Lost battles
Why are conservatives and their representatives trying to destroy public schools? Because they lost.
They lost the battle to keep government-mandated prayer in school (and they frame this as prayer itself being forbidden, though it's not). They lost the battle to keep evolution out of school (and they frame that as being a denial of God, though it's not). Yet they still argue those points. They're too immature to accept loss or admit that they're wrong, so now they practice the old "we had to destroy the village to save it" philosophy. If public schools don't bow to conservative Christian theology, they'll just get rid of them. Even at the cost of educating youth.
Thing is, they deserve to have lost both battles. It's wrong for government agents to force religion on children, and if it were anyone else's religion, they'd be quick to oppose it. And even though they don't like it, evolution is true. As one of your letter writers wrote recently, if religion conflicts with reality, it's not reality's job to conform to religion.
I doubt any appeals to their own moral code would mean anything to them, but it seems to me that Christ's power was that of persuasion, not of force and guile.
Conservative Christians have resorted to deceit and politics to force their will on the larger public. As far as I'm concerned, that concedes any moral ground they may have had at any point.
RICKY S. PHILLIPS
Winston-Salem
A new dialogue
As an upper-school English and creative writing teacher, I was challenged by Kwame Nyerere's guest column, "Mysteries of the end-of-grade exams" (May 31), to ponder yet again the concepts of "standardized testing" and grade integrity.
As my academic year draws to a close, I re-evaluate my successes and failures as a teacher and begin to plan ahead. The seemingly endless dialogue about testing is one of the most tiring and demoralizing aspects of my profession, and I believe the most important function of education is almost always lost — the nurture and encouragement of the individual mind.
The primary objective of any educational system should be to help the student create a life of the mind, for it is within that mind that one must live one's life and face the daunting challenges of mortality. Obsession over testing and scores drives the engine of mediocrity and is the bane of creativity.
Until we realize that the most important things we can teach or learn cannot be measured by tests or grades, our system will fail, our democracy will sink further into ruinous decline and we will continue to send students out into the world with a sense of hopelessness. It is time for a radical new dialogue on the very meaning of education itself.
GINA FUNK
King
Funk teaches at Forsyth Country Day School — the editor
Sacrifice and success
The 68th anniversary of the World War II D-Day invasion passed rather quietly. We must never forget the bravery of those who died for our freedom.
The largest armada in the history of warfare involved 156,000 troops, 6,939 naval vessels from battleships to wooden LST landing barges, and 11,590 aircraft. The U.S. Army, Navy, Marines and Army Air Corps combined with troops from England, Canada, Australia, France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway and Poland to break the back of Hitler's stranglehold of Europe.
Unfortunately, the omission of the sacrifice and success of D-Day has shortchanged the smallest U.S. military service. The U.S. Coast Guard performed the Herculean task of landing those 160,000 troops and supplies on that day and the weeks that followed. It also manned most of the Navy troop ships, 60 Coast Guard cutters, 24 LCI landing craft and hundreds of LST landing barges that shuttled troops to the beach.
So the next time we honor our brave troops for the D-Day invasion, just remember who got them there and supplied them once they established the beachhead. And let's not forget the Coast Guard participated in all the bloody Pacific beach landings on the Marshal Islands, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and many others, losing 574 men of the "Greatest Generation." So, to all you fellow Coasties out there, Semper Paratus (always ready).
DICK BROWN
Winston-Salem
Riley Frost Petree disagreed with his father on taking sides during the Civil War. His father disinherited Riley from his will, giving him 25 cents. After the Civil War a Constitutional Convention was called to meet in Raleigh in 1868. Riley represented the 19th District of Stokes County in this session.
ReplyDeleteThat was my Great Grandfather on my mother's side. My Grand Father was named Robert "Garfield" a born republican
http://www.fmoran.com/petree.html
let me share the above, I stumbled on it a couple of years ago, It has some very detailed local genealogies, you may find one you are connected to
I am eight generation on the Petree side and only 10 miles from where the 1st generation is buried. That should increase the odds I am related to people.
DeleteHere's the List of Surnames homepage:
http://www.fmoran.com/family.html
There are several hundred local genealogies listed there.
Delete"That should increase the odds I am related to people". Bob, I have always suspected you might be related to people.....Surely that must be a comfort for you?
