Most of us peons should try very hard to understand that they are the American roalty. They are wealthy because their God blesses them and not you.

Sarcasm aside,
If the media could put out pressure on congress that they are recieving public funded health care. Keeping the pressure on could be helpful. Threaten something as congress’s benifits as their health care. Because as people (tax payers) lose their jobs, health care, home(s).
Congress has enough time on their hands to have affairs and live high on said tax payers in such a time of economic stress……

and we whine like babies and continue to support imperialism around the world and a mega military budget like the world has ever seen.

ie one trillion in iraq and soon one trillion in afghan

hey big three think we could have spent that money on your retirement? oh but we love our wars and super power status.

the kick ass mentality of we americans has come home to roost and the rest of the world loves it.

the bully finally goes down

oh the price of imperialism it hits home now as most people have lost one third or more of their retirements.

but hey now the iraqis love us. yea right we have created a whole new nation of terrorists.

this fits right into the industrial military plan as we must always have a war or threat of war. war on drugs, poverty, and the big one the war on terrorism, war on crime, etc.

but hey now we can steal the iraqi oil with our iraqi puppet gov for the benefit of big oil

with communism man exploits man with capitalism it is the other way around.

how long will it be before americans figure that one out?

we cheered when communism failed not realizing we were next.

we are a failing state but our politicans tell us it is just a recession and most americans believe them.

really why would we. look who they bailed out first. ie wall street and griped and moaned about the big three bailout.

with capitalism the rich take care of the rich first. ie wall street bankers got the big bucks.

now americans line up to vote for your capitalist politicans so they can do you good.

The shameful way the unions have been treated in all of this makes me really angry. I think a lot of people are going to have a very long memory about all of this and it could end up hurting businesses. It gets into one’s spirit: I was looking for a new stair-railing the other day and I realized I will never be able to buy anything from China again, for goddesses’ sakes it could be radioactive (like the drywall) and it’s no joke.

It’s not a union story, but we’ve got our own local horror show happening up here in Ottawa. As the jewel of Silicon Valley North falls to the cruel ways of the evil corrupt moneymen, the remaining Nortel employees who stayed through ALL the layoffs are being stripped of their severance rights and all pensions are being dissolved by the bankruptcy proceedings. It’s horrifying. And it’s so cruel. And an incredible breach of trust by OUR governments.

People really have to start reacting to all of this, like buying Fords!

And now the company that promised it – and which paid current bonuses to top executives for having saved the company short term costs by promising long term benefits instead – is saying tough, can’t help you. If you tried to skip out on your bookie like that, you’d need new kneecaps.

A responsible Congress would promptly amend the bankruptcy laws. Among other items, they would close this escape hole, and the one used to trash labor contracts, by not making them throwawayable via a “strategic” bankruptcy. But we needn’t wait for that responsible Congress, as it seems a bit behind Godot in arriving at the bus stop.

We do have, however, a Congress about to legislate health care reform. Which seems the perfect way to take care of a large segment of the population’s need for health care, in spite of the ruthless corporate behavior that exacerbates that need. Seems to me a few of those former GM employees and their friends might make calls or stop in at their local Congresscritter’s pup tent and snake oil show and let their voices be heard.

Essentially when this is all over 90% of all the money that has been put into pensions of all kinds and SS will either disappear or end up in the hands of the Pigmen. This was always going to be the result. From the day in the early 60’s when the asset holding class understood that all that pension money reliably rolling into Wall Street would inflate asset values the game was on with the understanding that someday they would end up with what was left. The Tax advantaged retirement plans were the same thing. A subsidy to bid up financial assets. For SS when Greenspan and the politicians redesigned the system they made sure the surpluses would not go into fungible Treasury securities but rather intergovernmental IOUs which could eventually be declared not a liability afforded “the full faith and credit of the US” per the constitution. There is no way those IOU’s will be paid. None. Zilch. Nada.

Every bank which has ever existed has eventually gone bankrupt. There are a couple that are quite old but not ageless and are oddities. Giving money to someone else always results in them taking a good fraction of it for themselves. This is how the world works.

There is nothing to government can do to bring back what has been lost in financial assets. What they are doing is giving what’s left to the con men and thieves who took the money and ran away with it when times are good. There is no way to overstate the political and policy disaster this White House is over seeing.

If an autoworker doesn’t want to show up on the assembly line under the terms of a new deal, he or she doesn’t have to. That’s different from telling AIG employees they’re not getting the amount on which they agreed for work they’ve already performed.