Reluctance to Help Detroit Reeks of Class Bias (WaPo)

[Octafish]

The writer understands the real issue: Some people feel they have been enobled to lord it over the rest of us.

Isn't that un-American?



An honest wage for an honest day's work is what modern manufacturing is was all about.

Reluctance to Help Detroit Reeks of Class Bias

By Warren Brown
Sunday, December 7, 2008; G02

It has happened repeatedly in the last several weeks -- well-paid, well-known journalists questioning the wisdom of "bailing out Detroit," of helping an industry whose union-represented workers have substantially better wages and benefits than other manual or skilled laborers, or, more precisely, who are better compensated than their nonunion counterparts working at foreign-owned rival companies building cars and trucks in the United States.

The questions are tinged with outrage and ridicule: Why should Americans who earn less, have inferior pension and health-care plans, help the United Auto Workers union? Why can't the UAW be satisfied with the same pay packages given at Honda, or with an even less-expensive compensation agreement for workers at the Hyundai assembly plant in Montgomery, Ala.?

The queries often come from people who earn substantially more than the estimated $71,000 annually in wages and benefits paid to UAW members. They come from people who, having reached upper-middle-class status by virtue of their college educations and communication skills, certainly wouldn't settle for earning less.

So, why are the questions being asked?

Might I suggest class bias?

There is a feeling in this country -- apparent in the often condescending, dismissive way Detroit's automobile companies have been treated on Capitol Hill -- that people who work with their hands and the companies that employ them are inferior to those who work with their minds and plow profit from information. How else to explain the clearly disparate treatment given to companies such as Citigroup and General Motors?

CONTINUED...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/05/AR2008120502198.html

The writer closes with a pair of excellent, rhetorical questions.

Let me add one more: Once all the good jobs are gone from the United States, who'll be able to afford to buy what you do for a living?

[Barack_America]

1. K&R and an A-fucking-men to boot.

Class bias is exactly the issue here.

[Octafish]

18. Funny how the elite's loyal servants feel they'll find favor with their masters.

They don't know or have forgotten how fast Kenny Boy Lay threw the ENRON big shots under the bus.

Larry Chin puts class war into perspective, another operation by Capitalism's Invisible Army:

Enron: ultimate agent of the American empire

by Larry Chin
February 2002
Online Journal

Contents

* Cold Warriors in suits

* Extorting and racketeering in America

* The looting of Harvard

* Enron's past overseas adventures: collusion and exploitation

* Enron, the Bush administration, and the Central Asian war

* Enron, Halliburton, Bush and bin Laden

* The cover-up that no one is talking about

In portraying Enron as a "scandal", and as an isolated case of
overheated capitalism and "unusual political influence", the
mainstream American corporate media and congressional
investigators have studiously hidden the truth: Enron, like many
multinational corporations, has long functioned as an operational
arm of the US government, the ruling financial elite and as a
weapon of economic, political, and territorial hegemony.

The Enron scandal, arguably the biggest financial and political
crime in modern history, exposes a terminal malignancy at the heart
of world politics, and global capitalism itself.


Cold Warriors in suits

In a "free market world" in which (1) the goals of the state,
corporations, world financial bodies (World Trade Organization,
World Bank and IMF) and the national security apparatus
(intelligence agencies and military) are indistinguishable, (2)
these groups plan and conduct operations cooperatively, and (3)
government and business elites (linked by longtime social ties)
move seamlessly between public and private sectors, the hydra that
is Enron is nightmarishly uncontroversial --- and quintessentially
American.

Consider the company's leadership:

* Enron CEO Kenneth Lay was a Pentagon official during the
Vietnam War, and a friend of the Bush family for decades.

* Frank Wisner Jr., a board member of the subsidiary Enron Oil
& Gas, has intimate CIA ties, and is the son of former CIA
deputy Director Frank Wisner Sr., who was present at the
creation of the CIA.

* Board member and finance committee chairman Herbert "Pug"
Winokur is a long-time Washington and Wall Street insider,
intimately tied to military and intelligence communities.
Winokur is the CEO of the private Capricorn Holdings.
Capricorn is the lead investor of DynCorp. He was the
chairman of DynCorp's board of from 1987 to 1997, and remains
a DynCorp board member and chair of its compensation
committee. Winokur's Capricorn Holdings was used as an
investment vehicle in NHP, which from 1987 to 1997 was linked
to massive HUD housing fraud and money laundering.

Enron's symbiotic relationship to the CIA/Pentagon-based
Bush/Cheney oligarchy is well documented. As a pioneer of energy
deregulation during his administration, George H.W. Bush virtually
created Enron, and paved the way for its meteoric growth. And, as
David Walsh wrote, "to speak of `connections' or `intimate ties'
between Enron and the Bush regime nearly misses the point. To a
large extent, the present administration is an extension of the
Enron board of directors".

CONTINUED...

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/ultAgent.txt

Those who are connected to the Empire think they will do all right. And the closer they are to the Emperor, the better they'll do. Like us, We the People who are the cannon fodder and the taxpaying mopes left holding the bill, they're only safe as long as they're of use.

[JVS]

2. "The house negro always looked out for his master"-- Malcolm X

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znQe9nUKzvQ

[Octafish]

20. I'd hope those in the field would wake up those at home from their Stockholm Syndrome-induced stupor

Thank you for the video, JVS. We are really in it. If enough know what's what, we have a chance.

