Richard Shelby owns this one. His face is everywhere, and his hostility to labor is overt. It’s certainly in large part on behalf of the foreign automakers in his home state, but it’s also a legacy of Southern racism that equates unions with African Americans trying to take white jobs:
The Republican Party below the Mason-Dixon Line has been transformed into the White Man’s Party, under the firm control of racist businessmen who are as vicious as mistreated pit bulls. In state legislatures across the South, multi-layered legal fortifications have been erected against union organizing, in the same way that the Dixiecrats piled on Jim Crow laws in overlapping profusion from the moment of Emancipation right through the middle of the last century.
In hindsight, we now know why the racists legislated with such mad, redundant energy: They were wracked with desperate fear of Black freedmen and women. Their awesome, bewildering framework of statutes made the system of racial oppression seem impregnable, but concealed a fragile inner structure, whose legal façade was made to crumble in the space of one decade—1954 to 1965.
Today, with wild and thumping pontification, these same bigoted bosses rail against “agitators” causing “dissension” among the “good working people” who stand to “lose their jobs” if “outsiders” wearing union baseball caps invade the sacred soil of the South.
It all sounds so familiar, especially to the insiders: southern Blacks.
Southern, right-to-work culture warriors like Jon Kyl are endlessly saying that legacy costs are what is crippling the Detroit automakers, and that they are rendered "uncompetitive" by union members who cost $73 an hour. It’s a lie, and Bob Casey finally called them on it:
The labor-cost gap with foreign transplant operations will be largely or completely eliminated. OK? So, it’s — I think it’s important to put this information on the record for this hearing. And then we’ve heard this garbage about 73 bucks an hour. It’s a total lie, and some people have perpetrated that deliberately in a calculated way to mislead the American people about what we’re doing here. It’s a lie, and they know it’s a lie.
Shelby told CBS this morning that there was absolutely nothing the auto makers could say to change his mind about a bridge loan.
Of course there isn’t. This is all about cultural conviction, not information. Religious zealots rarely have any use for facts.
Video h/t Scarce
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The auto hearings are infuriating me. There isn’t a single member of congress who has any command of the obvious, including the spineless Ds who are wasting time with irrelevancies.
Jesus Christ! Bob fucking Casey FINALLY said something of value to someone who wasn’t a fetus.
Lord stone the crows.
He’s acting like, mebbe, a foetal Democrat.
Maybe.
Here’s a real time example:
The auto corps won’t make it thru the next month and Watt is asking them how they can speed up getting the next generation car on the market. What a jerk.
They stay behind operation the rethugs are running is something to see.
If there is not some pushback from the democrats we will start off in
a huge hole… truly fucked.
Shorter Richard Shelby: “My mind’s made up. How dare you confuse me with facts!”
Corkhead was even worse than Shelby.
It is nice to see that put on the record though.
“It’s a lie”.
Has such a nice ring to it.
Since the r’s are in such minority status they will have absolutely NO reason to compromise on anything. It’s going to be interesting to see how hard Obama pushes to get his agenda through.
Yeah, they hardly ever say that, especially about their esteemed fellow members. I wonder if Harry Reid will entertain a censure motion against Casey for his intemperate words about a fellow Senator’s statements?
Yep.
Now if we can just get MSM to replay this and even interview those congress critters who agree. Up to now, Shelby gets all the press.
The auto execs should have included Lansing mayor, Virg Benero. His passion might have awoken the somnambulent Democrats. The collegial bullshit has worn far to thin.
Republican economic policies have prevailed, for the most part, for the last 30 years — including the Clinton years — not a mere “8″ as you state.
You betcha. He was great on WJ the other morning.
It’s the kinda thing Tweety would be into. “Bob Casey called another senator a liar….” Didja feel the tingle? He’s not on Fridays is he?
The U.S. Congress is reminescent of the Russian Duma before the Revolution.
