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Ed Schultz held no punches back when he went after Hugh Hewitt's idiotic call for a national boycott of all GM and Chrysler cars because he calls them "socialist companies."

A pair of right-wing radio hosts says there's only one choice for conservatives angry about government involvement in the auto industry: Boycott GM. "Nobody wants to support an Obama company," Rush Limbaugh told his audience Friday, citing a poll showing that 17 percent of Americans backed a boycott of GM.

"Every dollar spent with GM is a dollar spent against free enterprise," conservative talker Hugh Hewitt wrote online last week.
"While it's not surprising that Rush Limbaugh would root for the failure of a national institution for partisan political gain, it is surprising that the other so-called leaders of the Republican party are silently going along with him given how many hard working Americans rely on GM for a living," said DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan.

So far, there is little evidence that the government's involvement is turning off buyers. In bankruptcy for the entire month of May, Chrysler had its best sales month of the year.

Ed hits the Grassley nail on the head. Why are Hugh Hewitt and Rush Limbaugh trying to destroy the American automotive industry? What about the families that need these jobs to survive? Will Hewitt and Limbaugh support all the families this child like boycott could affect?
Schultz is calling for a boycott of the Salem radio network.

Ed: Conservatives, are you out of your mind? Do you know how many Americans have lost their jobs in manufacturing? Do you know how many American families are being affected, their livelihoods are being drilled because of this recession and what do they do, they push back on the American families that are doing the absolute best they can to build a great product...
What do you say we just kick the American worker in the teeth. What do you say we just give all the money to Wall Street. Let's just take their health care, let's take their education, let's take their jobs. Let's just genuflect to the Hugh Hewitts of the world.

We know where Hewitt's heart resides. His love of CEOs and fat cats that prey on the working class to finance their palaces. And the media slobbers over Hewitt every time he writes a mindless book, but we never see a liberal on TV who releases one. Where's Will Bunch, where's Eric Boehlert, where's David Neiwert? All three have excellent books just release, but they are almost no where to be found on cable news. Why the silence of liberals? Anyway, it was good that Ed kicked Hugh in the head today.

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Ed Schultz slams Hugh Hewitt for his article at the Washington Examiner: Just say no to Government Motors and Obamacars. Give 'em hell Ed!

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June 02, 2009 C-SPAN

Ted Poe is apparently undeterred by Nate Silver's reporting.

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(before it went very far south )

With the GM bankruptcy forging ahead, and news of plant and dealership closings and sales of companies formerly part of the GM family (can't say the loss of Hummer is any sort of tragedy) pending, I got to thinking about the impression GM made on me as a kid - growing up and getting my first car (it was, in all honesty a 1956 Plymouth, but that's another story) and how the American auto industry, the whole car culture in fact was such an integral part of our lives. How commercials were as much of our culture as the cars themselves and how indelible some of those commercials were to our place in time. I've assembled a montage of some of the memorable ones, not all of them - but enough to make the events of the past few weeks just a bit sad.

The Congressional GOPers (Party of Corporate Pork) are so, so upset when the wrong people are on the losing end in government bailouts. See if you can spot the delicious irony!

Dozens of lawmakers are challenging the authority of President Obama's auto task force, saying its swift restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler is unjust to investors, dealers and others.

In a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner yesterday, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) said the auto task force is waging a "war on capital" by favoring the United Auto Workers, who are being offered a 39 percent equity stake in the new GM, over bondholders, many of them small investors and retirees, who are being offered 10 percent.

"Choosing sides between equal classes of creditors sets a terrible precedent -- one that could cause serious long term challenges to the financing marketplace by eroding investor confidence at the worst time in our recessionary period," Hensarling wrote in a letter signed by 20 other House members.

Yes, I know there's more to the story. I know Chrysler promised there would be no job losses or closings (which I put right up there with "the check is in the mail). But the absolute cojones of the Republicans, to complain about a protected class - well, I can't let that go without comment.

I can't begin to tell you just how little sympathy I have for the Wall Street bankers who bitch and moan about how impossible it would be to live in NYC on "only" $250K. (My kid manages to live there on considerably less.)

No, my sympathies lie with people like this who worked hard, played by the rules and are now caught in an economic disaster:

As the Obama administration prepares to send Chrysler into bankruptcy court, with General Motors possibly to follow, one of the biggest losers may be the automakers' current and future retirees, a group of nearly 1 million people who could see their pensions and health-care funds slashed by tens of billions of dollars.

The loss could pose political trouble for the Obama administration, which has pressed both automakers since February to ready themselves for bankruptcy as a means of purging their overwhelming debts.

