Georgia Senate Race Has Economic Consequences For Us All-- Ask Pat Buchanan, Sarah Palin and Ludacris

Ludacris vs Ludicrous in Georgia

An Op-Ed by Pat Buchanan has a dire warning for Republican reactionaries so eager to destroy unions that they don't mind wrecking the entire domestic auto industry. He claims the GOP was wiped out on November 4th because voters were angry they didn't kill the Bush Regime's Wall Street bailout proposal but that buying up junk paper from hated Wall Street fat cats in very different from burying an iconic American industry. He urges them not to follow the wrong-headed "counsel of that quintessential Bushite Dick Darman, who said of our computer chip industry, 'If our guys can't hack it, let 'em go.' America responded-- by letting George H.W. Bush and Darman go. Are Republicans aware of what they are about to do?"

When workers, execs, engineers, dealers, salesmen and suppliers are all factored in, the Big
Three employ 3 million people who contribute $21 billion a year to Social Security and Medicare, and $25 billion in federal income taxes. Add in all the businesses that depend on the auto industry, and we are talking about one-tenth of the U.S. labor force.

As columnist Tom Piatak of Chronicles and Takimag.com writes, 850,000 retirees, and their families, depend on pensions and health care from the Big Three. If they go under, the burden falls on us.

And to let the auto industry die is to write America out of much of the economic future of the planet.

In a good year, like 2005, Americans buy more than 17 million new cars, and West Europeans as many. Tens of millions in Eastern Europe, Russia, China, India and Southeast Asia are now moving into the middle class each year. These folks will all need or want one or two family cars. If we let the U.S. auto industry die, that immense and burgeoning market will be lost forever to America, and ceded to Asia.

"Who cares?" comes the free-traders' reply. Japanese and Koreans are setting up factories here. They can pick up the slack.

But that means Americans will work for and depend on foreign companies for a necessity of our national life as vital as the imported oil and gas on which our cars and trucks operate. All the profits of the mighty automobile industry in America will be sent abroad.

Before Republicans follow this free-trade fanaticism to their final interment, they might study the results of a poll by Peter Hart:

-- Seventy-eight percent of Americans believe the U.S. auto industry is highly or extremely important. Three percent think we can do without it.

-- Ninety percent of Americans believe the death of the U.S. auto industry would do great damage to our economic future.

-- By 55 percent to 30 percent, Americans favor federal loans to save it. And by 64 percent to 25 percent Americans back President-elect Obama's resolve not to let the U.S. auto industry go under.

If the GOP blocks these loans, and the industry dies, the party can forget about Ohio, Michigan and the industrial Midwest. For the Reagan Democrats will never come home again. Nor should they.

Go, Pat, go! Let's hope some of the folks planning to vote in tomorrow's run-off election in Georgia are paying attention. There is only one reason to vote for Saxby Chambliss and that is to further wreck this country's economy and security. Chambliss is one of the half dozen of the worst die-hard obstructionists in the Senate. He will certainly join every single filibuster against President Obama's plans to clean up after the catastrophic mess Chambliss has helped Bush create. Many suspect that it's Chambliss who's actually blocking, anonymously, the appointment of a special inspector general to make sure tax-payer dollars areb't stolen from the bailout program. Chambliss refuses to deny or confirm that he's the one single reactionary crook who's keeping this from going forward.

You can't blame Saxby Chambliss for the entire Bush Economic Miracle, of course. But since he was elected to the Senate in 2002 he has been an integral part of it and has never-- not once-- opposed any aspect of the Bush agenda, an agenda that has been so harmful to working families across Georgia. Chambliss' shocking voting record can't possibly be accurately described without using the words "extremist" and "rubber stamp."

In my neighborhood-- and this could well be different from how it is in Georgia-- the only houses that sell are the ones priced at their 1991 values. Bush's economic policies have wiped out 17 years worth of home equity. On CNN a few minutes ago I heard an analyst explain how, under Bush, slightly more than one full decade of stock market value has vanished entirely. I hope everyone who thought Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and for Big Business were good ideas can understand the connection. And in Georgia, I hope they understand Saxby Chambliss' role in the disaster we're all facing. Funny how Sarah Palin doesn't but Ludacris does!