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I've been reading through President Obama's much touted Recovery.gov web site and thought I would share the Frequently Asked Questions part of the site. It is in fact, the Delphi Technique in action. Through the whole of that web site, the Consensus and Facilitation of the Hegelian Principle is at work. To fight this phenomenon in our country, Freedom Lovers need to understand the forces at work, and master the language and techniques that will allow us to overcome the Barrage of facilitators and change agents who have just overtaken our country, fully, at the federal level. Please take some...

NEW YORK (AP) — A bankruptcy judge says Delphi can stop paying for health care and insurance benefits for its retired salaried workers. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain on Tuesday provisionally approved the auto supplier's request to cut off the benefits effective April 1. But he says the 15,000 affected retirees can form a committee to investigate if they have the right to negotiate with the company. The committee will present its findings at a March 11 hearing. Troy, Mich.-based Delphi Corp. has been operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since 2005. It says it needs to cut off the...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/business/17bizbriefs-DELPHITOSLAS_BRF.html

Tradition attributed the prophetic inspiration of the powerful oracle to geologic phenomena: a chasm in the earth, a vapor that rose from it, and a spring... The ancient testimony, however, is widespread, and it comes from a variety of sources: historians such as Pliny and Diodorus, philosophers such as Plato, the poets Aeschylus and Cicero, the geographer Strabo, the travel writer Pausanias, and even a priest of Apollo who served at Delphi, the famous essayist and biographer Plutarch... in about 1900, a young English classicist named Adolphe Paul Oppe['s] opinions were so strongly expressed that his theory became the new...

DETROIT - A union representing more than 2,000 of Delphi Corp.'s hourly workers said Friday it has told the auto parts maker that it plans to terminate its contracts, a first step toward a possible strike in October. The International Union of Electronic Workers-Communications Workers of America said the notification, delivered in a letter earlier this week, comes as contract talks have dragged on concerning job security, wages and benefits. "There is still much time to change our course," IUE-CWA Automotive Conference Board Chairman Willie Thorpe said in a statement. "But we cannot sit back and be unprepared. In our...

An obviously angry Ann Coulter this morning ripped into critics who deliberately distorted her comments about former senator and presidential hopeful John Edwards. After a relentless 24-hour firestorm during which much of the mainstream media used selective quotes to mangle the meaning of several of Ann’s comments about Edwards, Coulter set the record straight while talking with Joe Scarborough host of MSNBC’s "Morning Joe” program. Coulter told Scarborough: "I’ve never seen people avoid ideas so much in such an obvious way and try to alert Americans not to read anything, not to listen to something someone said — not because...

The Delphi Technique and consensus building are both founded in the same principle - the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, with synthesis becoming the new thesis. The goal is a continual evolution to "oneness of mind" (consensus means solidarity of belief) -the collective mind, the wholistic society, the wholistic earth, etc. In thesis and antithesis, opinions or views are presented on a subject to establish views and opposing views. In synthesis, opposites are brought together to form the new thesis. All participants in the process are then to accept ownership of the new thesis and support it, changing...

Costly Promises LOCKPORT, N.Y. — For two and a half years, Michael Tucker was mayor of this small city by day and an autoworker by night. Then in May, he became one of the nearly 50,000 workers at General Motors or its former Delphi parts division to take buyouts, lured by the $33,000-a-year pension his company offered. That pension, and a smaller one he expects to collect from the state after his years as mayor, makes him a little unusual in a nation where more and more workers are not covered by such plans. But now, as mayor of Lockport,...

DETROIT -- Delphi Corp. said today that 6,300 hourly employees represented by the IUE-CWA union, or 83 percent of those eligible, have agreed to early retirement or a buyout. The attrition program, financed predominantly by General Motors, continues to relieve pressure for a strike at Delphi. Earlier this summer, the UAW said nearly 13,000 of its Delphi members had taken a buyout or early retirement, with an additional 5,000 expected to transfer eventually to GM. Delphi is restructuring its U.S. operations under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company, spun off by GM in 1999, has asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court...

The UAW plans to ask its 24,000 members at Delphi Corp. to authorize a strike. UAW Vice President Richard Shoemaker gave the go-ahead Wednesday when he met in Detroit with UAW local presidents and other officials on the union’s Delphi council. The locals, representing workers at about 20 Delphi plants, have until May 14 to conduct the votes, said UAW spokesman Paul Krell. The authorization would give the international union the ability to strike Delphi if it cannot reach agreement on wage and benefit concessions of 60 percent that Delphi is demanding. A union official who attended the UAW council...

DETROIT -- The United Auto Workers and other unions opposed Delphi Corp.'s attempt to cancel its labor contracts in court filings Friday, saying the auto parts supplier has failed to prove it needs to slash workers' wages as part of its Chapter 11 restructuring. "This is a case in which the debtors have opted to place litigation before bargaining and to place confrontation before consultation," said the United Steelworkers, which represents about 1,000 of Delphi's 33,000 U.S. hourly workers. Unions aren't the only parties opposed to Delphi's motion. Appaloosa Management LP, a New Jersey-based hedge fund that owns 9.3 percent...

