http://www.dailyartisan.com/news/and-now-the-manchurian-microchip/

At least 17 underage workers, ranging in ages from 14 to 17, were arrested the day of the raid.

An employee sitting in a looped chain was lowered approximately 17 feet into a 21-foot deep manhole. Twenty seconds later he started gasping for air and fell from the chain seat face down into the accumulated water at the bottom of the manhole. An autopsy determined oxygen deficiency as the cause of death.

Each year, poly vinyl chloride (PVC) plants pump some 500,000 pounds of vinyl chloride — a known human carcinogen — and many other toxins into the atmosphere. In spite of the documented effects of these cancer-causing chemicals, the government has kept the industry’s air emissions largely unregulated.

Guess the country? The Internet makes propaganda child’s play. This is not a war against protection of minors, safe work places, or the environment. This is a war against tired cliches.

At what cost?

Children working in factories?

Residents say children as young as 12 have been recruited by child labor rings, equipped with fake identification cards, and transported hundreds of miles across the country to booming coastal cities, where they work 12-hour shifts to produce much of the world’s toys, clothes and electronics.”

Rampant pollution?

Local environmental officials have surprisingly limited authority to implement Beijing’s green regulations, as these cadres receive both their orders and their salaries from local government, which has an economic interest in shielding local industry.”

Little regard for worker safety?

The patients arrive every day in Chinese hospitals with disabling and fatal diseases, acquired while making products for America.

On the sixth floor of the Guangzhou Occupational Disease and Prevention Hospital, Wei Chaihua, 44, sits on his iron-rail bed, tethered to an oxygen tank. He is dying of the lung disease silicosis, a result of making Char-Broil gas stoves sold in Utah and throughout the U.S.”

The US used to be like that, yes, before progress was made and we started to value life over cheap goods.

Back in the day, doing a good job used to mean something. If the only way GM can make cars profitably is by cutting regulatory corners, than their cars aren’t worth building.

And to the point that worker’s protections are needed, etc. is hogwash. Back in the early 1900’s there was no internet, no CNN, no anything to barrage the public with every little crumb of injustice toward mankind. Those things would never happen in this era, and you know it. And if they did, well, then, it’s a person’s CHOICE to put up with it if they want a job. I’m sick of the nanny state we’ve become. Work is work. Sometimes it’s dirty and smelly. It might even be bad for you, but if you don’t like it move on to do something else, or get a degree and work in an office. There’s something called choices. Make wise choices for yourself, and don’t worry so much about your neighbor. If everyone would do this, we’d be much better off. China is what we used to be in manufacturing, and they are kicking everyone’s ass. Which I guess is fine with me. I’ve worked for a Korean car company, and I’ll tell you I loved it, even though it was much harder work than with American companies. They work their asses off, and they just get the damn job done, whatever it takes. No sitting around waiting for a meeting or some Union shlub to say “it’s Ok, we can do that”. I’ll tell you it’s actually FUN to work a 16 hour day and actually accompish something!

When faced with a challenge a good company sees an opportunity and earns money meeting the challenge. Toyota just simply met those challenges and got richer. GE sees the energy challenge and makes windmills.

A poorly managed company sees a challenge and panics into inaction and then begs for help.

I remember the smell of auto exhaust back in the 1950s – you don’t want to go there.

Yeah, let’s go back to 19th century work houses where you were forced to work 16 hour days and could be fired on the spot for taking an unscheduled bathroom break. Meanwhile we’ll just spew pollutants into the air, let people drive unsafe vehicles and force them to drive overpriced GM cars because Honda, Toyota et al. (who strangely under the same rules of safety and standards manage to make a profit on vehicles built in this country) are excluded.

Look at countries that DON’T have worker’s protections, safety or emission standards and DO have restricted trade policies (eg. China) and tell me you’d rather live there.

