A lot of people agree that the country’s manufacturing sector needs to get healthy before the economy can shake off the recession and start to grow again. That’s why the appointment of a manufacturing czar ought to be closely scrutinized.
Obama’s new man to lead our factories out of the wilderness has just been announced. He is Ron Bloom, a Harvard trained lawyer who has represented unions for much of his legal career. There were two blog reviews about this this today. One from the National Association of Manufacturers, which seems pretty upbeat about Bloom. And there’s this more critical assessment from the blog JammieWearingFool.
NAM of all groups, ought to be more concerned with this appointment. But in the first paragraph of the news release on their site (pulled from a French press agency of all things), they credit Bloom as the “guy who has helped drive the turnaround the U.S. auto sector.”
Oh, really? I can’t wait to see those sales figures next month. Here’s what that “turnaround” looks like in graph form. (Scroll down to the chart on light vehicle sales.)
JammieWearingFool isn’t so sure, and cites Bloom’s involvement in enabling the unions to bankrupt the American steel industry in the late 70s and 80s. And Bloom was in the thick of it when the Obama Administration nationalized Chrysler and GM just months ago.
Over the Labor Day weekend people of a conservative bent got a good chuckle out of watching Obama’s green jobs czar trash talk his way out of what would have otherwise been a cushy, do-nothing government job. Bloom, on the other hand, isn’t a blithering pseudo-radical and could be a serious threat to every non-union manufacturing company in the country. If he does what he did to the American steel industry thirty years ago, or what he helped do to Chrysler and GM just months ago, what little manufacturing we have left in this country could soon grind to a halt.
