Bailout Billionaires, Kill the Middle Class
We know how the bridge loan to automakers is being spent because the Bush administration made sure they only got aid after agreeing to tough stipulations.
So that accounts for $14.5 billion of our taxpayer money. But what about the rest of the $335.5 billion that went to Wall Street financial firms?
On “Morning Joe,” Joe Scarborough pointed out today that we do know how Wall Street spent $1.6 billion: on chauffeurs, company jets, home security, country club memberships and stock options.
Russian Free Trade Unions Under Attack
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Tim Ryan of the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center reports on growing violence in Russia against labor activists seeking to create democratic unions.
Over the past several years, the government of Vladimir Putin has consistently and deliberately shut down one avenue after another of free expression, pluralism and democracy in Russia.
The single bright spot that points the way toward a future for the Russian people is a democratic, independent union movement—one of the few survivors of the past decade’s attacks on political opponents and nongovernmental (NGO) organizations. But the survival of independent unions is threatened. The experience of Alexei Etmanov shows why. Etmanov is a highly respected and charismatic leader of Russian autoworkers and a welder at the Ford Motors plant in St. Petersburg. In November, criminals attacked Etmanov twice in one week.
Job-Killing Republicans
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The senators who yesterday blocked the $14 billion bridge loan to the auto industry out of ideological hatred for unions and workers who make a middle-class living did so knowing that if the American auto industry collapsed, between 3 million and 5 million jobs would be killed.
Think Progress documents the extent to which these Republicans are willing to go to fulfill their visceral hatred for America’s middle class and unions. A memo sent among Senate Republican staffers on the auto loan negotiations called for Republicans to “stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor.”
