AUTO. An Important Industry, vital to the national interests. New Auto Pact needed.

The Auto industry is so important to the North American economy that governments in Canada and the US are willing to invest billions of tax-payers dollars to save the struggling auto companies.
Each auto job has seven and a half related jobs tied to it in the economy. Each auto job distributes wealth into the communities that auto-workers live in. Every auto job greatly adds to the tax base of each country and is essential to the financial well being of the communities that auto-workers live and work in.
Matter of fact it is the belief of experts and economists that if the auto companies fail, with their attendant job loss, it would deepen an already dangerous recession.
This is the sole reason why a right-wing government like the Conservatives in Canada is even willing to consider a loan or a bailout. In the US the newly elected Democratic President Barack Obama has come out in support of saving auto jobs.

Conversely it is the two political parties who are the mouthpieces of the moneyed class in both countries, the defeated Republicans(rightwing) and Canadas ruling Conservatives(rightwing) who advocate that in order to recieve financial assistance from government, autoworkers ought to take concessions.
Republicans have gone one step further in advocating the autoworkers make the same amount of money as workers in Japanese auto companies located in the deep south of the US.
This is such a ludicrous argument that it deserves an article all its own, but its effect is to place both the CAW and the UAW in the unenviable position of being forced to negotiate concessions. The Unions have no choice. Either bargain concessions or the corporate media will blame the demise of the companies on the Unions.
Obviously these two rightwing parties have it wrong. What they are advocating and have always advocated is that profits be the sole domain of the private sector
(privatized).
Why this is so ludicrous is because ordinary autoworkers themselves did not cause the loss of market share in the domestic market. Through the years autoworkers have been downsized, rightsized,leaned and meaned and even kaizened and still the industry lost market share. Autoworkers have made concessions over the years, in ways the general auto-buying public is not even aware of, yet more is being demanded. With so many jobs lost through the use of technology, autoworkers have seen their jobs get busier, production lines speeded up, such demands placed on them that there is an attrition rate that is not generally talked about. Not everyone can be an autoworker. The injury rate probably deserves attention. It takes a lot to be tied to the line and the only reward is a somewhat more generous compensation package than the average.
It is solely the decisions of AutoExecutives and major shareholders who caused this turn of events.
Robbing autoworkers of their hard earned wages and benefits will not solve any problems, because it leaves in place the very same bad management who contributed to the loss of markets share...Yes, yes...the same ones who arrived in Washington in private jets to lobby Congress for bailouts!!
Nor will autoworker concessions help with the banking sector, which is the culprit for the financial meltdown globally.
No-one can argue that these are unprecedented times, which calls for unprecedented solutions.
The old rightwing mantra of "Let the markets decide" needs to be discarded, because when the markets decided to get greedy and melted down, corporations and banks turned to governments for help.
Heres what both the Canadian and US governments need to do. Use the billions of taxpayer dollars to take control of the auto corporations, run them the way profitable Crown Corporations such as the LCBO are run and nationalize the profits.
This gives bang for the bailout/bridge loans/loan guarantee bucks.
The new Crown Corporations can produce models the citizens want, that meet national environmental standards. It would be a source of national pride to buy and drive domestic products, because consumers would see the benefits of having profits stay in each country. It could become a newer, updated model of an Auto-Pact!!
We can bring Brother Buzz Hargrove out of retirement to negotiate for Canada.

Modify the Republicans' advice and get rid of the top Executives of all three auto companies, with their billions in bonuses for running those companies into the ground and replace them with Japanese and other successful auto companys management. The North American Execs should be made to return all bonuses, because who in their right minds gives bonuses for failure?
Executive compensation would be the same as the Japanese and other auto companies give their executives.
Injecting diversity into the corporate class will make Canada and the US major global players, because the auto companies have holdings and partnerships globally.
As for the major shareholders, well they took a chance on the stock market and if their handpicked executives made those shares worthless thats not and should not become the taxpayers' problem. The only people who should be the taxpayers problems are those whose pension funds were invested in the stock market, but this can be easily resolved with both countries providing a national pension plan for all citizens with some of the newly nationalized profits of the vitally important auto industry.
Remember, the moneyed class wanted profits to remain privatized. Why then should their losses become nationalized?
What can we do?
We can activate our UPC committees and activists, lobby Parliamentarians here and Congress people in the US to privatize losses and nationalize profits, through the new Auto-Pact.
With retirees re-entering the workforce in the US, because their 401K, stock market driven, retirement savings plans having lost value, to work in McJobs for minimum wage, the idea of a national pension plan will have traction.
Everybody wins in this scenario.
Citizens from both countries (Retirees included) will enjoy the social benefits of having their tax dollars making profits for them.
Newly unemployed auto-execs win because now they'll have time to enjoy the massive compensation they awarded to themselves in the days of yore.
Even auto critics win, because now people like Dennis Desrosiers will have an existing and vibrant, profitable auto industry to continue whining about.

