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.

Autoworkers and All Americans Are Worth Subsidizing

Excellent piece in the New York Times Sunday on the disaster of General Motors and its workers brings to the fore several questions.

- Should the United States government help American companies like GM by subsidizing the health insurance of employees?

- Should the government reward innovations that benefit the national war effort for the environment and alternative energy?

Sure, we have not yet declared war for a sustainable environment and the development of alternative energy; most of our domestic wars are ostensibly waged against something: Drugs and so forth.

How about a war for the environment and alternative energy? For full employment?

The 2,700-word piece illustrates well the desperation of and passion working people have for: Working.

Said ... Andy Richardson, who recently took office as the new president of (UAW) Local 95. 'If G.M. wants to build lawn chairs in Janesville, we’ll do it,' he said.

Beyond the make-believe, free market world of the Republicans who like McCain think buy-American initiatives are a "disgrace" lies the reality of a shattered community with families facing financial oblivion.

"Community and political leaders from Janesville have pleaded with G.M. management to consider putting a new, small car into the plant. Workers don’t expect that to happen, though, and they see little hope of a reprieve," reports the NYT piece.

A reprieve, a Manhattan-Project size regearing of industry and the social contract that recognizes the reality that those who want to work are, as LBJ used to say, worth the risk and deserving of the respect of going to the well with.

- via mal contends