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TechnoratiGoodbye, GM
I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.
As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?
It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.
So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.
But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?
Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:
1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.
We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.
The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true -- that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.
President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.
2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.
3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.
4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.
5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.
6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true).
7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.
8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.
9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.
Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.
100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front -- and the back -- seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The President -- and the UAW -- must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.
Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.
So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.
Yours, Michael MooreMMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
137 Comments so far
Show AllIT WON'T HAPPEN UNDER "FREE ENTERPRISE"
Yes, Mr. Moore, conversion to renewable energy and mass transit should have happened YESTERDAY. But it won't happen for years or decades. You know why. Seventy per cent of the operating costs for busses and trains comes from GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES. Mass transit, if it is going to be USED by the masses, is inherently unprofitable. Is the government going to triple or quadruple expenditure on mass transit? Is it going to tax, say, the OIL COMPANIES, the most profitable corporations in the history of the planet, to pay for busses and trains and windmills?
Not under this system! We only invest for profit, even if it means the destruction of the planet. When people understand that we have to produce for USE above profit; and when all Republicans and maybe half of the Democrats have been kicked out of office, THEN we may be able to slay the sacred cow of production for profit above all. Who can tell how much suffering and devastation we will have undergone before Americans reach that state of consciousness?
Golly -haven't heard much from the "Rails to Trails" folks lately,
Funny thing. I sure would miss pedaling from Erie to Buffalo, Cleveland or Pittsburgh.
We need light rail down every Interstate not ripping up whatever tracks are still in place for those folks in their spandex pants.
aw
I like this idea.
Everybody should remember that the Company's name is (was?) General Motors--not General Automobiles.
The point is that a GM-built motor is capable of Co-generation--the combined generation of both electricity and heat. When optimally balanced, about 25% of fuel energy goes to electricity, and about 65% of the energy goes to home heating, assuming 10% losses. The home heating would be achieved by circulating the glycol in the motor's cooling system through baseboard units exiting motor at 200 F and returning at 120 F. The electricity generated would eliminate the need to build any new power plants.
A GM build motor is also capable of running on natural gas. We wouldn't have to import oil to run the engine. Each home would have it's own source of power and heat.
During the summer when the heat isn't needed, it could be stored underground using the same equipment used in ground-source heat pumps. This heat could be recovered for use during the following winter. Some of the electricity generated could power air-conditioners during July-September.
The engines could also pump cooling water from the Great Lakes through cooling towers into homes for the early summer air-conditioning season (up until August).
Like Michael said. Except for those bullet trains in Japan that have been around for 5 decades.
We don't need bullet trains, but something much faster, smoother, cheaper and efficient. It's called maglev trains. They run on an elevated monorail and have a potential to travel at speeds in excess of 500 mph, suspended and propelled by magnetic levitation. So they don't even touch the track, but ride on a cushion of air.
This isn't science fiction. China and Germany are already using them. THAT is what GM should be building, starting day after tomorrow.
Gotta build the tens of thousands of miles of magnetic track too. Bullet trains can at least use existing rail lines to start with, can't they?
Sorry to tell all of you this but the current costs for light rail exceed $1 million/mile. On major arteries the price can go up to $10 million/mile due to the need to dig up the entire street and move all the utilities, water and sewer lines that have been put under there.
That is simply not affordable.
Walk out your front door and the chances are that the asphalt in front of your house is patched, potholed and failing. There aren't going to be good roads to drive the promised electric cars ON even if we could afford the cars themselves without jobs.
Pod Transit or Pesonal Rapid Transit proposals would be cheaper than maintaining our current roads but you have to build an entire system for a community at once. These would operate like elevator cars and would resemble people-mover pods everyone has ridden at amusement parks. Safer, cheaper, and faster than cars, buses or trains because there would be many more stops, less road maintenance and on demand routing.
Lacking any sort of leadership this simply isn't going to happen. The US is bankrupt in leadership and ideas. Obama is a tool of the corporatists and there are no actual leaders on the horizon. It's a bitter cup all around.
Sorry to tell all of you this but the current costs for light rail exceed $1 million/mile. On major arteries the price can go up to $10 million/mile due to the need to dig up the entire street and move all the utilities, water and sewer lines that have been put under there.
That is simply not affordable.
Walk out your front door and the chances are that the asphalt in front of your house is patched, potholed and failing. There aren't going to be good roads to drive the promised electric cars ON even if we could afford the cars themselves without jobs.
Pod Transit or Pesonal Rapid Transit proposals would be cheaper than maintaining our current roads but you have to build an entire system for a community at once. These would operate like elevator cars and would resemble people-mover pods everyone has ridden at amusement parks. Safer, cheaper, and faster than cars, buses or trains because there would be many more stops, less road maintenance and on demand routing.
Lacking any sort of leadership this simply isn't going to happen. The US is bankrupt in leadership and ideas. Obama is a tool of the corporatists and there are no actual leaders on the horizon. It's a bitter cup all around.
I agree completely with you Michael. But for "our" president to declare war against global warming would require a president who wasn't chosen by corporate America.
Michael Moore's finest writing, ideas and most perfect vision of what should be.
And the workers should somehow own part of the company, be connected to what they produce, be working for themselves when they labor and sweat.
Also, they should build xlnt mountain bikes, the highest quality, set up for streets, produce them by the millions and sell them to everyone for cost plus fifty bucks.
And utility companies must be mandated towards The Sun.
I know I am coming late to the party, but a couple of observations...
The buy-out of efficiency patents is a really serious issue. In the early 1970s I knew a guy in Ohio who was an engineer and he invented a Reciprocal ROTATING ENGINE that lacked the seal issues of the Wankel rotating engine. Bought out.
If you study physics and chemistry you will soon discover the diabolical plot between Big Oil and Big Detroit. For example, the only reason the U.S. let Volkswagen and Toyota et al into the domestic car market was the Elite's awareness that our new Fascist allies needed to reindustrialize after WWII---the Marshall Plan. There were real Stalinists back then and Stalin was still head of the USSR.
What is really going on as of June 1, 2009 is that the United States has lost the Cold War. We were given several opportunities that no other nation in the world had, to commit to a global economy of a sort envisioned by such as Eleanor Roosevelt or Adlai Stevenson and many others.
The neo-cons and the neo-libs have predominated and are now in the process of bankrupting the Middle Class (while nobody is writing articles about the plight of the homeless.
On one issue for sure Michael Moore is correct: Detroit needs to be retooled, and their CEO's and Boards of Directors need to be reamed. The post-war United States blew it, again and again, despite being warned, again and again. The victory in WWII should have produced a sense of humility. Had FDR survived that crisis he would have said so. Instead we had half a century of hubris. General Motors was central to this hubris.
Finally, to all you people reporting from the D.C. area, could we please somehow declare a day of NO ACRONYMS? Actually we need a National No Acronyms Holiday. Like what does SSRI "really" stand for and why are they being delivered to "autistic" children?
Let's get back to basics people. I could critique Michael Moore at several levels, but I didn't grow up in Flint MI.
Back in the late 60s I researched the interlocking directorates of corporations and other entities that were profiting from the undeclared war in Viet Nam. Check out the interlocking directorates of the old GM Board versus what is coming down the line and FOLLOW THE MONEY. This will not be "nationalisation." This will not be "socialism." I leave it to you, dear reader, to define for yourself the depredations coming.
-30-
Moore: "Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. "
www.mopedbus.com
Good riddens GM. A century of bloodsucking CEO's, Unions feathering their own nests, killing the EV-1 and making crumby cars.,..what do you expect? Who cares?
Dear Michael Moore, I really enjoyed your nine points, lovely sentiments positively enlightened ideas -- AND YOU STILL DON'T GET IT!
This isn't about ANYTHING except impoverishing the general population into squalor and degradation while xfering the last of the wealth of America into the sweaty palms of the top 1/4 of 1% where it will remain as the foundation of their wealth, privilege, and their right by birth to degrade and debase everything the richfilth animals touch...with impunity. AND THEY'VE GOT IT NOW and we don't, and BHO isn't going to listen to you about this any more than he listened on EFCA or Single Payer or War Crimes trials or ANYTHING except giving all the wealth to the aforementioned psychotic animals --- while holding us in our place, down here, below Master and subject to HIS every whim...
WHEN ARE YOU CALLING FOR THE GENERAL STRIKE MICHAEL MOORE?
I know, don't be stupid, who wants to be shot in the face with rubber bullets or tortured (possibly raped?) by one of America's finest boys in uniform who is just following orders...
Write on! Write on! Write on! Fill oceans with words - JUST DON'T DO ANYTHING...and you'll be okay...till you have to emigrate outside of the Reich...if you can...
"What's good for General Motors is good for the country."
U S of A should declare bankruptcy.
Nebraska Green,
It's naive to think that we all must rely on public transportation. Obviously there are business that benefit and have to have their own means. Public transportation is for people to commute to work, leisure, etc.
And plants must be used to produce green cars as well as solar panels and wind mills. Most developed countries are WAY AHEAD in green energy production. The US is behind, don't you want to live in a first world country? I do.
