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Calling All CounterPunchers!
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Today's Stories November 13, 2008 Pam Martens November 12, 2008 Johanna Berrigan Steve Conn Patrick Bond Bokar Ture / Alan Farago Dave Lindorff Karl Grossman David Macaray George Wuerthner Susie Day Website of the Day November 11, 2008 James G. Abourezk Allan J. Lichtman Eric Toussaint Ron Jacobs Peter Montague Corporate Crime Reporter Laura Carlsen Col. Dan Smith Morton Skorodin David Michael Green Charles R. Larson Website of the Day November 10, 2008 David Roediger Paul Craig Roberts Peter Lee Corey D. B. Walker Jeff Halper Bill Hatch Andy Worthington Bill Quigley Peter Morici Anthony Olszewski Kim Nicolini Cpt. Paul Watson Website of the Day November 7 / 9, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Vijay Prashad Tariq Ali Jean Bricmont John V. Whitbeck Saul Landau Peter Morici Lawrence Velvel Karyn Strickler Nativo V. Lopez Christopher Fons Alan Farago David Yearsley Christopher Brauchli Samah Sabawi Dave Lindorff Deepak Tripathi Beth Sherouse Patrick Irelan Stephen Martin Richard Rhames J. Murray Lorenzo Wolff Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Day
November 6, 2008 Frank J. Menetrez John Chuckman P. Sainath Joshua Frank Edna Canetti John Ross Norman Solomon Fawzia Afzal-Khan Robert Weissman Harvey Wasserman Website of the Day
November 5, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Chuck Spinney Ishmael Reed Chris Floyd Binoy Kampmark Michael Donnelly David Macaray Peter Morici Manuel Garcia, Jr. William Willers Website of the Day November 4, 2008 Kathleen Christison James Ridgeway Winslow T. Wheeler Mike Whitney Conn Hallinan Holly M. Barker Ashley Smith Andy Worthington Martha Rosenberg Stephen Martin Doug Lummis Carlos Fierro Website of the Day November 3, 2008 Patrick Cockburn John Kennedy O'Hara Peter Montague Steve Conn Andrew Gebhardt Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Niranjan Ramakrishnan Uri Avnery Dave Lindorff Fred Gardner DC Larson David Michael Green Val Strange Tuli Kupferberg / Website of the Day
October 31 , 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Douglas Valentine Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Dr. Ignacy Nowopolski Alan Maass William P. O’Connor Patrick Irelan Brian Cloughley Mats Svensson Binoy Kampmark Steve Conn Alan Farago Morton Skorodin Robert Bryce Wajahat Ali David Yearsley Dennis Loo Pam Martens Stephen Martin Richard Rhames Ramzy Baroud Missy Beattie Howard Lisnoff Richard Neville Saul Landau / Kim Nicolini Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 30, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Vijay Prashad Paul Craig Roberts Glen Ford Stanley Heller William Loren Katz Joshua Frank James McEnteer Felice Pace Jonathan Cook Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day
October 29, 2008 Arno J. Mayer Eric Toussaint Matt Gonzalez Steven Conn Jonathan Cook Patrick Bond Ramzi Kysia Douglas Valentine Stephen Martin Margaret Dooley-Sammuli Amee Chew Website of the Day
October 28, 2008 James G. Abourezk Andy Worthington Gary Leupp Paul Craig Roberts Mike Whitney Gregory V. Button Ralph Nader P. Sainath Martha Rosenberg Charles R. Larson Website of the Day October 27, 2008 Michael Hudson Barbara Rose Johnston John Dinges Mike Whitney Mary Lynn Cramer Greenspan's Higher Power Alan Farago David Michael Green Andy Worthington George Wuerthner Niranjan Ramakrishnan Website of the Day October 24 / 26, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Ishmael Reed Mike Whitney Don Santina Scott Boehm Saul Landau Ron Jacobs Binoy Kampmark Linn Washington Jr. Nicole Colson Bernard Chazelle Brian Jones Christopher Brauchli Benjamin Dangl Val Strange Steve Early David Macaray Allison Kilkenny Richard Rhames Jim Bell Kris De Welde Barry Clemson Adam Engel Mark Scaramella Tuli Kupferberg Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 23, 2008 Allan J. Lichtman Todd Chretien John Ross Peter Morici Mats Svensson Marlene Martin Robert Jensen / Margaret Kimberley Deepak Tripathi David Morris Website of the Day October 22, 2008 Brian Cloughley Heather Gray Jeff Birkenstein Ralph Nader DC Larson David Swanson Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth Larry Everest Robert Fantina Martha Rosenberg Stephen Martin Website of the Day October 21, 2008 Vijay Prashad Paul Craig Roberts Corey D. B. Walker Steve Breyman Eric Toussaint Wajahat Ali Robert Weitzel Brendan Cooney Dave Lindorff Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing Patrick B. Barr Omar Barghouti Website of the Day October 20, 2008 Michael Hudson Anthony DiMaggio Tariq Ali Uri Avnery Bill Quigley Ben Rosenfeld David Michael Green William S. Lind Chris Genovali Stephen Martin Howard Lisnoff David Yearsley Website of the Day October 17 / 19, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Pam Martens Paul Craig Roberts Mike Whtney Michael D. Yates Suzanne Smith Carl Boggs Ralph Nader Fidel Castro Dave Marsh Saul Landau Jo Guldi Kevin Zeese Larry Everest Steve Early David Macaray Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Don Monkerud Helen Redmond Dan Bacher Wajahat Ali Farzana Versey Vladimir Frolov Kim Nicolini Poets Basement Website of the Day
