The Flow of Consciousness

I received today an email from Working America, some kind of subgroup of the AFL-CIO which I unknowingly signed up for when a visitor rang my doorbell during the summer months.

Congress is moving toward an agreement to provide emergency bridge loans for domestic automakers, but significant roadblocks remain. These loans are urgently needed to avoid a collapse of our U.S. auto industry, which would send shockwaves across our entire economy and deepen the current recession.

To protect America’s workers in this economic crisis, we need your immediate help. Members of Congress need to hear from you directly. Call your senators today and make sure they get the message: Provide emergency bridge loans to the auto industry.

Call Bob Casey and Arlen Specter via the Capitol Switchboard today at (202) 224-3121.

To make your call as effective as possible, keep your message short and direct and begin by making it clear that you support providing an emergency bridge loan to the U.S. auto industry to protect American jobs. Communicating this simple message is enough, but if you’d like to provide additional information for why you support an emergency bridge loan, here are some talking points you can use.

* According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute:

o Nearly 2 million jobs have been slashed already this year, and we could lose 3 million more if emergency loans for the auto industry are not approved.

o If the auto industry is not rescued, jobs could be lost in all 50 states, including workers at parts suppliers and in dozens of supporting industries, not just workers in the Midwest.

* Any emergency bridge loan should include requirements that will protect the taxpayers, and ensure accountability and the long-term viability of the domestic auto companies.

I felt compelled to respond, both here and through the reply address.

And while we’re at it, we can bail out the CRT monitor makers and bail out the fax machine makers. While we’re at that, we could wish we would have bailed out the carriage industry in the early 20th century.

The Big Three have failed to innovate; they have failed to adapt to their circumstances and surroundings. Natural selection says that these companies should feel the consequences of their failures and go the way of the dodo. There are more useful, acclimated birds in the sky these days.

I feel for the workers, whose livelihoods and families depend on their income. I feel for the retirees, who rely on their pension income. However, the fault for this will lay in the hands of management and the stockholders. It will be they who must answer to their employees, perhaps by cutting their own salaries down to a more responsible level.

If the government must intercede, it would be far more worth the $34 billion to give new car vouchers to any taxpayer with a car older than so many years. Imagine the jobs that would be created! There would need to be more salesmen. There would need to be more gas stations, too, so that increases the number of construction workers and suppliers. There would need to be more people to recycle junked cars. There would need to be more people to administer all of these peoples at all levels. Entire industries could be created overnight, while the Big Three keep their money coming just the way they’ve always gotten it: from the responsible, always-right consumer, the one looking for the most car for the least price.

Really, what the American autoworker needs to do is hold management and the stockholders responsible for the financial mess, but prevent them from asking the federal government for a handout.

Update 2008-12-10 0903: Treehugger has an excellent fake advertisement for the bail out which so perfectly describes the feeling of the responsible American public.