Perhaps you are thinking about the early-withdrawal tax penalty for his IRA withdrawal, that is NOT the penalties for failure to pay back taxes that the rest of use would have to pay.

If you don’t want to accept Politifact, how about the Wall Street Journal?

“For our part, we are delighted that Mr. Baucus and Democrats are suddenly in such a forgiving tax mood. In addition to being a teaching moment for liberals, perhaps Mr. Geithner’s tax snafu can do all of America some good. We’d suggest that Mr. Geithner and Mr. Baucus together set a new standard for the IRS in dealing with people who, like Mr. Geithner, make a boo-boo on their tax returns.

Let’s have an amnesty — with penalties waived, as they were for Mr. Geithner — for all those Americans who somehow “forgot” to pay their taxes but are now willing to fess up or are audited. If forgiveness is to be the order of the day for the man who may soon be responsible for the IRS, American taxpayers deserve a similar reprieve.”

Since you don’t say what all the “mistakes” are, not sure how to respond except to point out the above.

And even more important, what actual data or evidence can you offer that the UAW worker is inefficient? Worker productivity in the U.S. increased by 16.6% between 2000 and 2005. Wages have not kept up. Where has the money realized from greater worker productivity gone? Into the CEO’s pockets. How “efficient” are they when they are running their companies into the ground?

Here’s a notable letter from Salon:

GM’s CEO was paid $15.7 Million in 2007:

http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSN2534738420080425
This amounts to 77 workers getting paid @ $70 to work for 360 days a year, 8 hours a day.

Ford CEO, the wonderful Mulally got paid $28 Million for FOUR months on job.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/05/news/companies/ford_execpay/
That amounts to $7 Million a month. Which amounts to paying 3300 workers @ $70 an hour every month.

And what did Mulally bring to FORD? $581 Million LOSS.

And on the issue of productivity, I’ll quote:

A New York Times article (08/28/2006) by Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt had this to say about productivity and lack of gains by labor : “With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.

“The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation’s living standards — has risen steadily over the same period.

“As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960s.”

Worker productivity rose 16.6 percent from 2000 to 2005, while total compensation for the median worker rose 7.2 percent, according to Labor Department statistics analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute… Benefits accounted for most of the increase.