Mitch Ablom lets them have it.
Do you want to watch us drown? Is that it? Do want to see the last gurgle of economic air spit from our lips? If so, senators, know this: You’ll go down with us. America isn’t America without an auto industry. You can argue whether $14 billion would have saved it, but you surely tried to kill it.
We have grease on our hands.
You have blood.
Kill the car, kill the country. History will show that when America was on its knees, a handful of lawmakers tried to cut off its feet. And blame the workers. How suddenly did the workers — a small percentage of a car’s cost — become justification for crushing an industry?
And when did Detroit become the symbol of economic dysfunction? Are you kidding? Have you looked in the mirror lately, Washington?
In a world where banks hemorrhaged trillions in a high-priced gamble called credit derivative swaps that YOU failed to regulate, how on earth do WE need to be punished? In a bailout era where you shoveled billions, with no demands, to banks and financial firms, why do WE need to be schooled on how to run a business?
Who is more dysfunctional in business than YOU? Who blows more money? Who wastes more trillions on favors, payback and pork?
At least in the auto industry, if folks don’t like what you make, they don’t have to buy it. In government, even your worst mistakes, we have to live with.
And now Detroit should die with this?
In bed with the foreign automakers
Kill the car, kill the country. Sen. Richard Shelby, Sen. Bob Corker, Sen. Mitch McConnell, your names will not be forgotten. It’s amazing how you pretend to speak for America when you are only watching out for your political party, which would love to cripple unions, and your states, which house foreign auto plants.
Corker, you’ve got Nissan there and Volkswagen coming. Shelby, you’ve got Hyundai, Honda, Mercedes-Benz and — like McConnell — Toyota. Oh, don’t kid yourself. They didn’t come because you earned their business, a subject on which you enjoy lecturing the Detroit Three. No, they came because you threw billions in state tax breaks to lure them.
This was pure politics. Ironlically, these GOP Senators think they are “rebranding” the party in a pathetic attempt to regain support after two disastrous elections. Yet people are starting to see through their bullshit.
There are times when leaders need to put aside politics and ideology to do what is necessary for the good of the country, even when it’s not popular, and even when a compromise solution is not perfect. These Republican Senators passed on their responsibility, even when all other parties, like Speaker Pelosi and George W. Bush, all compromised to get something done. They chose to demonize workers and unions. Of course the unions have made mistakes and we need further reform, but many others are at fault as well, particularly auto executives AND Republican congressmen who for years fought attempts to raise mileage standards to start weaning us off of foreign oil and gas-guzzling cars.
Blame the workers; blame the poor. With this economic crisis, we’re seeing a pattern here from many Republicans. Is it good politics? I don’t think so. I think they will pay for this for years.
