Well we have moved ever closer to government owned enterprise, what with the bailouts to AIG, GE, and untold banks. We have moved ever closer to bailing out our auto industry without fixing the problems which caused the industry to reach this precipice, little available credit, falling home prices and during the last thirty years a UAW stranglehold on the Detroit Three. We have put enough money in play with TARP and other Federal Reserve actions, that we can expect run away inflation in two to three years. Post election surveys indicated that a good portion of the electorate does not know which party is in charge in Congress, who the Speaker of the House is, what party she is with, or who Harry Reid is and what party he is with!
Our Representatives in Congress have attended to their constituencies quite well. You know, those are the people and companies who gave them oodles of money for their campaigns, and not the voters of their District or State. The Speaker of the House announcing rules for the President-Elect to follow, when dealing with her minions in the House. She has laid out ground rules to be followed by the President-Elect when he is in office. She has real chutzpa.
The President-Elect must be looking around at the cratered economy, the international scene, and his Congress, and by now is muttering to himself, that the job in the Senate was not so terrible – why did I seek this role? We can only hope that he takes on the overwhelming challenge without ideology getting in the way. One of his goals should be our manufacturing infrastructure and its ability when operating properly to sustain a solid and prosperous middle class.
He will need to rebuild America’s manufacturing infrastructure by convincing the unions that they are not existing in a vacuum. The need to know that they are competing worldwide against other workers and not just U.S. workers. If they know this, their actions indicate that they do not. Their long term survival and especially the UAW’s long term survival depends on making steep concessions to the Detroit Three.
America’s unions, including the UAW are apparently waiting for the Employee Free Choice Act, which the Democrats have promised the unions. This is the act that actually inhibits workers free choice about joining a union. It is intended to foster union growth in places where no union exists, such as the foreign automakers operating in this country.
I hope no one is assuming that if those foreign owned plants unionize, the UAW will now be safe to ravage the Detroit Three. That would be a monumental mistake. Once those plants vote to unionize with impetus from the Employee (non) Free Choice Act, the foreign makers will close those plants and move production to their off shore plants. This will result in more jobs being lost. We are in a world wide economy and unions that fail to recognize this, are doomed in the long run – they must learn to compete as the companies supporting them have to learn to compete worldwide. Our nation needs a manufacturing sector, and soon to be President Obama will need to lay the groundwork to foster its growth, but he can be sabotaged by short term thinking unions. Let’s hope for a new administration that understands the challenges ahead and is up for those challenges.
If President-elect Obama is able to navigate the rocks and shoals of a rotten economy, world-wide terrorism, over-reaching special interests, the auto unions, the teachers union and Bernie Maydoff, he won’t be re-elected – he’ll be canonized.