I was starting to come around a bit on the unions, thinking that while they are certainly part of the problem, you couldn't pin the whole thing on them. I'd also heard that they were ready to make concessions- about bloody time, with their employers nearly bankrupt. Then I heard a segment discussing the Big 3 this morning on NPR and I'm 100% back to "kill the unions". Their "concessions" were pathetic- basically they deign to agree to discuss their contracts with the companies- no guarantees of any concessions, just a meeting. They're going to phase out a program called the "Jobs Pool" which apparently pays workers who have been laid off for doing nothing. Give me a fucking break- are these guys even remotely connected with the real world? Their spokesman said that these concessions were not primarily intended to actually help the companies in this time of near collapse, but were simply intended as token gestures to get Congress to go ahead with the bailout so they can keep on sucking the Big 3 dry (my interpretation and not his actual words, obviously).