When Bob Reich Agrees With The Loonies

TPM Cafe yesterday:

A new Civil War is breaking out when it comes to automaking in America, and it was evident in the lineup yesterday of senators for and against bailing out Detroit. Japanese, Korean, and German automakers are now building 18 auto assembly plants in the United States, none of which is unionized. Kentucky (home to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell) already has Toyota's biggest auto assembly plant outside Japan. Tennessee (home to Senate Rep. Bob Corker, who came up with the "chapter 11" bailout amendment which was the basis for an attempted compromise yesterday) houses Nissan's North American headquarters. Alabama (Senate Rep. Richard Shelby) hosts a range of foreign automakers.

There's no reason to suppose the good citizens of Kentucky, Tennessee, or Alabama are particularly excited at the prospect of handing over their taxpayer money to competing firms and their workforces, especially since almost every one of these states already gave foreign firms big tax-payer supported inducements to come and create jobs there.

Besides, southern Republican are not particularly enamored with the UAW, which has steadfastly bankrolled Democrats who have taken on Republicans. (The new Congress will have at least six new Democrats from formerly Republican districts, all of whom received at least $40K from the UAW.)

Corker's compromise -- which he'll push again in the new Congress -- would force the UAW to match the wages of foreign, mostly non-unionized autoworkers in the South. This would essentially make the UAW irrelevant. Why have a union if you can get the same deal without one?

It's nice to be validated, but the real shame here is that our little tiny blog was pointing this out days ago; and as respected (or infamous) as Reich is, his piece is being published not in The Times, but on the blogs, whom still don't play to much more than single digits of the electorate-at-large.

I do have one little disagreement though:

But Republicans also know that the Big Three and their suppliers are spread out over the battle-ground states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Minnesota. Republicans don't dare give up these states or alienate their citizens. So here's where political compromise comes in.

What about this campaign of political violence has suggested this?? The GOP in this fight has done nothing but denigrate unions and union membership for the past 4 weeks of the auto bailout drama. Any unionized worker in these rust belt states that votes for a Republican in the future should be ashamed of themselves.

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Hard truths

Thom Hartman on Olberman with that Schuster guy:

"We've gone from the nation with the most exports of finished goods, the largest number of people owing us money to the nation that imports the most manufactured goods and the deepest in debt. That's the definition of a third world country. This is the end result of Reaganomics."

Ugh.

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You’re Right – It Is Personal

This whole auto industry failure; union busting; kill the economy; families starving thing, does hit home, and I cannot separate my personal feelings from my intellectual opposition to what the GOP is doing. I feel it now the same way that I felt it as a little girl – and it frightens me.

Click "read more" to find out why.

My dad is from Tennessee. He grew up extremely poor, his family was basically “share croppers” – they never owned a thing. They lived in a shack on the land that they took care of. My dad quit school in the 6th grade so that he could go to work in the tobacco fields and help to take care of his family.

The army saved his life. He gained 40 pounds in his three months of basic. He said that it was the first time that he got good meals and good sleep. He had worked so hard for so many years that basic friggin’ training was a reprieve. The army also brought him west. The Army took him out of Tennessee and away from that life of share cropping; it also brought him to a union state with union jobs.

Dad worked for a Chevy dealership as a mechanic for 40 years, (except for a couple of years in the late 1970’s.) Dad had worked his way up to Service Manager. (I remember what a big deal that it was for my daddy to go to work wearing a tie. I recall looking in the closet at his ties...it was so extraordinary. Dad also no longer came home covered in grease.)

In the late 1970’s dad’s dealership went non-union. I will never forget what it was like, walking the picket lines with my family. The talks broke down, the union dissolved, my dad was fired.

He worked for a couple of different independent mechanic shops – but he could not make enough money, nor did he have any benefits. About this time mom, who had also worked for some auto dealerships and done miscellaneous odd jobs to help us survive over the years, started working nights as a custodian for the school district. She had to do this, the job offered benefits which my dad no longer had.

Dad was eventually hired back, at the same dealership, on the bench. On the bench means that he was once again an auto mechanic. No more ties, no more clean fingernails.

For the next 20 years dad worked as a mechanic. He finally retired, at age 65, one of the longest working employees at the dealership. He outworked the original owner’s son, who took over and retired while dad bent over cars and dolly’d under cars and had fucking computerized vehicles overtake auto mechanics (the technology changed so dramatically that the older mechanics just could not do it anymore – btw, when dad started working at the dealership, the owner’s son was still in High School.)

Meanwhile, mom worked her way up at the school district and eventually became a crew chief of a unit that went from school to school resurfacing the hardwood floors. She also worked on the board of her union, serving various volunteer positions.

After 20 years the district killed her position, dissolved her crew, and she had to take a seniority cut and go back to work in one of the schools. She worked nights for close to 30 years and put up with crap from students that no one should ever have to put up with. She was union – that is the only reason that her job was saved at all. She was union and had to put up with the crap that she did, but at least she had a job and she had benefits.

So, this whole anti-union, anti-American auto industry, Tennessee union-busting Senator, kill-the-American-dream-and-make-families-starve Bullshit really hits home. These bastards who sit in their offices making decisions that affect millions of people need to realize that these people are not numbers, they are not statistics, they are real people who are just trying to eat and take care of their families. They are trying to save their homes and be able to turn on the heat in the winter.

