GOP Policies Have Inflicted Damage To American Workers and Our Economy
Main Street is getting hit big time by the financial debacle, but the loss of jobs started before this, a hallmark of the Bush administration.
The criminal Bush regime whose philosophy is government of, by, and for the rich, has long supported companies' offshoring of jobs, encouraged by Republican rubber stamps like that Bush clone, J. Sid McSame.
American workers are struggling with stagnant wages and many of them have been laid off or lost their jobs to downsizing and offshoring, with loss of steady income and home foreclosures.
Because of Bushite policies, the once strong manufacturing muscle in the US is now a shadow of its former self, with this debtor nation turned into a service economy of minimum wage jobs.
Once, those workers in manufacturing were its best consumers but with the Bush cheerleading for offshoring of jobs, that has become a thing of the past.
The Washington Post reports: "First it was the outsourcing of components, and then vehicle assembly. Then gasoline prices shot up, slashing demand for trucks and sport-utility vehicles. Now, just when things seemed as if they could not get any worse here, the credit crunch and the subsequent stock market meltdown have dealt powerful new blows to the nation's already reeling car industry.
Thursday's automobile stock sell-offs sparked new concern among economists and investors that the U.S. manufacturing sector, which had been slowly constricting, may be squeezed to an unimagined degree by the turmoil on Wall Street, posing a serious new economic threat at a time when the nation is already struggling with a financial sector collapse.
Nowhere is the pain more evident than in Michigan. Falling sales of vehicles and heavy equipment have sent ripples through the manufacturing food chain. The state's unemployment rate is now 9 percent, the highest in the nation. One in 16 home mortgages is "seriously delinquent," trailing only Florida and Nevada.
In an economic downturn, automobile companies are often the first to feel the pinch as consumers postpone expensive purchases. Industry sales dropped last month to levels not seen in almost 20 years. Ford fell 34.5 percent compared with the previous September; Chrysler, 32.8 percent; and General Motors, 15.6 percent. Even Toyota, known for fuel efficiency, saw sales drop by 32.3 percent.
U.S. auto companies and suppliers cut 18,000 jobs last month, with many of the losses coming in firms that produced components for trucks and sport-utility vehicles, whose allure plummeted as gas prices reached $4 a gallon.
(Thanks to the deliberately myopic and erroneous management decisions that ignored the writing on the wall and Bush policies that encouraged the continued manufacturing of gas guzzlers instead of
energy efficient vehicles.)
In Ypsilanti, 30 minutes west of Detroit, the steady downsizing of a Ford supplier knocked a $700,000 hole in the city's $14 million annual budget, part of a difficult stretch for a town that had 130 employees in 2000 and has 107 now.
"There isn't really any way we can make that up, so we have to cut," Mayor Paul Schreiber (D) said, explaining that the city of 22,000 closed its park and recreation department and now relies on volunteers.
Eleanor Walker runs a nonprofit organization in Ypsilanti called Hope America, which teaches financial literacy and works to prevent foreclosures. In her office are 50 open files belonging to Washtenaw County residents now in default. She estimates that 75 percent had auto industry connections.
"They were making $60,000 or $100,000. Now these people are making, like, $30,000 or less without health benefits and they can't make it," Weaver said. "The situation has just paralyzed them."
This is the result of the the anti-worker, anti-environment, anti-Constitution, no regulation, screw the common good, illegal warmongering policies of the corrupt Bush Republican regime that has turned this country into a crisis ridden, debtor nation, condemning this and future generations to pay for Bushite crimes.
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