It's time for  a pop quiz!  
        QUESTION: What do the following companies all have in common?
        
                        Texaco       
                        Kmart
                        United Airlines
                        Dana Corporation
                        Northwest Airlines

    Give up?
    Answer: The CEO's of all five companies have never been in my house. (Okay, that's an old line from one of my favorite episodes of "Cheers".)
      The other correct answer is that all five companies have taken bankruptcy in the past, yet, today, continue to operate.  Supporters of the UAW bailout for the Detroit Three, hold the threat of bankruptcy as a scare tactic for Congress.  The UAW is claiming that many of the legacy costs will start to fall away in 2010.  Hence, they are pleading with Congress to keep the patient alive until 2010, when the Big Three might be more competitive.  By that point, foreign car makers will be even further ahead.  
    The best chance that Ford, GM and Chrysler have for competing on the world market is to play on a level playing field.  A bailout won't get them to that playing field......ever.  The sooner the firms are able to cast of the burden of the UAW, the sooner they will reemerge as contenders.


University Liberalism revisited        
    Brian Milleville, is a local college student, who offers insightful comments and even an article to the Republican Reporter.  He sent the following email on his life as a conservative student:   

     Last year I had a journalism class and I spent almost an entire class hour explaining to the teacher how the media is liberal and the detrimental effects of MTV on our kids.  My history professor last year would try to interject his hatred for the Iraq war in his lessons in his ancient history class.  My adolescent psychology teacher started the first day of class this semester by bragging on how "enlightened" she was.  One of her extra credit chances was attending class when PRIDE (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender group at EIU) came in and held a panel discussion on homosexuality.  Discussion?  I meant brainwashing.  All is not lost though, my econ professor last semester was a conservative, and so is my military history professor this semester.  

     I try to speak up every opportunity I get.  In fact, doing so probably cost me a letter grade in my modern world history class last semester.  My professor had us read King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild.  The book outlines the oppression of Belgium toward the natives of the Congo during colonialism.  I felt the author spent some of the book condemning capitalism.  So for the reaction paper I researched who Hochschild was.  He is a "progressive" who helped found Mother Jones, a "progressive" magazine/website.  When I wrote that I felt Hochschild and Mother Jones was socialist, she wrote back that I needed to change it to "progressive".  I revised the rest of my paper, but I left the socialist part in, and in my own handwriting at the end of the paper, I explained to her that "progressive" means socialist and that I refused to back down from my feelings about Hochschild and Mother Jones.  I got a B on the paper, but I think it was an A paper.  Couldn't prove it, so there was not much I could do about it.

You have to stand up to these people because they are used to spewing their crap and no one challenging them on it.