I am a retired GM worker. I worked there from the 70’s to 2006. I’ve seen first-hand how much quality has changed in their product. When I started we use to check only one part per 150 peices, now it’s every peice. I own a 1997 Aurora Oldsmoble and other than a fan problem and an oil pump replacement recently, it has been trouble free and a joy to drive. As far as what is happening to the business, I’m sad to say I’m not surprised. GM has been in a rip and burn mode for some time. One thing I’m not sure about and no one else I know is sure of either, is how much of GM is still here in the U.S.and how much now is overseas. When they talk about GM going bankrupt, do they mean the whole corperation or just the North American Operations. Those who are not as close to this will not remember that GM has sold off huge parts of the business over the last 15 years. First it was EDS then it was Hughs. In 1999 they sold all of their components and production plants.Causing them to shrink from close to a milloin hourly employees to around 300 thousand. Recently they let go of GMAC. Through all of this the workers were constantly pushed to improve their productivily and asked for concessions. While Ford and the japanese have paired down their salary population in proportion to their hourly, GM has not. They have 4 times more salary than Toyota and twice as many as Ford in ratio to hourly employees. In one of our local papers they had a cartoon of Toyota in one boat with seven people; 2 salary folks yelling out to row and 5 workers rowing; and GM in the other boat with 5 salary folks yelling and only 2 workers rowing. If anyone is wondering why GM is in a worse state than most, here is the reason as I understand it. When I hired in, a small portion of my hourly wage was put towards my pention. Over the years when the corperation was doing well, the amount of retirees were small in proportion to the workforce. The retirement account seemed inexhaustable. In the 1990’s it was around $51 billion. GM started tapping it to fund their new ventures.( Does this not sound familiar e.g. social security system). Soon, between the skyrocketing price of healthcare and the huge influx of new retirees and GM not paying back to the fund,our pension accounts became grossly underfunded. When I started paying into my pention there where no 401K’s offered and where some companies offered matching stock options, our company did not. We were assured that our pentions could not be touched, which is no longer true. I feel the american public as well as autoworkers are in a loosing proposition. GM would love to loose their legacy issues( that’s how they refer to retirees and older workers). Going bankrupt would allow them to dump their obligation to the government to pay suplimental pention guarantees and send most of us in crisis on healthcare who are not 62 years old. I hope that if the bailout does come, that there will be hard and restictive use on how and where GM can use this money. Until they repay their obligation to America they should not be allowed to be able to divest capital from the U. S or invest outside of it.

I talked at length with my mother, who will be 92 soon. She said something very telling from someone who voted for FDR. ” I never think of Mr. Obama as being black. I think of him as being this caring mature adult. He reminds me of the father everyone wants, the statesmen we hope for to run our country”. She voted by absentee ballot and she knows it will be the last time, since her health and memory is failing. There is this hope and joy that fills the air. A sense of maturity and seriousness that as a nation we can take a step forward. Everything old is new again.

My son’s daily call to talk shop My ex’s daily call to touch base Going to lunch with my pals Being out in the marsh, having a picnic My 90 years old mother telling me jokes Birds at the feeder on a snowy morning My cat curled up under my arm when I’m reading My littlest granddaughter padding around the familyroom in the morning, in her bare feet with jammys and her wooly hat and gloves ( It’s my favorite video)

I lived in middle America during the 60’s. We only heard about what was happening on the coasts, but when I read your posts it’s surprising the memories I have of that time. My family went to see Toronto, and Washington D.C. in the summer of ‘68’. I remember the head shops and their incense laden smell. The sidewalk cafes and the music, not my parents music, but ours, coming from the little shops. The nervousness of D.C. and the heat. Boy do I remember the colors, it was like the Wizard of Oz, with Peter Max leading us down the yellow brick road. I lived ninety minutes north of Detroit when the riots started. My boyfriend’s dad spent the whole night in his shop in downtown Saginaw, I remember being almost grief stricken with worry for his dad. My father took me with him to the airport when Nixon came to town. I got to shake his hand, even though I didn’t believe in his politics, but my dad did and so I pretended I did too. When I visit Ann Arbor, Michigan in the summer it brings a lot of it back. It’s still has some of that radical, mother earth feel, but only in the summer, when it’s hot and the kids still are wearing hippy gear and singing on the sidewalks and the head shops still smell of incense.