Deletelol, yes, WW, like skillet cornbread and pinto beans
DeleteI too am related to people...might be related to Anne Romney's race horse as well.
DeleteFaye Moran, who lives in Rural Hall, is yet another unsung hero. Her website is one of the most valuable historical resources anywhere. Over 300 family genealogies...if your family has been here for 3 or more generations many of these folks are your cousins. Just click on the coffee pot to see the family listing.
I know that I am related to the Jarvises, both the local and Texas branches, so was astonished to discover that there is not an entry for Walkers...sorry Stab.
Does that mean we're not cousins? Say it ain't so.
DeleteIt ain't so. Sorry, but we're stuck, richer, poorer, sickness, health, all that, as long as we both shall live.
DeleteAnd the problem with cousins...I know this because I have more than one problem cousin...is that you can't divorce a cousin. It's all about blood.
So we'll just have to be grown up about it and, as the Brits say, carry on.
Proud to claim you as friend and relative. I do not let politics or religion interfere with friendships. Or union status.
DeleteMarvin S. Dallas, Texas:OK Libs. Here you go. THEE EEVELLE ANN ROMNEY HAS A RACE HORSE!!! Jump on the band wagon and cry "WAA WAA I DONT HAVE A RACE HORSE". Naturally you dont because you would have to get out of bed before noon and use your welfare money to feed it unless you can get on some Government program.
ReplyDeleteBob B. Wi: It ain't a RACE HORSE, just like Texas ain't Arkansas!!!
Mr. Phillips:
ReplyDeleteIsn't it ironic that the very same people that don't want religion in our schools, want the deviant sexual lifestyle-homosexuality taught?
Also, people that yell about tobacco smokers are also advocating the legalization of a mind altering drug-marijuana, but then they want soft drinks banned.
Ahhhh, the liberal mind-what a strange and horrid entity. Logic doesn't live long there.
Homophobia, the church and politics: How the religious right seized political power
Deletehttp://current.com/groups/news-blog/93797655_homophobia-the-church-and-politics-how-the-religious-right-seized-political-power.htm
Wordly, I read your referenced article. To call it gibberish would be polite.
DeleteWhen liberals get enthusiastic about restoring white males' rights, I'll get more interested in gay rights. DEAL?
LTE #1 – A good bit of hyperbole here. But many fumblementalist christians don’t want their children to learn, because they would then lose control of them.
ReplyDeleteI will agree with the last paragraph.
LTE #2 – In addition to the editor’s note, Gina Funk graduated from Wake Forest with honors, then earned a Masters at Brown, for nearly a century now one of the top three English grad schools in the country.
This letter should have been a weekly winner or better, because it is one of the best letters I have seen in the Journal.
There is nothing wrong with standardized testing itself. What is wrong is that it is worshipped like a god. To evaluate a teacher or a school or a school system based on standardized tests is naïve and foolish.
There has to be a better way to do evaluations. But without the creative thinking that Ms. Funk mentions, we will never find it.
LTE #3 - Three cheers for the Coast Guard. Mr. Brown is correct in that the Coasties’ role in WW II has been pretty much ignored, as is their daily service even now. They labor tirelessly, often in dangerous conditions, for the good of us all. They don’t get medals and they don’t get invited to the White House or major TV shows, but their service is actually far more important than what is going on in the Middle East.
And don’t forget, when you hear about some fishermen who had to be rescued because of their own foolishness, who it was that had to waste their time to rescue them.
I will take issue with one statement: “…to break the back of Hitler's stranglehold of Europe.” That is not what D-Day did, because that had already been done by the Russians. In fact, if the defeat of the NAZIs was the only purpose, we could have just sat back and watched the Russians finish the job.
But if we had done so, we would have been faced with a communist controlled Europe. The purpose of D-Day and its sequels was to prevent that from happening.
I know the Funks. Gina's husband Peter taught me chemistry and was my drama coach in high school. He's one of the best teachers I've had.
DeleteOT, I agree re the Sovs defeating the Germans. We focus on the battles on the Western Front, such as Normandy, Arnhem, Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge), but battles in the East were gargantuan: Stalingrad, Kursk, and the 1944 summer offensive that overran 28 German divisions. The Sovs lost more tanks in the final drive to Berlin than the Germans produced during the entire war.
