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COFES Blog
Nov
19
Written by:
Russ Henke
11/19/2008 11:45 AM
Further to previous blog entries in this space, we call your attention to key excerpts from the November 18, 2008 blog of Patrick J. Buchanan, entitled, “As GM Goes, So Goes the GOP”:
In the original bailout, “Hank Paulson demanded $700 billion to haul away the trash in the dumpsters of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs — assuring us that he could hold a garage sale of the junk. Now (mid-November) we hear from Paulson that the $700 billion Congress voted will not, after all, be used to buy up rotten paper on the books of the big banks. Some banks are using the cash to buy other banks.
So Republicans are right to be enraged. But they are now about to do something terminally stupid. With GM, Ford and Chrysler teetering on the brink, they are turning a cold stone face to Detroit and are about to follow the counsel of that quintessential Bushite Dick Darman, who said of our computer chip industry, “If our guys can’t hack it, let ‘em go.” America responded — by letting George H.W. Bush and Darman go.
Are Republicans aware of what they are about to do?
When workers, execs, engineers, dealers, salesmen and suppliers are all factored in, the Big Three employ 3 million people who contribute $21 billion a year to Social Security and Medicare, and $25 billion in federal income taxes. Add in all the businesses that depend on the auto industry, and we are talking about one-tenth of the U.S. labor force. 850,000 retirees, and their families, depend for pensions and health care on the Big Three. If they go under, the burden falls on us.
And to let the auto industry die is to write America out of much of the economic future of the planet.
In a good year, like 2005, Americans buy more than 17 million new cars, and West Europeans as many. Tens of millions in Eastern Europe, Russia, China, India and Southeast Asia are now moving into the middle class each year. These folks will all need or want one or two family cars. If we let the U.S. auto industry die, that immense and burgeoning market will be lost forever to America, and ceded to Asia.
If the GOP blocks these loans, and the industry dies, the party can forget about Ohio, Michigan and the industrial Midwest. For the Reagan Democrats will never come home again. Nor should they.
By the choices we make, we define ourselves and reveal what we truly care about. Thus, consider:
We bail out the New York and D.C. governments of Abe Beame and Marion Barry. We bail out a corrupt Mexico. We bail out with International Monetary Fund and World Bank loans and foreign aid worthless Third World regimes. We bail out Wall Street plutocrats and big banks.
But the most magnificent industry, the auto industry that was the pride of America and envy of the world, we surrender to predator-traders from Asia and Europe.”
Source: http://buchanan.org
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