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Sunday, November 30. 2008
The Big Lie
Saturday I eavesdropped on a funny conversation. While helping one friend, Mike, move, two of our friends were sitting in the living room watching one of those college football games that had an astronomical score. Can’t remember which one, but everyone marveled at the total number of points on the scoreboard.So, on comes the Navy commercial, the one that shows the Navy taking part in a bunch of humanitarian missions. One friend says to another, “It’s the media’s fault the military has these humanitarian commercials.”
Really, I ask? How so?
“Well, the media wouldn’t buy military commercials that show what the military actually does, killing, destroying things …”
It’s the media’s fault. And then he tried to turn the argument around and have me blaming the media. Interesting, watching others trying to twist a conversation. The Army has shown plenty of commercials that illustrate their war capabilities.
The Navy, on the other hand, has a hand in humanitarian efforts primarily because they have many services available on their floating cities, like aircraft carriers and so they choose to advertise that mainly because it is more appealing to not just the young people considering time in the military, but their parents who see an endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan and who wants their kids going off to the killing fields?That’s been one of the rabid right’s favorite ploys; blame it on the media. In this past election, members of the McCain-Palin ticket were leaking damaging information daily, anonymously, and then Sarah Palin would blame the media, as if printing or talking about news items was a bad thing. Often I would feel sorry for Palin, since most of the negative news was about her: the wardrobe, her lack of basic knowledge on politics, the world and even our Constitution, but then she would start talking and the pity would disappear.
It’s always the media’s fault. Unless of course it’s the unions. It’s always the fault of the unions and that is how everyone on the right is twisting the story concerning the Big Three bailout.
First, the right wing wingnuts want us to believe the cause of the Big Three’s financial woes are the contracts with the United Auto Workers. That’s it in a nutshell. In that lie is the falsehood that the average union autoworker makes $70.00 per hour. How the wingnuts arrive at that wonderful number is, they take the highest of wages of UAW workers, about $28.00 per hour, plus the cost of their benefits and another $3.00 an hour, bringing the total to about $31.00 an hour.
Then, to get to the $70-75 dollars per hour that is spouted on TV is really quite simple: first they add things like overtime, shift differentials (getting paid more to work 3rd shift and on holidays and weekends) vacations and even the employer cost of things like taxes and Social Security payments. Then they add the retirements and retirement benefits paid to current retirees and their spouses, stating those retirement benefits weren’t included as costs in the contracts that were ratified to create those retirement costs.Less than 10% of the price of an American automobile is attributed to labor costs. The rest of the cost has to do with shipping, marketing, design and of course management. You won’t find any top-level management making less than one million dollars per year in base salary. The other bennies, which include bonuses and stock options, take many of those salaries well into the upper seven and sometimes eight figure range.
Once again the working class is taking it on the chin from the right wing, although the right wing will always claim they have the best interests of the middle class in their hearts. And what’s in the best interest of the average union autoworker in the United States? Lower his or her standard of living.
For the right wing, autoworkers are not entitled to things like quality health care or pensions to ensure they live decent lives once they leave the work force. The right wing will of course deny it, but the two biggest “problems” the right wing has the with the autoworkers are their health care and pension plans.
The other part of the story the right wing likes to leave out of their anti-middle class diatribe is that Japanese automakers don’t pay health care benefits for their workers; like most other civilized nations, the Japanese and South Koreans provide nationalized health care. The United States, on the other hand, considers health care to be a privilege and ought to remain a system based on profit, not on the well being of the patients.
On the other hand, U.S. automakers need to start building vehicles Americans want. That means more fuel-efficient vehicles, hybrid even, and they need to start marketing the cars, not just the SUV’s, CUV’s and the pickup trucks. One of the great disparities in the market place is in advertising. The Big Three market their pickups pretty well, not so much SUV’s anymore, but when’s the last time you saw an ad for a Chevy Impala or Chrysler 300 — or even a PT Cruiser?Ford manages to advertise it’s new Fusion, but none of their other cars. Local dealers might advertise a Focus or Taurus — and rarely a Mustang, their signature vehicle — but the bulk of their advertising is devoted to their line of trucks.
Years ago, when the Japanese started making inroads in the U.S. auto market, U.S. automakers conceded the field to their rivals and now we are often likely to see a television commercial for a Toyota Camry, Honda Civic and Hyundai, but not for a Mercury Sable or Pontiac G6.
Ford and General Motors do advertise their luxury lines, the Lincoln MKE and Cadillac CTS, but that’s the high-end market.
The Republican lie about the Big Three bailout: it isn’t even about the cost of labor and unions. The real issue for the Republicans and their right wing supporters is the power of the unions, not in labor negotiations, but in politics. It’s all about influence in Washington and the unions overwhelmingly support the Democrats. On rare occasions a union will throw it’s support to a Republican, as the Teamsters did when they endorsed Ronald Reagan, but that’s the exception, not the norm.The real goal of the right wing is the elimination of the unions. It’s part of their goal to completely roll back Roosevelt’s New Deal and return to a time when the titans of industry completely controlled America. As if they don’t control enough already.
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