Nicole Hughes
March 23, 2008 | 11:49 pm EST
GOP Senator/Psychic Jim DeMint
GOP Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina has warned of “riots” in the streets should the proposed $14 Billion Auto Bailout pass. “We’re going to have riots. There are already people rioting because they’re losing their jobs when everybody else is being bailed out,” the South Carolina Senator told an interviewer.
I get the feeling that Senator DeMint is conveniently mistaking the sit in at the Republic Windows & Doors factory in Chicago for a riot. I also get the feeling that he’s conveniently forgetting that over $700 Billion, a figure at least 50 times as large as the one being floated for Detroit automakers, was recently approved in a bailout package for the financial industry on Wall Street with no reports of riots to be found in its aftermath. Let’s face it, this is America and, by and large, we do what we’re told, even in the face of catastrophe.
What Senator DeMint doesn’t mention is the naked power play at work in the United States Senate over the Auto Bailout package and the name of the game is Union versus Right-to-Work states. First bear in mind that the South is the power base for what’s left of the Republican party, with 20 of the 22 US Senate seats there being currently held by Republicans. All southern states have right-to-work laws on the books which allow for non-union factories. As a result many foreign auto manufacturers have set up shop in the South in an effort to skirt around the United Auto Workers union and their pesky contracts which allow employees things like good wages and decent health and retirement benefits. Meanwhile, most Northern and Midwestern states do not have right-to-work laws and have factories that fall strictly under the UAW contracts. The Big Three is bound into these contracts from agreements it made with the UAW decades ago. But should the automakers be forced into Chapter 11, a bankruptcy judge could rewrite the labor contracts of the car companies, which could then in turn send factories and jobs from the reemerging industry down south to right-to-work states. Should the Detroit companies fail to recover, the South will still benefit from foreign automakers building more factories there in order to satisfy the hole left in the American market after the departure of the domestics. So basically Big Three bankruptcy is win-win for Dixie.
Read the rest of this entry »
Read the rest of this entry »
The HGTV Green Home Giveaway is on! Home and Garden Television is giving away a new “green” home located in Hilton Head, South Carolina, complete with eco-friendly appliances and a brand new GMC Yukon Hybrid. Sure, your chances of winning it are probably on par with winning the lotto, but it certainly beats a toaster oven or a gas-guzzling SUV. Kudos to HGTV!
Stephen Colbert answers Nation blogger Cora Currier’s nostalgic reflection on what might have been had he stayed on the South Carolina ballot. Check out the clip below from Comedy Central. Feel like taking your activism to the next level? 
by learning how to start your own campaign and run for office in your area.
Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, has endorsed Barack Obama’s candidacy on Thursday. Said Kerry of Obama:
“[he has] the greatest potential to lead a transformation, not just a transition”Who better than Barack Obama to bring new credibility to America’s role in the world and help restore our moral authority?”
According to Kerry’s aides, South Carolina was chosen as the endorsement site in an effort to help him win the SC primary on January 26th. John Edwards, Kerry’s former running mate, is from South Carolina and is thought to be favored in the state.