I recently travelled on a high speed train in Europe, and I can tell you there is no first class plane that can be better than travelling by train. Really sad to come back here and see how undeveloped this country really is.
Sorry if I wasn't clear, I'm all for more and better public transport. My main point was that there will always be some need for personal transport as well and that this is an opportunity we've never had before to make it clean and sensible. And obviously I'm aware we need more green energy production, just not convinced that GM is the way to get it done.
BTW to qatzelok, I really am a carpenter, not just claiming to be one. It's why my response to the article occurred to me. Nor am I against all gas taxes or increases thereof. I'm only against regressive taxes that affect working classes more than investing classes.
"I'm only against regressive taxes that affect working classes more than investing classes."
Well, the rich might still be able to afford cars even if 90% of them are eliminated via taxes and driving restrictions. If you don't like that the rich get more toys than the poor, then vote for an egalitarian party in the next election. In the meantime, taxes and other disincentives are the best way to encourage use of non-polluting/non-torturing forms of transportation.
The very poorest people in our societies - the homeless and children - live in permanent fear and deprivation because of our motor madness.
I suggest that not the case. Go to many of the countries of the world that do not have "Motor madness". They have the very poor and the very rich.
This is all an exercise in futility. The era of the internal-combustion driven automobile and it's resultant economic models is gone. Sure there will still be taxi's, ambulances, tradesman's trucks and the like.
Purchasing a second car to drive kids in circles every day is done as a lifestyle. Purchasing a first car for many is no longer possible due to increasing food and and health care prices and declining wages. Gas prices are only the nail in the coffin.
The U.S. is a failure and the Chinese were definately laughing AT us. They get around on electric scooters.
Sorry MM - listening to BO lay out the "auto task force" plan at the moment, and it includes not a one of your suggestions. Not even the hint of one, a mention, a peep.
Nope - GM will 'rise again' and build cars 'America wants.' BO said it, so it must be true and good and right...
"There are those who say Obama isn't ready, or he's voted wrong on this or that. But that's looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate."
-Michael Moore April 21st, 2008
Soooo...
Who gets to decide the terms of GM's bankruptcy?
Obama?
Or his imaginary "movement"?
I'm sorry, Mr. Moore, am I still "looking at the trees and not the forest"?
Sicko was a great film. Aren't you glad the candidate you endorsed has given all Americans universal single payer health care? Oh wait...
I think that one problem with americans visualizing alternatives to the private car is that the great majority of them live in suburban environments, and have never spent any time in a transit-served city environment. Only Zmann and George Markley seem to have in this forum.
I grew up and lived in such a suburban environment - undesirable for a lot of other reasons other than the mandatory care use. But I didn't think other alternatives existed anymore. But then, purely by chance, (my wife going to Carnigie-Mellon U. to study theater design) I moved from the the car-orinented, culturally empty, suburban environment to a city neighborhood. It was an epiphany - I felt like I was "coming home to a place I've never been before". For the first time, I was living where things were REAL - the poeple, architecture, the family shops, the children playing in the streets...
I live in what used to be a thoroughly rural county until the last few years when it grew so fast and is now a suburban sprawl. Living in DC itself is very expensive and there are other issues there that make it uncomfortable for my husband and I to live there. I couldn't grow a vegetable garden or think of converting parts of my home to solor power or wind turbine generated if I had lived in DC. The rural and suburban areas need not have been so bad. It is possible to extend mass transit there too but our society is way too addicted to cars and the price difference between driving and metro-ing forces us to keep our cars. Why else would you find very heavy traffic even in transit-served cities? Most poor people who live in those cities could hardly afford metro or for that matter any green technologies simply because the prices are often a little too high. We need to provide both economical and environmental incentives. The economy cannot do without the environment and vice-versa.
Xyy June 1st, 2009 5:50 pm..........I grew up in NYC and rode the buses, subways and Staten Island ferry for the first 25 years of my life. I LUV the peace and quiet of a rural existence. My point in an earlier post is that there are interim steps one may take until alternative transportation improves on a massive scale....such as a hybrid or just getting rid of your SUV for a smaller vehicle.
Well, if you model for city living is NYC, than I understand. But very few US cities are like NYC, thank goodness. I live in Pittsburgh. The city neighborhood I lived in was quieter than any suburban area I've ever been in. The loudest noises most of the time are still kids playing.
Here is Obama's employment plan:
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/107136/The-31-Year-Old-in-Charge-of-Dismantling-G.M.?mod=...
Jobs for Yalies kowtowing to Lawrence Show-Me-the-Bailout-Money Summers.
Very insightful article and I agree with most of it. The problem we are facing is on a greater scale than just GM. It's that our elected officials have been doing what's in the best interests of the corporate elites (as opposed to the best interest of our country) for a couple of decades now. Case in point, it has always been in the best interests of the auto industry not to have bullet trains and other mass transit in this country, and wallah, we are the only devoloped nation without even one bullet train. There's no question that building cleaner mass transit would have a tremendous positive impact. Unfortunately, I'm a realist, I see the 2 party system as nothing more than an illusion, I think Obama is going to continue with the status quo (he's already proven that) so I don't see this happening.
Michael, good commentary.
And I'd like to add a comment to the paragraph that begins,
"The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me."...
Reminds me of the real cost of the gallon of gas that we purchase here in the US.
$2.50? $3.00? $4.00? Try $12.00 - 15.00 per gallon, which is the cost of the barrel plus US armies waging expensive wars in two-three Middle Eastern countries.
We never factor in the cost of waging war for this oil.
Oh, yeah, that's for the next generation to worry about paying off.
I thought Chrysler was under the wing of Daimler. But lo and behold, Cerberus Capital Management completed its purchase of Chrysler in April this year just in time to capture a piece of the bailout.
wikipedia: "Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. is one of the largest private equity investment firms in the United States. The firm is based in New York City, and run by 49-year-old financier Steve Feinberg."
wikipedia: "Founded in 1992, Cerberus is named for the mythological three-headed dog that guarded the gates of Hades. Feinberg has stated to his employees that while the Cerberus name seemed like a good idea at the time, he later regretted naming the company after the mythological dog."
YES IT WAS a very good idea for Feinberg to name the company after the three headed guard dog of Hades.
Because EVIL is its game, the EVIL is its name. You get it? To attract evil support. And it did, surely. It's got the public bailout. Down the throats of the three-headed dog, guardian of Hades!!!
wikipedia: "On March 30, 2009 President Barack Obama issued a US Government guarantee of Chrysler's warranty liabilities, and publicly stated the U.S. Government will back the warranties on Chrysler vehicles if the company were to go out of business."
To the Guardian of Hades!!!
wikipedia: "Chrysler filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the Federal Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York, in Manhattan, on April 30, 2009, and announced an alliance with Fiat. Both the White House and Chrysler expressed hope for a 'surgical' bankruptcy lasting 30 to 60 days, with the result of reducing the company's liabilities and post-bankruptcy emergence in stronger financial shape."
Did Chicago Mafia Thug O'Bamba make a square deal with New York Mafia Thug Feinberg? Not a topic for polite company? Let's not discuss it!
rtdrury June 1st, 2009 4:55 pm..........
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/133291.html
We don't have to 'tax gas' to get the money for alternate transportation - after all, trillions were found to 'bail out' the thieves who destroyed our economy - no problem there... but this isn't about money - it's about power, specifically, the power of monopoly. And that is why we don't have 'alternative transportation' options in the US - the fascists wanted total control of the population, and saw a way to get it. They used sophisticated propaganda tactics developed originally to gain the support of reluctant Americans who didn't want to get involved in 'foreign entanglements' - especially wars. Research what the Rockefeller boys and Eduard Bernays did - and how well it worked, especially when adopted by the advertising agencies. I can't help but ask myself what kind of psychopath would work for such a company, whose only raison d'etre was to lie to the people and convince them to work against their best interests, and the best interests of a free, prosperous, and peaceful CIVILIZED society. Those 'white collar' psychopaths whose amydala is connected well enough to their frontal lobe so as to protect them from legal repercussions - those fascists who rule our country today, just as they did at the turn of the century, and probably long before that.
This isn't just about fossil fuels, the environment, and sustainable living - it is about the absolute rule of psychopaths (who make up about 1% of any population - that can be predicted by brain scans). Those who listen to propaganda - those who allow billboards, radio ads, TV programs, and movies to depict America as something it is not - are ultimately responsible for abdicating their responsibilities. Those who cede their rights and responsibilities to religious organizations, corrupt governments, and/or military and quasi-military institutions - they (us) are ultimately responsible for the destruction of our society, our economy, our future, and the future of our own children. And the big pay-off? Getting to 'belong' to a larger entity - a 'team' that always wins, no matter by what means.
