Let Me Get This Straight...

...we have $20 million dollars to bail out Citicorp, which is on the verge of failure despite years of charging usurious interest rates on its credit cards, but we don't have $25 million for General Motors even though it employs 150,000 people directly and millions more through its subsidiaries and job multiplier. 

Look, I know that General Motors bears heavy responsibility for its problems and that its brand has a bad rep. But there's still something wrong with a picture where it's o.k. to use taxpayer dollars to bailout finance but not o.k. to use them to help labor. For all the big talk in this country about the work ethic, public policy time and again favors capital over labor. Look no further than the tax code, where the highest tax rate on money earned by money (capital gains) is lower than the highest rate on money earned by work. Moreover, capital gains are exempt from Social Security and Medicare taxes.

Conservatives of course see GM's travails as golden opportunity for them to fulfill their moral imperative of union busting. For them, this is like the Prime Directive. And I don't like seeing my tax dollars go to bailouts any more than anyone else. Nor am I for giving GM (or Citicorp, for that matter) carte blanche with bailout money. The government needs to hold their feet to the fire and exact a commitment from them to build green cars. But I don't see the point in allowing the backbone of American manufacturing to disappear without a whimper...

"Working On A Dream," Bruce Springsteen's new single is available from iTunes and his web site for free today only. It's an o.k. song. Bruce is capable of more original metaphors than playing the hand you’re dealt, although the first stanza is classic Bruce. But what’s with the whistling? His harmonica suddenly isn’t good enough? And if that’s actually Roy Bittan on piano, he got turned into a 1970’s Southern California sessions ace. On the other hand, I’ll be the first to admit that if I’d been present when Bruce broke out the song at an Obama rally, I’d have been singing along and crying with everyone else. Context is everything, and "Dream" might work well as part of a song cycle. (Although I’m apprehensive about what’s been leaked so far. Any album that opens with a song called "Outlaw Pete" should be greeted with apprehension.)

My personal dream for the next Springsteen album remains the same: Ever since hearing his contributions (“Ain’t Got No Home” and especially “Vigilante Man”) to 1988’s Folkways Revisited: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, I’ve hoped that he would do an album in this spirit. This takes the form of a four-piece band – two guitars, bass, and drums – performing live in the studio. The material is a combination of nine or ten originals and three or four covers. It’s generous with guitar workouts, and most of all it is self-produced. I think he could take that baton and run a mile in 100-meter dash time...