Ron Bloom Obama’s Manufacturing Czar

Continuing our look into Obama’s radical czar’s we come to Ron Bloom. Ron Bloom is yet another Union shill within the Obama administration as well as a Maoist.

First up, Official title and duties from WhiteHouse.gov: Sept 7th 2009

President Obama Names Ron Bloom Senior Counselor for Manufacturing Policy

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Obama will announce that Ron Bloom will serve as the Administration’s Senior Counselor for Manufacturing Policy.  Working closely with the National Economic Council, Bloom will provide leadership on policy development and strategic planning for the President’s agenda to revitalize the manufacturing sector.  He will work with departments and agencies across the administration – including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, Energy, and Labor – to integrate existing programs and develop new initiatives affecting the manufacturing sector.

Bloom will retain his role as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury assigned to the President’s Task Force on the Automotive Industry.

President Obama is committed to a next-generation manufacturing agenda by partnering with the private sector to spur innovation, invest in the skills of American workers, and help our manufacturers prosper in the global marketplace by promoting exports.

President Obama said, “Last week we learned that our manufacturing sector expanded for the first time in 18 months and had the highest monthly output in two years.  It’s a sign that we’re on the right track to economic recovery, but that we still have a long way to go.  That’s why I’ve asked Ron Bloom to help coordinate my Administration’s manufacturing policy.  Distinguished by his extraordinary service on the Auto Task Force and his extensive experience with both business and labor, Ron has the knowledge and experience necessary to lead the way in creating the good-paying manufacturing jobs of the future.  We must do more to harness the power of American ingenuity and productivity so that we can put people back to work and unleash our full economic potential.”

Ron Bloom said, “A strong manufacturing sector is a cornerstone of American competitiveness and a critical part of President Obama’s economic strategy.  As we meet the challenges of globalization and technological change, it is vital to have a concerted effort across the Administration to support an innovative, vibrant manufacturing sector.”

From the Washington Post: Sept 8, 2009

President Obama on Monday announced his selection of Ron Bloom as senior counselor for manufacturing policy.

Speaking at an AFL-CIO picnic in Cincinnati, the president introduced Bloom, who has been a senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner as part of the auto industry task force since February. Bloom, a Harvard Business School graduate, previously advised the United Steelworkers union and worked as an investment banker.

“As my new point person on manufacturing, he’s going to help us craft the policies that will create the next generation of great manufacturing jobs and ensure American competitiveness in the 21st century,” Obama said.

Bloom will work with the National Economic Council to develop and plan policy for Obama’s efforts to revitalize U.S. manufacturing, the White House said. He will retain his position on the auto task force.

The U.S. manufacturing industry has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in recent years to overseas competition as some U.S. businesses have relocated abroad to take advantage of cheaper labor. Bringing an invigorated manufacturing base back to the United States was a campaign pledge Obama made last year.

Bloom will be charged with reviewing U.S. competitiveness in the global economy. His job will include coordinating with the departments of Commerce, Treasury, Energy and Labor to integrate current programs with new initiatives.

Bloom’s appointment follows news that the U.S. manufacturing sector had expanded for the first time in 18 months and had the highest monthly output in two years.

“It’s a sign that we’re on the right track to economic recovery, but that we still have a long way to go,” Obama said in the announcement, issued Sunday.

Bloom said in the statement that a strong manufacturing sector is a cornerstone of American competitiveness.

“As we meet the challenges of globalization and technological change, it is vital to have a concerted effort across the administration to support an innovative, vibrant manufacturing sector,” Bloom said.

Prior to joining the Obama administration, Bloom was a special assistant to the president of the United Steelworkers. His responsibilities included the union’s collective bargaining program.

Before joining the Steelworkers, Bloom was one of the founding partners of Keilin and Bloom, an investment banking firm, where he was involved in numerous transactions on behalf of the Steelworkers, United Auto Workers, Teamsters, Air Line Pilots Association and other unions.

And now a deeper look into Ron Bloom from Discover the Networks:

Born in 1956, Ron Bloom was raised in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. During his childhood, he was deeply involved with Habonim — “a progressive Labor Zionist youth movement that emphasizes cultural Judaism, socialism and social justice.” Bloom’s experience with this movement had a major influence on his personal development and worldview. Many years later, in 2009, when accepting a post in the Barack Obama administration, Bloom noted that the lessons he had learned from Habonim – “identifying with the underdog, and … observing the world through a lens [of] people who don’t have as much and aren’t as lucky” — remained “part of what I try to do in my work life.” “That’s one of the things that made me want to work for Obama,” he elaborated.

After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1977, Bloom took a job as an organizer, negotiator, and research specialist for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). While at SEIU, he observed that many union negotiators lacked the skills necessary for bargaining effectively with management:

“Unions were being backed into corners by companies and couldn’t understand on a sophisticated level, the company’s arguments … Labor needed to be armed with the equivalent skills.“

After his stint with SEIU, Bloom went on to work as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Full Employment; then as New England Regional Director of the Jewish Labor Committee.

In 1985 Bloom graduated from Harvard Business School and spent the next decade as an investment banker with several firms, most notably the New York-based Lazard Freres & Co. (where he was a vice president).

