“We are blessed to have Toyota in West Virginia”, chortled a member of legislature on West Virginia Public Radio. Have you noticed how West
Virginia news on Public Radio is a series of chortlings from various
politicians? Seems that Senator Rockefeller, Senator Byrd and Governor Wise are the most often quoted and with nary a dissenting thought.
Judging from the commercials and the news sound bites it is fairly
obvious who owns West Virginia Public Radio--a combination of big
business and politicians. Of course this is the two headed monster
that has always run the state. Public radio sucks up to those guys
with seldom a thought to denouncing some of their more self-serving and
devious sound bites.West Virginia Public Radio has become the press agent for incumbent politicians and companies busy decapitating the Appalachain mountains.
Being “blessed” to have Toyota in West Virginia puts God in the
picture. Being blessed means by some diety, or did Toyota bless us? Is
Toyota our God, now? The people in Kentucky must be looking for a new
God since our common diety blessed us with the new Toyota plant that
they wanted. It is like thanking God for football victories. Did God
forsake the side that lost?
Toyota must be thanking their diety that they were blessed with a
state that would give them fifteen years without property taxes, a
four-lane highway, a bridge and an airport. And we are doubly blessed that
our politicians would fall all over themselves praising our new diety
for giving five hundred thousand dollars to the Putnam county school
system. Sounds like a good deal to me--five hundred thousand dollars
and no property tax for fifteen years. How much you want to bet that
the five hundred grand is tax-deductible?
There is a new civil war. It is indeed the war between the states.
Fifteen years form now Toyota will probably ask for another
fifteen-year gift from the poor tax payers of West Virginia. If we
turn them down, Kentucky is ready and waiting.
Workers Aren’t Equal to Corporations
West Virginia Public Radio 7-29-98
Unfortunately for our environment, prosperity in this economic system depends on how much money is spent and that depends on people making good wages. If everyone's wages suddenly went down people would have less money to buy the goods that are on the market, the goods would
sit there and workers who make those un-bought things would be laid off
and we would have a good old-fashioned depression.
With the top 1% of Americans owning more than the other 99% combined perhaps we could start at the other end. Let the obscenely over-paid executives take a pay cut. Let’s see if they want to live on less. With
Bill Gates owning more than the poorest 106 million Americans combined
maybe it is gagging at a gnat and swallowing a camel to ask people to
work for less.
With 40 million Americans having no health insurance it
is bizarre to propose that people would be better off with lower wages.
It is mighty hard for a worker to agree to a pay cut when the
executives in his company are getting pay increases in the millions of
dollars, usually for firing thousands of workers.
American companies are already racing to the bottom on the wage scale by taking their factories to poverty-stricken third world countries
and hiring desperate people to replace American workers who demand a
living wage.
To say that "Just as workers are free to look for work wherever they
want to, businesses should be free to look for workers wherever they
want to,” is to say that one lone worker and the corporation he or she
works for are equal. Since the workers can shop around then the
company should be able to hire and fire whenever they please. Let's
take the cover off this. What is being advocated is that General
Motors should be able to hire scabs or in Orwellian newspeak
"replacement workers" whenever their workers show dissatisfaction by
going on strike.
It would be wonderful if workers and corporations were equal--we
could all get super tax credits and use loopholes to avoid paying
taxes. Workers aren't equal to corporations and that is exactly the
reason we must organize and match our numbers against their billions of
dollars.
Perhaps wages should depend on what a person needs to have a decent
life. Maybe wages shouldn't be dependent on General Motors auctioning
off jobs to the lowest bidder.
This is Julian Martin on West Virginia Public Radio.
This was a rebuttal to a commentary by an industry owner representative who did actually say "Just as workers are free to look for work wherever they want to, businesses should be free to look for workers wherever they want to,” Unfortunately West Virginia Public Radio has discontinued commentaries and rebuttals. And Governor Joe Manchin, who was elected Governor in 2004 and again in 2008, got things changed so that he heads up West Virginia Public Radio. Don’t expect much to be said against big corporations now that they have one of their own in power. Manchin actually changed the slogan on the welcome to West Virginia billboards to read West Virginia, Open for Business. Public anger over the change from West Virginia, Wild and Wonderful caused the Governor to wiggle out of his mistake by holding a vote on what slogan people wanted on the welcome signs. Of course Wild and Wonderful was a previous change from The Mountain State. All three slogans were cooked up by public relations hacks. Open for business is probably the more accurate of the two considering that 500,000 acres of wild and wonderful mountains have been destroyed by mountain top removal coal mining.
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