By Staff
Before the nation's largest automotive parts supplier, Troy-based Delphi Corp., Oct. 8 declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Oct. 7 it promised 21 of its top executives, who make as much as $1 million a year, even more money if they are fired or laid off to encourage those leaders to stick with the company.
Better benefits for top executives were just another insult to blue-collar workers, who found out Oct. 6 that Delphi wants to slash their pay by up to 63 percent and reduce health care and retirement benefits.
So much for management being willing to cut its own wages and benefits and to share the sacrifice.
And never mind that these are the same brilliant executives whose deft business decisions guided the company into this mess.
Delphi threatened to file for bankruptcy by Oct. 17 without union concessions and financial assistance from its biggest customer and former parent company, General Motors Corp., from which it spun off in 1999.
Delphi is the fourth-largest Michigan-based company - behind GM, Ford Motor Co. and Dow Chemical Co. - with 14,700 employees in Michigan and 185,000 around the world.
Delphi lost money three of the last four years and another $741 million in the first half of 2005.
Median household income, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of government data.
Newsday columnist Marie Cocco came to a similar conclusion that we are poised for a middle-class revolt last month writing from Portland, Ore., which is regarded as one of America's most livable cities, though median income there has declined three straight years.
2.3 million: Number of service jobs moved offshore from the United States by 2008, up from 900,000 as of 2003, according to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute.
The ruling class doesn't even see fit to talk about it.
Before Hurricane Katrina, before $3-a-gallon gas, before more airline bankruptcies reminded the working class that they are never more than a corporate strategy away from losing not only their livelihoods, but their pensions, average workers don't get how globalization can be anything but poison in the way it concentrates wealth instead of spreading it.
The middle class is fed up at working hard and playing by the rules, as Bill Clinton used to say, yet losing anyway.
Political leaders ought to be nervous. Frustration this deep yields upheaval, like 1994, when voters cleaned house and exiled Democrats to the wilderness, where they wander still.
Harriet Myers: Who knew you could be nominated to the Supreme Court without even serving as a judge? Despite her impressive career as a lawyer, the sole reason she came to the attention of the nominating process is her status as confidante to President George W. Bush.
Cronyism is not enough for a position which will long outlast the political expediency behind her nomination.
Conservatives are always so vituperative about judges &#8221legislating“; from the bench instead of interpreting the Constitution, yet in the same breath they give no respect at all to the judiciary's checking and balancing the executive branch.
Revealing letter intercepted: The United States obtained a July letter from Osama bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahri to Iraq al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that discusses plans to force a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, create an Islamic government there, then spread their fight into neighboring countries, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.
Quips, quotes and qulunkers: &#8221John could write a great mean song. He had a lot of venom in him. Whereas I had a pretty happy childhood … with this particular song, ‘Riding to Vanity Fair,' I decided to work on it.“;
Obit: First Bob Denver, now (would you believe?) Don Adams, 82, CONTROL Agent 86 in Mel Brooks' and Buck Henry's James Bond parody, &#8221Get Smart.“; Bumbling spy Maxwell Smart talked on his shoe phone, romanced Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon) and battled KAOS. Adams also voiced cartoon penguin Tennessee Tuxedo and Inspector Gadget.
Corporations cash in on Katrina: Almost 80 percent of the first $1.5 billion in federal reconstruction contracts were awarded without competitive bidding. The Labor Department waived rules requiring contractors to pay fair-market wages and hire minorities. Legislation has been introduced to let polluters ignore environmental laws for 18 months - not just in Louisiana and Mississippi, but in any of the 41 states that have taken in disaster victims.