Those who give up their rights and civic duties - delegate them to scam-artists, demagogues, and politicians - can expect nothing but misery, poverty, and hopelessness. The rest of us pay the price for tolerating them among us - for not nipping this immoral behavior before it became the monster it is today. Too big to fail? Ban advertising - all advertising that is not strictly instructional peer-reviewed information - verified by scientific methodology (there are enough mistakes using these means, as it is) - and we may build a decent MORAL society. Let the scam-artists, charlatans, propagandists, etc, run the country - and this is what you get. Hopelessness, apathy, ignorance, and social collapse. Remember when drugs were allowed to be advertised? Remember what life was like BEFORE these highly-paid sophisticated liars were allowed to pollute our brains and indoctrinate our children with their BS? That's all that 'advertising' ever brings - lies and destruction. You cannot maintain a civilized society based on lies, misinformation, and brainwashing - that's why truth, honesty, and open government were so highly prized. We once knew 'right' from 'wrong' - now most Americans only know what they are told to believe - by the puppetmasters who used sophisticated proven psychology to make us believe the most ridiculous and deranged nonsense ever invented.
We can never free our people as long as 'free speech' is allowed to be bought and sold. Those with the most money will always win - and through advertising, they will accumulate more and more wealth while we - the collective society - not only suffer the consequences, but leave our children with a poisoned legacy. As Hitler bragged: "Your children will know nothing else." - even he would be surprised (as would be Goebbels) at how successful his sick perverted ideology turned out to be - and in the hands of those who vanquished him. After all, the only reason he was 'the enemy' was because he was too successful at that game - the US and UK only wanted to eliminate the competition. They didn't give a damn about the people suffering under fascism - just as Reagan and Thatcher soon proved, until even 'the Left' (Blair) was brainwashed by the nonsense. So when will we revisit 'free speech' and return to the principles upon which this country was founded?
"what kind of psychopath would work for such a company"
American Psychopath. Ooops! American Idol!
"We can never free our people as long as 'free speech' is allowed to be bought and sold."
Agreed. In fact, I can assure you, that one of the healthiest acts for a USan still enslaved to the elite establishment would be to embrace the ideas expressed by the lowliest street being, amid the suits/ties on the streets of NYC and show the people directly, face to face how important is the concept of fair speech over free speech.
FAIR SPEECH NOW
FAIR SPEECH NOW
FAIR SPEECH NOW
When I think of the landmark Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, and Statue of Liberty in NYC, I think what they symbolize is collapsing now in the hearts/minds of the people, like the WTC collapsed on 9/11. The Empire State should rename itself the Humble Pie State. The Chrysler Building should become the Public Railroad Building, and the Statue of Liberty should become the Statue of Universal Equity/Justice.
Do not expect Borax Obysmal, the Republican or Democratic parties, the congress, or anyone with any actual authority to do anything sane or prudent with the corpse of General Mendacity. The pooh-bahs who ran the company into the grave already are well taken care of. If they choose, they will get jobs as consultants to GMII and will spend the rest of the time playing golf and cavorting with protitutes.
The fired GM workers will get jobs cleaning Ronald Reagan's Shining Toilet on a Hill. Many of them will vote for the Republican presidential candidate in 2012.
I saw a picture over the weekend of Bill Clinton sitting at some political crabfest with George Wanker Bush. That's the future.
Michael, over the years you supported the same people who gave us NAFTA, GATT and other overall disastrous policies. You tied yourself and your political support to the very people who are responsible. You thought that they in the end would save the day (I guess).
The deals were probably cut long, long ago to surrender the American auto manufacturing base to Asia --for something--military posts of empire, a vut of this, a cut of that, or God knows what else.
The rich have made their money and are departing--if not already. America is now one big strip mall thats dying by the moment.
Again, unless we address the unbalanced trade agreements, it will not matter whether or not we retool the factories. Once they work out the process, it will be shipped away. We are quickly running out of time to revamp NAFTA and GATT. When no more money can be extracted for goods made elsewhere the show will be over, and we will be helpless in the face of our own stupidity.
GM sure was nasty.
I remember when they funded experiments where members of non human species were tortured and when protests were done-they replied by saying: but we recycle the animals!
They would sew the body parts of the animals back on and do the experiments again.
It finally stopped when someone brought it to the attention of Paul McCartney before a GM sponsored concert.
He refused to go on unless the stopped the research.
They did.
"What's good for General Motors is good for America"
Will bankruptcy be good for America?
Moore wants us to give up our Gas guzzlers? Fat chance. The so called Green revolution is already dead on delivery. Obama gave the Bankster and soon the Health Vampires all the $$ we needed to convert to Alts. We'll be burning whatever till it runs out and they'll we take whatever is left at gun pt. That's the real American way. Roger needs to wake up and smell the Petrol. Americans LOVE the smell of Gasoline in the morning, "it smells like Victory!"
End of manufacturing= end of US empire. When the finance whizzes and bankers took over the economy they got addicted to making easy money by flipping papers and creating bubbles.
Sadly, these guys don't do manufacturing--it's too hard a buck. So we begin to sink into a weird world of credit default swaps, sub-prime mortgages and hedge funds. And not even humpty-dumpty (Larry Summers)can put our old empire back together again.
Mr.Moore,
It is difficult to hear the voice of reason in the middle of a shit storm but I appreciate your efforts and I sincerely hope that your words do not fall on Obama’s big deaf ears. I do hope that this series of cataclysmic events do bring about the wake up call that brings about real change.
I sent a letter to Obama back in February with some of the same suggestions and concerns… here is a sample..
“>You said you want to improve the infrastructure , roads, bridges, power grids, etc.
There needs to be some kind of master plan for the rebuilding process that includes coordination of light rail from the big cities flowing out to the suburbs and at the same time moving improved utilities underground to avoid problems from weather extremes.
With that in mind the auto companies should have had some guidelines to increase r&d for electric cars and retooling for light rail production. A concerted effort that would mean jobs.
>Put a solar panel or whatever the newest photovoltaic available on every government building, mall, stadium etc.. Give businesses and home owners tax breaks for purchase and installation.
File under more jobs..
Remove all tax breaks from the pariahs, like Big Oil. Review all the alternative energy patents they have been sitting on and give them 6 months to use it or loose it.”
Bright ideas that will probably be ignored.
I would like think that great minds think alike but I don’t even begin to have a your grasp of what this is doing to the people left on the side of the road because of GM.
keep up the good fight.. appreciate ya..
http://opinionsandreasons.blogspot.com/
"when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars?"
I don't know, Michael. How long are you and millions of USans going to keep beating the dead horse of elite rule? How long are you going to keep it up there on the theater stage with the spotlight on it? How long are you going to keep beating it and begging it to rule you better? When are YOU, M. Moore going to start the Flint Electric Golf Cart With Diesel Genset garage workshop ?????
tick tock tick tock tick tock
tick tock tick tock tick tock
tick tock tick tock tick tock
tick tock tick tock tick tock
"When are YOU, M. Moore going to start the Flint Electric Golf Cart With Diesel Genset garage workshop ?????"
There are already a number of plug-in electric motor scooteers from small to maxi-scooter size avaialble. Most come from China, so the owner needs to be a bit mechanically and electronically inclined since they come with design and workmanship glitches standard. I own two electric scooters, which serve me and my wife's commuting and personal transportation needs for up to 8 months out of the year.
The most impressive one is being made by an enterprising group of individuals in Ann Arbor. Go here:
http://www.currentmotor.com/
There is also a terrific conversion kit for electrically motorizing a bicycle made by Bionx in Quebec. Very lightweight, simple to install, let's you pedal or not, speed maxed out by law at 32 kph (in Canada, anyway). I have one, and have sold my car, even though I don't ride in our endless winter. Bus in winter; electric bike in summer. It's really great.
32 kph??? A fit cyclist can do better than that on flat ground without any motor. Do you get a ticket if you are caught coasting down a hill?
In Europe and many US states, the speed limits for mopeds (what an electrified bicycle would fall into) is 45 kph. This number also applies to 50cc scooters in a lot of places. I suspect that it is rarely, if ever enfordced.
Here in Pennsylvania, and I think, Ontario, there is no speed limit for scooters. Much more resonable.
I lol'ed at Moore's "tax incentive" suggestion.
Does everyone in America believe in the magical and transformative power of greed?
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Right on, brother Michael! That's what I'm talking about. I wonder if dozy old Charlie Rose will dare have him on to express those fine sentiments and ideas... He would have at one time.
The Chinese have, this year, decided to devote $10 Billion dollars to dominate the world in the manufacture of high tech wind turbines. The U.S. could've done that easily with just a tiny fraction of the money we are lavishing on STILL un-investigated, STILL un-prosecuted mega-fraudsters.
Read Ralph Nader's recent piece entitled Corporate Frankensteins. In all my decades of reading him and following his career I've never heard him sound such a note of despair. If we can't act on the kind of vision Moore expounds and start thinking in terms of the long-term good of our nation and the world instead of quarterly profits and get rich quick and bail on everyone capitalism--including screwing your own U.S. workers while you build overseas manufacturing capacity and eliminate plants here--we are doomed to a consolidated militarist/corporatist dictatorship that will turn more and more on its own people and devour their hopes, futures and their imagination that things can ever really change for the better.
Supply and Demand-
Tax gas and build alternate transportation?
