RIP American Auto Industry, 1896-2009
While everybody's bitching about AIG's bonuses and Citigroup's executive payouts, the same Obama administration that's handing the U.S. treasury over to Wall Street pirates is gutting the last bastion of good union manufacturing jobs in the country.
The madness of the approach adopted by the Johnson and Nixon administrations to war in Vietnam was summed up by the American major who said after the destruction of the Vietnamese village of Ben Tre: "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."
The madness of the approach adopted by the Bush and Obama administrations to the renewal of the American auto industry has been summed up by the Treasury Department's latest statement on the "restructurings" of the Chrysler and General Motors automotive companies -- which are shaping up as plans for factory closings, mass layoffs and the shuttering of hundreds of car dealerships in communities across the country: "The Administration's commitment to this industry has given both companies a new lease on life."
It may be true that the tens of billions in federal tax dollars that are being pumped into Chrysler and General Motors will save the names of these companies. But the auto-industry "restructuring" is not saving auto plants that have been targeted for closing, tens of thousands of auto workers who face layoffs, auto dealers who are being "consolidated" out of business and perhaps 100,000 service and repair employees who are soon to be jobless.
SNIP
Ohio Congressman Steve LaTourette says he and other members of Congress were briefed by top administration officials prior to the president's national address about the future of Chrysler. "Members of Congress on the call were assured that there would be no permanent plant closings... We were also assured that no jobs would be lost," says LaTourette, a Republican.
Democrat Dennis Kucinich, another Ohio congressman who was briefed, told the Plain Dealer he "is struggling even to understand why the administration would tell him and others something that wasn't true." Says Kucinich: "To me, it really becomes a question of credibility."
The question of credibility remains unsettled.
An auto industry "bailout" that shutters productive factories and dealerships, lays off tens of thousands of auto workers and perhaps 100,000 dealer employees, is not change that we can believe in. The Obama administration is headed in the wrong direction on this one.
The president needs to change course.
Instead of spending billions to steer America toward fewer jobs, fewer factories and fewer dealerships, the Obama administration should stop spinning and start investing in the workers, the small businesses and the communities that have always been the heart and soul of America's auto industry.
Read the whole thing.
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1 comment:
The auoto industry, as well as the big financial/mortgage/insurance institutions and pharmaceutical companies, are glaring examples of the failure of American corporate-think and capitalism in general. In their obsession with instant profit, our huge corporations and their pathetic boards of directors have screwed their dealers, their vendors, their communities, their government, and their laborers big time. They have adopted short-sighted, very selfish policies, have decimated locales wherever they have set up operations, and have created a small, insulated elite completely out of touch with even their own markets. They have recklessly polluted the environment all over the world and have always taken the cheap and easy way out. They have fought innovation and oversight. Their boards and huge stockholders are the only ones to have benefitted from their immoral and unethical piggishness. The small stockholders got little piss dribbles, while their laborers and the public at large have simply gotten shit on by them. The modern-day multinational corporation is a disgrace. It is a thief and an oppressive malignancy which is destroying the quality of life for people the world over. As such, it must be completely modified, or it, too, must be destroyed altogether.
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