by Charley James –
In the 1950s, “Engine” Charley Wilson – then chairman of General Motors – said “What’s good for GM is good for America.”
We’re about to find out that the reverse is also true.
Thanks to a handful of Republican Senators whose twofold purpose of trying to bust the United Auto Workers while simultaneously protecting their home state, non-union, foreign-owned car manufacturers who received tens of millions of taxpayer subsidies, the loan deal passed by the House died in the Senate last night because, the GOP knuckle-draggers maintain, the auto industry shouldn’t receive government help.
“Let them eat cake,” which Marie Antoinette never actually said, has become “let tens of millions of Americans go to hell.”
Republican Senator Bob Corker insists the breakdown came over differences on employee compensation. But he and other GOP Senators say the UAW must make even more concessions than they already have made, a clear attempt to break the union which is busy trying to organize workers at Honda, Toyota, BMW and Volkswagen plants in the old Confederate states.
Corker and his pals are liars: For one thing, the Southern states they represent have given millions of dollars in taxpayer money to foreign manufacturers to attract their plants. For another, unionized auto workers in Detroit already earn less than non-union workers. The average hourly rate in Detroit is about $27 per hour while non-unionized auto workers Southern states earn an average of roughly $39 per hour, according to MSNBC. At Toyota, workers earn an average of about $37 an hour – plus an annual bonus.
Clearly, the issue is all about unions, not the false concerns raised in their pompous, self-serving speeches on the Senate floor about wasting money.
Repeating History
What Republicans are doing today parallels precisely what the GOP did as the Depression gripped America following 1929’s stock market crash: Nothing.
Like frail birds trying to fly directly into the gale force winds of history – and economics – Senate Republicans today aren’t content with losing two elections in a row, both badly and the last one horrendously. Instead, they are content to follow Herbert Hoover and his Congressional cronies into perpetual discredit, allowing America to sink helplessly into economic disaster while sanctimoniously claiming to be looking out for the very people they’re destroying.
Continued>>>
http://www.laprogressive.com/2008/12/12/so-long-gm-see-ya%E2%80%99-chrysler-hope-america-enjoys-the-second-great-depression/