GM’s woes aren’t due to any regulations, they are due to pissing away the money they made while they were in profit. “Make hay while the sun shines” the saying goes; GM just sat back staring at the sun and believed the summer would never come to an end.

oh puhhlease, this is a USA not India or some other third world country where people can’t afford having a reasonable crash standard, a working seat belt, or an air bag. Somehow, I don’t see people immigrating from the USA into one of those countries where they can enjoy all the “freedom” from not having so much regulations. China would be a great place to start, where tens of thousands babies got poisoned by tainted milk products.

As for CAFE. Yes. It’s stupid. Federal gas tax would have worked much better in terms of improving the efficiency and emissions of our vehicle fleet, and getting Americans to behave less wastefully.

oh puhhlease, this is a USA not India or some other third world country where people can’t afford having a working seat belt or an air bag. Somehow, I don’t see people immigrating from the USA into one of those countries where they can enjoy the “freedom” on not having so much regulations. China would be a great place to start, where tens of thousands babies got poisoned by tainted milk products.

As for CAFE. Yes. It’s stupid. Federal gas tax would have worked much better in terms of improving the efficiency and emissions of our vehicle fleet, and getting Americans to behave less wastefully.

A few bil come back to the US and GMs liabilities (200B) go to China. The US market for GM collapses and we are rid of the Chinese influence to boot.
They have fun in Europe, S america etc.

How is this not a good plan.

Ya, ya. I know the Fanboiz will meltdown (they always do).
Jobs? Let’s be real, those are already gone.
Image? Who’s? GM? Wagner’s? Lutz’?
Puhleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze.

Grab the money and run Comrades!

Bunter

Possibly a Chinese buyout of GM would allow the meltdown of bloated GM “management” and allow the good folks there who actually do something to get on with their jobs.

As to those who feel that it was government meddling in safety and emissions standards which lead to this, I suggest you visit Bangkok, where the government has done no such thing. Walk around for a while, breathing the noxious brown air and think about having a crash in one of their 1970-vintage cars.

Yours has got to be the wildest crash I’ve seen. -The page came up looking like you’d try to open a Compiled application like Excel or Word in a Text Editor; -10 miles of Sanskrit and Scientific Notation.

Hmm… note to self. next time site needs traffic, put “China” in headline

+++Also note, that if China buys GM, all cars produced hence will be 40% Melamine and kill your babies, so Buy American!!!

So, GM et al go hat in hand to the feds, the feds go hat in hand to China…who does China go to? They have a deep well to draw from these days…but not infinite. And given the deficits growing not incrementally but by leaps and bounds, one does wonder how many more 12 zero deficits even they can prop up.

If you like worrying, these are good times.

It was not “Labor through joy?”

Oh well, even sex isn’t what it used to be ….

All the union/OSHA/CAFE/”Consumer Product Safety Commission” crap does impede the ability of automakers like GM to dig themselves out of the hole they’re in, though even with a rope like that thrown down the hole they’ve dug, I think Rick would just hang himself with it somehow.

But the second more salient point is all that overhead prices start-ups completely out of the business – before they even get in business. Just to do a re-design on a current model for one of the big companies involves I don’t know, a couple hundred crashes into some concrete for crash-safety data? Something like that I am sure. What start-up can crash their first hundred cars off the line and then wait nine months for Uncle Sam to “get back to them on that?” Hogwash.

Of course other giant companies in foreign lands can eat those costs, which is why you see only foreign outfits eating Red Rick’s lunch. Without the suffocating bureaucracy in place, you would’ve seen a hundred more companies show up in the past forty years of Detroit malaise to eat their lunch, and it would’ve been Americans doing the eating.

Oh well, down with the Capitalist Running Dogs!

Or my favorite, “JOY THROUGH LABOR!”

I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords and wish them the best in fixing our nation.

*sorry, couldn’t resist*

This doesn’t surprise me, but does concern me a bit. It’s a little scary how much we owe the Chinese. I agree with the quote from the article to go to Congress saying “we’re in negotiations with the Chinese, wanna make us stop?”

It’s Capitalist Running Dogs. We’re already down wit dat.