Sure, the auto companies are getting a special session of Congress. But are they getting anything NOW NOW NOW?
Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic congressional leaders blocked immediate action on a bailout for cash-strapped domestic automakers and told the industry to come up with a workable plan to submit to lawmakers in December.
``The sad reality is that no one has come up with a plan that can pass the House and the Senate and be signed by the president,'' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said at a Washington press conference. He said automakers must submit a proposal that would convince Congress taxpayer aid won't be wasted.
Failure to bail out the Big Three automakers this year may leave General Motors Corp. facing the prospect it could run out of cash before a new Congress can come to the rescue next year.
``Unless they can show us the plan, we can't show them the money,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. She later told a reporter that the automakers haven't said to her they will go bankrupt within the next month without help.
So, Big Money gets a bailout NOW NOW NOW! And the automakers get a bailout LATER LATER LATER. Why is that?
Er, could it be that Big Money doesn't have any unions?
NOTE And why, oh why, isn't this idea on the table: Putting the autoworkers under "Medicare for All" right away, and getting the automakers out of the insurance business?
- lambert's blog
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What about Wall Street's plan
when they asked for a bailout? Oh, yes, the plan that didn't work.
Hmmm.
Whaddaya mean, didn't "work"?
For Hank Paulson's golfing buddies, it worked just fine. What's wrong with you?
and, oh, I dunno...
getting the State of New York, the City of New York, and the PSC-CUNY Welfare Fund out of the "buying Health 'Insurance' business".
You know what really brings me to a boil? The idea that some technocrat, charged with denying me health coverage, makes more than I do trying to raise up the children of Bed-Stuy.
---------------
We can't afford not to have single-payer!
The Big Difference
is that the auto comanies would use the cash to pay suppliers and pay wages, not to fatten the wallets of Hank Paulson's (and Reid's, Pelosi's, Bush's and Obama's) golfing buddies.
Some of that money might trickle down to the lower classes, and then where would we be?
Well, I wandered off and forgot to post comment--and it is not
here when I got back....web page not available.
And I had hit preview....
So, anyway, the automakers can be allowed to fail bcz there is a direct win for the Repubs--killing the auto unions. Knocking off unions is a Repub wet dream and now there's a chance it will be getting closer to coming true.
Oh, and those Banksters are not unionized--they're just part of the tribe of uberwealthy.
Day and Night
I'm glad to see folks here are able to see the complexities of this. All I've heard for days, now, are the fauxgressives gleefully joining with the GOP chorus on how great it would be to put the domestic auto industry under. Now, let it be clear, I've had much criticism of the industry, but at least since the UAW contracts of 2007 they've been honestly trying to do the right thing. Again, I can understand the criticism, and most of it is deserved, however, I can not understand or accept the glee with which the so-called progressives speak about the collapse of the largest sector of American manufacturing. I don't get why they are being held to a standard so much higher than that of the Banker boys of Wall Street. It's the unfairness that I don't understand, and how people don't seem to give a damn about labor, at all, anymore. So, banks are readily given money to simply buy up other banks, but the entire auto industry is fighting for basic survival and asking for money to pay their workers and suppliers and they get the scorn usually heaped upon pedophiles?
Wagner, Nardelli, and Mullaly should readily offer themselves up as sacrifices, but I do wish many on the left wouldn't wouldn't show such happiness in telling hundreds of thousands of direct auto workers to drop dead. That has been the most gratuitous and jarring thing about this experience living in Michigan, seeing just how little our so-called friends really think of us. I think there are legitimate reasons to oppose this bailout; I'm a bit confused as to why the domestic autos have been turned into bigger villians than the paper-pushing banker boys who were literally allowed to rob and pillage under other names.
But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...
We don't have much of manufacturing base as of now-without
auto mfring we will have way, way less. And suppliers and their specilaizations will also be lost if they have fewer mfrers to supply.
Oh, my. I see a security issue in this, as well.
In mid-November, I posted this link with Martin Hennecke saying stimulus works where there is a mfring base...now what?
(Another point was that there are warnings out that the US may have to default on its debt.)
Video at link.
Oh, and about that "recall all its troops from around the world," how likely is that with Obama's promise to up the ante in Afghanistan and take on Pakistan? And his new team?? Change? Hope? And "radically reduce" spending...what does that mean for UHC?
Damon, years ago one of my neighbors, a master tool and die maker, was put into early retirement. The company he worked for, which made mfring equipment for other big manufacturers, was bought out by a Swiss company, then closed down.
In the past few years, no apprentices had been taken on for tool and die making, so he felt the end was coming long before any financials indicated the company was not doing well. In fact, he felt the Swiss company wanted to shut down a competitor.
At the time, we discussed what would happen to the US if, IF, there were some kind of world disorder which made getting things from overseas difficult, either through some kind of boycott or other supply problems. This country would be nearly disabled in terms of building up its manufacturing capability.
One of the reasons the US could gear up so effectively for WWII was bcz there were efficient, extant manufacturing facilities. Auto plants turned out airplanes, etc.
Now? Excellent security move, Congress and Prez. It's like they also do not realize how necessary trains are. Sheesh.