Less auto fuel used the price of auto fuel goes down.
Yes it will put a burden on people who HAVE to drive a lot.
things are getting a bit like going to work at your job in the gun and bullet factory and putting the final touches on the gun and bullet they're going to use on you next week, so you can get your paycheck today...fascism will not be defeated through 'jobs'...jobs ARE fascism...
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Grandfather: "Oh, and Great Spirit, please keep my grandson Little Big Man from going insane."
Related over-population vs. finite resources issues aside,
this person clearly knows nothing of the history of the struggle for labor rights in the U.S. A large, unionized middle-class industrial workforce existed at the peak of the American economy and lifted up the incomes, housing, educational and business creation or labor contribution opportunities of ALL Americans--not just the ones at the top. We were once a nation of hands-on workers who MADE enough for ourselves and to export around the world--not idle day traders sipping frappacinos speculating on other people's labor and "financialized" paper mega fraud. When our workforce was 50% unionized THAT middle class that was stable enough and populous enough to truly affect political and economic decision making in its own interest. That is precisely why the richest 1 percent of corporatists and their political hatchet-men spend the last 40 years tearing the middle-class down and pitting components of it against each other. It got too powerful for their taste and was interfering too much with their laissez-faire profit streams. Now they are our masters and are systematically dividing up the spoils from conquering our country before they crush America's peonage and facilitate the degradation of the global environment to the point that most of it becomes uninhabitable for human life.
I'll never forget the feeling of impending doom that filled our household when Reagan struck at the ATC unions - and broke them. What did the American people do about that? What did other unions do about that? Yeah, that deadly silence is EXACTLY what made my parent afraid - very afraid. Because they had seen the same thing happen in Nazi Germany - nobody did anything to stop the insanity of Hitler and his goons - at least not early, when they could have been sent packing. It has been all downhill from there - with Americans in DENIAL about the creeping fascism (which was never really defeated in the US, just hiding in the shadows, waiting for the perfect opportunity to get their foot back in the door).
My parents - strict conservatives - knew the difference between 'conservative' and 'fascist' - and knew what we were then facing. My relatives in Europe were outraged at 'what the American people are doing' - where they crazy, or what? Reagan and Bush? (And let's not forget America's poodle and Thatcher.) Like I was supposed to explain how and why Nazi propaganda was being used - SUCCESSFULY - in the US? It was as if Americans had collectively lost their minds - the ultimate result was entirely predictable, at least according to many members of my extended family - the world was once again doomed to suffer under militarized monopolized industrialized FASCISM. Americans had adopted insanity as their national priority - and bulled full steam ahead to bring disaster to the world. And just like the Germans, they never imagine it would ever come back to bite THEM. After all, they were so superior in every way - the new MASTER RACE - and everyone would be scrambling to support their shining new ideology. Except that it was the same fascist ideology as the LAST crazy 'Master Race' with their delusions of superiority and grandeur.
Oh, but at least they struck back at those bothersome 'hippies' - you know, those 'flower children' that abhorred war - those pot-smoking college-educated rebellious brats... Yeah, America, you sure showed them... just like Hitler did. You thought shooting yourself in the foot was bad - so you shot yourself square in the head. Can't have those kids making up new rules - especially if they smoke pot! They were even against the military and hideous foreign wars and using chemical weapons against innocent civilians! How dare they protest? Who did they think they were - insisting on humanitarian rights, protesting war crimes, and SMOKING POT. Boy, Reagan sure showed them! And too many Americans still can't look in the mirror and see who caused this catastrophe... and if you think things are finally looking up, think again. Another decade or two, and the US might regain viability and revitalize its economy - but don't bet on it. IMF won't. Nobody in their right mind would take that bet - but I'm sure AIG will cover it. They cover any kind of Ponzi scheme, so long as they can skim their share off the top. And you pay the bill, no matter what - profits are privatized and losses are socialized. That's fascism.
So Americans DID participate in power. They allowed the worst possible people - the neo-fascists - to do their bidding. They got rid of the hippies and any mention of war crimes - they had the power and they used it. To put the worst psychopaths in charge of 'their' government. Oh, and they made pot extremely illegal - and prisons extremely profitable (one of the 'growth industries' in the Rust Belt). Nice going.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
America, even under Bush II, did not get rid of ALL its hippies or flower children.
Most of the leaders of the various anti-war, anti-Bush, pro-Constitution, pro-environmentalism protest groups such as Cindy Sheehan's or Iraq Veterans for Peace, or United for Peace and Justice, or Green Peace, or Rainforest Activist Network, or Code Pink, or World Can't Wait to Drive Out the Bush Regime, etc., are filled with beaucoup old activists who've fought many a local, State and national battle over the years. Many of their children and friends were with them and some (but not nearly enough) of the clergy. We've all been marching and doing teach-ins and organizing and yelling our heads off at rallies and getting arrested, beaten, herded and spied on at various events and political conventions (along with ordinary citizen bystanders).
But the BIG DIFFERENCE is that the broadcast news media will not substantially cover any of these movements on either the local or national level. Big Media back in the '60s was not nearly as concentrated in ownership; was not measured for advertising ratings profitability (that began in the 1980s); was still in its infancy and would cover things like white sheriffs turning fire hoses, billy clubs and German shepherds on black students during the Civil Rights marches. They would cover some of anti-war protests for the shock and "looney" factors and because even some of the media establishment didn't trust or like Nixon. That was then and this is now. Between 2003 and now we could seldom if ever get any substantial news coverage of any of our local protest events--even in a city with a population of nearly 6 million. We never got any national news coverage and it's been generally the same across the country. Out of sight, out of mind.
The other side of that coin is that while most Americans are now indoctrinated to LOVE gratuitous violence, most of them are equally indoctrinated to find loud, complex public controversies personally icky. Especially if it involves organizing with other people. It requires too much thinking, debate and give and take, and might even necessitate personal self-sacrifice--exposing them to police or counter-protester violence or targeted warrantless government surveillance. Most Americans despite their admiration for macho militarism tarted up as patriotism are now thespianically emotionally expedient, situationally ethical and morally and intellectually weak. Obama reflects this perfectly.
Sioux Rose
METAL: I am really resonating with you today! I hadn't read your post (above) when I responded to Cee Miracles. You were wise and informed enough to list some of the important groups that remain virtually under the MSM radar. Fortunately, thoughts hold power and the higher they rise, the more of that invisible force of Light they can tap into. We share our efforts to give birth to what the participants in the World Social Forum also seek to midwife in the form of: "Another World is Possible." I also think it's inevitable. We are midwives of the dream of what's next.
Excellent post, armybrat. And it has been a terrible feeling, lo these many years, to not only understand what is happening, but realize that so few do, and they don't want to hear it.
Most of the Flower-children Hippies were middle-class kids, who then grew up and began to have families and disappeared into the Big-Daddy-with-Cowboy-Hat Reagan era. Most became part of the Corporate work treadmill and actally became the Yuppie-parents making sure junior learned to make decisions at two and never got his feelings hurt.
Erich Fromm's classic book, ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM, is the best description and analysis of the swing from Rebellion back to the Protector-Leader with the Smiling Face who seems to be the one who will make everything all right. [my words, not his].
Whatever any of us say on this message board, it will have to play out. But it is so frustrating and scary because it sure is not looking good on so many fronts.
Keep on truckin' ...
peace, cm
Sioux Rose
CEE MIRACLES: I fit that profile but I never sold out. Matter of fact I ran into Jerry Rubin in London and we hung out for an afternoon (at Portobello Road). He sold out, got into the upscale dating business! But not everyone did... many of us "dropped out" and became freelancers, or spent our time designing new ways to live that created a far less intensive footprint on this great, grand Earth. The watchdogs of mainstream culture would prefer we didn't exist at all, and even if we have solid, good ideas they are seldom ALLOWED to be heard. We are rendered invisible!
Sioux Rose
METAL: Excellent postings today. Thank you.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
You are welcome Sioux Rose. I've had a little more time lately to post on CD because I've been laid off again and am selling off possessions one by one online.
Sioux Rose
METAL: The title of my new book, just in its beginning stages IS "Laid Off," and it follows a blue collar worker/carpenter (general fix-it man, based on the guy I date) as he faces the diminishing opportunities that result from the new "global economy" and its wage race to the bottom.
