If I hadn't already lost all respect for Republicans, I would have lost the final ounce last night.
Senate Republicans, led by the good ole boys from the South, killed the $14 billion dollar bridge loan to the big three automakers, two of which may now go out of business and spill millions of workers into the pool of the unemployed.
At a time when our economy is already in recession, with large numbers of decades old businesses closing their doors, millions of Americans being thrown out of their jobs and homes, and the rest of us holding our breaths that somehow we can weather the growing economic storm without being thrown out of ours, the Republicans decided now was the time to get stingy with the only big manufacturing industry left in America.
They weren't stingy two months ago when their buddies on Wall Street nearly destroyed our economy with their deregulated creative banking instruments, their risky sub prime mortgages packaged into securities, and their credit derivative swaps to insure those bad investments. They gave those idiots $700 billion without blinking. This was supposed to free up credit so that banks would begin loaning again, businesses could remain open and homeowners could restructure their mortgages so they wouldn't lose their homes. Only this hasn't happened. Businesses are closing left and right and millions of homeowners hear the knock of the marshall at their door, serving them eviction notices. Soon, the soup lines may start.
One has to scratch one's head and ask why. Why give $700 billion to Wall Street and nothing to Detroit? Why demand workers wages be reduced in Detroit, but nothing of the kind regarding wages on Wall Street? It makes no sense, unless you live within the failed and destructive ideology of Republicanism.
Republicans say they are guarding the taxpayers' money and demanding accountability from the automakers who managed their businesses badly. What? No one managed businesses more horribly than the Wall Street bankers who made bad loans, created bad securities and then insured them against loss so that they could win either way. Except when the insurance money was demanded once the bankruptcies started, there was no money. So Congress had to fork over $700 billion for starters. Is that really worse than building gas guzzling SUVs instead of hybrid cars? Is it more of a crime?
And lest we forget, it was always the Republicans who voted against higher fuel efficiency standards for the automakers. Republicans, like the president and vice president, have always been in bed with oil companies, and wanted to see those gas guzzling vehicles because it was good for the oil business. Wasn't it the Republican Congress along with Bush that came up with the huge tax deduction for businesses that buy Hummers and other gas guzzling monstrosities? Now the Republicans want to blame Detroit for not building the kind of fuel-efficient cars that can compete with Toyota and Honda. What a crock! What hypocrisy!
No, the Republicans see several opportunities here and they are determined to take advantage of them. The workers be damned! The country be damned!
First, they want to break the union. The UAW has always been an enemy of Republicans, partly because they largely support Democrats, but also because they have contributed to the growth of the Middle Class, which the Republicans are determined to destroy. Republicans have never liked unions, which - by demanding decent pay for their hard work - threaten to eat into the enormous profits of stockholders, whom the Republicans think are much more valuable in a capitalist economy than workers. The current financial trouble of the carmakers is the perfect opportunity to do what they live for - destroy a union and keep the wealthy class wealthy. In Republican land, capital is king, investors deserve to be billionaires, and workers are slave labor that deserves the lowest of wages for their pay. Is it any surprise that the leaders of this attempt to lower the wages of autoworkers are Southern Senators: Corker, De Mint, McConnell, Shelby, among others?
Second, these Southern Senators also are protecting the foreign car plants in their states. Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai have all built plants in Southern states where anti-union laws allow them to pay lower wages to their workers, and giant federal tax breaks allow them to succeed. In other words, our tax money helps foreign car companies employ Southern workers at low wages, which helps to bust the unions of domestic car companies. Sounds real patriotic to me! Help the foreign companies and destroy the domestic ones. Keep wages low for American workers and enrich stockholders and investors in those companies. Punish the American companies that dared allow themselves to be unionized.
Of course, getting jobs and money for your state is always the name of the game for elected officials. But I always thought our elected representatives were also interested in keeping a healthy economy for the entire nation. Apparently, some of them are not.
Once again, we see what the Republican Party stands for: a wealthy class and a poor class and no middle class; low wages for workers and high profits for owners; socialism for Wall Street and the "creative destruction" of the market for Main Street; government intervention in people's sex lives, but not in their economic survival (unless they're millionaires).
There'd better be a special place in hell for these people.