I saw him on FOX News and they were imnpressed for God’s sake. When the intyerview was over, the bimb who as interviewing him said “Maybe they should have sent him [to testify before Congress] instead of the auto company executives.” And the other inreview guy said something like “They’re doing a better job getting their side out.” he was great.
Polish sjem?
Or at lot like the current Duma.
http://exiledonline.com/faces-…../#more-948
If he did well on Fox, that’s saying something.
do you agree that is the time frame?
Religious zealots rarely have any use for facts.
Jane, you just summed up what is behind the majority of the world’s problems; all in one sentence
Now Pastor Rick Warren is agreeing with Hannity that the US should take out Ahmadinejad.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.c…..015925.php
I only know what I hear.
If that’s what they’re saying, then the truth might be a little longer using their economic assumptions. However, the economy is so much worse than anyone is saying that they’ll probably be lucky if they can make it thru a month.
There is no way after today’s jobs (or lack of jobs) report the automakers aren’t going to get some cash.
And Sen. Shelby (R-Toyota, Honda & M. Benz) needs to STFU, and act like he’s in the minority in the Senate, because he is.
the economy at large is at least a bit visible – and it looks horrible. don’t have any knowledge about the auto companies and haven’t looked at their plans.
Guess you’re not listening to the hearings. Seems doubtful to me.
Don’t bet the farm on it, no public pressure has emerged to force it.
Cash burn is something they can calculate, something that Wall St. auto analysts can calculate, using assumptions to be sure, but don’t have to assume much to figure out cash is gone in less than a month. I see no reason to doubt their word.
auto hearings – don’t know anything about friedman, but love the union of concerned scientists on science and engineering policy (don’t know what they are like with regards to labor, etc.). am interested in hearing what he has to say.
thanks. appreciate your take as i have no clue.
I think some of us may have a warped view of how a minority party is supposed to act. The way the Dems did it was not the way to do it! Unfortunately, the way Shelby is acting is how a minority party should act if they hope to get anything accomplished.
And since no one will lend the car cos money or contribute equity capital, once the cash is gone, bankruptcy it is.
And what the Rs are trying to accomplish is to plunge the U.S. economy into depression? Great goal.
OT -O.J. getting sentenced right now – this judge is gonna smoke him big time – MSNBC.
Why brag about not having the Healthcare and Benefits that a Japanese worker in Japan has who is working for the same company doing the same job?
Why would a Southerner brag about getting paid less than a Northerner?
OK Pups Digg this Post for Jane and the Lake!
This crap being spewed by the Republicans is nothing more than more attempts at breaking Unions. They know if they break all unions then their fat Rich Corporate BFF will be able to contribute even more to their re election war chests. Besides they have always sided against unions, why let workers have any leverage over their management masters who will always try and spend/pay as little as possible so they can reap as much profit as possible! Workers are just like a piece of machinery… when it wears out you just toss it out and get a new one.
up the lazy river. . .look at the Goldman’s faces.
I didn’t say I agreed with his goal, just that he’s doing a damn fine job at achieving it.
At least 15 years
They are protecting Bush’s free trade Cred for his *cough* legacy. At the expense of Christmas sales and the economy. Why aren’t the Dems making this a bigger issue?
But they will have destroyed the union and a Depression is a price Republicons are willing to take.
coulda been a whole lot worse….
Reposting this great Barney Frank quote that Josh found.
Hopefully they will square his ass away in the joint
I should have been writing this all down – confusing with what was sentenced concurrent and what was consecutive….
Surely you jest. You’ve been watching the Ds for the past two years. Do you expect more of them?
Right, Abrams says 6 minimum
I’m from a suburb of Philly and was pretty depressed that, in such a big sweep that ‘06 was, we picked the ’safe’ guy Casey over someone like Joe Hoeffel (whom I hope goes for Specter in ‘10 – and if Tweety tries, I will campaign for Lizard Man over him in the primaries, and Toomey in the general), whose a great man for labor, but still, this makes me happy.
