Well, we’ve got a foot of snow at my house, it’s still falling, and it looks like my appointment at the doctor’s office two days from now is up in the air. I can say this, a good snow storm helps me to appreciate the beauty of “Mother Nature,” even though it’s got me stuck where I’m at. Actually, it’s kind of nice to be forced to just relax and do nothing for a while. Today, a neighbor happened by with his family for a bit of hot tea, cocoa, and cider. We had a very nice discussion. My friend is an engineer at Hewlett Packard and always blows me away at his ability to tear things apart and put them back together as if they suddenly became new again. As a school teacher, when I’m around him – and others with such talent who have done something with it – at first I marvel and then I think about how I can motivate the students I have with natural talent to develop it and strive to “make something of themselves.” Tonight, our converstation evolved into a discussion about the American “obsession” with “accountability” while at the same time looking downward on workers which has brought us to a place where many in our workforce (including my friend) are kind of walking on “pins and needles” in their jobs as upper management uses the threat of job loss to extract every bit of whatever they can get from their employees. The sense of community and loyalty that once was pervasive in companies like Hewlett Packard (They once took pride in having never “laid off” an employee) is a thing of the past. Anything and everything that corporations can “outsource” to save a few dollars at the expense of this sense of loyalty gets outsourced. I’m really getting tired of calling “customer service” and being routed through India. I’m saying this in the wake of the so-called “auto bailout” which is really a bridge loan that, in my mind, is Bush’s way of passing the problem onto Obama, still hoping for the demise of the United Auto Workers.

I’m OK with that. Now it is up to President Elect Obama to show some leadership (which is what I’m hopeful will be his strength) to ensure that the UAW succeeds, our domestic auto industry succeeds (I’m still baffled by the number of republicans that seem to think losing our domestic auto industry would be OK), and unions in general start to make a comeback in this country. While I’m pretty focused on the corruption of the corporations in America, the political parties in America, and of course the Bush administration – there can be no doubt that over the course of years the labor unions have had their share of corruption. Keep in mind that this has been largely abuses by the leadership of these unions – but the reality is that the union workers, the ones who fought for worker’s rights from the thirties up until this day, have been the backbone of this nation. They are the reason for so many workplace benefits that I believe many of us Americans just take for granted, that the time has come when we have to band together and re-commit to the value of collective bargaining and the reality that without it you end up with a system that is totally out of balance such as what we are experiencing today.

When it is not unusual for corporate CEO’s to be making multi-million dollar salaries and then issuing themselves huge bonuses – in today’s economic atmosphere despite tremendous corporate losses – and then doing everything they can to reduce jobs, something is terribly wrong. How did we get to the point where, en masse, we just seem to stand by and watch this happen? I’m sure there are less people working in America today than the day George W Bush took office almost 8 years ago. That is a damning and disgusting fact. And it appears that it is going to get worse before it gets better. We are still listening to too many people arguing that GM should be allowed to go bankrupt – to me more the victim of the financial meltdown (remember, most Americans have to go to the bank to be able to buy a new car) than their own lack of foresight as to how they should compete in the market we are now faced with. My friend who works at Hewlett Packard tells of how their company merged with Compaq and one of the “benefits” was the elimination of thousands of jobs. Additionally, thousands of other jobs were eliminated because, due to the advances in technology (for example face to face meetings over the internet), it is very easy to replace an American worker with one in Singapore who will work for less.

The CEO’s who are doing a good job of eliminating these jobs are being rewarded with huge bonuses. Last year the CEO at Hewlett Packard was compensated with a salary of $23 million. Well, that is less than the CEO of GM who received $28 million – so I suppose that gives him something to “shoot” for. And today I read where the CEO of Merrill Lynch (keep in mind that to avoid bankruptcy they were purchased in a “hastily arranged” takeover by Bank of America – after losing something close to $10 Billion) was compensated with $83 million – because he took over after most of the damage had been done, I suppose someone thought that it could have been worse. The point I’m trying to make is that until we change the mindset that has been programmed into the minds of the American people allowing for these abuses to happen, while thinking it’s OK for genuine workers who actually produce things to “go down,” we are in a world of hurt. The greed level in the US is unbelievable. My friend and I looked at his children and I referred to my grandchildren and grown children, and we agreed “We have to start speaking out about this.” Trickle down economics don’t work and the money has become “stuck” at the top of the “food chain.” Our children deserve the opportunity to have their work valued in a way that will support their future families.