Supposedly, supporting bailouts is now the only way (outside of paying taxes) to make you patriotic. Which is interesting because I guess being patriotic also means supporting other economies before your own failing economy according to GM’s latest business development plan (via Bob Park’s Black & Right). I know – WTF??? On one hand can you really blame GM? They’ve got a bottom line to support to keep their business running so that they can pay back that bailout loan.  But at the same time, I don’t think American tax dollars should be used to support other countries’ economies on the premise the tax dollars would be used to help America’s economy. And to think, there are many liberals out there criticizing those who question govt. spending. How dare they! I mean because if you did you could potentially avoid situations like this and that would be ooooh so bad to have informed citizens, huh.

Gee, I wonder what would happen if the UAW would just get out of the way and quit burdening GM 1) with staying in the same crappy plants, 2) forcing them to pay the average $40 wage among UAW members, 3) blocking GM from leaving Detroit so that they can move to more competitive markets (which happen to be right-to-work states) in other U.S. states. Let’s keep U.S. jobs here but in order to do that we need labor unions to recognize the flexibility they need to bring to the negotiation table. Too often the union leaders just rely on govt. to pass legislation that puts a gun to a company’s head, where in the company is trying to keep product prices low (to compete with foreign automakers), employ U.S. workers, and still generate a profit to keep operations running. Are you starting to see where the UAW leaders (and their liberal political support) are potentially creating a hostile and unstable work situation for the very members they are representing? Eventually GM will probably only do the bare minimum work here in the U.S. they need to satisfy the UAW and then will ship all other operations overseas. That’s not a promising scenario and not helping union members stay employed.

Govt. should be mediating the UAW and GM to make sure we can keep jobs in the U.S. but also make it plausible for this company to be competitive, deliver efficiently to customer demand, and produce profit to maintain/grow their operations. If we don’t we’ll either see GM eventually move most of its operations outside the U.S. OR we’ll see it go down into the ground – and then where will those UAW members be employed?