Movin' on up

Now we're up in the big leagues
Getting our turn at bat 

~~ Theme from "The Jeffersons"

Lordy, what a day! 

Day 33 of the federal government shitdown shutdown. Workers are going to go for a month without a paycheck and our airports, our borders, and our country are all less safe because of Individual-1's petulant temper tantrum.

Venezuela cuts diplomatic ties with the United States and orders all U.S. diplomats out within 72 hours.

Michael Cohen postpones his testimony before the House Oversight Committee due to threats to his family from Individual-1 and his TV lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

Individual-1 says, "Imma do the State of the Union in the House of Representative." 

Speaker Pelosi says, "LOL No." 

My head is spinning! It's easy to become inured to the utterly chaotic news cycle because it just never stops. However, today I had a vaccination against the chaos and it came this morning. 

My very own Mayor, Pete Buttigieg (say it like 'Buddha Judge'), announced that he has formed an exploratory committee concerning a run for President of the United States. 

Translation: HE'S RUNNING! He really is!

It's been looking that way for a while, but how exciting to hear that it's happening for real! I am thrilled. 

I've been preaching about Mayor Pete for years. I've told friends all over the country to watch this guy because he's going to be President one day. After this morning's announcement, I had friends telling me, "I thought of you when I heard!" I've been on Cloud Nine all day!

So what is it about Mayor Pete that I (and so many of my fellow citizens) love? There are many, but I'll give you three. 

I was impressed from the very first moment I met him. Ken and I were at the local Firefighter's Blues Festival and it was when Pete was first running for Mayor. I had read some articles about him in our local paper, the South Bend Tribune, and I'd liked what he had to say. Ken and I were sitting there in our lounge chairs drinking our beers and I saw Pete working his way through the crowd and shaking hands. I elbowed Ken and said, "Hey, that's Pete Buttigieg! Wanna say hi?" We stood and waited for him to make his way over and we shook hands and chatted a bit. He is not a large man but despite his slight frame, he has a real presence. He was open and friendly and there was just something about him that left us both saying, "Wow." That was when I started thinking that this guy was meant for big things. 

The second thing is what he has done as Mayor of South Bend. I was born here and grew up here (same for Pete) and many of my family members worked for Studebaker. My grandpa, several uncles, and my Aunt June, who did payroll and was one of the last few employees after the plant shut down. The factory buildings cleared out and Aunt June helped various desks go to local schools. We had a huge old Studebaker desk for many years and my cousins and I had all kinds of Studebaker stationery to doodle on. (If we had only known how much that stuff would be worth one day!)

But I digress. After Studebaker shut down, it devastated our town. People lost their pensions (in fact, it was due to the Studebaker plant closing that government protections were put in place to ensure that workers would have guaranteed pensions), people started moving away, and the suicide rate shot up. The malaise continued for decades. When I was in high school, there were a couple of malls built in the area and it siphoned off all of the commerce from downtown. It's not an exaggeration to say that our downtown was a ghost town. Everything was closed and shuttered, all the stores and restaurants closed or moved elsewhere, and no one went there. 

When Pete Buttigieg came on the scene and decided to run for Mayor, Newsweek included us in an article about America's "dying cities." Pete had plenty of ideas about how to make a difference, and when he got elected, he started implementing them. He went about working to reinvent us as more of a "tech hub," rather than a manufacturing city. People started investing time and money in our city and some highly motivated Notre Dame students saw the potential and decided to stick around and make a difference. 

To make a long story short, our downtown is bustling, there are numerous restaurants (from burger joints to some of the best restaurants in town), there is an active music scene, and we've gone from a ghost town to it can be hard to find a parking place when things are going on! It is a complete turnaround from what it was like when I was growing up and I am proud to take out of town friends downtown and show off our city! Mayor Pete was a revitalizing force behind this and helped make our city friendly to business and tourism. 

Third, in 2016, he invited his supporters to a Christmas party at a pub downtown. We attended with Shane and Matt, and it was the first time we'd gotten together since the presidential election. Needless to say, we were all pretty down. Pete and Chasten came by to say hi and thank us for coming, and I asked Pete, "How do we deal with this? This is awful." 

I don't remember his exact words, but he talked about how we need to focus on what is right and continue to speak out and be involved. He agreed that it was pretty awful but said that we all need to stick together and support each other and keep working to make things better. When he and Chasten finally walked away to talk to other groups, we all looked at each other and said, "Whoa!" Somehow he had managed to make us feel optimistic during a very dark time. We were all worried about various rights, not just for us, but for others. But with a few words, Mayor Pete left us feeling better. 

I could write about more things and probably will in the future, but this is long enough. As I've told people for years, check this guy out because he's the real deal. 

I don't know what will happen but I look forward to seeing everything play out and I especially look forward to seeing other people around the country get to hear his ideas and get to know him. If you are interested in that, please check out his website, PeteForAmerica. Click on the "Meet Pete" tab to get a brief bio. Good luck, Mayor Pete! We are with you! 

Beth’s Books: Boom, Bust, Exodus

Subtitled The Rust Belt, The Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities, author Chad Broughton

I came across a description of this book somewhere and thought it sounded very interesting. It made me think of my hometown, South Bend, Indiana, and our loss of the main employer in the area, Studebaker, over fifty years ago.

The book recounts the story of how Galesburg, Illinois lost its own “Studebaker,” the Maytag plant. This happened at a time when many companies were moving operations to Mexico and other such locations, partly due to NAFTA, and it also looks at how Mexican border towns were affected by this change.