As fears grow that General Motors will go bust, management and unions are locked in a mournful embrace. “IN THIS case, it takes three to tango.” So said Rick Wagoner, the boss of General Motors (GM), this week—his re-working of an old cliché, capturing the contortions he is having to perform as he struggles to save the ailing giant of the car industry. Given its shrinking market share, GM would be hard enough to revive were it any firm in any industry. But GM is not any old firm, and designing more sellable cars is arguably the least of its...

Auto parts maker Delphi Corp. is free to move ahead on its plan to offer thousands of hourly employees the chance to retire, a bankruptcy judge ruled Friday, marking a key milestone in the company's effort to tame staffing levels amid falling production. The ruling allows Delphi, one of the world's largest suppliers of auto parts, to pay as many as 13,000 hourly employees to retire. Based in Troy, Mich., Delphi filed for bankruptcy protection in October and is trying to shed what it says are increasingly unsustainable labor agreements that have left it overstaffed and saddled with costly benefit...

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) -- Delphi Corp. workers angered by the auto parts supplier's proposal Friday to close or sell many of its plants said the plan would ruin some employees' lives and hurt communities that rely on the facilities for jobs and tax revenues. ADVERTISEMENT "You're going to see the tumbleweeds," said Allen Huguely, who works at one of five Delphi plants in the Dayton area that employ 6,000. "This whole city is going to suffer." Delphi asked a federal bankruptcy court to void its labor contracts as part of a restructuring plan that includes selling or closing 21 of...

GM, Bondholders and Unions Attack Parts Maker's Plan To Shed Jobs, Contracts...UAW Threatens 'Long Strike' Delphi Corp. filed a radical reorganization plan that includes closing or selling most of its North American plants and slashing as many as 30,000 union and salaried jobs. The move sets in motion a power struggle as Delphi, its labor unions, and its largest customer, General Motors Corp., seek advantage in the auto-parts supplier's bankruptcy-court proceedings. Delphi also threw a big wrench into the restructuring plans of its largest customer, General Motors Corp., filing a motion to void more than $5 billion in contracts to...

DETROIT | Bankrupt supplier Delphi Corp. has identified 14 U.S. factories it will shed as part of its reorganization in another sign of how bloody the restructuring of the nation's largest auto parts maker is turning out to be. The Troy, Mich.-based parts maker — now with 28 U.S. plants and 33,000 hourly workers — intends to close all but four of 18 factories represented by the United Auto Workers after it emerges from bankruptcy, according to a UAW letter distributed this week to workers in Oak Creek, Wis.. Contents of the letter were confirmed by other local union officials...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Delphi announced plans Friday to throw out its union contracts and shed more than 28,000 workers as it shut down most of its U.S. operations -- moves that could spark strikes at the auto parts maker and a possible bankruptcy filing at its biggest customer, General Motors. Delphi (Research) filed motions with the federal judge overseeing its bankruptcy proceedings to shed contracts with the United Auto Workers union (UAW) and another union that it says it can no longer afford. It also announced plans to sell or close 21 of its 29 plants. But it said...

Delphi, UAW Brace For Collision Delphi Corp. and the United Auto Workers appeared to be on collision course as the union flatly rejected the company's latest contract proposal, which would have reduced by 18 percent the compensation of Delphi's workers to $22 per hour, starting July 1. Under terms of the deal, wages would have continued to drop, falling to $16.50 per hour in September 2007. The proposal, blasted by the union, also had not been approved by GM. Under the terms of the deal, GM would have had to underwrite a one-time $50,000 payment to Delphi workers to make...

DETROIT - In one of the largest buyout programs ever, more than 125,000 hourly workers of General Motors Corp. and auto supplier Delphi Corp. are being offered up to $140,000 to give up their jobs to help cut the companies' crippling labor costs. GM did not say how many workers it expected to accept the offer, but it is aiming to slash 30,000 hourly jobs by 2008. Some workers wasted no time in declaring the deal "fantastic" and started calculating what they would get, based on years of service, if they accepted the offer. GM and Delphi have said that...

DETROIT (AP) -- General Motors Corp. and the auto parts supplier it once owned, Delphi Corp., announced deals Wednesday with the United Auto Workers that would offer buyouts to 13,000 hourly Delphi employees and up to 100,000 hourly GM workers represented by the United Auto Workers.GM workers will be eligible for payouts of between $35,000 and $140,000 depending on their years of service. At Delphi, up to 5,000 workers will be eligible to return to GM, Delphi's former parent, while 13,000 U.S. hourly workers will be eligible for a lump sum payment of up to $35,000 to retire.