waxman is not part of the change montra set by obama, waxman has been in congress for 30 years.
the democrats will lose the majority two years from now, the rust belt is not a guarentee for them.
waxman will put standards on industry that will result in thousands of jobs lost, and there is nothing progressive about that.
this is classism, when DC bailed out wall street(white colar), no one blinked an eye. But DC has declared war on detroit (blue colar) and everyone thinks it is progrssive.

The auto industry and its friends have been living in a dream world where all the calendars read 1960. They have fought tooth and nail any safety legislation, any fuel economy standards,and any environmental and climate legislation for over 40 years. Whenever anyone has proposed any changes to their 1960 version of business as usual, they have told us that they can't do it, because it will drive them out of business. The American automobile industry always tells us what it can't do. It never tells us what it can do. If they really get desperate they take their employees and their communities hostage. "Do as we say, or the little guy gets it!"  

You can respond to change in two ways. You can buy into it, or you can get run down by it. The auto industry and people like Dingel chose to stand in its way. They are road kill.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

I'm curious, what do you think Dingell's chairmanship has done for the rust belt? Whatever he's been doing, it doesn't seem to have worked very well.

grist.org

To quote Merle Haggard, "When your running down my country man, you're walking on the fightin' side of me."

Watch out auto execs and board members, you who Dingell served, you could be next to get the axe.  Your crowd insisted on continuing to build gas guzzlers, which in turn made gas prices soar, which in turn started a recession, which in turn lead to home foreclosures due to high energy costs and lost jobs.

Ultimately it was the oil schock that caused the recession, the mortgage/credit crash would have been over by now without it.

Throw these bums out!  Why continue to let them use taxpayer and shareholder money to support their know-nothing, do-nothing industrial regime.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

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waxman is not part of the change montra set by obama, waxman has been in congress for 30 years.

the democrats will lose the majority two years from now, the rust belt is not a guarentee for them.

waxman will put standards on industry that will result in thousands of jobs lost, and there is nothing progressive about that.

this is classism, when DC bailed out wall street(white colar), no one blinked an eye. But DC has declared war on detroit (blue colar) and everyone thinks it is progrssive.
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Obama's goal is to work with as many people as possible to fix our problems.  He does not have a "purity test", but a pragmatic attitude.  Waxman is a big improvement over Dingle.  (Fill in your fantasy name here) was not elected to the House during the last election and Waxman was seen to be the best choice available.

 There is no guarantee that Democrats will win or lose in the next election.  That will depend on how well they do during the next year and a half vs. how well the Republicans do in reinventing themselves.

 Decisions will have to be made that will result in labor shifting from one sector to another.  The end result might be for fewer people to be occupied in making cars and digging coal and more people occupied in making and installing wind generation.  My guess is that people working in the car industry will find themselves making different types of vehicles as we move to more efficient models.

Lots and lots of people not only blinked when banks got bailed out.  They screamed loudly.  But in the end they accepted the fact that we need a viable credit market or our economy will just not function.

Union blue collar workers may get hurt in what's coming to Detroit.  They already have to the extent that new hires won't receive the same benefits as  traditionally has occurred.  

That's too bad.  But that's the reality of operating in a global market.  One set of car manufacturers can't survive while paying their workers $70 per hour (including benefits) while other manufacturers pay $35 per hour.

We are in a global economy.  There was no way to avoid joining.  There is no going back.