The book is well-researched and well-written, and left me with an overwhelming sense of loss and sadness. The struggle of some workers to deal with the impending loss of what they had thought to be a lifelong career was sometimes courageous, but most often heartbreaking. Some planned ahead and worked hard to get a degree. For those who went into fields like healthcare, chances were good that they would get a job. Others ended up doing something completely different, like part-time teaching, janitorial work, or railroad work, often for much lower wages than they had been getting.

As for the Mexican workers who flocked to the border towns like Reynosa to find steady employment, they were subjected to long hours, slave wages, and abuse. Drug cartels meant a dangerous environment for them and for their children. Some in this country love to hate the Mexican workers “who are taking our jobs,” but they are hard workers who are used by corporations to feed their profit margins.

I mourn for the loss of strong unions in this country. While the union was unable to save the jobs at the Galesburg Maytag plant, they put up a good fight, if an ultimately futile one. Some of the Mexican workers were fighting for stronger unions and worker protections, a fight that took place here years ago, and one that it seems we have finally lost. I know that unions aren’t always saving angels, but in the face of overwhelming corporate profits, they are the working person’s last refuge for representation. The loss of strong union representation in this country helps no one but the corporations who exploit the workers.

We have gone from a post-WWII boom, one in which corporations shared the profits with the people who manufactured their goods, to an atmosphere of antagonism and exploitation of workers. I find this tragic. So when people like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker boast about breaking unions as some sort of grand achievement, I think that this is a person who doesn’t respect the American worker.

The South Bend experience is mentioned in this book:

South Bend, Indiana, once home to Studebaker automobiles, is now home to a data center for cloud-based computing, with hopes for rebirth based on high-tech manufacturing.

I know we aren’t the only town, especially in the Midwest, to have experienced the loss of a main employer like Studebaker. Galesburg dealt with the same thing some thirty years after we did. It can be a devastating thing for a community. Most of us who grew up in this area had at least one relative who worked there; I had a good half a dozen. Suicide rates in town went up after the plant closed; our population took a significant hit as people moved elsewhere to find work; the loss of pensions for Studebaker workers led to federal legislation that protected pensions even when companies declared bankruptcy. How does a community deal with such a loss? Fifty years later, it is still a work in progress for South Bend, and we have a larger population than Galesburg as well as another large employer (University of Notre Dame).

Income inequality is only growing in this country. The top 1% control 40% of our nation’s wealth. Wage stagnation fuels the growing divide. Who will stand up for the American worker? Who will be the voice of the middle class?

A local take on a national issue

Our local paper had a great front page article today, looking at the topic of the auto industry bailout through a local perspective. And we do have one, because after decades of operation in South Bend, the largest employer in the area closed its doors. Studebaker shut down its local operations in late 1963, putting thousands out of work--and right before the holidays. This picture has always made me sad...it's the last day at Studebaker, the workers leaving for the last time.

From what I've read in various books about the company, it was a bleak time in South Bend, with many wondering if the city would survive. By that time, there were enough other companies that the city did survive the blow, but many workers were unable to find as good a job as they had with Studebaker, and many were old enough that they weren't able to find other jobs at all. Suicide rates went up. Local and state lawmakers visited Washington to plead for assistance, and they did get some, but not enough to bail out the company completely. Studebaker had always been the recipient of lucrative military contracts, beginning with the Civil War, and this kept them afloat for many years. With the pending shutdown, the federal government gave money, but not to save the company; the money went towards retraining of workers. The success of the retraining was mixed, as some workers had never worked for another company, and had never finished high school in order to go to work at the plant--for some, literacy was a problem.

The current crisis is compounded by the credit crisis, which has a broad effect on all industries and businesses. Also in today's paper was an article about a steelmaker near Gary that is going to have to lay off over 3,000 workers. The Union president is calling for government help for those workers.

This is a horrible dilemma, because while we all want people to keep their jobs, I believe that if a company no longer has a viable business plan, the government cannot continue to fund those plans that just aren't working any longer. The auto makers saw it this past week when Congress said, "This isn't good enough. You have to show us what you are going to do to make this viable again." The auto makers will need to make concessions, such as when the government loaned Chrysler money in 1979, and Lee Iacocca took a salary of $1 a year. I believe (and this is merely my opinion) that the auto makers really need to rethink how they make their cars, and part of that is stricter fuel efficiency. They should have done that years ago, but they took the easy way out and maintained the status quo, for the most part.

I am not against the American auto industry. I've never owned anything but a Ford Mustang, and I've always been satisfied with Ford's service. I think they're a fine company, and I'm happy to buy their products. But they, along with GM and Chrysler, haven't been really competitive for some time now, and they need--here comes one of those phrases that we all love to hate--a complete paradigm shift of how they operate. I believe they can still be viable companies, and I think it's time that the CEO's pony up like Iacocca did. If they truly believe in their companies, they will be willing to do so, they will work harder to turn the companies around, and they will care enough about their employees, their shareholders, and about the economy in general to do whatever it takes to reverse their companies' fortunes.

Based on some numbers that Ken is running, the federal assistance to the auto makers makes sense. Not to help the CEO's maintain their million-dollar salaries and lavish perks, but to save these great American companies and save the people who build the cars. To not do so will cost taxpayers more in the long run. The thought of Ford going under makes me want to cry. They can turn things around, but there have to be conditions, and there will have to be a lot of hard work.

I hope they're up to the task.
_____

Source: South Bend Tribune, November 23, 2008