Now it’s about federal assistance to the US auto companies; GM, Chrysler, and Ford. The GOP in general and in particular Senators Shelby of Alabama and Corker of Tennessee torpedoed the deal. They were unalterably against it. While excoriating corporate and union leadership, they pontificated on the potential folly of extending any sums to America’s only remaining industrial premise, along the lines that it would eventuate being a case of “good money after bad” and an act absolutely contrary to the tenets of free enterprise capitalism. That was immediately after they supported, with neither strings attached, nor a demand for the first hint of oversight, nor without even asking the most rudimentary questions of a financial industry upon which they blest with TWENTY TIMES the chump-change, in comparison, funds sought by the three auto makers!
(NOTICE: Overlook the fact that both senators are from states with non-union, foreign automaker assembly plants.)
The argument has been that any extension of assistance will only extend for a short period the inevitable bankruptcies, and that the auto companies, as was the case with the airlines, will be able to secure greater financial health under the aegis of BK than continuing under the current paradigm. Either those issuing such inanities are at best fools, at next-to-worst they are duplicitous hypocrites, or, at the very worst, both. Folks purchase plane tickets for X-hours of transportation. With cars, it’s for X-YEARS!
Their true, and terribly sinister, subsurface motive is what has ever been a Republican uberrima fides über alles: on behalf of their corporate base, it is the unfettered utter demolition of organized labor. (Disclosure: Since July of 1968 — the last, and only, time I was in a union — until 2006, I was a business-for-self, highly capitalistic entrepreneur.) Prior to organized labor and the bloody hard won victories of the 20th century there was no middle class in America; no paid vacations, no limit to the hazards and hours of toil necessary to earn a paycheck, no minimum wage, no paid sick leave, no health insurance, no pensions, no anti-discrimination hiring and wage legislation; nothing whatsoever that today’s middle class uses to define itself.
The GOP and American business have never given the first damn about anyone who wasn’t part of their wealthy base. Whether on the job or off, a worker becomes injured, falls terribly ill, or dies, or suffers some other of life’s fickle maladies . . . “Hmmph, who can we get to replace him?”
One of every ten American jobs is tied immediately to the US auto manufacturers. But that’s really, deliberately low-balling the scenario, should they fail. From retail sales and stocking clerks, to waitresses and cooks in diners and finer restaurants, to insurance agents and all who find employment in the various agencies, to everyone who works for ad agencies, to medical and dental office professionals and personnel, to every micro economic entity coast to coast the wrought human devastation will be manifest as this country has not known for the past 75 years, should the American auto companies go under. No prudent manager ever hired anyone to fill a position that was not deemed necessary for the enhancement of the bottom line. Remove the US auto makers from the economy and there will be millions upon millions who are no longer needed, because they will no longer serve those who served directly those quite directly linked employers.
That it is a myopic proposition, that one can maintain a country and an economy in the absence of a sufficiently strong consuming middle class, matters not the least to the GOP or the identified senators. Their philosophy not so much defines how they feel about business or its bottom line as how they cling to the doctrinaire ideological certainty of their philosophy and how they really feel about people.
Workers, employees; these are people, human beings. They have families. They have loved ones they care deeply about; loved ones they love to the depth of their souls. All need to eat, just to survive. All need shelter. All need clothes. All need medical resources to treat them and their family members when they fall sick. All need hope. All need to feel an entitlement to dignity. Maybe most of all, all need both hope and the sense they’ve an entitlement to dignity. Throw someone out of work and you throw that person away. He is not refuse. She is not refuse. Their children are not refuse. None of them are cogs or pawns. They are human beings. Damn it! — they are, first and last, human beings!
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