In my story he gets involved with his anger management counselor (kind of based on me), and one night while they're dining and she picks up the tab (50% of every one of his paychecks goes to delinquent child support payments) they notice a bunch of gay diners who order one expensive bottle of wine after another. What happens in my story is that mr. macho has to reinvent himself as a gay interior decorator to get gigs. I am not sure that "strategy" would be of any assistance to you; however, as a freelance writer, I have found that I can get by through diversifying. I have tutored, substitute taught, offered courses at community colleges, and in your case I wonder if you can become an independent contractor and "farm" out your talents on a less routine basis? I've also learned that so long as I give, I always get what I need. One example: I just had guests this weekend and I surprised each with a gratis tarot reading, paid their way into the state park, had a luscious shrimp and vegetable curry ready for their dinner, and my own espresso blend this morning. And just in time, I rented out the place my companion and I just renovated. I do believe there is a rhythm to these things, that it reflects cosmic law when we give, and know that what we need will find a way back to us.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Dear Souix Rose,
I like your book idea and it would work as a movie script as well. Some swell opportunities for aiming a few choice barbs at our increasingly rigid class wall between the haves and have-nots. I've pondered various ideas for diversifying but I'm a terrible procrastinator. I'm pretty thrifty though, and far more temperamentally suited to living on Somerset Maugham's Razor's Edge than most Americans. I would like to believe in that rhythm you describe and it seems to be true for some. Not quite my experience, though. I feel more like Kwai Chang Kane in the desert at the beginning of the movie Kung Fu. I'm pretty field expedient and know how to take care of myself in extreme conditions but it would be nice to have some clean water to mix my nutritional and medicinal ancient Chinese Shaolin herbal tea with--and maybe some intelligent companionship on a little more regular basis.
Sioux Rose
METAL: We all do have different paths, as well as strengths and weaknesses. In my last movie script, "Fat Chance," the premise was that two unlikely partners get together and brainstorm the idea of a lucrative investment: they sponsor survival boat tours for overweight women and GUARANTEE these guests will lose weight since the only things they will be allowed to eat are what they can hunt, fish, or forage. I had a blast writing this and I named the captain, an arrogant sort, Scott. Damned if I didn't meet HIM and feel compelled by fate into a tie! The manager at one of the two restaurants I frequent heard me tell this tale of synchronicity and she offered, "Why didn't you make him nice and rich!" Indeed. In any case, this captain was something of a hybrid of Scott (name just came to me) and my nature-tour buddy, Dennis.
The first time Dennis took me into way backwater streams in North Florida he told me that a water mocassin COULD fall into the kayak, and we had exactly 3 seconds to grab it behind its head and throw it overboard. I said I'd prefer to just jump into the water, that 3 seconds no doubt represented an AVERAGE count time, and there might be an Olympic-style snake that did IT in 2.4. You get my drift. Well, Dennis sounds like you. He's put himself through a vigorous regimen going without so much since he feels the U.S. economy is going to tank, and only those who know HOW to survive will survive. He taught me how to locate fresh water on off shore islands, and in my story, the fat ladies "fish" use panties (the leg holes are sewn up and the apparatus then tied to a branch)to fish! One can find many arrowheads in these parts, and on the offshore islands pieces of conch that were used as chisels by the indigenous. So there's something to be said for the power of The Razor's Edge, and something to be said for owning the faith to know one can manifest what is required when it's truly necessary that one do so. You sound like a good companion by the fireplace!
On a personal note, I have never been drawn to men who spend their lives in office jobs. I like those who have allowed themselves much exploration, time spent off the beaten trails. Even as a child a grade school teacher once asked us what we lived for, or something like that, and I said "adventure!" That was NOT a typical reaction for a girl. I've done Yoga facing the cliffs all over Maui, high in the jungles of Puerto Rico, and facing a stupa at a Buddhist monastery in Nepal. Adventure is VERY important to my soul.
"I've had a little more time lately to post on CD because I've been laid off again and am selling off possessions one by one online."
That is so sad that you're having to sell what you have just to keep afloat. It would be better if all of our local communities got together and put forth local businesses and would even come up with their local currencies for a change. I don't think you'll be alone as Obama allows everything to get worse. The faster unemployment rises, the less chances I hope he has of continuing Dubya's policies of meddling with other nations for oil but I can only hope.
I enjoy your posts too and I too hope to hear from you more often. You're much better than all those rightwing trolls and Obama shills that have been pestering this site lately. I already miss the great posts and debates Thomas More brought here as well as Red Rick and JenniferBedingfield being bold, fierce, and even honest even if a bit too emotional at times. Take care and good luck in your life.
FWIW, my first impression of Michael Moore was as a new staffer at Mother Jones magazine, where he wrote a column called (if memory serves) "Notes of a Shop Rat."
It was long on snark and woefully short on useful information, seeming to be mostly a running monologue on how awful his life was (at about $30/hr + benefits) and how hard it was to find new places at the factory to cop a snooze. As one earning $5/hr under the table at painting and carpentry, with no union to cry to, I felt insulted and demeaned.
If both GM and Mother Jones had fired his worthless a$$, I might have been able to work up some sympathy for the shape they're both in now.
That being said, his documentaries "Fahrenheit 9-11" and "Sicko" have partially redeemed him, while his trashing of a true crusader, Ralph Nader, shows him to be a loose cannon whose primary interest still seems to be himself.
"The glaring stupidity of this policy"
Like the policy of people grabbing for the highest-dollar union job without a second thought about where our society was headed with such stupidity? What if all those stupid people who have worked for GM, Ford, etc, had thought about that during all those years they were raking in the dough as they destroyed our country?
"...a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with." You mean those people who made GM into the monster that it became, without a single thought about the country and society they were destroying in the process? Those people? Same as the ones who work in 'defense' industries, in my book. They're getting what they deserve.
"..when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses..." as if this wasn't obvious back in the '40s and '50s when I was a kid? (Back when my uncle devised a carb that would get 50mpg and GM bought the patent from him - and buried it?
"The fascists were defeated. We are now in a different kind of war..." It's the same war - and the same fascists, who were NEVER defeated in this country. That was the problem...
"the products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction..." And you didn't know that back when they were buying up street-car lines, and then bus lines, to make sure they had a monopoly on transportation? When they let you have unions, to appease the stupid workers as those same workers self-destructed their own society and country?
"...as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline." And the oil companies haven't been doing exactly that for the last nearly 100 years - because the people that were dying lived in other countries, and Americans don't care about them...?
"Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year... Average speed: 165 mph... They have had these high speed trains for nearly 5 decades... The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal." So it took 40 years for you to figure that out? Europe also has bullet trains, convenient shopping and living, and a hell of a lot more freedom than any American - so who won the war, after all? Or did the fascists just manage to keep freedom from coming to this country - and didn't care about the rest of the world - and stupid greedy arrogant Americans slobbered up all that propaganda (BS) because it made them feel superior?
"impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline." Yeah, and already the disabled and elderly can't get volunteer drivers to take them to the hospital, let alone anywhere else - higher gas prices will finish off millions of already endangered people - which is what the fascists always do: eliminate anyone who can't help their bottom line. Hitler started with the disabled - that's how he perfected the method of mass-extermination. Now we hear about ending Social Security COLAs - at a time when food prices, energy, healthcare, and shelter are beyond reach for many already - oh, but they don't count those items as 'necessities' do they? That's the kind of BS Americans go for - let the 'useless' or 'excess population' die out. Even after every economic model shows that raising Social Security would give the largest return on investment dollars to get the economy moving again. But Americans don't believe in wise investments - unlike Europeans (especially Scandinavia) and other modern CIVILIZED countries.
"But Americans don't believe in wise investments - unlike Europeans (especially Scandinavia) and other modern CIVILIZED countries."
That gets to the crux of it.
In my lifetime, the U.S. population has more than doubled. Earth's population has tripled. Natural resources -- potable water, food & fuel -- are declining. Competition for what remains is intensifying as, in corporatist America, the wisdom of coherent cooperation is dismissed as "socialism". How else to justify having 5% of the world's population consume 25% or more of its energy?
This cannot come to a good end.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
All the above union bashing ignores several countervailing hard facts:
(1) It was GM management that originally pushed the idea of "planned obsolescence" while the Japanese, German and other small car importers began to eat our auto industry's lunch. The mistake of the unions wasn't in their wage and benefit demands, but in the fact that they went along with management on planned obsolescence instead of pushing for more competitive, energy efficient, safer car designs--choices, however, ultimately controlled by management, not the unions.
(2) The unions were conned by the Newtzis and Bill and Hillary Clinton into supporting NAFTA. They were told more good jobs would be created by NAFTA in the U.S. than lost to Mexico. This was a deliberate lie from its inception.
(3) NO AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL WORKER CAN COMPETE AGAINST A FOREIGN INDUSTRIAL WORKER DOING THE SAME JOB FOR AROUND A DOLLAR AN HOUR, REGARDLESS OF THEIR BENEFITS PACKAGE, ESPECIALLY IF THE FACTORY OWNERS DON'T HAVE COVER THE COSTS OF OBEYING ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS OR PROVIDING HEALTH CARE. EVEN IF YOU STRIP AMERICAN UNION WORKERS OF ALL THEIR BENEFITS, HEALTH CARE AND PENSION, YOU CANNOT LIVE IN THE U.S. FOR A DOLLAR AN HOUR UNLESS YOU EXPECT FACTORY WORKERS TO LIVE IN TENT CITIES OUTSIDE THE FACTORIES THEY WORK IN.