Deletesupply lines, supply lines supply line, Napoleon found that out in 1812. All Russian/Soviet train tracks were a different guage and all the supply trains had to be stopped and changed at the border. The winters are long, cold and dark. The southern most part of Russian in near AZer at 42*N parallel. Cleveland, Ohio is at 41* N parallel to give you an idea how far north it is. Moscow is on the same parallel and the southern tip of the Hudson Bay, and St Pete is 300 miles north of that.
DeleteThe growing season there is after the Spring thaw in many areas. It's short, but the days are very long during the growing season, which made survival very labor intensive.
DeleteThe Germans really wanted to get to the Soviet oil refineries in Tuapse, on the Black Sea, built by Winkler/Koch between '29-'32 but got held up at Volgogradskaya Oblast.
DeleteVolgograd is near the southern most tip of Russia and is on the 48*N parallel, In Canada the parallel forms part of the border between Quebec and New Brunswick.
DeleteAt this latitude the sun is visible for 16 hours, 3 minutes during the summer solstice and 8 hours, 22 minutes during the winter solstice.
Hitler wasn't the first to vastly underestimate the enormous amount of ground to be covered to reach Moscow or the severity of the Russian winters. I can still imagine how history would have changed if the Germans had been able to reach Moscow and knock off Stalin (granted the odds were highly against them). With the Axis armies stretched that thin and totally exhausted, the Allies would have swept across Europe and retaken Moscow within a relatively short time. A pro-Western govt would have been installed, and the Cold War would have been avoided.
Deletedotnet....from somewhere General Patton is smiling at you.
DeleteWhat has always fascinated me about the Russian offensive is how quickly the worm turned. One day in July, 1943, the Soviets were on the defensive in Kursk. The next day they were moving forward and never stopped.
DeleteBetween July and the first week of November, 1943, the Russians destroyed over 4,500 German tanks. To give that some perspective, in 1940 the US had a grand total of 464 tanks and produced another 330 during the year.
By the war's end, we had about 130,000 tanks and other armed tracked vehicles and the Soviets had over 100,000.
But the really scary number is that by November, 1943, the Russians had about 5.7 million troops on the move against Germany, the largest army ever put into the field by anyone.
I meant to include the observation that those 4,500 destroyed tanks represented nearly 20% of all the tanks produced by Germany during WW II.
Deleteafter a frozen winter, the spring thaw, the mud became so impossible, tanks mired, and became easy targets.
Deletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAqP35A9Oi8
DeleteAl Stewart (with Roger Taylor) - Roads To Moscow
Stab hit on just the right word...gargantuan.
DeleteThe numbers on the Eastern Front were really beyond belief, and right from the start.
Operation Barbarossa, 1941,the largest military operation in history to that point:
3.8 million Germans vs 2.9 million Russians
Tanks: Ger 3350 Rus 12-15,000
Aircraft: Ger 4389 Rus 35-45,000
Killed: Ger 152,602 Rus 802,191
Wounded: Ger 542,837 Rus 3 million
The Russians lost over 20,000 each of tanks and aircraft, in the case of tanks, more than they started with.
In December 1941/January 1942, the Germans lost 179,000 horses!
Earlier German tanks had fairly narrow tracks, so their flotation was not very good. Later tanks like the Panthers and Tigers had wider tracks, and did better. The Panthers and Tigers also had cleated tracks that were tough on roads but did well in mud and snow. They had one liability in their interleaved wheels, though. They would pack up with mud, which would freeze overnight and jam the wheels. Crews had to bash at the ice to get their mounts moving.
DeleteThis is an excellent report about what happens when we fail to control our borders. Remember, the Obama Administration is suing states that 'try' to assist the federal government in that regard. Those actions should be utterly outrageous to every thinking and caring American!
ReplyDeleteThis report deals primarily with what's going on in N.C. as a result of the infiltration of Mexican drug cartels into the state.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/09/us/mexican-cartels-small-town-usa/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
The House of Representatives is preparing to hold AG Holder in contempt regarding 'Fast and Furious'.
DeleteHe should be removed from office for his actions on 'Fast and Furious', immigration, and other matters.
The State of Florida is having to sue DOJ. Why? Because DOJ won't let Florida purge illegal voters from its voting roster.
DeleteAG Holder is completely out of his mind!
MSCD is going to charge illegal immigrants 58% 'less' than out of state students.