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November 13, 2008 Let the Auto Workers Run Detroit!Bailing Out the Big ThreeBy LEE SUSTAR The Bush administration's Wall Street bailout may be a prelude to a sweeping government intervention in the auto industry--even before Barack Obama takes office January 20. And if the government does step in to rescue General Motors, Chrysler and Ford--a move backed by top congressional Democrats--it will raise pressure on Obama to offer government aid to more big companies threatened with bankruptcy and underwrite the restructuring of entire industries. Already, Rahm Emanuel, Obama's pick to be his chief of staff, has joined Senate Majority Leader Henry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in calling for government aid to the auto industry. But if the companies get government loans or other assistance, what happens to workers' jobs, pay and benefits? Will, for example, the government finance a proposed merger of GM and Chrysler that could eliminate 40,000 jobs? Will the U.S. Treasury put up the $58 billion that the companies must pay the UAW to support a trust fund for retiree health care? * * * THOSE QUESTIONS loomed in the background as the Big Three automakers reported their worst monthly sales figures in years and huge losses. GM executives said that the company has $16.2 billion in the bank, but it expects to spend money for daily operations at a pace of about $2 billion a month. The company could run out of money by the end of next year. CEO Rick Wagoner said that GM can't file for bankruptcy to get protection from creditors, since consumers are unlikely to buy cars from a bankrupt company. If the company were to go out of business altogether, it would send a wave of job losses through manufacturing and car dealerships that could eliminate 2.5 million jobs and wipe out $125 billion in personal income in just one year, according to the Center for Automotive Research, a think tank with close ties to GM. "Letting GM go is a terrible idea," Wagoner said on CNBC. "Look at the effect of Lehman Brothers." By invoking the September collapse of Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers--which led to a worldwide financial plunge--Wagoner is trying to maximize pressure on the government to fork over billions to GM. He's following the example of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who declared that the world economy would collapse if Congress didn't approve his $700 bailout for the Wall Street banks--and give him dictatorial control over how the money was spent. Wagoner wants the same flexibility--the ability to use a $25 billion Department of Energy loan for fuel-efficient cars to shore up losses, as well as access to the Wall Street bailout funds. Even if the threat of a collapse of GM is real, Wagoner, like the bankers, is angling to use the money to cover up for his disastrous management of the company and carry through a restructuring at workers' expense. GM, Chrysler and Ford kept pushing SUVs and pickup trucks that were profitable in the 1990s and resisted pressure for higher standards on fuel efficiency. As a result, the companies are still hemorrhaging money even after eliminating an estimated 100,000 jobs since 2006 and extracting tens of billions more in concessions from the UAW. Free-market ideologues use the auto company's mismanagement to argue that they should be allowed to fail or radically downsize, as the steel industry did in the 1980s. But a U.S. government of any political stripe is unlikely to allow this to happen, given the disproportionately large economic impact of the auto industry. To be sure, the domestic automobile industry is no longer synonymous with great-power military status as it was in the 1930s and 1940s, when car assembly lines were retooled to make tanks and bombers in the Second World War. Nevertheless, the world's dominant economic and military power must maintain an industrial base, despite the pressures on individual companies to outsource or invest in cheaper labor markets overseas. For U.S. industry, the contradictions of globalization are coming to a head. For Obama, the pressure to shore up the auto industry and manufacturing generally will be especially acute. Having promised aggressive policies to overcome the economic crisis and create jobs, it