I remember when money was scarce and I remember not being able to turn on the heat. Luckily, for my family, we raised our own beef, had chickens for eggs, went hunting for venison in the fall, went fishing in the spring and had an enormous garden where we grew our own vegetables and had fruit trees out back. Our cellar and freezer were full – we were spoiled in that way and grateful for the plentiful food that we had…but we were always a paycheck away from losing it all. I never understood as a kid what a difference that growing and raising our food meant; not until adulthood brought grocery bills and an understanding of what my parents did.

Ya, you’re right, it is personal - I wish that it were personal for the Senators in DC.

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Troll bait - auto bailout edition

Here you go, trolls. Your very own free speech zone. Aren't you lucky? Can't say we never gave you anything.

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Sons-a-Bitches

Those Southern fucks killed the bill.

Those gawddammed Southern Senators - who hate the unions and love their foreign automaker's plants - killed the auto bailout bill.

How these bastards think that they can get away with this is beyond me. Do they think that we will not remember? Do they think that we will allow them to kill manufacturing, American Manufacturing, and not come after them when they are up for re-election? Do they really think that President Obama, with his army of friggin' email organizers, will allow them to run for re-election without us going door to door and reminding everyone that they killed the unions, manufacturing and brought on the next Republican Great Depression!?

Dammit, Dammit, Dammit!

Please, call the Congress tomorrow. Make three calls. Call both your Senators and your Representative and tell them what you want.

The Bastards.

UPDATE: Support the auto industry here, and at the UAW

UPDATE 2: (by id) The Senate vote, by yea or nay. Courtesy of dday, who says:

The 52 votes don't include Biden, Kerry (in Europe, I believe), Kennedy and Wyden (?). Add in those 4 plus Reid (who voted no for procedural reasons) and you're 3 votes away. Lame ducks Gordon Smith, John Sununu and Series of Toobz Stevens sat this out by not voting. Merkley, Shaheen and Begich would be likely to vote yes, and add in Biden and Obama's successors (whenever that is) and you have more than the votes needed to pass this come Jan. 6 when the new Congress is sworn in

So the automakers have to hold on for 25 more days as the new Congress will convene on January 6th.

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Sleeper Part 2?

Nothing disgusts me more than sexual abuse of kids under the age of 18. Now, a repulsive story out of Texas about sexual abuse of powerless teen males at a juvenile detention center. What bothers me the most about it, complaints were filed, test conducted, investigations carried out, "DNA samples collected" and yet, two years have passed since there has been any action on this case.

When Dwight Harris, executive director of the Texas Youth Commission (TYC), appeared before the Senate Finance Committee at the Capitol on February 1 to discuss his agency’s fiscal needs for the next biennium, he came prepared for some tough questions. It has been a difficult year for the troubled agency, which oversees the system of correctional facilities for boys and young men known as state schools. Last summer, federal agents investigated allegations of abuse following a riot at the Evins Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburg. The findings of that investigation are still pending, as is a multimillion-dollar civil rights lawsuit filed by several students. Statewide, the agency suffered a 48 percent turnover rate among staff last year. The recidivism rate for inmates, Harris told the panel, is hovering around 50 percent. Yet Harris was clearly not prepared when Sen. Juan Hinojosa, a Democrat from McAllen, asked about an alleged case of sex abuse by staff members at the West Texas State School in the rural town of Pyote west of Odessa.

The incident was a particularly ugly one, though few people outside the Permian Basin have ever heard of it. Following an investigation by the Texas Rangers and the FBI in February and March 2005, two of the highest-ranking officials at the school—the assistant superintendent, Ray Brookins, and the principal, John Paul Hernandez—were accused of having sexual relations with several students over an extended period. Both men denied the allegations, but investigators collected dozens of statements from students and staff, conducted polygraph tests on students, and collected DNA samples from semen-stained carpet and furniture at the school, according to a TYC inspector who assisted with the investigation. Yet there has been virtually no mention of the case in the media since the two men resigned nearly two years ago, nor have there been any arrests. Harris told the Senate panel that the investigation was closed. He also asserted it was the agency that alerted the Texas Rangers to the case and that his staff had done everything in their power to address the problems at Pyote...

Time to go after Texas Governor Rick Perry. His inaction is criminal.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, and Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick all knew about the acts of sexual violence being perpetrated on youthful offenders at the Texas Youth Commission as early as last fall.
But none bothered to act until this week.

Of course the corruption doesn't end there, our good buddy, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales knew at the same time as Gov. Perry what was happening and did nothing.

I guess they figure that will prevent those young criminals from ever doing anything wrong again. And sick adult men in positions of power get away with criminal behavior again. A sick fucking world we live in!

h/t McCamy Taylor at DU

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The Crazy Has Only Just Begun.

Cesca, of HuffingtonPost, has summed it up nicely. I've taken the liberty to post it here.

Bob Cesca: Obama Unfairly Tainted by Crimes He Didn't Commit

We've seen this before: specious attempts to connect Barack Obama with corrupt or controversial figures in Chicago, followed, then, by a Republican and establishment media outcry for the president-elect to denounce and reject them. It appears as if in this post-Bushie universe, the president-elect doesn't have to be involved in corruption in order to be pegged as corrupt. Indeed, he can be entirely and vigorously declared to be absolutely corruption-free and still be tagged with the red letter "T" for "taint." This is what we can expect for the next four years. The crazy has only just begun.

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