Anybody read Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism? She basically talks about how the ideologues that looked to Milton Friedman as their guru looked to the opportunities created by disasters to jump in and put in place solutions that they had been wanting to implement for decades. A great example is the way that 9/11 was used to pass hundreds of bills that they had been trying to get ****** for over 10 years - and knew that only a very few politicians would oppose anything that was labeled anti-terrorist no matter what was in it. Hell, they didn't even read them before they ****** them.
The whole situation with the auto industry brings this to mind. Here you've got politicians like Mitt Romney positively gleeful over the prospects of all 3 big auto companies filing for bankruptcy just a few months after he was pledging while campaigning in Michigan that he'd do everything he could do save or restore every job possible. The real aim I see is to just destroy the labor movement in this country - to knock the legs out of every bit of protection that the labor movement had gained for workers in this country through decades of struggle in one fell swoop.
These people are willing to see an industry go down that directly affects the employment of approx 10% of the people in this country - not just the people that work for the auto industry, not just the dealers, not just the auto parts suppliers, but they are the biggest market for electronics, for steel, for rubber. I've seen figures estimating the cost to the US economy of bankruptcy for the big 3 at 180 billion dollars in the first year.
It scares the hell out of me what's being risked here.
The whole situation with the auto industry brings this to mind. Here you've got politicians like Mitt Romney positively gleeful over the prospects of all 3 big auto companies filing for bankruptcy just a few months after he was pledging while campaigning in Michigan that he'd do everything he could do save or restore every job possible. The real aim I see is to just destroy the labor movement in this country - to knock the legs out of every bit of protection that the labor movement had gained for workers in this country through decades of struggle in one fell swoop.
These people are willing to see an industry go down that directly affects the employment of approx 10% of the people in this country - not just the people that work for the auto industry, not just the dealers, not just the auto parts suppliers, but they are the biggest market for electronics, for steel, for rubber. I've seen figures estimating the cost to the US economy of bankruptcy for the big 3 at 180 billion dollars in the first year.
It scares the hell out of me what's being risked here.
