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Tuesday, December 9. 2008
The Big Three Continued
Well, the new sport in Washington and talk radio is to bash the management of the Detroit Big Three—as well as the United Autoworkers Union. And the bashers are doing it with such indignation!Dylan Radigan on Morning Joe, MSNBC’s morning program, got puffed up and with all the “I’m smarter than you” bluster he could muster, told us definitively the answer to why the Big Three are in the position they are now: BAD MANAGEMENT!
Get rid the management of the Big Three! They are all bad!
Not once did Radigan mention the crisis with the financial institutions that have stopped giving credit to the consumers who buy the cars, didn’t mention the economy that has made the decision to buy cars more difficult even if there was credit available.
They did have UAW president Ron Gettelfinger on, and Joe Scarborough, a man I see as a closet liberal, asked the question I and may others have written about in previous weeks: “Isn’t this just code for busting the contracts?”
Joe was referring to the automakers being forced to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy, which would break the contracts with not only the UAW, but contracts with dealers and many of the Big Three’s vendors. One of the arguments, used by the proponents of forcing the automakers into bankruptcy, is to compare the automakers to the airlines. They like to cite how people continued to fly on the major airlines after they had declared bankruptcy. But it’s apples and oranges. We don’t pay tens of thousands of dollars per flight as we do for automobiles.
If and when I buy my next automobile, it will be a big part of the decision whether or not the dealer and the automaker will be there to honor the warranty if and when repairs or maintenance are required.
People do fly on airlines when the companies file for bankruptcy, but they’re not likely to spend thousands of dollars on an automobile if the solvency of the automaker is in question. Recent polls bear this out.
One of the great hypocrisies in this debate though, comes from Alabama’s senators, Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions, both Republicans. What a surprise. Both advocate forcing the Big Three into bankruptcy, Shelby even going so far as to call the Detroit automakers “dinosaurs” that ought to be extinct.The hypocrisy, Alabama lured European and Japanese automakers to build plants there, based on the facilities and infrastructure being paid for with tax dollars! The truth is, this isn’t about throwing good money after bad, as the Republicans portray it, this is about busting the union, short and simple. It doesn’t matter that millions of people will be thrown into unemployment, what matters is rolling back the New Deal, as represented by unions and collective bargaining.
That’s just what we need right now, after a recent report from the Department of Labor which says over a half million people filed for unemployment in November. Economists called the disappearing jobs a “flash,” the worst mass lay-off in over three decades.In the past years, nearly two million jobs have been lost and the number of people unemployed is over 10 million — and that’s not even counting the number of people who have given up on looking for a job. Economists predict that number will likely double before this depression bottoms out.
General Motors, part of the Big Three asking for government help, will lay off even more employees even if they get the money from Congress. And Republicans like Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions think this is a good thing. Makes your head spin.
We are heading into another Great Depression, a time when, as Franklin D. Roosevelt proved, government can bring help and hope to the nation, and we have people who are absolutely content to let it happen. Not just let it happen, but hasten it along with more policies like the ones that helped get us here in the first place.
All through his administration, Roosevelt, or 32nd president, had people strongly opposing his policies to get America working again and today, there are those who are rewriting history to support the Republican push to end the New Deal once and for all, regardless of the consequences.
Obama won the election, but he will have a tough row to hoe, as Roosevelt did 75 years ago, trying to put America back to work. His opponents won’t even admit we are in a recession. It’s too bad Obama didn’t get a filibuster-proof Senate to work with, the job will be tough enough regardless.
Congress has a proposal for Detroit, far less than what the automakers are asking for, but it’s start. Republicans, including the president, are opposed to it. No surprise, although now, the Republicans close ranks? If it means union-busting and rolling back the New Deal, bygones can be bygones.
Democrats have stepped up to the plate, holding the automakers’ feet to the fire like they didn’t do for the financial institution bailout, the irony being, banks, like Bank of America, have closed their lines of credit forcing one Chicago company, Republic Windows and Doors, to close its doors, giving the employees just three days notice and hopefully avoiding the requirement to pay the employees vacation pay and other benefits. The employees are demonstrating.
President-Elect Obama expressed his support for the employees, so they have a glimmer of hope, but the closing of a company, building a “green” product — vinyl windows and doors — is just one more in a long list of business failures that will continue for some time in this current recession.
Don’t bet on the Republicans going along with the Democratic plan for helping the U.S. automakers, they’re willing to break the back of the Middle Class in their quest to end the UAW.
Remember when the Republicans were the ones thought to be so pro-American? I never believed it, but they won enough elections on that lie, but here they are, ready and willing to let the cornerstone of the U.S. industrial base fail, willing to let the country fall deeper into a depression, ceding the automobile industry to America’s foreign competitors. I’m betting neither Richard Shelby nor Jeff Sessions drive American automobiles. Real Americans, those two.Yesterday, December 8, marked the day, 28 years ago, when John Lennon was gunned down by Mark Chapman. One of the sad chapters in American history. I suggest, we celebrate his life and music.
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