DeleteDon't you just love the sense of 'fairness' liberals bestow on society?
The Justice Department set the stage Monday to sue Florida over its effort to purge the voter rolls of non-U.S. citizens -- just hours after Gov. Rick Scott announced that his administration was filing suit against the federal government in connection with the same initiative.
DeleteBoth moves marked the latest in a volley of accusations and legal maneuvers between Florida and the federal government over the state's controversial effort to check the citizenship of voters.
___________
Like I said, AG Holder has lost his mind.
Good afternoon folks!
ReplyDeleteLTE 1: I do wish LTE submitters would cool it with the strawmen. Anytime a letter begins with "Why do liberals/conservatives always...", my mind automatically dismisses what they have to say. The shame of it is that occasionally valid points are made. Yes, there are some (mostly Christian fundamentalists) who wish to bring up their children with a "Christian world view", which entails an education based on taking the Bible at face value. They are only doing their children a disservice, especially when their children grow up and have to deal with the real world. On a related note, I noticed in looking at the private and parochial school listings of colleges that their graduating seniors had been accepted a lack of ivy league admissions while Parkland, my alma mater, had several admitted through its IB program with a full ride. I'd save my money on the private schools and put my children through the IB program.
LTE 2: A perfect example of having the wrong people making the educational decisions, while ignoring input from those who should be making those decisions. If legislators would listen to teachers such as Ms. Funk, this dialogue might actually take place and new plans that actually work just might be implemented.
LTE 3: Various countries have holidays to recognize major military victories, whereas in the US, we just lump everything together into Memorial Day and Veteran's Day. It's a shame, because D-Day deserves to be recognized every year. Mr. Brown is correct that the Coast Guard doesn't get the due it deserves. They have done far more than just capture drug runners and rescue stranded boaters.
Ms. Funk:
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. A lot of these so called smart people, that score extremely well on standardized tests, are often common sense idiots. Some border on being non-functional in some societal roles. The bottomline, in society and life, is one's performance on a particular task. That should be the true measure of one's ability.
Obviously, Buck boy does not do well on standardized tests...we already knew that, of course, because in order to do well on any kind of test, a brain is a basic requirement.
DeleteOn the other hand, we know that he perform's well on "particular tasks"...for instance, showing his ass numerous times each day.
Hey Rush, did you get 'Sasha' out of jail yet? Hee...Hee, I'll bet the two of you make a cute couple.
DeleteSee what I mean?
DeleteHere's a good example of just what kind of geniuses are running our newly Republicanized state legislature. Have I mentioned before that the GOP has gone insane?
ReplyDeleteAnd Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.
We used to sing a lot of silly songs in vacation bible school, but when I was about 4 I liked this one:
DeleteThe foolish man built his house upon the sand
The foolish man built his house upon the sand
The foolish man built his house upon the sand
And the rain came tumbling down
Oh, the rain came down
And the floods came up
The rain came down
And the floods came up
The rain came down
And the floods came up
And the foolish man's house went "splat!"
The best part was that you clapped your hands once when you sang "splat". I guess 4-year-olds are easily entertained.
And I guess there really is nothing new under the sun. Dr. Orrin Pilkey at Duke has been preaching the gospel of fools building houses on the sand for about half a century, but has anyone listened? Not bloody likely.
How much money has been spent keeping the Shell Island Resort at Wrightsville afloat? How much has been spent on dredging and groins and other nonsense? How long will it be before some fools in the legislature set out to build a bridge to Ocracoke?
They're already well on their way to another act of insanity regarding the Bonner Bridge. Tear the damned thing down and reinstitute ferry service.
I took a vacation on Figure Eight ten years ago. IIRC, two houses on the shore (including one belonging to the President of Wake Forest at the time) had been condemned due to beach erosion.
DeleteIt's probably only gotten worse since then.
Much worse.
DeleteFor many years we spent a week or two at Ocean Isle Beach in the summer. Since we are the sort who want to get away from the crowd, we gravitated to the ends of the island. We watched as the sea took away the eastern end, with house after house falling into the ocean.
On the western end, growing from the sand migration from the east, which had been pretty much wild dunes and a plethora of natural phenomenon...sea turtles, beached whales and rare birds not seen anywhere else in NC, one year we came to the end of the pavement and found a sign: Private Property...No Trespassing
So we parked there, walked down to the beach and walked west along the surf line. My sons were enjoying this immensely. "Are we trespassing?" they asked. "Are we going to get arrested? Are we going to jail?"
