James Giago Davies. Photo from Native Sun News
Hogs at the taxpayer trough
There’s a better way to bailout big industry
By James Giago Davies
Native Sun News Correspondent
www.nsweekly.com Some years back Congress bailed out the auto industry to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Had to be done, we were told, because Detroit was too big to fail, all those jobs had to be saved. People have this weird ability to find rich people being handed money (which they did not work for) perfectly okay, but balk if a young single mom gets handed a welfare check. They have been conditioned to unquestioningly assume virtuous legitimacy for any government handout at a corporate level, and discount as dead beat any individual receiving government handouts. Wasicu somehow miss noticing trillions lost to corporate welfare, but bellyache if Lakota receive any government monies due them because of treaty obligation. This is partly because it is assumed the corporations will do something productive with this money, whereas lazy Indians will squander it, but mostly it is because Wasicu working stiffs have internalized the values and identity of the rich star-bellied Sneetches they worship, so whatever the rich receive is deserved, whereas Lakota are plain-bellied, brown-skinned Sneetches, odious targets of justifiable contempt. Dr. Seuss aside, the idea an alternative auto industry bailout strategy was doable, one which served the long term best interest of the economy, the industry, and the country, far better than just giving hundreds of billions to a badly run operation of greedy, irresponsible corporate knuckleheads, never received much media coverage. The president certainly never held a press conference. All the financial experts on the major news networks said diddly-squat about it. But there was another, better plan that would have saved the auto industry and helped hard working Americans on an unprecedented scale. That plan is rooted in the classic definition of capitalism as historically practiced in this country. Used to be a business provided goods and services to customers, but now that corporations are the defacto rulers of our country, that outdated business model was critically modified long ago. Corporations don’t just want our paychecks, there’s a bigger prize, one that we should have never allowed their slimy hands to touch – our taxpayer dollars. That’s where the real easy money is at. All they do is get this subsidy and that subsidy, and it sure beats the days when their only way to turn a profit was build a factory, hire workers, produce a product, ship the product, market the product; so much hard work, when it is so much easier to just be bailed out. Then you take that bailout money and pay huge bonuses to the corporate management that ran the industry into the ground in the first place. No workers get bonuses, in fact, those you haven’t laid off, are asked to take a pay cut, or a reduced retirement package, and then you start producing more product, for a market where most folks struggle to find the money to pay for it. But the auto industry are in cahoots with the credit industry, and so allow customers to finance their purchase, financing necessary because the corporations used corporate welfare billions to corrupt Congress to enact laws that keep worker wages stagnant since 1970, and their benefits minimal.
Read the rest of the story on the all new Native Sun News website: Hogs at the taxpayer trough (Contact James Davies Giago at skindiesel@msn.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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