I seem to remember that Obama had jobs in the private sector, when he was just out of college. It’s a part of his life he doesn’t highlight in “Dreams from my Father”, only briefly mentioning the whole period. He had a job somewhere in the financial sector (I think) and supposedly had risen far enough to have a secretary. He also had a white girlfriend, with whom he broke up because he “didn’t feel comfortable” with her family. No mention of any racism on their part (this is true throughout the book, as far as I remember) but racial consciousness without any prompting, on his, is of course his main theme.
As to whose fault it is that American auto companies are falling apart: can’t anyone accept that it’s *everyone’s* fault. It seems if you think that the corporate idiots who ran General Motors are responsible, you must then think the Union blameless, and vice versa. In actual point of fact, neither group did anything to support the company, and when the economy went south so did its sales. If the corporate guys are so incompetent, then why is it that all the successful companies in America are in right-to-work states? If you answer that this is because they’re run by more competent executives, then the question becomes: Why did those more competent executives go to such lengths to avoid the unions? I think that question answers itself. Why would you pay more for less work? You’d have to be an idiot (or a GM executive) to think that a good idea.
One sidenote: when our brilliant government minds decided the public should own GM, and the executive branch’s people began huddling with GM’s top executives every evening, one of the first subjects of discussion was no doubt which plants to close. I bet the one at the top of the government’s list is the Saturn plant in Spring Hill. TN is a right to work state, and the existence of the plant has long stuck in the UAW’s craw.
