we ever had. the auto market is volatile as hell we all know that. now they claim these new concessions will bring security. we just gave our security away. the company and union think we are all dumb as hell!!!!!theyre right about some of us. vote your conscience

you have to read that whole paragraph, brother and take the sentence that says what you want to hear in the full context of the paragraph. basically all nonstrikable items will have to be settled before we can even think of a strike.this will surely complicate the negotiating process. i imagine they will attempt to settle items subject to binding arbitration before items subject to strike are even brought up. i could be wrong but this sounds like a nightmare to me. also they are just bound to keep wages comparable to all competitors. if you want to work for what they pay at toyota go work there. they hire all the fucking time.they fire all the time too. job security is an illusion in the auto industry anymore. its a dangling carrot that can never be reached. the new auto market is the most volatile in the country with more and more competition everyday.they cannot honestly promise security because it depends on factors largely beyond control of any of us.never mind the fact that we did just recently give up the job bank and everything else that did provide at least something. i would still LOVE to see a cost benefit analysis on the wages that were given up to get that job bank versus the actual cost of the benefits actually paid to it.as soon as any number of people needed it we gave it up!!!!!!

wait,what??????what i read does say you cant strike while an issue is in arbitration. that is pretty clear or someone made a big typo.so there we are in contract talks with an issue bogged down in arbitration rendering us unable to strike over anything but it doesnt matter cuz we can just strike later??really???