The GM and Chrysler pension plans together cover 928,000 people, and many of them worry that the industry restructuring already underway could slice their benefits.

A group of nonunion retirees is scheduled to meet with the administration's auto task force this morning to try to save their pensions and health benefits. The United Auto Workers is also negotiating over changes to the benefits, but has yet to reach an agreement with the Treasury Department, a source familiar with the matter said.

"We are going to do what we can to help protect their benefits to the degree that we can," said an administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private. "It's premature to speculate on what will happen. This is certainly a constituency that we are focused on, but we have not and cannot rule anything out."

With Chrysler facing an end-of-month federal deadline to reach agreements with its bankers and the union, stakeholders have been trading a flurry of offers and counteroffers.

In recent weeks, members of the task force have struggled to devise rescue plans and a legal strategy that might protect those workers if the companies file for bankruptcy. But experts say an outcome is difficult to predict.

"I feel betrayed," said Vicki Prout, 57, a former executive assistant at Chrysler whose 23-year career there included typing speeches for Lee Iacocca when he was chief executive. "They offered these incentives for us to take early retirement, and I took one. Now it looks like my fixed income wasn't so fixed."

She estimated that her monthly payment would be cut in half if the pension is terminated in a bankruptcy. She has started looking for jobs around her home in Troy, Mich., but said there are not many to find.

"I feel like I've been caught in a storm," she said.

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Rachel Maddow talks to David Sirota about whether the Obama administration is being tougher on the auto makers than they are on Wall Street. They also take Sen. Bob Corker to task for complaining about the CEO being forced out of GM but having no problem saying that it's perfectly fine to tear up the union contracts of the workers and slash their wages.

And so it begins:

The chairman and chief executive of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, is resigning, just hours before President Obama was expected to unveil his rescue plans for G.M. and the ailing American auto industry, a person close to the decision said Sunday.

Mr. Wagoner was asked to step down as part of G.M.’s restructuring agreement with the Obama administration, according to an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because a formal announcement has not been made yet. Mr. Wagoner then agreed to resign.The unexpected move by Mr. Wagoner, who has been at the helm of G.M. for eight years, was not confirmed by the company. A statement about Mr. Wagoner’s future will be issued after the president’s comments, which is expected to be Monday morning.

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During the hearing held yesterday by the Senate Banking Committee into government assistance for the automotive industry Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) commented on the "scapegoating of the men and women of organized labor" in the auto industry. He also called the false claim about autoworkers making $70/hr a deliberate lie being perpetrated on the American people.

He said:

CASEY: I have to say also, with regard to the labor concessions -- Mr. [Ron] Gettelfinger [UAW president], I wanted to review some of those. Because I am stunned by the kind of -- when you hear the talking heads on television and when you read what some people say in this town and across the country about the mythology that's out there about how we're -- how we got to this situation. And, frankly, the scapegoating of the men and women of organized labor, and in particular, autoworkers.

Point number one: In 2005, cuts in wages for active workers and health-care benefits for retirees -- point number one. I'm reading from your testimony. Cuts for new workers, bringing the wage level down to 14 bucks an hour. How many industries are doing that? Reducing the company's liability for retiree health care by 50 percent. And I realize these have been in the record before, but it is very important.

And wages and benefits. You said yourself that they're about 10 percent -- 10 percent of the budget? You would think listening to some of the people talk out there, some of the so-called experts, that wages and benefits were 70 percent of the cost. So there's a lot of mythology, a lot of myth generally that has been put on the record.

In 20-- since 2003, downsizing by the companies has reduced their workforce by 150,000 people. That doesn't get said very often. The labor-cost gap with foreign transplant operations will be largely or completely eliminated. OK? So, it's -- I think it's important to put this information on the record for this hearing. And then we've heard this garbage about 73 bucks an hour. It's a total lie, and some people have perpetrated that deliberately in a calculated way to mislead the American people about what we're doing here. It's a lie, and they know it's a lie.

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From the man who called the union benefits at automotive companies a "welfare state," we have George Will on This Week showing his compassionate conservative side yet again. I would like to see George Will working on an assembly line until the age of 65 and then let him speak out about someone retiring before that age or receiving benefits that they somehow don't deserve. Working for thirty years at a company while giving your blood in the process is not enough for these people.

John Amato:

Conservatives love to rewrite history so they can trumpet their own philosophy. Paul Krugman explains to George Will how FDR got America out of the Depression. Conservatives have been trying to unravel the New Deal ever since.

Krugman: There was a collapse of the financial system which was not restored for a long time. There was a deep slump in consumer demand and therefore no investment demand so we were stuck in this trap.

Update: The video links with the correct video should be working now.