will be politically difficult for the new administration to sign off on a government rescue that includes the elimination of some of the best-paying blue-collar jobs in the country. Limiting compensation for already-wealthy CEOs, as is the case in the bank bailout, may be a good political symbolism, but it won't halt, let alone reverse, the unraveling of the industry. * * * THE ISSUE is--or should become--what kind of auto industry bailout will take place. If the government is going to put up billions, why should a discredited and bloated management remain in place? Call the intervention what it is--nationalization. Throw out the management and use their compensation for investment--and put workers' committees in control of production. Then there's the question of jobs. In the last UAW contract, the union agreed to allow the Big Three auto companies to hire new workers at about $14 per hour--about half the rate of current workers. One condition of a government loan should be payment of industry-standard wages. (Prompt passage of the proposed Employee Free Choice Act would spur the unionization of the nonunion, foreign-owned auto plants located mainly in the South, and take wages and benefits out of competition in the U.S. auto industry). Certainly, the Obama government should insist on a moratorium on layoffs and guarantees of job security. It's nonsensical--not to say outrageous--to suppose, given the skyrocketing unemployment rate, that the government should finance Corporate America's elimination of any more jobs. Won't keeping jobs protected and factories open add to the capacity glut in the auto industry--the capability to produce more cars than consumers will buy? Not if the investment is directed toward development of new, energy-efficient vehicles and mass transit. If tens of billions of taxpayer dollars are going into the Big Three, taxpayers should have the right to stipulate that production be carried out according to social needs. Another major issue in a government intervention in the auto industry is workers' health care and retirement costs. The Big Three provide health care to about 2 million people, as well as pensions for 775,000 retirees or their survivors. And the Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) trust funds worth $58 billion being set up by the companies will be underfunded at the outset, thanks to concessions made by UAW leaders, who are to control the trusts. This problem, though, is best handled at a higher level: A government national health care program modeled on Medicare would eliminate the problem altogether. If these demands seem far-fetched, it's useful to think back on the scale of the economic crisis and the speed at which it spread. After all, it was Henry Paulson--a former Wall Street CEO and free-market Republican--who carried out the nationalizations of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG. It's time for organized labor and the left to raise the stakes, especially when the incoming president has been elected on a promise to make the economy benefit working people. Lee Sustar writes for the Socialist Worker.
New in the Print Edition of CounterPunch For his 20-year stretch as Fed chairman, they all fawned on him – presidents, Congress, the press. Only a handful of left economists said he was pushing the economy over the cliff. Now Greenspan admits it in a humiliating confession. As the world’s financial structure tumbles in ruins, guess what? “I found a flaw in the model… To the extent that I figure out where it happened and why, I will change my views.” Read Frederic Claremont’s savage assessment of the fool who has plunged millions into misery. Also in our new issue: Bill Hatch on the story of one foreclosure; Kristian Williams on police torture in Chicago. Only in CounterPunch newsletter! Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great presents. Order CounterPunch By Email For Only $35 a Year !
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New in the CP Print Edition! For his 20-year stretch as Fed chairman, they all fawned on him – presidents, Congress, the press. Only a handful of left economists said he was pushing the economy over the cliff. Now Greenspan admits it in a humiliating confession. As the world’s financial structure tumbles in ruins, guess what? “I found a flaw in the model… To the extent that I figure out where it happened and why, I will change my views.” Read Frederic Claremont’s savage assessment of the fool who has plunged millions into misery. Also in our new issue: Bill Hatch on the story of one foreclosure; and Kristian Williams on police torture in Chicago. Only in CounterPunch newsletter! Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Waiting for Lightning
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