The CEO's of the Big 3 appeared before the Senate yesterday - begging for $25 Billion they say they need to survive. Today they will appear before the House for the same reason.
Most members of Congress are skeptical. Quite a few of them believe that the damage the auto industry has suffered is self-inflicted. Most don't want to release monies to them that was supposed to help bailout the banking system. Mr. Paulson who enigneered the Bailout is resistent to letting any of that money got out for any other purpose.
N.W. Ohio's local gal on the spot - Marcy K. - who opposed the first Bailout probably is quietly lobbying for this one. No word has come down from her office on where she stands on this new
Bailout (at least not the last time I checked the Web). But I'm sure she's getting an earful from many locals (esp. from those who work at Powertrain and the Jeep Plant on Stickney and their retirees) who fear the loss of 10,000 local jobs and an Armageddon for the Toledo if Mo-Town goes down. Carty the Fink is out in Washington, along with other Rustbelt mayors, adding their voice to the clamor on Captial Hill.
I know what's at stake too - but I'm deeply against giving them anything as I said in my last post. Why?
I will say it again: warnings were given for decades to the Big 3 about selling SUV's and Big Ass Trucks and Minvans and also allowing labor agreements that were soaking the industry while at the same time dragging it down. I'm not against Unions - as long as they really work for justice for their members. But in this case the members got a hell of lot more than they really needed.
Case in point: I used to walk around as a Pinkerton guard at the now closed Ford Stamping Plant in Maumee. In in 1998 and 1999 - the years I worked there, I made about $8 per hour. I had access to a print-out of the employees who worked there and for some reason, I don't know why, the print-out always included the current hourly rate for each man and woman. On the average they made about $24 to $28 per hour. Three times (and more) than I was I making and I was also working two other jobs, elsewhere, in addtion to that guard postion. I sometimes put in 60 hours a week. I topped out at bout $40 Thousand a year then, but these folks, some who worke 80 hours per week, were well into the six figure income bracket.
And it was hard as hell to get in there too - a lottery was conducted in which employees could submit names once per year. If the name was drawn, the person was hired on a trial basis. It was supposed to be an honest one - names drawn out of a pot by the lottery committee chairperson while blindfolded. Yet presistent rumors floated around that many of the workers unabashedly bribed members of that lottery committee with huge sums of money to ensure their wife or husband son or daughter or nephew or niece or some other relative or good friend (or one they were shacking up with) would get a place on the line.
But, even despite that chicanery, I do admit they worked hard and got lots of harressment from mangement, but most lived like little kings and queens outside of the Plant. A few had purchased working farms in the sticks and added the money made by renting the land out to farmers to their already substantial incomes; others bought 5 to 10 acres of land in the suburbia and turned them to into little feudal estates - palace-like house and moat-like pond too! Yet even that wasn't enough - I knew one guy and his wife who both worked there who tried to solicit me to buy stuff from them they sold via Amway! They got mad when I wouldn't buy! Others I know of who worked there lived far beyond their means and were going bankrupt while getting that fat six figure income.
Disgusting!
Now their jobs are gone as they too were making parts for gas guzzlers - the 4x4 trucks I believe and some are hoping to restart the place with their own money.
I don't think so. The Big 3 and the UAW got themselves into this mess and they are going down. GM's CEO says the company won't even last until the end of 2008 without a transfusion of money. I really do believe what the CEO's are saying - they will go down and not even a Chapter 11 will do a bit of good.
It's gonna collaspse anyhow - the $25 Billion will just post-pone the inevitable.
After the dust settles - let's rebuild on a basis of a system not focused on on rabid consumerism, but on thriftiness and truth - one that doesn't destroy our planet - one in which we, 5% of the world's population, are not using up 25% of the world's resources.
It'll be new way of life. It's coming folks - fighting to keep it from happening will just make the birth all the harder.
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