Kucinich on Assisting the U.S. Auto Industry

Run time: 03:53 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUwk0oGci2g   Posted on YouTube: December 11, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: December 11, 2008 By DU Member: Hissyspit Views on DU: 1121

 
Today the House is debating HR 7321, the Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act to address the American auto industry's request for financial assistance. The legislation provides up to $14 billion in short-term bridge loans and includes accountability measures banning corporate excesses, including no golden parachutes, no bonuses for the 25 most highly paid employees at each company, and no corporate airplanes, with requirements to sell or end leases on any existing aircraft.

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youtube is taking a nap. it'll be back shortly apparently.

The Republicans leadership are more than willing to destroy the automobile industry, which will also take down other major industries and an undetermined multitude of suppliers, if they can achieve their cherished goal of annihilating unions.

Since the election of Reagan, the sole goal of the Republican Party has been to dismantle the New Deal and Fair Deal policies that created and sustained the Middle Class. It is unfortunate that so many of those whose success depended on these policies have been so delusional that they have actively cooperated in their own economic destruction.

The South is a prime example of this phenomenon. It was once one of the leading textile manufacturing centers throughout the world. John Edwards attempted to educate them to the fact that their racial prejudices and narrow religious convictions which they Republicans had exploited blinded them to the fact that the party that they had embraced was their direst enemy. The very people they empowered were instrumental in closing their factories and outsourced their jobs along the machinery to cheap labor markets. They are indeed their own worst enemy.

from the world stage?" That really is the question. Auto manufacturing, steel production, electronics, aircraft and shipbuilding, these are all strategic industries you have to have to be a great nation. Banking and energy production are, too. And we can list others. The Department of Defense used to list them, and the strategic natural resources we had to have to support them. Without them, the security of the nation fails, not just the economy.