{"id":8241,"date":"2011-08-31T11:38:54","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T15:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=8241"},"modified":"2011-08-31T11:38:54","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T15:38:54","slug":"dick-cheney-anti-corporate-activist-the-michigan-view-08-31-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2011\/08\/dick-cheney-anti-corporate-activist-the-michigan-view-08-31-11","title":{"rendered":"Dick Cheney, anti-corporate activist ( The Michigan View 08.31.11)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Aren&#8217;t Republicans supposed to be slaves to Big Corporations? To Wall Street? To rich CEOs?<\/p>\n<p>So how come Democrats&#8217; b\u00eate noire, Darth Vader Cheney himself- opposed bailing out the biggest crony of them all, General Motors?<\/p>\n<p>Of course, that&#8217;s not how Democrats (or most folks in Michigan) will react to today&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/detnews.com\/article\/20110830\/AUTO01\/108300390\/Cheney-opposed-Bush-decision-to-save-GM#ixzz1WX4fUvo5\">revelation from The Detroit News&#8217; Dave Shepardson<\/a> that in his new memoir, &#8220;Cheney says he disagreed with President George W. Bush&#8217;s decision to rescue GM with a $13.4 billion bailout in the final days of his term.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Big Three are synonymous with Big Labor and therefore should help themselves to the public trough, goes conventional liberal wisdom. But who&#8217;s really looking out for the little guy here? Contrary to Halliburton caricature, Cheney took the taxpayer&#8217;s point of view: GM should fix their mistakes. That&#8217;s how the market works.<\/p>\n<p>Politically, of course, neither Bush (nor any other president) would have left GM hanging in the midst of a financial crisis. &#8220;The president decided that he did not want to pull the plug on General Motors as we were headed out the door,&#8221; Cheney writes.<\/p>\n<p>But in so doing, GM also missed a golden opportunity to rid itself of its historic disadvantage against America&#8217;s foreign transplants: the UAW.<\/p>\n<p>That ball and chain is back with a vengeance as UAW Chief Bob King\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.detnews.com\/article\/20110830\/AUTO01\/108300366\/1148\/auto01\/UAW%27s-King--Wage-increases-on-the-table-for-Tier-II-workers\">is putting renewed pressure on the Big Three<\/a> to raise wages because &#8220;we&#8217;re very concerned about that entry-level member having a middle-class standard of living.&#8221; So much for wanting to make the industry competitive. King is a headache GM&#8217;s competition doesn&#8217;t have to wake up to every morning.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I would have preferred that the government not get involved and was disappointed,&#8221; writes Cheney, &#8220;when the Obama administration significantly increased the government intervention in the automobile industry shortly after taking office.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Democratic Party &#8211; slave to corporate America.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aren&#8217;t Republicans supposed to be slaves to Big Corporations? To Wall Street? To rich CEOs? So how come Democrats&#8217; b\u00eate noire, Darth Vader Cheney himself- opposed bailing out the biggest crony of them all, General Motors? Of course, that&#8217;s not how Democrats (or most folks in Michigan) will react to today&#8217;s\u00a0revelation from The Detroit News&#8217; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8241"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8241"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8243,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8241\/revisions\/8243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}