All you militarist, corporatist union bashers need to get real and ask yourselves why neither dominant political Party will even discuss how to rebuild our industrial middle-class job sector in this country. It's not because we can't do it. It's because the U.S. owners of factories in Mexico and China are raking in the dough-rei-me using dirt cheap foreign labor and trashing foreign ecologies on a scale that could never be competitive, profits-wise, using U.S. labor UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE as long as the "free trade" treaty regime is still in effect without globally enforceable labor and environmental protections.
metel, the unions never supported NAFTA and in fact cost Clinton the midterms by staying home after he broke his promise to them to oppose NAFTA. I see Obama heading down the same road with the bank bailouts. The public is very angry about the bailouts and not blaming Obama - yet. But the midterms are still 1 1/2 years ahead and for now people are taking a wait and see attitude. But they aren't going to be infinitely patient. And little is being done to stop the wave of foreclosures.
Your other points are all well taken. Thank you for your thoughtful post.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
To BeForKids: I've got stacks of old Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report magazines and newspapers from that era and I don't ever remember Bill Clinton promising any American labor unions that he would oppose NAFTA. Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton got into bed together on that one. His wife went out and speechified around the country in support of those treaties on his behalf. The line to the unions was that it would create more good paying jobs in the U.S. than it would lose to Mexico. There was some justifiable grumbling among the union rank & file, but the union leadership basically caved by holding their fire and Clinton was elected to two terms. If you can site any articles or researchable quotations from persons in a position of authority in the unions or the Clinton administration from that period that support what you say I would love to see them.
It's not unusual for the leadership and rank and file to diverge. It was the rank and file who refused to campaign or even vote in the midterms of 1994. They were pretty sore about NAFTA. They do keep coming back to the Democrats, they don't see anywhere else to go. A lot of them did become Reagan Democrats in the 80s, but that didn't do them any good. They figured that out. And then there was Clinton promising to take care of them - the liar. They fell for that until NAFTA. Clinton did promise the unions in his speeches to them he would resist NAFTA but you won't find that in Time. I never believed anything he said anyway. I smelled a rat all along. Just didn't with Obama.
I wouldn't rely too much on the stacks of magazines you refer to. They are notorious for printing what they want people to hear, not what is really happening. My husband's grandmother sent us a subscription to Time for years, I got really fed up. I read a few issues of Newsweek, thought it was more blatant. Time was sneakier. I consider them one step up from The Reader's Digest - a short step. I was getting my information from The Progressive and The Nation.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Army brat is pushing revisionist history and undermining his/her own arguments as well as ignoring several countervailing hard facts:
(1) All those GM union workers from the '30s to the late '80s were unaware, as were 99.99% of Americans that there were global greenhouse gas consequences to their industry's output. That science wasn't mass publicized until 1988.
(2) Gasoline was MUCH cheaper than it is now until the first Arab oil embargo caused it to briefly spike for a while in the early 1970s and then it began to noticeably but still slowly climb in the '90s until the Bush II super-spike after the second invasion of Iraq. I remember .35 cent a gallon gas for years when I was a kid.
(3) The fascists in America, Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy and Imperial Japan were not all "the same," although there were some American business interests who did support the Nazis. Over time, our corporatists have, in my opinion, become gradually more Nazi-like in their mentality (when only a comparatively small percentage of them were in the period from the Beer Hall Putsch to VE Day).
(4) GM, Ford and Chrysler didn't simply "let" their workers have unions. This betrays your lack of knowledge of the often bloody struggles American workers had to engage in to achieve unions. Workers and their families were brutalized and many killed during the labor struggles of the 1920s and 1930s. You ignore the extensively documented horrible working and living conditions of most industrial workers prior to the labor rights movement.
(5) Michael's comment about violence and wars during the end of oil days regards the likely growth in the scale of such wars. Yes, it's easy for now fat and materially glutted developed countries to ignore the already violent struggles for a gallon of gas in many parts of the 3rd World, but that's nothing compared to the global bloodbath that will ensue when those struggles move to the 1st World developed nations--if we don't do everything we possibly can as fast as we can to move to an environmentally sustainable economy. World Wars are a different order of magnitude.
(6) It is neither Michael Moore's nor organized labor's fault that the U.S. didn't plan and implement better mass transportation systems. Organized labor doesn't make those kind of decisions and would have benefited from construction, parts manufacturing & supply and maintenance of a network of bullet trains just as they conversely benefited from ongoing and increasing reliance on automobiles.
(7) Armybrat can't have it both ways: Either gas is cheap and plentiful enough for the 'disabled and elderly [who] can't get volunteer drivers to take them to the hospital' and we continue to pay the enormous present and projected costs of oil/pipeline wars to try to temporarily, artificially keep the cost down, OR we move to an environmentally sustainable economy as Michael Moore suggests as fast as we can. Picking on Moore you are creating your own false enemy.
(8) It was GM management that originally pushed the idea of "planned obsolescence" while the Japanese, German and other small car importers began to eat our auto industry's lunch. The mistake of the unions wasn't in their wage and benefit demands, but in the fact that they went along with management on planned obsolescence instead of pushing for more competitive, energy efficient, safer car designs--choices, however, ultimately controlled by management, not the unions.
(9) The unions were conned by the Newtzis and Bill and Hillary Clinton into supporting NAFTA. They were told more good jobs would be created by NAFTA in the U.S. than lost to Mexico. This was a deliberate lie from its inception.
(10) NO AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL WORKER CAN COMPETE AGAINST A FOREIGN INDUSTRIAL WORKER DOING THE SAME JOB FOR AROUND A DOLLAR AN HOUR, REGARDLESS OF THEIR BENEFITS PACKAGE, ESPECIALLY IF THE FACTORY OWNERS DON'T HAVE COVER THE COSTS OF OBEYING ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS OR PROVIDING HEALTH CARE. EVEN IF YOU STRIP AMERICAN UNION WORKERS OF ALL THEIR BENEFITS, HEALTH CARE AND PENSION, YOU CANNOT LIVE IN THE U.S. FOR A DOLLAR AN HOUR UNLESS YOU EXPECT FACTORY WORKERS TO LIVE IN TENT CITIES OUTSIDE THE FACTORIES THEY WORK IN.
All you union bashers need to get real and ask yourselves why neither dominant political Party will even discuss how to rebuild our industrial middle-class job sector in this country. It's not because we can't do it. It's because the U.S. owners of factories in Mexico and China are raking in the dough-rei-me using dirt cheap foreign labor and trashing foreign ecologies on a scale that could never be competitive, profits-wise, using U.S. labor UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE as long as the "free trade" treaty regime is still in effect without globally enforceable labor and environmental protections.
metal,
Good Post. I have a bit of a problem with your first point, though.
"(1) All those GM union workers from the '30s to the late '80s were unaware, as were 99.99% of Americans that there were global greenhouse gas consequences to their industry's output. That science wasn't mass publicized until 1988."
That is true but you left out an important point: the geopolitical consequences of our automobile dependence. We all became aware of our dependence on Persian Gulf oil in the mid-70s. Many people warned that our military-industrial complex would use that dependence as an excuse to meddle in those countries and that is exactly what happened. In 1979-80, the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis made us aware of the consequences of past meddling in the region. Jimmy Carter made it explicit in 1980 when he declared the Persian Gulf oil fields to be "vital to our national security" and vowed to go to war, if necessary, to defend our access to them.
Yet we did nothing, even as our military-industrial complex aided both sides in the Iran-Iraq war, shot down a passenger airliner full of innocent civilians in 1988 and went to war in the Gulf in 1991. Our failure to make the necessary adjustments to our lifestyle is, to a large extent, responsible for the mess we find ourselves in now.
I read an interesting post in the Guardian's blog last week:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/may/28/threat-civil-liberties-consumption
It's not entirely true but it's not entirely false either.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
While it is true that in the mid-'70s many Americans became aware of our dependence on oil flowing through the Persian Gulf, many more were living very well and didn't pay much attention. There had been no major oil wars yet so the full geo-political ramifications had not yet been linked in their minds to that region in terms of consequences beyond fluctuations in gasoline prices. Most Americans in that period failed to even link gas price fluctuations with the ongoing costs of the Vietnam War in terms of the resulting inflation of the post-Nixon period and later blamed Jimmy Carter for it. LBJ and Nixon had more to do with that inflation than Ford or Carter. They quickly forgot Gerald Ford's little "Whip Inflation Now" buttons (about all he did to combat it) and swallowed Rush Limbaugh's canonization of Reagan as the one who defeated the "stagflation" of Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter presciently tried to warn America about being too dependent on imported oil and had solar panels installed on the roof of the White House and told everyone to conserve energy and lower their thermostats a few degrees and he was roundly derided and scoffed at by the Washington D.C. Beltway and New York media establishment. Reagan came in, dismantled the solar panels, gas was still cheap: The nation went back to sleep until Gulf War One. Now we're a nation of somnambulist recidivists.
Excuse me, but I am NOT a union-basher. I believe - as my father, a contractor, did - that unions are very important, but need to be weened away from their criminal ties and internal corruption.
As for 'all those GM union workers from the '30s to the late '80s' - they could see what was happening in this country. Most of them in the early years already knew what was going on in Europe, and certainly Japan, because those countries were occupied by the US. They'd have to be awful blind not to notice the difference.
