John Cole over at Balloon-Juice has been doing some good blogging on the arbitrary line in the sand Southern Senators have been drawing with respect to giving money to the auto industry so it doesn’t collapse. Here is one of the entries.
Some themes: these Senators appear to be going to bat for foreign automakers in their own districts. They appear to be willing to let the American auto industry collapse if they can’t do some union busting. If the U.S. picks up the health care costs of its workers, the difference in compensation between the Big 3 union workers and their non-union Japanese company counterparts becomes almost negligible. The Southern Senators are willing to pay Iraqis not to shoot at us; are willing to pay bankers and their bonuses; but aren’t willing to pay American workers who actually make stuff.
Again, hard telling whether the auto bailout would actually succeed. But, the priorities are telling. When it comes to providing money to American workers who actually build stuff, some of our politicians just can’t stomach the thought.
Talk about some disingenous comparisons. All Senators “go to bat” to relocate ANY manufacturing industry to their state, foreign cars or John Deer’s for Christ sake. They don’t “favor” a foreign company over an American company, they favor a PROFITABLE company, period.
To answer your question, no the bailout will nort succeed, mark my words, I will stand by them, it will only prolong the agony.
I also don’t believe the “Southern Senators” have a hard-on for union busting, per se, they just happen to be smart enough to add 2 + 2 and get 4. The UAW adds 2+2 and get’s 75.
Some smartass dubbed Senators Corker, Shelby, DeMint, Vitter, etc. “The Plantation Caucus”.
Vitter: “Money for prostitutes, not for union workers.”
Is it really any more than simply defending what’s at home? Michigan’s Senators are defending what’s at home, namely union auto plants. If union auto plants were in the states of these selected Southern Senators, I have little doubt that they would be fighting a little differently.
But, why is it hard to tell whether or not the bailout would succeed? Will the companies radically change their business model such that they can compete with companies with dramatically lower legacy costs? If not, it’s a pretty easy call as a band-aid and nothing more.
Wilson posted:
Some smartass dubbed Senators Corker, Shelby, DeMint, Vitter, etc. “The Plantation Caucusâ€.
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Ive heard one commentator refer to them as the ‘Nissan Senators’.They’re defending their region and a culture more than just standing up for their own state’s economy and their ideology is a moral absolute: that union membership is a covenant with Satan.
As a lifelong NEA member,now retired, I can vouch for the fact that union affliation is attacked before anything else is proposed as an improvement to public education and that seems to be the same with the auto industry bailouts.This is just more of the class warfare
argument that divides ‘the good people’ from ‘the bad people’,imo.
The treatment of the auto reps was shabby and mean. Contrast the way the Wall Street reps were handled with kid gloves and given whatever they wanted on a two-page memo and a few vague promises to limit thier plundering. The congress is a reflection of the times. People respect fast money slicksters and con artists who get rich with schemes that, for example, make it profitable for a stock to LOSE money. They don’t respect true capatalists who actually make a product, employ workers and are in it for the long run. They call the financial “system” the life blood of the economy but give no importance to the bones and muscle; real people in American industry. (Incidentally, intelligent talk Zank.)
Dim Tank, like most Rethuglicans, will not rest until we are returned to the Industrial Revolution. Lou’s got this right, not any class-warring Rethug.
For some reason this morning, I have been having second thoughts about Lincoln’s beliefs regarding Reconstruction.
Still, for anyone here who believes in an afterlife, maybe Dante missed a level of Hell (or two).
I call BS on looking out for your home town.
Mitt Romney has been once of the biggest voices saying to let them all go bankrupt.
I never really agreed with him before, but I do on this issue.
However, I also think the banks that made bad decisions should have died, too.
There is so much wrong with the let them go bankrupt idea that it borders on the criminally stupid. From the timing, which is just wrongheaded, to the sheer ignorance of what will happen to all connected with the companies when they go bankrupt. Hint: Anderson could become a crater even though we no longer have an active GM presence here but only a huge retiree population. The retirees stand to lose their pensions – and the area stands to lose income and tax dollars. The retirees lose their health benefits and we got a lot of doctors (who oddly enough opposed national health care and vote Republican) out of work. I think there is enough reporting that the Senate Republicans voted more against the UAW than it did for Nissan. If it was not, then why all the strings attached for the Big Three instead of for AIG and the Wall Streeters?
Does GM have to change its ways? They made a lot of changes but maybe not enough. GM adopted a lot of techniques from overseas. The UAW has been pretty meek and conciliatory for years with GM. Yet GM still made the J car. Ugly, ugly cars that no wanted to be seen driving. Engineering could be improved (but then I always heard that Chrysler had better engineers).
Yet GM Europe was a cash cow. Figure that one out – the Europeans did not create a national health care system on the backs of its industry. We did. Remember that until a few years it was not Wal-Mart but GM who was the biggest employer in the country.
Frankly, I am not sure that Adam Smith ever contemplated a single company as big as GM. That changes the whole idea of creative destruction. Which in turn puts the utility of bankruptcy at about nil.
Sorry, Doug, about the length. I am supposed to be catching up with work. This whole subject burns me up in too many ways. Summing up very quickly – criticizing the current situation of the Big Three without taking into account the history of the past 69 years (September 1, 1939) to the present, our energy policy since 1973 (the oil embargo) and our industrial policy since the mid-Sixties is a lot of hot air.