The Fox Effect

By David Glenn Cox

We have all sorts of mental conditions and psychoses that cause us to behave outside the norms of society. Post traumatic stress, ADHD, even Alzheimer’s disease can cause cognitive function to decline. So open your medical books and write this one into the margins to be codified into later additions: “The Fox effect.” The Fox effect is a syndrome that appears in all agencies and franchises owned by News Corps. Its symptoms include the inverting of facts and statistics to meet its right-wing political agenda.

When the Wall Street Journal was bought out by News Corp last year I wondered to myself, how could the Wall Street Journal become even more right wing? Long the bastion of conservatives and right wing business interests but it was also known for at least some semblance of journalistic integrity. Ah, those were the good old days. Now automatons churn out Fox News caliber offal that would make William Randolph Hurst blush and point to their Wall Street Journal paper hats to show us their integrity.

Here is a perfect example of the Fox effect: “South Could Gain as Detroit Struggles” By Paulo Prada and Dan Fitzpatrick

“As Detroit’s auto makers seek a government bailout, the resilience of their foreign rivals could vault the South to the forefront of the U.S. car industry.”

“Foreign makers have been lured to South Carolina, Alabama and other Southern states over the past decade by generous tax benefits and laws that make it easier to build a largely nonunion work force.”

Ok, the premise is fair enough, the South could benefit, but guess how the South benefits.

“That labor flexibility has emerged as a key advantage during the industry downturn, allowing foreign-owned plants to rapidly downshift in ways their unionized U.S. competitors cannot. Looser work rules are allowing German automaker BMW AG to lay off up to 733 employees at its Greer, S.C., plant by the end of the year. And Toyota Motor Corp said Wednesday it plans to let go at least 250 people at a Georgetown, Ky., factory in the first quarter of 2009.”

That’s the Fox effect, the South could benefit because non-union foreign auto plants can send a thousand Southerners home without paychecks to feed their families. Isn’t that great! At BMW’s plants in Germany its union employees just received an annual raise based on BMW’s record profits last year, but in Greer, South Carolina business is slow, so “get lost.” Toyota gave their Japanese union employees bonuses last year of between $17,000 and $22,000, and its American employees will get the gate and it’s called flexibility.

“Such moves would be largely out of reach for the Big Three U.S. auto makers, which have been saddled with stricter labor rules as vehicle sales have plummeted. Union rules often guaranteed jobs for workers along with generous benefits and wages that surpass those of most other U.S. manufacturing sectors.”

Those same generous benefits also apply to German and Japanese autoworkers, so the South benefits through lower wage earners who pay less in taxes into state and local coffers. Those workers who will have little recourse when being flexible but to depend on state unemployment compensation when the overseer sends them back to the shacks. It only makes sense to shut down the plants where state and local governments have given them a free pass on property taxes and millions of dollars of government incentives. Likewise these flexibility shut downs will reverberate throughout these communities and strain the tax base, but remember, you’re not unemployed, you’re being flexible.

“The foreign manufacturers — which are also reaping benefits of advanced production lines and a more popular lineup of models — are positioned to grab market share from domestic competitors when demand revives. ’If the American car companies died, this is what would replace them,’ said Laurie Harbour-Felax, an auto industry consultant.”

An advanced production line, full of healthy twenty and thirty year olds. Not like the inflexible auto workers in the United States who have the nerve to get older after the big three gave them employment for twenty years. Who demand healthcare and living wages and are just being inflexible. I wonder why those foreign automakers would ever come to such a country? Oh yeah, to get away from their own unions back home so that they can come here and exploit, I mean take advantage of, the “flexibility” of the southern tier of American states.

“Volkswagen AG, Toyota and Kia Motors Corp., which collectively will benefit from more than $1 billion in government incentives, are pushing through the downturn to complete new factories in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia.”

More good news! Georgia has lost two union auto manufacturing facilities, idling 4,000, but even more good news! We added one new non-union plant that only cost the taxpayers of Georgia 10 million dollars a year in tax abatement every year for ten years, even if the workers get sent home next week and never draw another paycheck. Why, to get any better we’d have to have a leaking nuclear plant near the old folks home.

“Foreign makers, which currently operate eight plants in the South, have the firm support of many Southern legislators and governors, who have spent much of the past week giving high-profile denunciations of a Detroit bailout. They argue that buttressing ailing U.S. car companies would create unfair competition to foreign makers that have brought thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investments to the region.”

The companies have the firm support of lawmakers who, in turn, have the firm support of the foreign manufactures. I guess it’s what you would call our own peculiar institution. Lawmakers who denounce the assistance for American companies while proclaiming that competition drives the marketplace. They claim that the big three are going broke because of a bad business model and union wages yet their own non-union plants are being shut down and their workers are left with nothing and they praise it as good news!

The Fox effect, union and non-union plants alike are shutting down but that will somehow aid the South because the companies in the South will owe those workers nothing. Southern lawmakers are lobbying for lower wages and less security for the citizens who ignorantly elected them. With leaders like those who needs enemies? Lawmakers who lobby against American workers and interests and call their support unfair! And a minstrel show media that dances on cue and calls it good news!