hearing from MCMers how those rapacious unionized workers and retirees are just gonna have to "sacrifice." That once the automakers are in bankruptcy, all the contracts can be tossed out, all the agreements -- and those workers who dare to think they deserve and have earned decent health insurance? Well, they'll learn, won't they?

Are pensions a contract with workers?
Are benefits codified in contracts with unions actual contracts?
Not in bankruptcy court -- anything goes to keep the bidness solvent.

And maybe not to Team Obama, at any point.

We are so fleeced, and now our Dem administration is so fucking us.

Oh, and are they going to make the workers take GM stock to just keep the hope alive for pensions and jobs a wee bit longer?

Oh, and those "entitlements" of ours? Our remaining safety nets? Wanna put any bets on Obama working to strengthen them for the non-Uberwealthy, for the regular people? I fear we ain't seen nothin' yet.

Wanna bet BO'd even sign single payer if it made it through Congress?

All those times back in the primaries we here wrote about Obama's Reaganish tendencies? Others wrote about them? And we said it was better to have a candidate whose actions were known and clear, someone with an actual history? And the OFB attacked us? I, for one, actually had some small hope that maybe Obama was playing the center, keeping his "true" prog/lib tendencies on the QT so as to win all those centrist votes.... I think that hope is fading to nothing. Ashes.

+1% better than a Repub? +10%?

Can't recall where I heard it, but someone was talking about Team Obama's gamesmanship about the AIG bonuses putting Obama on the very edge of falling into the "He doesn't care about us" land among the public, where Bush landed with absolute clarity with the Katrina heartlessness and incompetence. Ah, on NPR. Now, who was it...

Here:

Really? Heads will roll before writing big checks?

Funny, I kinda remember a trillion dispensed without so much as — You. Out!.

I am no fan of Wagoners, but I have to ask the geniuses behind the bank bailouts: When are you going to ask the TARP and bailout recipients to step down? Ken Lewis being asked to step aside after many years of running BofA ? How about Blankfein? Pandit? And the rest of the TARP recipients?

This inconsistency from the new administration is very disappointing.

And Ritholtz isn't even a hippie. Just sane.

IMHO, the key is, a little indirectly, your point #4.

Why would any self-respecting Villager lift a finger for sweaty uncreatives in overalls?

The Velvet Glove Comes Off For Carmakers As Obama Threatens Them With Bankruptcy is Ian's take on Obama's move on the automakers.

I’m impressed. Impressed by his willingness to talk this way and act this way towards non-financial companies that is. Somehow when it comes to banks and brokers Obama’s practically begging them to keep the money they’ve been given, and assuring everyone that they won’t be forced into bankruptcy or nationalized. Somehow his words of outrage at bonuses don’t include forcing companies like AIG, Bank of America and Citigroup to renegotiate thier compensation contracts by saying “do it or you go down”.

Snip

There are a ton of cynical things I could say about this, but I’m going to point out something more fundamental: long run the US needs its industrial sector healthy and strong more than it needs an overpriced, overpaid financial sector. One major long term problem the US has is its trade deficit. Financial companies don’t noticeably help that, what they do instead is package up paper assets for sales to foreigners, but those assets are almost all debts. Everytime the US sells a collateralized debt ogligation, it’s selling its future to foreigners. Every time it sells a car, it’s getting money now for a real item now.

Smart restructuring of the economy would mean figuring out how to create a car industry and an industrial sector that stays in the US and doesn’t move all its production and R&D overseas, rather than trying to restart the paper for money financial economy, an economy which caused this financial meltdown and which has been partially responsible for stagnant wages for Americans for 30 years now.

I will also note that a real bankruptcy for the Big 3, would cause in excess of two million job losses and worsen the US’s trade deficit. (My emphasis)

I woke up this morning thinking this could be Obama's "Nixon goes to China" moment. Awful thought to start the day. The Dem prez takes down the unions? Does what no Repub has completely succeeded in doing? Wouldn't it be an incredible, terrible irony if Obama becomes the Anti-FDR? That with him at the helm the Democrats take apart the many things which the New Deal put in place?

FDR worked to make unions stronger, believing that Big Business needed a strong counterweight for the economy to work better for all. FDR worked to regulate the Big Banksters. He worked to establish a dependable old age pension for all workers. He wanted national healthcare, but never succeeded in achieving that.

Obama seems to be using this financial crisis to lessen the power of unions, even wipe out what workes have accomplished. Finishing Reagan's hit job on labor? Will he do the same to SocSec? Medicare?

Where is the Frances Perkins* of the Obama administration? Where is the president of this administration who would appoint such a strong proponent of the people and workers?

*Frances Coralie Perkins (born Fanny Coralie Perkins, lived April 10 1882 – May 14 1965) was the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman ever appointed to the US Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her friend Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. Roosevelt, she helped pull the labor into the New Deal. She, and Interior Secretary Harold, were the only original members of Roosevelt's cabinet who remained in offices for his entire Presidency.

NPR's Jackie Lyden did a nice piece on her with biographer Kirstin Downey on Saturday. NPR did another piece in 2005 on her work to establish SocSec.

McCain won or Obama, and you shouted at me that I was full of it.
Well, now what?

Bust the unions.
Prop up the con game.
People will suffer but it won't matter 'cause they're not rich people anyway.

. . . a capitalist in populist's clothing. I don't think we've seen the worst, by a long shot. What amazes me is that anyone OTHER than the financial industry is still behind him.