Southern Republicans are out to kill off the Big Three bridge loan and the United Auto Workers Union

The new civil war over America's automotive industry has started. Japan, Germany and Korea between them are currently building 18 new automotive assembly plants, all in the Southern U.S., and none are union. This is the motivation behind the efforts by Senators Mitch McConnell and Richard Shelby as well as Representative Bob Corker to torpedo the Big Three bridge loan and kill off both the United Auto Workers and the Detroit auto companies.

This political move will strengthen their political hold on their respective states. It will not particularly damage the Republican Party since they have already lost and written off Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Minnesota. Besides, even if those states do vote Democratic in the future, the Detroit-based auto companies are going to be shutting down plants and laying off workers in those states as they shrink in the future anyway.

Consider how this is working. The Southern states have ponied up a lot of taxpayer money to get the foreign non-union auto plants to locate there. If the federal government provides taxpayer bail-out money to the Detroit auto companies, then the taxpayers in Southern states are also paying tax money to support the out-of-state auto companies that are competing with their in-state companies. Robert Reich explains further.

As for the clear anti-union bias demonstrated by the Republicans, that's just what they do. They hate unions because it allows workers to put limits on what the executives and investors can do and forces the executives to pay labor more, funds that come directly out of the return to investors. That's the reason for this memo about union-busting sent to Senate Republicans.

As long as the Republicans regain the power they have lost in the last two elections they don't care of America goes into Depression or if foreigners buy up the industrial jobs in this country. It's no skin off their noses. So we can expect even more obstructionism from the Senate Republicans for the next two years. Since the recent two years saw the Republicans conduct the highest number of filibusters ever, to exceed that is going to be something to watch.