I remember when gas was 15 cents a gallon - and my uncle invented that 50mpg carb - and he wasn't the only one to come up with such inventions. Anyone working in the auto industry KNEW the auto-makers were intentionaly screwing up in order to make higher profits. They could have gone on strike for more than just more money and better benefits - they could have considered the rest of the people in this country, and in the rest of the world. My family didn't like it - after all, they'd just fought a war with the Nazis over the same problem - fossil fuels. Arrogant Americans laughed at Europeans driving Vespas and VWs - whose laughing now? And we knew when railroads were 'railroaded' that something was amiss - along with all those convenient disappearing street-cars. You're living in denial.
If the auto manufacturers didn't 'let' the workers have unions, then why isn't Wal-Mart and other Big Box chains unionized today? Give me a break. Auto workers were played like an old fiddle.
And yes, I CAN have it both ways. The most unfortunate deserve a break after the hell our society has sustained for the last 100 years because people with power - which was once in the unions - did NOTHING to stop the slide into fascism. Anyone who can't provide profits for the oligarchs can either go to prison (and provide slave-labor, as in Nazi Germany) or get stuck in institutions where their lives are micro-managed even more than most prisons. You can judge a society by the way it treats its most vulnerable population - and the US flunks out badly (as in LAST of the OECD countries).
By the time NAFTA came along, it was already too late for anythng but an ugly war. And I'm afraid that's still coming down the pike, sooner or later - it will once more be a matter of survival. Now those bloody union battles will have to be fought all over again - and by EVERYONE and FOR EVERYONE - not just a few elite union members. That's where this train left the rails - special benefits for 'special' people - that's neither a level playing field nor an egalitarian society. (I've lived in 'Right to Work' states - and they are not only impoverished, but sliding ever further down in every important human need.)
Being a conservative - not a fascist - means embracing 'enlightened self-interest' - which my father emphasized all our lives. It means living modestly, being honest, generous, responsible, disciplined, cautious, moral, polite, and a whole lot of other 'virtues' - that doesn't include GREED, which, like jealousy, is a VICE. With enlightened self-interest, you make no enemies - because you treat everyone fairly, and for those who receive an 'unfair' lot in life, you try to help them live a dignified respectable life. (That way they don't turn into criminals just to survive.) You could learn a lot from a traditional conservative - but you seem too angry and defensive to want to learn from anyone. I hope life treats you better - so you can treat others better. Another conservative truism - treat others as you wish to be treated yourself - that promotes civilization (and civilized debate, which is needed to reach a consensus in a free society - which we don't have.)
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Yeah, you are a union basher; you deal in dumbed down generalities; you lack any clear supporting historical references to support your contentions and what few historical trends you try and fail to mix'n'match are as scrambled up as your polemics. Moreover, you are conflating the fairy tale Randian notion of "enlightened self-interest"--which has never existed on a significant scale under a capitalist industrialist ethos since before the first Gilded Age--simultaneously with traditional American conservatism and, tragicomically and pretentiously, lack of greed and jealousy (I'm assuming you mean jealousy in the sense of materially coveting someone else's possessions). There never has been any such thing as "enlightened self interest" that existed as a functioning variant of American conservatism with programmatic or other large scale societal results to measure it by. Henry Ford's early desire to pay his workers enough for them to be able to purchase the products they made is the closest approach and he was roundly damned by his fellow conservatives for that idea. There is is no such thing as the Easter bunny or "free markets" and never has been, either. Taxation and trade import tariffs have coexisted with government throughout written history.
The period in which the steel factories, coal mines and auto industry were unionized in the U.S. were an entirely different period of U.S. history from the era of Walmart and other contemporary Big Box chains. You should do a great deal more reading about that period, roughly from 1920 to 1942, before spouting off comparing the auto workers' unions--industrial manufacturing labor unions that organized American workers who produced their goods in America overwhelmingly for domestic American consumption--to Walmart, a massive retail import and distribution chain that is critically dependent on the labor of foreign industrial workers. Very different period of history, very different business model. The Chinese totalitarian government in recent years allowed some pseudo-unionization of Chinese workers in Walmart owned plants in China, but these Chinese "unions" are government controlled, not worker controlled. Walmart has intensively crushed all efforts toward worker unionization of their stores in the U.S.
The political center of American politics in the Great Depression was far to the Left of where it is now, even after the recent full-spectrum debacle of the Bush-Cheney Junta. Americans nowadays have a greatly reduced sense of solidarity or the common good or how to best 'Promote the General Welfare' as a famous Founding Father put it. Decades of conservative propaganda have inculcated the masses into believing that any such ideas about organizing for the collective good are "Marxist" or "socialist"--even though most contemporary Americans couldn't explain the difference between doctrinaire Marxism, failed attempts at State Marxism, doctrinaire socialism, democratic socialism, progressivism, liberalism, neo-liberalism (fascism lite more corporatist than militarist), conservatism, neo-conservatism (fascism medium more militarist than corporatist), patrio-psychotic master race Nazi fascism and all the many variants of all these systems. Not one in one hundred thousand Americans has ever heard of participatory economics or any other more recent economic/political theory that re-asserts the idea of the commons, the commonwealth or the common good.
Americans, alas, are now so ignorant and brainwashed that since the economic mudslide last November they are turning on each other and their own families and communities in record numbers rather than organize to confront their true enemies.
Military suicide rates and their cause are the true shame of this particular period of Amurkan history. Conservative business, political (in both major Parties) and media interests and their conservative business cronies launched, praised and profited from these criminal wars of botched occupation in order to control oil and pipelines. GREED writ large IS American conservatism and it and its interests now pervade both major Parties and every federal institution and branch of government.
Traditional American conservatives over a hundred years ago promoted selective import tariffs and other careful "trade protectionism" and would not have tolerated the "free trade" treaty regime that contemporary American industrial workers are unable to compete with by design. The newspapers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are filled with various pro- and con battles over tariffs, but nothing like NAFTA or the WTO existed or would have been tolerated to exist. It would have been considered unpatriotic on its face and "Buy American for America!" would've been the battle cry. For good reason. This country and the developed nations of Europe became economic powerhouses in large part because of trade protectionism and domestic self-reliance on domestic industrial production for domestic use and export. That is what made us the world's greatest creditor until we stood that model on its head and decided to export our manufacturing capacity, idle the rest and import everything from baby bottles to cars to coffins--too much of it from American owned factories in Mexico, China and elsewhere.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Your notion of two sets of gas prices--one for the elderly and disabled and another one closer to market price for everyone else is half-way to a good idea. There are some other groups I would include on the cheaper priced tier and this idea could be implemented with a special gasoline purchasing card. But it emulates entirely a large scale LIBERAL PROGRESSIVE program idea and not a CONSERVATIVE one.
None of the nationwide programs that actually helped elderly, sick, disabled, war-maimed, indigent, minors, etc., challenged groups in this country on a significant scale were EVER the result of CONSERVATISM, traditional, neo-conservative or the fictional version you attribute to your father. Those were his personal values he miss-attributed to ideological conservatism because he wanted to believe it was so. He, like most rank & file conservatives, failed to grasp the essential nature and purpose of partisan conservatism: To concentrate money, social and political power in the hands of a few old money families at the top of the income ladder so that neither the middle- nor lower classes can attain enough money or power to interfere with the prerogatives of the ruling elite with annoying things like taxation and higher government expenditures on programs that actually do help the less fortunate.
Some latter day moderate conservatives (like Nixon) grudgingly went along with big government, big programs while the old school Democrats were still the predominant Party--until the Reagan Regression began our conservative dumb-down slide backwards into Bush-Cheney feces flinging as anti-kulture made dominant.
Well-known, well-documented nationwide, big government LIBERAL or PROGRESSIVE programs included the public school system, public sanitation (garbage pickup & sewage systems), public health measures and/or vaccinations against yellow fever, typhoid, German measles (rubella), polio and other diseases, food and drug inspectors, elevator inspectors, the WPA, the CCC, Social Security, the Rural Electrification Act, the original GI Bill's housing and education loans, Medicare, the Civil Rights acts, Food Stamps, WIC Vouchers, General Assistance to families, etc. Conservatives scoffed at all of this en masse: Even Ivy League academic conservatives scoffed at the original GI Bill of Rights that raised the level of home ownership in this country from 1 out of three adults prior to WWII to 2 out of three within 20 years, quintupled the number of engineers, multiplied the numbers of Americans with degrees in business by seven and helped trigger an explosion in the creation of small and medium sized businesses and related employment.
The first known mention of the idea of 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' was made by the Chinese political scholar and technocrat, Confucius, in his Analects in the 5th century B.C., not some fictitious American "conservative." There was a similar doctrine in the Hillel school of Judaism that influenced the generation of Jewish teachers that included Jesus Christ--one of the most socialist religious figures to ever preach. You might have heard of him: He was persecuted by conservative Jewish religious and banking interests for adversely impacting their bottom line when he threw the money changers out of the Temple. He was sold to the Roman garrison for the conservative price of 30 pieces of silver.
