Fucking Sadistic Republicans

[valarltd]

The Auto bailout didn't pass.
The Republican minority in the Senate killed it as a big "Fuck You" to the American Blue-Collar Worker. For being "Pro American/America first" they surely hate the people who make the country run.

I'm terrified. I may not have a job after the new year. We can't live on my husband's income. I carry the health insurance...and we have 2 mentally ill children, one with bad ears and I'm trying NOT to go into cervical cancer. The local truck lines are laying people off. The freight's not there to move.

It isn't just Michigan that will be affected.
The sheet metal stamping factory in Twinsburg OH, the manufacturing center in Belvedere IL, the plastic company in Mishawaka IN, the brake maker in Cincinnati OH, the Youngstown OH location, the assembly plants (there are 4) in Shreveport LA... Every one of those is going to go down if GM folds.

There are nine little family-owned dealerships I deliver to. The other driver on my linehaul has 16. Multiply that by 300 throughout the south, not to mention our office support staff... We're talking about 30,000 people. And that's just GM!

On a day when the Shrub looks like my last, best hope, I'm feeling very damn desperate. That's like depending on Charlie Brown to actually win a ball game.

Comments

[nbrooks.livejournal.com]

Picking up frozen thread, but keeping on the topic at hand:

"People *still* are going to prefer foreign cars in March, so what good would a bailout now be?"

Because 3.5 million americans have their jobs at risk (and more as the aftershocks of 3.5 million ripples through the affected communities - restaurants, stores, tourism). People without jobs leads to less spending, less eating out. Less spending and eating out leads to cooks, servers, cashiers, stockers out of work.

People out of work leads to loss of health insurance which puts a toll on that system even worse than it's already got now.

I realize that those in the health industry have some job security at the moment. But the career also requires some compassion for the communities served. Having a whole shit-ton of new uninsured shouldn't be a medical professional's dream come true either.

What good will it do? Maybe nothing. But if it can even *possibly* keep more people in their jobs longer, we have to try.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

I agree that something has to be done to help keep things stable, but I don't think the situation is hopeless. Marketing and vision needs to change in the industry, dramatically, and it needs to be made by people who aren't just interested in making their 'bonusable goals'. I think that a thinktank could make excellent progress toward redirecting the auto industry. Transportation will not become optional any time soon, and it will become increasingly more reasonable to purchase vehicles made close to home. I also think that a huge portion of the industry may be eligible for 'guided repurposing', that is a deliberate move of workers and facilities into other forms of industry and production in order to maintain employment and to relieve dependence on the auto industry.

The US is in trouble, and has been for years, in so many ways; it's really a matter of concern for Canadians, too. We just had a Toyota plant open here in Canada that was destined for one of a number of US sites. They built it here because it was cheaper to build here and export to the US than it was to deal with a 50% functional illiteracy rate among workers in the proposed American sites. They would have had to spend millions on re-education and the production of pictographic safety and instructional material. That sounds great, that we got the plant in Canada, but having a nation of uninsured, unemployable, undereducated people to the south as our major trading partner and economic ally... it's no good for us, either. I hope the US pulls out of it. It's going to mean people of all types getting up and saying, "change has to happen," for it to work.