Mitt Romney Slams Saving Auto Industry Jobs

Growing Manufacturing with the
Auto Industry Turnaround - A good thing

By Phil Scarr

It nearly slipped by, but Mitt Romney [GOP frontrunner this week] bashed the Obama administration for the wildly successful bailout of the auto industry.

[[W]e decided to do more than rescue this industry from a crisis. We decided to help it retool for a new age, and that’s what we’re doing all across the country – we’re making sure America can out-build, out-innovate, and out-compete the rest of the world.
- Remarks of President Barack Obama; Saturday, June 4, 2011 Toledo, Ohio

As Jonathan Alter points out, if he’s the nominee, he can kiss Michigan goodbye. The Dems will use that clip over and over and over to hammer him.

Hating unions, loving foreign cars

Update: LA Times - E-mail circulated Wednesday among Senate Republicans reads: "Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it."

Nice piece in Salon about southern senators.

"The fiercest opposition to the loan proposal -- and nearly a third of the 35 votes against ending debate on the deal -- came from Southern Republicans, and the ringleaders of the opposition all come from states with a major foreign auto presence. Not coincidentally, nearly all of those states -- except Kentucky -- are also ‘right-to-work’ states, which means no union contracts for most of the employees at the foreign plants. The Detroit bailout fell victim to a nasty confluence of home-state economic interests and anti-union sentiment among Republicans."

Economic Treason

Update III: History of the Filibuster and Cloture - Great for those who seem believe that we just cannot survive without this relic from the 1850s.

Update II: Thank you William Greider: Stop Senator No, Senate Dems should disable the rule that gives Mitch McConnell a virtual veto over anything he wants to kill. Advocating the filibuster defies reason.

Update: Bush is acting now, good for him.

Or as John Judis outs it: The Feather-Brained GOP Senators Who Sold Out U.S. Workers.

Southern Republican senators [Bush seems to be a non-actor] would throw the country into a depression to lower the wages of workers and break unions.

BuzzFlash calls its "economic treason."

We have to hang on for just 40 more days, and the U.S. Senate should get rid of the filibuster in January, or at least put it at 67 and make the filibusters actually talk. Any parliamentarians in the house?

The stakes are clear: Rid the Senate of this undemocratic relic or stare into the face of a near depression.

Car Bailout Bring more oversight

Congressional Democrats were drafting legislation for government control of the auto industry, including the possible creation of an oversight board.

Another nostrum of the GOP bites the dust.

Detroit Bailout Is Set to Bring on More U.S. Oversight

Dems Get What They Can from Bush for Auto Industry

Update: Obama Pledges Public Works on a Vast Scale

Democrats Set to Offer Loans for Carmakers reads the headline from this morning's NYT.

Faced with staggering new unemployment figures, Democratic Congressional leaders said on Friday that they were ready to provide a short-term rescue plan for American automakers, and that they expected to hold a vote on the legislation in a special session next week.
- David M. Herszenhorn and Bill Vlasic

The fact is George W. Bush would throw the country into a near depression if he thought that he could get back at the United Auto Workers (UAW) for not supporting his war on the working class and not being one of his crony Iraq War contractors for whom the myth of the free market and competitive innovation remain not very funny jokes.

For now, Democrats will get what they can for the Big Three and next year show the Republicans the meaning of the terms: jobs creation, stimulus and economic rescue for domestic industries as Bush fades off like a prolonged and terrible nightmare for which one gets very busy, very early during the morning to get to work and forget the passing nightmare ever happened.

Union Busting Writ Large

As America enters what is feared to be a long and deep recession, one question is whether we save or let fade our auto industry.

The GOP has long been hostile to the auto industry's unions so any union-busting opportunity not used is a wasted opportunity, in their view: Let 'em crash, millions of jobs lost, so what?

House Republicans sitting in their fantasy world spouting free market bromides are capable of anything.

But does anyone believe that saving the millions of jobs that depend on the domestic auto industry is not in itself sufficient cause to act?

The new Congress and President will act, and Republicans as a Party opposing comprehensive measures will find themselves by the political wayside very quickly.

The economy will be geared toward establishing a middle class and raising families by this new administration.

Health care reform and the whole array of initiatives addressing the concerns of real people will become policy next year, and the Republicans will scream while they lose a generation or two of voters who will see the results.

The Wall Street crisis and recession of 2008 will become Barack Obama's 9/11, used to show Bush and the Republicans what the American people are capable of when challenged to act together for the common good and spoken with honestly as fellow citizens.

But unlike Bush, Obama will not lie to the American people and use crises to line the pockets of political allies in opposition to common efforts.

Now is not the time for orthodoxy and lies, and such a state of crisis that is now before us can open up and clarify much of the current social arrangements that is hidden or at least unacknowledged.

As a friend (an anti-bigotry type) puts it, "When the Republicans block saving jobs these 60 next days, this will show the blue collar workers who vote Republican what the Republicans really think of them."

So when Mitt Romney starts talking about excess labor costs and excess retiree costs, our rejoinder should be: Hey, fuck you Mitt, people died so working families can join the middle class, not that we think you're much on labor history.