You could learn a lot from a traditional progressive about the difference between unsupported rhetoric and popular and successful programs that have a decades long history of ACTUALLY WORKING to improve the lives of the less fortunate. To me you are just another confused, conflicted pseudo-conservative gas flare and I'm sick to death of the lot of you. You and your "conservative" apologist ilk have given too much aid and comfort to our true enemies and emboldened too many corporatists to gradually infiltrate and destroy the Democratic Party from the top down--taking the country and the planet with it.
Your kind never intelligently distinguish between Poverty Welfare (socialism for the poor) and Corporate Welfare (socialism for the rich), and you never mention the outrageous expenditures for military socialism dominated by conservative interests and conservative no-bid contractor cronies who have zero strategic successes to point at. Most conservatives tongue-bathe Israel no matter how heinous its post-Yitzhak Rabbin bloodbaths. Yeah, I'm angry at the last 30 years of wasted opportunities, the present and likely future state of affairs. This country was created by a bunch of angry farmers, lawyers and merchants who organized against an aristocracy. Does that bother you?
You sound a little hot under the collar to me, yourself. Only you spew fairy tales instead of suggesting any nuts & bolts ideas based on previous programs and plans with a successful track record like the ones Michael Moore suggests that were based on rapid and successful manufacturing plant conversions--some with unionized workforces--in the 1940s. Even FDR had big skirmishes with some of the unions, but he recognized the necessity of their essential function and purpose and didn't slam ALL of them because some of them had corrupt leadership. Corruption creeps into all powerful institutions: It's the informed struggle to counter-balance it that is key. But labor unions are only 12% of the contemporary U.S. workforce and no longer anywhere near the level of power brokers the Republican Right self-servingly pretends them to be.
Germany has more powerful Unions, much stricter labor regulations and is the worlds largest exporters of goods. They are 1/20th the landmass of the USA, 1/15th the population of China and still export more manufactured goods then either.
Mercedes and BMW seem to be doing ok.
How is it Germany can compete with China and the USA can not?
You should check out Washington Metro and VRE. No unions in those metro businesses but lots of money mismanagement scandals on WMATA. If metro rails had labor unions our public transportation infrastructure would be a lot better and would have expanded.
Last year, after gas prices suddenly dropped, public interest in metro suddenly dropped too. Despite our mass transits businesses being strictly labor union free, the prices just keep shooting up while nothing gets improved. The auto union workers ought to be given a chance to work at the metro stations all across the country and be given good pay and benefits but from the folks I talked to at metro, most of them are very rightwingish in their attitudes and want to keep corporate fascism that way. They still think that more workers means lower wages and less productivity. I cannot believe that even the employees working in WMATA are this selfish and rude.
don't know about VRE, but the WMATA _is_ unionized.
Interesting. I came across a few people who happened to be WMATA employees but they gave no indication of their being union members. I wished I had come across enough of the WMATA employees to know for sure but with the few that I did speak to, the way they behaved led me to believe that they weren't unionized. I thought unions and their members had some sympathy for workers and welcoming in new workers but I guess not always. Some people have discussed on this board that today's unions are nothing like yesterday's unions. Maybe they're correct to say that unlike yesterday's unions, today's unions are all about the money and nothing else. If that is the case, then I don't see any chance of labor unions recovering. It's becoming clearer as to why labor union leaders and most of their rank and file gave no voice to Kucinich, Nader, or Mckinney, but instead fell for Obama and Clinton despite their poor support for labor unions.
"I thought unions and their members had some sympathy for workers and welcoming in new workers but I guess not always.."
Aside from a few "activist" unions - the UE and (in an exploited sort of way) the SEIU, most US average union workers these days are absolutely NOT into any kind of solidarity stuff. They consider their unions strictly like they would a club or an insurance plan - dues paid, benefits returned - and if the union folded up the day they retired, thay couldn't care less (as lo9ng as the retirement survived, that is). A hang gliding buddy of mine who is an IBEW electrician, is even a big libertarian/Ayn Rand type.
They only remember what their union was for when it faces a serious crisis - like the ATU here in Pittsburgh is facing. i have heard plenty of good radical analysis from bus drivers out here.
I was listening to a bus driver talk to his buddy about his upcoming two-week vacation. You sure can't get that outside of a unionized job, unless you're management.
Are you talking about a two-week job guarenteed without having to collect the hours needed for it?
For my job, it would take me 1 year to collect enough hours for 2 weeks vacation and that assumes I don't get sick, have to take a day off due to an unforeseen circumstance, or don't get laid off again. Plenty of jobs in the DC area but more temporary positions and I have been getting used to doing without benefits when I was on temp. Usually, I would land a 3-6 month job in DC or Arlington but after a couple of those, I'm glad I finally got a full time job that's not as much torture and is more employee friendly and social even if it pays a little less.
I don't know the details about union pay and benefits since I never got to be one. Maybe that's because I was a southerner first in the deep south having lived in Louisiana and later moving to Northern VA 9 years ago. Maybe I should consider being a federal employee or beg my husband to consider being one himself. I wonder if that there's anything to gain from it.
The idea tht someone considers 2 weeks of vacation a generous benefit is scary. Europeans all take 4 to 6 weeks off a year.
You should seriously consider federal employment. You earn 104 hours of sick leave per year, and 104 hours of vacation per year - increasing to 156 hours of vacation at 5 years and 208 hours at 15 years. Pay is very competetive with private industry - and much better than private industry at the lower clerical/technician grades. Federal workplaces are wonderfully egalitarian, relaxed places. Medical insurance is not free, but the employee share of the premium is reasonable, only some union plans are better.
The Fed. government employs every occupation and profession I can think of - and includes some very sharp scientists and engineers (and not just in "defense"). I am a civil engineer for Dept of Labor (MSHA) myself. Becaue I am no longer in a dog-eat-dog competetive for-profit environment - where all work must be done quickly and shoddily, I can improve my level of engineering skill in a way that was not possible in private industry.
Yes, i know, you have probably heard that the profit motive is supposed to encourage excellence and quality. That's why government should privatize everything. Bullshit.
Probably. I just have a paid internship, with not much above minimum wage pay and no benefits myself.
Ouch. That's not good considering that you live in the heart of DC. Have you lived in this area before or is this just your college years?
I always say to anyone who moves into DC that when it comes to jobs, they're always there and this area is as recession proof as it can get. The dirty secret about job growth in Northern VA by the way is that there's been a lot of job shoving into the areas closer to Washington but there has been some improvement recently to spread it out. For example, 75% of the employeed workers in Fauquier County travel to and work in Fairfax County, Arlington County, and Washington DC since there's virtually no employment opportunities in that rural barron land. Loudoun County, on the other hand, doesn't look as bad and in fact there are plans to bring up local job growth and force Fairfax, Arlington, and Prince William counties into some competition. If you plan on living in the area after graduating in case you don't live here otherwise, let me know. I can help you with Northern VA. I'm not so good with Maryland.
P.S.:
I have coworkers who travel all the way from Fredericksburg to Arlington/DC via I95 N or even from out west from Shenandoah and even West Virgina to Arlington/DC via I81 N and then 66E. It generally gets cheaper the further out but taking 1.5 to 3 hours is the price to pay. There is VRE from Fredericksburg on up and I hear that they are planning to extend it to Richmond, VA. Going west though, it's still limited to Prince William County. Peak oil will likely force improvements in all directions to be expedited.
I just graduated college, this internship is my first *real* job I guess you could say. I live a pretty low-cost lifestyle, renting a room in a rowhouse just within the DC limits, a short walk from downtown Silver Springs. I'm trying to find a permanent job similar to what I do now, but I've been so busy I haven't done any serious looking yet.
Finding a permanent job can be difficult. Sometimes, those temp/contract to hire recruiting agencies can be very helpful. Starting out as contractor/temp for 3-6 months and then going permanent is often the way it works. Good luck in your job search. Make your graduate degree count. You don't want to take too long to find a permanent job given this economy and that the longer the wait, the harder it can be to make it in the job market.
I just finished my undergrad, actually. I haven't made up my mind about grad school yet.
True, I think this is Moore's best writing too. Great Idea's.
I suggest that Michael Moore and every other American read Edwin Black's book, INTERNAL COMBUSTION which gives a stunning history lesson in how it came about that we are addicted to oil and drive internal combusion engine cars when it was clear from the very beginning that electric automobiles and light rail vehicles made the most sense. It is a story of a criminal conspiracy entered into by GM, Big Oil and other players to cheat Americans insuring that money was diverted away from good ideas and into bad ones so that relatively few people could get very rich at the expense of everyone else. The conspiracy continues today. Moore has some good ideas but a good understanding of how we were cheated and continue to be cheated might help protect us from this fraud continuing or morphing in something just as bad.
I didn't read the book, but both my father and uncle worked for GM after the war (after my father gave up his military career because of the fascist ideology he saw infecting everything in this country). My father pointed out to us how this fascist monopoly game was played - even when we were too young to really understand - and taught us how fascists were a dire threat to true conservatives.
You have it right!