The Financial meltdown

The current financial meltdown is the clear result of everything people on the Left have been warning about for decades.
Of course they were pooh-poohed, laughed at and derisively written off as being fear mongers. Their ideas were discredited by the corporate media and people generally accepted that folks on the left side of the political spectrum, while well meaning were completely out of touch with reality.
Of course with some people, (some-not the majority, in fact a distinct minority) making ooodles of profits the idea took root that this was indeed the way to go.
In his inauguration speech Ronald Reagan famously noted that government itself was the problem. Regulations were anathema and got in the way of profit, so deregulation became the mantra.
Margaret Thatcher also famously proclaimed that there were no societies, that there was only the market and governments role was to facilitate the market.
LET THE MARKETS DECIDE became the rallying cry of the traders and their ilk.
Well the markets have decided and melted down in an orgy of greed.
Guess who Big business and the banks turned to when this happened?
You've got it. They turned to government in order to get bailed out.
Suddenly Government became all importantm the facilitator of credit, the giver of bail-outs.
At it turns out.....The Left is right after all.

Posted on CBC new this afternoon. How Harper and his Re-formed Alliance of Tories shot themselves in the head and created a Coalition.

This Re-Formed Alliance of Tories had a chance to govern with the help of the other parties, much as they have over the last couple of years.
Instead, in the teeth of a Conservative, let the markets decide, economic meltdown, Harper and his merry band went after the opposition with the funding issue, tried to take power away from workers (The Visible Majority)by attacking unions and then went after a demographic that suffers most during economic downturns, namely women, by trying to limit their fair pay rights. With Canadians attention understandably distracted by the economic meltdown and worried about their financial security, this Re-formed Alliance of Tories, rich as they are with "Common Stench Revolutionaries" in cabinet and in the PMO, decided to have a fire-sale ala Hwy. 407 in Ontario, one that the tax-payers continues to pay and pay and pay, for!! They decided to sell off Canada's capital asstes at rock-bottom prices to their pals and cronies in the private sector.
This is why they have lost the confidence of Parliament. The opposition is perfectly within their rights to approach the GG and ask to form Government. Regardless of opinion,this is the Parliamentary tradition that Canada has been governed by.
The actions of the Re-formed Alliance -of Tories, since then has been reprehensible, with specters of seperatism and all sorts of unpatriotic accusations being bandied about. The Re-Formed Alliance of Tories sound as though they are desperately clinging to power, eager to implement some as yet un-defined agenda, one that does not address the serious issues facing Canadians.
Thus in keeping with the tone these guys have set, The Coalition is addressing the needs of Canadians, so they are performing an act of patriotism.

Many outcomes from the Left of the political spectrum

There have been many outcomes from whats considered to be the left spectrum.
Environmentalists, animal rights activists, social activists, unions, non-governmental organizations or NGOs are just some of those outcomes.
Lets use Unions to expand this thought. Unions are epitomes of leftist thought in that they truly represent and help in real terms to address the wants and needs of the majority of people in a community/society in broader terms, their own members in narrower terms.
Union struggles have in the long term led to gains that are taken for granted by people in todays society.
Basic things such as the 8 hour workday, overtime pay, holidays, weekends off, were the result of Union struggle. On a bigger scale, pensions, social programs, medicare etc. were originally hatched in union halls and eventually implemented by various forms of governments across the world.

For long as I remember, certainly since the 80's business and their backers in governing circles, that is government and senior civil servants,have been warninng us that we need to tighten our belts, adjust our expectations, because Canadian businesses needed to compete globally.
We needed to tighten our belts to avoid deficts and then again to pay off deficits.
Meantime business was having a helluva time competing globally and wouldn't you know it, we needed to tighten our belts again.
On the other hand, Union economists warned repeatedly about the paper economy, where massive profits were being made without aiding the real economy, without capital investment in real assets.
They and their Union leaders were blown off as would be socialists and loony lefties.
What the hell did they know anyway, asked the barons of business and their cheerleaders in a servile media as paper profits soared ever higher. In return for regulatory favours that allowed them to amass ever bigger media empires and of course profits, media forfeited its objectivity and joined in the orgy of feasting at the bloated table of unregulated riches and profits.

What the barons of business called market adjustments, the Unions knew as their members, real flesh and blood people who lost a lot if not everything during the adjustments.
Unions, railed against this, demonstrated, held rallies, at every new piece of legislation. They held town-hall meetings, lobbied and demonstrated some more. They even had to go to their bargaining tables to try and restore what had been lost through legislation.
Look at today realistically.
The economic meltdown is the result of over 10-15 years of unbridled right-wing politics and policies. This is the real result of let the markets decide.
Realistically the lesson of the economic meltdown is that.....The Left Is Right!!

Turns out the Left has been right after all....

The effort that has been expended to prove that the people who are said to represent "left" values were wrong, have been enormous. Vast amounts of treasure and effort have been put into the endeavour of demonizing those who were denounced as leftists. All manner of indignity and atrocity have been employed to mute "left" values. Murder, torture, kidnappings, disappearances and yes even mass killings have occurred through time to preserve the "Rights" values.
The Lefts shrill fearmongering of yesteryear, today manifests itself in terms such as Wall Street financial failures, billion dollar Bailouts, Golden Parachutes, Executive bonuses, greed on a scale that has impovershed millions of citizens.
The Left being right is manifested in the fear and insecurity of the vast majority of earths citizens, TODAY!!