Booming Republican economy spreads to Detroit

General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner today said he will close 12 facilities and eliminate 30,000 jobs in the biggest round of cuts in more than a decade.

The world's largest automaker will idle or reduce operations at nine manufacturing sites and several non-manufacturing facilities

GM will close assembly plants in Doraville, Georgia; Lansing, Michigan; Oklahoma City; Spring Hill, Tennessee, and a car plant in Oshawa, Ontario. The automaker will shut down engine plants in St. Catharines, Ontario, and Flint, Michigan. GM will also reduce shifts at plants in Moraine, Ohio, and a second car plant in Oshawa.

Toyota, by contrast to Wagoner's plan to cut plants, is adding plants in North America and has released cars this year such as a redesigned Avalon sedan targeted at people who might otherwise buy GM's Buick Lucerne. Toyota plans to open a factory for Tundra pickups in San Antonio next year and a plant for the RAV4 sport-utility vehicle in Woodstock, Ontario, in 2008.

The Toyota City, Japan-based carmaker has said it plans to take 15 percent of the global auto market in the next decade, rising from about 12 percent now.

GM can be expected to make workers pay for the company's losses...

[Wagoner] may have to spend his bargaining time getting deeper health care concessions. As Wagoner shrinks the company, he has to spread the company's massive retiree pension and health care costs over a smaller fleet of cars sold. That means he will have to go back to the union for deeper health care cuts than he got last month.

In November, the union agreed to pay larger premiums on retiree health care, saving GM $1 billion in cash annually.

Wagoner could demand more health care cuts in 2007, when the current labor pact expires. But he may have to go back the UAW even sooner, McAlinden says: Wagoner has taken a huge step toward fixing his troubled company, but his work is far from over.

See ya later people. Good luck out there. Maybe you can work for Toyota. But at least the Bush tax cuts should keep you and your kids warm at night.

While Republicans are telling us that the economy is in fine shape, and Wall St. players and investors welcome news of huge job slashes and screwing employees out of health care and pension benefits as it will lead to further profits, or at least minmize any losses, the fact remains that the middle class is getting screwed in a thousand ways and the economy as a whole is heading into the ditch.

But the Republican party is so devoted to the wealthy investor class that it simply doesn't care. In the face of rampant unemployment, falling wages and rising cost of living, they hand out more goodies to these wealthy investors, heedless of the fact that if this trend continues, it could lead to economic disaster.

THIRTY THOUSAND well-paying jobs with benefits are now vanished, communities devastated with the ripple affect driving small businesses under, crime rate rising, local tax base depleted, and a whole host of problems attending it. And all the Republicans are concerned about is how GMs stock is doing.