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thatcrazycajunWith thanks to the folks at CrooksAndLiars.com, here are a couple of links that tell you almost all you need to know about why Southern U.S. Senate members kiboshed the auto-industry bailout yesterday:
Salon.com: Meet the GOP's Wrecking Crew
Thom Hartmann discusses the "Plantation Caucus" of the GOP and its loathing of unions on MSNBC's Countdown
I write "almost" because Hartmann only gets it partly right. For these Southern Republican Senators, it's about more than just paying back one's political enemies, or showing fealty to one's political friends and financial benefactors, i.e., foreign automakers with plants in their states. Men like Corker and McConnell, and Southern Repubs in general, see and always have seen organized labor and the demands it makes as a drag on corporate profits; as unjust restraint on businessmen keeping them from freely deciding how their own hard-built businesses should be run; as an inversion of the natural order of private enterprise, which (in their view) is that management says "Jump!" and the only question their workers get to ask is "How high?" This is why most Southern states have "right-to-work" laws on their books that make it way harder for unions to gain a foothold...by the design of their authors, who pretended to be championing workers' freedom to work without being required to join a union, as many of the same suspects are doing now in fighting the Employee Free Choice Act (AKA "card check" legislation abolishing secret-ballot union votes).
In the minds of most GOP leaders, but especially these cracker solons, unions and the union movement are intrinsically evil...and must be destroyed at any cost wherever and whenever possible—even if it brings down an entire industry. This is only one of many things our side needs to understand and remember as it battles these men in the coming years. Regardless of your feelings about whether GM and Chrysler deserve to be bailed out, this naked attempt to nuke their union members' livelihoods—and the labor movement itself—should not go unnoticed.
Salon.com: Meet the GOP's Wrecking Crew
Thom Hartmann discusses the "Plantation Caucus" of the GOP and its loathing of unions on MSNBC's Countdown
I write "almost" because Hartmann only gets it partly right. For these Southern Republican Senators, it's about more than just paying back one's political enemies, or showing fealty to one's political friends and financial benefactors, i.e., foreign automakers with plants in their states. Men like Corker and McConnell, and Southern Repubs in general, see and always have seen organized labor and the demands it makes as a drag on corporate profits; as unjust restraint on businessmen keeping them from freely deciding how their own hard-built businesses should be run; as an inversion of the natural order of private enterprise, which (in their view) is that management says "Jump!" and the only question their workers get to ask is "How high?" This is why most Southern states have "right-to-work" laws on their books that make it way harder for unions to gain a foothold...by the design of their authors, who pretended to be championing workers' freedom to work without being required to join a union, as many of the same suspects are doing now in fighting the Employee Free Choice Act (AKA "card check" legislation abolishing secret-ballot union votes).
In the minds of most GOP leaders, but especially these cracker solons, unions and the union movement are intrinsically evil...and must be destroyed at any cost wherever and whenever possible—even if it brings down an entire industry. This is only one of many things our side needs to understand and remember as it battles these men in the coming years. Regardless of your feelings about whether GM and Chrysler deserve to be bailed out, this naked attempt to nuke their union members' livelihoods—and the labor movement itself—should not go unnoticed.
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no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 06:11 am (UTC)This is who they are.
This is who they elected.
I don't have time to hate them anymore.
Life it too short.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 07:54 pm (UTC)Why didn't you demand equal concessions from the secured creditors? The Big Three are loaded down by enormous amounts of secured debt. Why demand immediate pay cuts from workers -- and no concessions from lenders?
We all know the answer, but no one is making them publicly answer. They ask about "executive salaries," and they can say "yes, we asked for clawback on that (after the Big Three already offered it), but not a single secured creditor has come forward.
I find it particularly odious to balance this on pension funds. These people worked their lives for the deal they negotiated. Now they are gready for wanting what they worked for.