But the levity ended when we were confronted by a goon. For Stab's benefit, he was not a union goon. He was a rich and powerful big business goon. Still, a goon.
He informed us that we were trespassing and that unless we left we would be arrested. Needless to say, my sons were really enjoying things now, anticipating solitary confinement on bread and water, but we adults were not amused at all.
Fortunately, one of our group was one of the best and brightest lawyers in NC. He calmly pointed out to the goon that we were walking below the tideline, thus beyond his goonish reach, and invited him to go ahead and have us arrested. After making a radio call to goon headquarters, our goon shrugged and left.
We later had a similar experience on the beach east of Diamond Head on Oahu, home of such luminaries as Doris Duke and Tom Selleck, where armed uniform guards are posted at the tideline to keep peons off their hallowed ground.
As long as you stay below the tideline, there is nothing that they can do except foam at the mouth, which is quite common.
Abuse of our beaches will continue until there is an all-out war between the public and the privileged.
You should be proud of your sons OT -- they sound like my kind of people.
DeleteI admit, I felt a little schadenfreude seeing those houses falling into the ocean. I'm just a dirty socialist I guess.
Annexation allows city officials to force people who had lived outside the city limits into the city limits, and to require those property owners to pay city taxes. That revenue helps city leaders pay for services.
ReplyDeleteWinston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines said Sunday that the bill, in the long run, "will hurt North Carolina cities."
"North Carolina cities have pretty strong financial bases, and it's been because they could grow in a logical manner," Joines said. "Cities that are in trouble financially are not able to grow in an orderly manner, and just continue to get more and more dense."
The North Carolina League of Municipalities also criticized the bill Sunday, saying its leaders support Perdue's stance on the issue.
-WS Journal
______
Hey Allen, the rich and middle class have been Robin Hooded long enough in this state. Go steal your 'city' money somewhere else!
Thanks Wordly for the link...I will repeat it here, as it may have gotten lost in the middle of the pack. Well worth reading:
ReplyDeleteHomophobia, the church and politics: How the religious right seized political power
Thank's for posting as link. I've searched but can't figure out how to do it this site. I use Google Chrome like I believe you do.
DeleteWordly, here is the html for links...it works in all browsers that I use...cannot guarantee for MS Explorer.
Delete"a href="link location">link name) from the equation. Replace the first " with the left arrow and the last " with the right arrow.
Then paste in the url between the quotation marks and give it any name you like where it says "link name" and you're in business.
I save snippets like this and other things that I copy in an extended clipboard called Clip Menu, which is exclusive to Mac OSX. But there are excellent freeware apps like it for Windows. Just Google "clipboard extensions".
Oops, screwed that up. try again.
DeleteWordly, here is the html for links...it works in all browsers that I use...cannot guarantee for MS Explorer.
"a href="link location">link name) from the equation because otherwise it would post as a link.
Replace the first " with the left arrow and the last " with the right arrow.
Then paste in the url between the quotation marks and give it any name you like where it says "link name" and you're in business.
I save snippets like this and other things that I copy in an extended clipboard called Clip Menu, which is exclusive to Mac OSX. But there are excellent freeware apps like it for Windows. Just Google "clipboard extensions".
Thanks, will give it a try, but will probably have to seek help from more technologically adept members of household.
DeleteGood to know! My HTML skills could be better.
DeleteSorry, something isn't working.
DeleteGo to
Create HTML Links
Copy the html and paste it into your post, make the appropriate substitutions and it will definitely work.
Okay I guess I dabbled in the Buckbrew backwaters yesterday with the 10 year pension vesting somewhere. I really think I read that in the NYT before Chris Christie came on the scene, but I'll concede 20 years is the routine minimum for full pension benefits.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I do think that many people have PUBLIC PENSION ENVY, in that they realize they will never have anything approaching these types of benefits in retirement. This envy resonates with middle class voters because they see middle class public employees receiving these packages. The Rick Perry type pensions, housing and other perks do not resonate with most people to the same extent because they could never envision themselves being in that type of King league.
Absolutely agree. It's class envy on their part.
DeleteI saw an apropos quote on Facebook, saying something like: "Instead of asking why union wages are so high, maybe you should ask why yours are so low."
