My piece on the UAW and Bush’s stuttering admission that the free market is not, in fact, infallible is up at Global Comment.
But Friday morning, Bush announced a $13.4 billion loan to the auto companies from the TARP funds—better known as the $700 billion bailout. The loans are for a three-year period, but will have to be paid back immediately if the companies do not show themselves to be “viable” by March 31.
Lucky for the auto companies, there’ll be a new president by then.
Bush said, “Government has a responsibility to safeguard the broader health and stability of our economy. If we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation for the automakers.”
I don’t know about you, but I have to smirk at least a bit each time a Republican has to admit that the free market doesn’t always do the right thing. I also giggle each time Bush has to use the word “responsibility.”
While we’ve been watching the Republic Windows and Doors protest, the kind of successful workers’ action we haven’t seen in years, some of us have been reminded of what solidarity actually means. Politicians from Barack Obama to Rod Blagojevich stood up for the workers, and workers around the country demonstrated outside of Bank of America offices and threatened boycotts until the bank gave in and paid the workers their compensation.
Yet the UAW appears to get nothing but scorn from America.
as always, read on.
being from Michigan i’m glad somethingn happened to hopefully help the big 3.
it’s amazing to me how the right just wants to crush the unions. they could give a sh*t about anything else here is our chance to crush the UAW
I don’t know of the loans are the right or wrong thing but the class warfare the repukes always, always accuse the left of doing is so apparent even I can see it.
This is the kind of solidarity that is desperately needed today. Companies are going to try and take advantage of people because of the desperate state of the economy. We need to stand together and demand living wages. One of the things people often forget when they think about the great depression is the amount of worker action that occurred. We need to take a lesson from the past because the only one that can protect our jobs are us. It is time to end business unionism and corporation with capitalist pigs who only seek to starve us into submission.