Sachs, big perpetrator of Shock Docrtine, is up.
I think “They” will do more than Square his out! It will be more like ream his ass! He will become someone’s BFF!
Uh, you don’t think that’s what I meant huh?
Contessa says 9 years
by far not the biggest, but that he is one of them is what makes his testimony so astonishing to me.
Sachs is trying to make up for past sins.
But this is the perfect issue how many Union autoworker kids are not going to have Christmas this year unless the Dems do find their Spines?
Its Christmas and the GOP is willing to play Scrooge! Now we just need to cast a hero?
Is there nobody with Ambition for Higher Office in Congress?
“If this were not OJ” it would have never come to trial and he would have gotten pribation.
BTW, I can’t pay attention to the testimony & read you email intelligently at the same time, so I’ll get back to you when testimony’s over.
Ooops. Sachs just made a political mistake. He said that France was going to support its auto industry. Now congress will never go for it.
I was just making it a bit plainer. I mean what a coup to have OJ as your BFF in prison, they would climb the rungs of success in there!
going one on one with him would probably be a bit risky, he’s an idiot but he’s no lightweight
sachs:
drawing the comparison between the citi bailout and the foot dragging on the big 2.5
auto industry will melt down before christmas if nothing is done.
bernanke needs to be here too
frank:
complains about being asked to work weekends.
me:
barney – fuck you. i’ve been expected to work many, many weekends over nothing so serious. i was happy to do it, and you should be too.
Shelby is up in the Senate hearing lying as usual. Nothing like a cornpone peckerwood politician to get the blood boiling.
no problem… whenever works for you.
How true butt they would surely start with numbers at first until he was broken in!
Frank has a big mouth. Sometimes is works against him, as in what you cite, but sometimes it works in his favor as in my 43.
ding
Goodbye NASCAR.
goodbye corporate NASCAR
re: Barnie.
Really. What a jag-off. I used to like the guy. He was a sorta bombthrower type. Then, as he’s gotten more seniority he’s become prickier.
Power does seem to have gone to Frank’s head.
I still like his quote in my 43.
lol. yeah. i’ll take him pissing me off, if keeps putting pressure on obama.
Is there any other NASCAR?
What hole did they dig Kanjorski out of? He agrees with Corkhead?
there’s sure plenty of racin here
The silver lining of the Great Depression of 2008.
If we don’t do something to save the auto industry in America, we kiss our manufacturing base goodbye. Not only that, but we kiss pretty much any manufacturing jobs here, ever, goodbye. I think this is a really bad idea. We have already lost so many jobs, do we really want to lose more? I say we draw a line in the sand. I say we give them every dime they want. How can we give AIG everything they want, and they are useless paper pushers (also pieces of shit), Goldman Sachs, again usless paper pushers, JP Morgan, useless paper pushers. These companies do not produce anything, nothing. An automanufacturer produces something you can touch. If we don’t manufacture anything, kiss the supremecy of the U.S. goodbye. Most folks like to think that the U.S. is hot shit, it won’t be anymore, or ever again if we don’t make anything but War.
True, local dirt track will survive, real racing rather than that thing
that replaced real big track racing, current NASCAR is Buffalo Bill’s
Wild West Show for racing.
Gotta see the glass half full somehow.
Killing NASCAR doesn’t come anywhere near making my glass half full. I actually don’t care about it at all, dead or alive. I was (as you know even without a tag) being snarky.
Oh, I can’t bear to listen to Waters on dealerships again. Off to do some chores.
Same here, this is the largest economic cornerstone that seems to have
no effective support left in this post stupid society we have. We all
are at risk if Detroit goes south, pun intended.
I know you don’t really care about NASCAR, but you have to believe that if we don’t manufacture anything, we become a two class Country, the very rich and the very poor. We become about FIRE, Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate; a paper economy that does no on any good for the long term.
that is “does no one any good for the long term”.
