Progress Illinois

. How can someone get a 120 days vacation? Think about that ....120 days is a third of a year. Take a pie and cut it into three pieces then take one out . Rep Kirk is trying to say Auto Workers get four months of vacation. If you really believe the 120 days of vacation then the $78 dollars an hour is just as believable. Here is some real facts the Federal Government employs more people then Manufacturing, Wachovia lost $66 billion in six months and Their executives are getting a $98 million severance (post takeover of course), Manufacturing generates wealth, Government and the Financial industry shuffle money around and they take a piece of the money. the Middle class is dying.

My understanding is that they get 7 weeks vacation plus 37 personal days. But vacation time is nothing compared to lifetime pay after layoff and lifetime medical benefits. You can argue all you want on the details but the fact is UAW are outrageously overpaid. No other workers have this time of compensation. Maddow clearly doesn't understand why the feds bailed out wallstreet. She needs to learn about default credit swaps. This is not an issue of white collar vs blue collar. Blue collars workers at the big 3 have much better compensation packages than white collar workers do. When white collar workers at the big 3, they get a pink slip and nothing else. GM hasn't made a profit since 2002. From 2003 to 2007 GM lost 73 billion. The big 3 will never make a profit with the UAW profit. The UAW knew since 2003 that there was talk of bankruptcy and the UAW kept up their greedy demands. Now the UAW is getting payback.

Times are hard on all workers. Millions have lost jobs, houses and suffered losses in their 401Ks. No one has any sympathy for the UAW workers. UAW destroyed the big 3 and they are not going to get our tax dollars. If democrats hand out dollars, the republicans will be back in the majority in two years.

Looks to me like Pam got her "information" from the right wing website Townhall from which it appears she just cut and pasted. Fact is that UAW members do not get 7 weeks of vacation or 37 personal days. Some can get up to 5 weeks of vacation and 17 paid holidays. It depends on the individual contract and the number of years of service just like any other job. Pam and her friends on Townhall apparently want workers to have no vacation, no sick days, no safety measures, no health care, no pensions. They used to call those places of business sweatshops.

Pam also forgets the huge bonuses given to all these bankers and investment managers for engaging in very risky business. The credit default swaps she claims to understand were part of that overly risky business and the folks who never understood them were the ones insuring them at AIG.

Get your facts straight before posting next time, Pam dear. I'd suggest Townhall is not a place for finding facts, but a place for arguing for the wealthiest 1% of the country. Unless you are in that category, you're just being used.

Ah, about 3 minutes of internet research uncovers where Townhall gets its misleading "facts". Union contracts are usually for a term of several years. What they are doing is adding up the vacations for the entire contracts (usually 3 or 4 years) and attributing them to a per year basis. Lying to make a point doesn't make any point other than point that the liar is, well, a liar.

Anon 22:09 -- I'd been wondering about Kirk's "120 vacations days" claim and would like to do a follow-up post on it if it is, in fact, based on multiple years. If you have any helpful links debunking this claim, please post them.

It isn't class warfare so long as the rich are winning.

Have you noticed something else? The rich tend to label anything they don't like as Socialistic and making the ones they like exempt. Stop spending on all but necessiities and you will start to see the rich squeel and squrim, soon to them a livable wage will be a term exempt from the Socialistic label.

I live in Rep. Kirk's district, and I hope that he'll run for the U.S. Senate or governor, in 2010. If he does, St. Rep. Elizabeth Coulson, a Republican, should run for his congressional seat. Like Kirk, Coulson is a moderate who lives in Cook Co.

Phil: Kirk lives in Lake County -- not Cook.

We know this thanks to the research we did earlier this year on his property taxes. Due to a very clever use of the historic preservation assessment freeze program, the congressman pays under $800 per year on a condo with a $450K market value.

You can read more about that here:

http://www.progressillinois.com/2008/06/06/more-on-kirks-property-taxes

That was a nice tactic to pay low tax. I simply can't understand these people. They are the leaders of this country and this is the way they behave. They should be a model for the citizens, but it seems that they are a bad model. This congressman should be fired and never allowed to work in politics.

Well I suppose congressman Kirk is non Jewish. American foreign policy if I'm not mistaken ,is run by by the like of Paulson,Geithner,Summers,Shapiro,Bernanke,Bernstein and Volcker. These people are controlled by lending institutions, so what do you expect? Especially when their called Rothschild ,Warburg etc.

My understanding is that they get 7 weeks vacation plus 37 personal days. But vacation time is nothing compared to lifetime pay after layoff and lifetime medical benefits.

thank you very much for sharing..

i really dont understand either :(