"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." --Bishop Desmond Tutu

Friday, December 12, 2008

Culpability


The party of Herbert Hoover committed seppuku over the auto bailout last night. They were lead into this act of self-destruction by Mitch McConnel, Senator from the right-to-work state of Kentucky. These bastards voted for a war that's costing this nation $10 billion a month, but they won't lend the flagging auto industry $14 billion to preserve 3 million American jobs. What does that mean? It's a big "Fuck You!" to the American workforce and 20% of the American economy. That's a hefty price to pay in an effort to break-up the UAW. But it will secure your party's place forever as the Hoover party.
A bailout-weary Congress killed a $14 billion package to aid struggling U.S. automakers Thursday night after a partisan dispute over union wage cuts derailed a last-ditch effort to revive the emergency aid before year's end.

Republicans, breaking sharply with President George W. Bush as his term draws to a close, refused to back federal aid for Detroit's beleaguered Big Three without a guarantee that the United Auto Workers would agree by the end of next year to wage cuts to bring their pay into line with U.S. plants of Japanese carmakers. The UAW refused to do so before its current contract with the automakers expires in 2011.
Some of my friends, usually sensible liberal types like me, broke with the position that that supporting the auto industry was necessary and opposed it. They sided with the party that voted for an unnecessary war, illegal wiretapping and that now seeks to finally kill organized labor in America. They are as ideologically driven to ignore the reality on the ground as the GOP. They are equally culpable for the looming depression in their opposition to this aid for the auto industry. It's shocking when people put ideology (union busting or environmental sustainability) over the lives of real, on-the-ground people. Both shirk their responsibility to their fellow American's in ways that truly upset me.

Well, now we'll get to see what happens when America bleeds 3,000,000 jobs over the next 18 months. Maybe it won't be that bad. But even if it's half that number, it's going to be a bloodbath. I hope that they are prepared for the rise in welfare rolls, food stamp rolls and soup kitchen lines. The lack of compassion shown by those who oppose this bailout is staggering to me. In this economy, if you're not supporting workers, you don't really understand the real problems we face.

So let's look at a few photographs of what we can expect to see if the Big Three collapse.









While the past never repeats itself, it often rhymes. Well this is a dissonant tune that we're playing and it's a shame that we're going to hear it again. I hope that, when we emerge from this looming depression, the American worker is armed with a new sense of purpose and the unions emerge as a political force to be reckoned with. This sums it up nicely.
In the future I think it will be difficult to explain why this happened, perhaps even more challenging to explain why this key national decision was left in the hands of lame duck senate Republicans.
Amen.

1 comment:

Tad Johnson said...

As one of the enviroterrorists culpable for destroying America, I need to make one key distinction:

It's not that I want to see 3 million people lose their jobs when the big-3 automakers go under. I dread the day (that seems to be coming rather soon).

My struggle is that I don't see how $15B (or $30B) is going to change that outcome.

Sadly, we have to sleep in the bed we've made. Don't shoot the messenger.