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Fans of rank political hypocrisy can rejoice, for the corker is back!
That’d be Bob Corker, the multimillion-dollar real estate developer who’s now a U.S. senator from Tennessee. He first burbled up into public consciousness last December by hurling rhetorical bombs at Detroit’s unionized auto workers, asserting that their pay packages are so outrageously high that they are the reason the industry is on financial life support. Corker demanded that, as a price for getting federal bailout money, GM and other American companies tear up their union contracts and bust the wages of their workers down to the level of non-union, foreign auto factories in Tennessee.
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First, what a hoot to hear a rich senator, who draws $165,000 a year from us taxpayers, jumping on middle-class workers who don’t average a third of that pay. Second, it turns out that, while experienced unionized autoworkers get about $28 an hour, that’s barely more than the $25 an hour that Nissan pays its workers in Tennessee.
But now comes strike three for the hypocritical senator. He’s discovered that – whoops! – there’s a unionized General Motors plant in his own state, and his attacks on the union make him less popular there than a tornado in a trailer park. “We’re deeply disappointed.” in Corker, said a union official at the GM factory, adding: “That’s the official [union] statement, but actually my members want to choke him.”
So, guess who is now demanding that any restructuring of GM by Obama’s car bailout czar must spare the Tennessee plant from cuts or closure? Right, The Corker. Suddenly, the guy who tried to mandate wage cuts for Detroit auto workers is at the barricades in his state, plaintively singing “Solidarity Forever.”
Corker’s shameless hypocrisy is so glaring it can be seen from the space station with the naked eye.
“Corker: If Spring Hill’s GM plant closes, it will be for political reasons,” www.tennessean.com, March 30, 2009.
“Look who wants to protect a GM plant,” www.freep.com, April 10, 2009.
“Rage In Spring Hill – Tennessee GM autoworkers outraged that their senator torpedoed the auto industry bailout,” www.wordpress.com, December 13, 2008.