A good question. Nationwide, union members make about 30% more than non-union members. Of course, they must pay union dues, but still come out far ahead.
DeleteContrary to popular belief, unionized companies do quite well on the bottom line. See GM, Chrysler, GE, Boeing, oil companies, many others, etc.
The best non-unionized companies in the US are already offering above union level wages and benefits in order to attract the best employees. And they are among the most profitable companies.
Because the biggest effect on the bottom line is having superior employees.
If people aren't getting the pay and benefits that they would like, they should, indeed, ask themselves why.
Also, in NC, benefits offered to state, county and municipal employees are quite reasonable. At every level, full benefits require 30 years service, along with age restrictions, and full benefits do not equate in any way to full pay.
DeletePeople who believe otherwise are living in their own fantasies rather than reality.
Again, if private employees are unhappy with their lot, maybe they should question why.
If you live in a "right to work" state, you are actually living in a "right to fire for any or no reason" state. That means that if you are even suspected of being involved in any kind of union organization, you are a gone gopher.
My fault? No. Your fault? Yes.
Yeah, GM did real well. They had to ask for a bail-out from sugardaddy Obama.
DeleteWhat utter nonsense!
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/government-down-16-billion-gm-bailout_646676.html
Better get out and roll around with 'Sasha' some more, you're losing it.
DeleteI grew up in a transitional family…my grandparents were farmers, my parents were city folk. For a while, all were hunters. From the time I was big enough to carry a .22 I was tutored in the art of hunting. Since hunting was both a necessity and a sport, I was taught certain rules.
DeleteOne was that you never shoot sitting ducks. It's just not sporting. If you cannot hit them on the wing, then you do not deserve to eat. But I have to admit that I cannot resist Buck boy as a sitting duck. Why? Because his sort of sitting duck is a throwback to the gene pool, a degeneration in human progress.. Here's what the fool said:
"Yeah, GM did real well. They had to ask for a bail-out from sugardaddy Obama."
Oh boy. I could go off on a long rant here, but I won't. I will just mention that the GM bailout originated with George W. Bush, which, as with everything else he started, he was incapable of finishing. Just after the 2008 election, Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times in which he urged that we let Detroit die.
But that was just political bullshit. The President of the USA had to actually deal with the situation. And he did. As a result, GM has again become the #1 automaker in the world, and Chrysler is seeing profits well above anything since the late 1990s.
If we had followed the Romney/Buck boy plan, about 1.5 million jobs would have been lost, and due to the dependence of so many US companies on Detroit, we might have actually descended into full depression.
As always, stupid is as stupid does.
OT, a person in an RTW state is perfectly free to vote for and join a union.
DeleteAs for that alleged 30% wage difference, there are a lot fewer people enjoying that disparity. Note the number of closed car plants where the average assembly line compensation was $69/hour. Then note the humming plants in RTW states.
Boeing now has a fine non-union plant in SC, no thanks to the Obama administration, which spent our dough trying to punish that plant's workers for decertifying the IAM.
DeleteStab, I already said "Uncle". Since your union thing is obviously religious in nature, I no longer have any incentive to engage there.
DeleteIf you want to believe that "god" created everything good and that "the devil" (I cannot say his name for fear of summoning him) created unions, that is your business.
But again you got suckered by big business if you think that union workers in the auto industry ever made $69/hour, which comes to almost $3000/week, $156,000/year. Wow, what a bunch of fat cats. I'm sure that they wish that that were true.
What you and others overlooked is that those figures came from the the automakers, who were including in that numbers retirement benefits being paid to all of their retirees forever, averaged out over current workers, which has nothing to do with anything.
As PT Barnum or somebody once said, there's a sucker born every minute. Maybe he was the last truth teller.
Those car plants are still closed, thanks to management stupidity, abysmal quality, unproductive workers, high absenteeism, wildcat strikes, idiotic work rules, and an adversarial culture promoted by union TB's. The UAW finally had to accept realistic compensation for new hires to bring labor costs closer to practicability, but overall are still higher along with the aforementioned drags on productivity. Check Consumers Union's rating of the unionized US car makers v. their competition. The UAW products are at the bottom. We consumers pay for that fine 30% extra, and that kills our competitiveness in the international markets as well.
ReplyDelete