Those crazy baldheads.

We got to chase those crazy baldheads out of town.

[notadmblnd]

3. That's the point I've been trying to make

The potential loss of up to 4 million jobs means a lot of those newspapers aren't going to be bought any longer. Where will the writers ply their trade then? What the hoity toity don't realize is that their jobs are tied to this also. If they think it's not; then they're in for a rude awakening.

[ellie]

4. Nice!

Thanks for posting this! My dad was a union glassworker for 38 years. Because of the benefits he received, all eight of us kids were able to live in a house, eat food, go to a tuition-based Catholic school, and college if we wanted it.

Allowing the automakers to fail is stupid and crazy.

[madrchsod]

5. ..as soon as the workers had rights and made more than the management class

the workers had to be crushed.

entire industries have left this country is due to the fact the american wanted a decent wage and rights.

take a look at the stuff in your house..tv,appliances,clocks,bikes,stereos,etc,etc...nothing made in the usa. 35 years ago they were.

[BeFree]

6. It is pervasive in our society

We've been brainwashed. Even tho I am a working man I find myself sometimes looking down my nose at someone who works at a lower level. Most times I catch myself doing so.

What makes me do this? What makes me subconsciously look down at some, and look up to others when consciously I know better?

It has to be the education in the schools that does this. A by-product of the capitalist system whereby each is pushed to want to be 'somebody' greater so that we earn more so that we keep pushing the system higher and higher.

Methinks a better system would be that in which the lowest workers would be paid a higher wage than those who actually do the least amount of physical labor.

[w4rma]

8. That's a dumb system. (nt)

[BeFree]

13. You're right

It is a dumb system that divides one citizen from another. Being that that is precisely what the present day system does, what solution can you present?

[blonndee]

21. I always thought that pay should be based on how few people were willing to do it,

instead of the other way around.

Executives don't want to clean the toilets in their posh building? Then the custodian ought to be paid more than they are.

The consumers who don't work in a slaughterhouse don't want to slaughter their own meat? Then the slaughterhouse workers ought to earn more than they do.

Citizens don't want to see dogs and cats being gassed to death or otherwise euthanized at the pound? Then the people who do that ought to earn more than they do.

And so on and so forth. Makes sense to me.

[TahitiNut]

26. So, I guess that means grunts under fire in Afghanistan could be rich? (Blackwater agrees.)

Remember the Golden Rule: People with the gold make the rules.

[blonndee]

27. Weird question, because one of my oldest friends and ex-fiance

is right there in Afghanistan, and he's there because of money. He's career army, and doesn't want to be there, but how can he just "retire" (quit) so close to real retirement? This is his sixth deployment - five to the big A, one to Iraq. He's literally trapped, just hoping he can make it until he retires. And, he says, even if he doesn't make it, at least his daughter will be taken care of. And if he DOES make it, he says, it's all good. He'll have health care and retirement for life, as long as he is able to work in the private sector too. (We'll see. I hope he does. He certainly has earned it.)

He's army, not Blackwater, but so broke that combat pay is making it so he can pay his bills and help pay for his daughter to go to college. Barely.

[TahitiNut]

28. That's part of why I support Universal Service.

It's criminal that so few are being required to do so much for a lie that we aren't motivated enough to correct.

[sufrommich]

7. And that is the ugly truth of it. Blue collar union

workers don't "deserve" what they have. Great editorial. k & r.

[formercia]

9. Grover Norquist and the Free Trade Mafia win again.

This is their chance to kill the UAW once and for all.

[madmom]

10. Great article.. Thanks!

[Omaha Steve]

11. Right on target

Was going to post this until I saw it was up. Thank you.

K&R!

[BrklynLiberal]

12. Bailout for white collars, bot no help for blue collars.

[Odin2005]

14. Or as Ed Schultz would say, " Those who shower before work get bailed out...

... while those who shower AFTER work get the shaft".

[BrklynLiberal]

15. Yep. Zactly...

[pinto]

16. Well done article. Thanks for the post.

:kick:

[northernlights]

17. bullshit...

Refusal would be because of class bias.

Reluctance is because the same CEOs who squandered $50B in the last year alone to lobby congress to protect gas guzzling, polluting SUVs and Hummers and refused to adapt to changing needs, now have the effing audacity to try to hold us all up for $50B to keep their obscene incomes rolling in.

And as of today, they had the effing gall to start running paid t.v. commercials trying to influence ordinary folks into supporting loaning them $50B.

I'll bet I'm not alone when I say that I'll support a bridge loan 110% IF and WHEN it includes canning the current management that drove their freakin' hummers off a cliff and replacing them with people who can and will retool the Big 3 for the 21st century. Translation: produce energy efficient or, even better, green cars and mass transit....or die.

[Chisox08]

24. The same thing could be said about

AIG, Bank of America and the other big Wall St. firms. Their CEO ran those companies into the ground and we rushed to giove them houndreds of billions of dollars. Congress didn't ask them did they fly in on a private jet. This is about delivering the final deathblow to UAW and to send a message to the other unions in America.

[Captain Hilts]

19. A real double standard is at play. nt

[agincourt]

22. The old bumper stickers were,

"Live better work union". I always thought it should be "Live like a human, work union".

[anonymous171]

23. K&R

:kick:

[amborin]

25. Sunday NY Times article says just the opposite