As I’ve said before the entire history of this country as far as labor and workers’ rights go is tied to the failure of the Johnson administration and the administration of Grant to adequately punish the traitors who went to war with the Union over their vision of states’ rights and the right of human beings to own other humans as chattels.
The failure to utterly destroy the old south after the Civil War, to decimate the arrogant, resentful southerners who took pride in their hatred of the Union and their utter contempt for the idea of black suffrage and civil equality is represented by the smirk on Bush’s face, the sneer when he’s confronted on his inadequacies, and by the sense of entitlement that someone like Saxby Chambliss has to an office which he originally gained by lies and vote manipulation.
It isn’t too late for Obama to strip the south of its military bases and remove Federal contracts from states that constituted the old south. They hate our values so much, let’s see what they can develop on their own.
“Of course there isn’t. This is all about cultural conviction, not information. Religious zealots rarely have any use for facts.”
Yes, just like those who try to argue this is all about being pro-union when the money goes directly to corporations.
I don’t know if this is absolutely true, but I sense some truths within. I do know that I have heard ugliness spewed towards progressive ideas in the South. Sarah Palin proved that during the general election. Saxby Chamblis in the runoff in Georgia. Hate will always be some people’s crutch, let us hope that we can work to abolish it from the North, West, East and South.
Sort of like asking a drowning teenager if they have any plans for college.
Ding!!
Start calling up CBS, NBC, etc. and telling them that.
Corporations pay the union workers’ wages. UAW knows that.
UAW backs the bailout.
It’s not just racism. The power of the big man on the hill is diminished if any of those around him has economic means. He needs servants of any and all colors.
A C-Span caller said we rebuilt Germany, Japan and other countries after WW 2 and we should be able to help ourselves and give a loan to the auto co’s. We are rebuilding Iraq now when Iraq has something like 63 trillion dollars and can rebuild their own country. We need to gut the military budget to rebuild our own country not fund and build bases overseas. At some point the US of A has to come first.
Racism, of course, was routinely exacerbated by business owners who mercilessly manipulated labor by implying that if anybody asked too many questions, the next crowd of immigrants would take their jobs. It deflected labor’s attention away from owners and managers and onto the guy next to you in the breadline.
The reality was that if a factory or mine worker or migrant farm worker wanted to unionize, the owner would either have his brains beat out or give his job (and often his house or room and his kids’ places in school) to the next white guy off the boat, or the next not-so-white guy who swam the Rio Grande. If the boats stopped coming, as they were forced to do in the 1920’s, the threat was that those to whom the “N” word applied might get those jobs.
An unimaginative but effective way to keep the rabble fighting among themselves so that they wouldn’t successfully demand better pay and safer working conditions. Shelby and Co. are doing it again, just as Reagen did it twenty-five years ago when he fired federal air traffic control workers en masse in order to replace them with non-union workers. Bustin’ unions good. Safer air travel? Not so important.
Ronald “Reagan”, not Reagen; how soon we forget.
And collecting a lot less tax revenue.
Could some one please tell me what cultural conviction means? Thanks
Unbelievably, they’ll take a depression over Democratic success, particularly a black Democrat. It will also create more cahos, an environment they favor.This unreasonableness and animus runs particularly deep in southern politicians (Shelby, Chambliss, et al) These folks have deep, on the down low conversations about keeping up the white man’s tradition and legacy. They truly believe that is their responsibility to maintain, however increasingly futile, white supremacy in some manner.
The Big 2.5 are in a Yankee state.
Unions represent organizers, community or not.
Rich Southerners represent the last vestiges of royalists in the US, and all this inconvenience of people getting together and speaking with one is not to be tolerated.
It may be useful to some to check in on one interpretation of its source:
- Bob Dylan, 1963
We’re still there, in many ways. Seems like our lust for things, and hateful religion has gotten in the way of societal growth and increasing harmony.
Hate may be it’s own reward, but it hurts so good…
Is Shelby up for re-election in 2010?