In 1996 Bloom joined the United Steel Workers (USW) union as a special assistant to the president. At that time, the USW president was George Becker, a co-founder of the Campaign for America’s Future. Bloom retained his position as special assistant when Becker was replaced by Leo Gerard (who today serves as a board member of the Apollo Alliance) in 2001. Both Becker and Gerard have close ties to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Both have been honored by Chicago’s DSA chapter, for their “leadership in building working class solidarity across borders”; their “advocacy of fair trade over free trade”; and their “commitment to finding a better way to run the economy for working people everywhere.”

In June 2006 Bloom was a featured speaker at the metal industry’s Steel Success Strategies XXI conference in New York, where he said:

“The Steelworkers have some advice for industry execs on how to make sure there’s plenty for both shareholders and workers. The theme of this advice will be really quite simple — be hard-headed and pragmatic capitalists — run the companies and actively participate in the political process on the basis of what is good for your shareholders — and not based on outmoded nostrums about unions, free enterprise, deregulation, free markets and free trade.

“In today’s world the blather about free trade, free markets and the joys of competition is nothing but pablum for the suckers. The guys making the real money know that outsized returns are available to those who find the industries that get the system to work for them and the companies within those industries that dominate them.”

Bloom supports federal-government control of the American health care system (“Management must support universal single-payer national health care”). He also believes the government should be authorized to regulate the production and provision of all forms of energy (“It is time to support a comprehensive national energy program”).

At a 2008 “distressed investors” forum, Bloom said:

“Generally speaking, we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system, to beat the market. Or at least find someone who will pay you a lot of money, ’cause they’re convinced that there is a free lunch. We know this is largely about power, that it’s an adults-only, no-limit game. We kind of agree with Mao, that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun.”

On July 13, 2009, Bloom replaced Steven Rattner as head of the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry (a position popularly known as “Car Czar”). This position was created by Barack Obama to oversee federal bailouts of failing automobile manufacturers and the restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler. On September 8, 2009, President Obama appointed Bloom to an additional post — Senior Counselor to the President for Manufacturing Policy (a position popularly known as “Manufacturing Czar”).

Ties to Socialism indeed. He wrote an article for their paper Democratic Left “The magazine for the Democratic Socialists of America” in the Fall of 2006 Within it he advocates for Socialist principles such as universal healthcare and more:

Free Market

The Steelworkers have some advice for industry execs on how to make sure there’s plenty for both shareholders and workers. The theme of this advice will be really quite simple – be hard-headed and pragmatic capitalists – run the companies and actively participate in the political process on the basis of what is good for your shareholders – and not based on outmoded nostrums about unions, free enterprise, deregulation, free markets and free trade.

In today’s world the blather about free trade, free-markets and the joys of competition is nothing but pablum for the suckers. The guys making the real money know that outsized returns are available to those who find the industries that get the system to work for them and the companies within those industries that dominate them.

Unions

The starting point is that companies need to get along with the union. Companies that establish a constructive partnership with their unions do far better for their shareholders than those that do not.

Health Care

The first is one where conflicts between labor and management do still exist, and that is health care. On that issue, however, given the fact that the shareholders want us to get along, the answer is to get it out of collective bargaining and into the public sphere. That means that management must support universal single-payer national health care.

The simple fact is that America’s current health care system places those companies that manufacture in the U.S. at a tremendous competitive disadvantage against those who manufacture anywhere else in the developed world. A universal single-payer system, whether financed through general revenue or even a payroll tax, would result in significantly higher profits for the steel industry.

Energy Reform

And if that were not enough, one could finally add the huge corrupting and corrosive distortions that petro-politics bring to our nation. Irrespective of where one sits on the various divides in our country, no one defends our “addiction” to foreign energy as healthy for our democracy.

Once again, a vital sector of the economy is being run for the benefit of its producers, not its consumers. And while we can waste time arguing about whether to drill in Alaska’s North Slope, real relief will come only from increasing supply and reducing demand, through huge investments in conservation, clean coal, and renewables – all of which will consume lots of steel and none of which will be done by the guys who today are profiting so handsomely from the status-quo. The steel industry and manufacturers in general need to stop worrying about offending their business school classmates, political soul mates, and friends at the country club and to stand up for their owners. It is time to support a comprehensive national energy program.

Trade Deficit

To convey the dangers of a trade deficit left unreined, let me quote two well-known radicals.

The first one said the following:

I think we are skating on increasingly thin ice. On the present trajectory, the deficits and imbalances will increase. At some point, the sense of confidence in capital markets that today so benignly supports the flow of funds to the United States and the growing world economy could fade…. I don’t know whether change will come with a bang or a whimper, whether sooner or later. But as things stand, it is more likely than not that it will be financial crises rather than policy foresight that will force the change…. Altogether the circumstances seem to me as dangerous and intractable as any I can remember…. What really concerns me is that there seems to be so little willingness or capacity to do much about it.

And the second:

A country that is now aspiring to an “Ownership Society” will not find happiness in – and I’ll use hyperbole here for emphasis – a “Sharecropper’s Society.” But that’s precisely where our trade policies, supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, are taking us….

The first radical that I quoted was Paul Volker; the second, Warren Buffet. And if you don’t believe them, let’s look at where the most cold-blooded and unemotional capitalists of all – currency traders – are putting their money.

While it may be true that they read the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, cluck endlessly at cocktail parties about Eurosclerosis and make contributions to the CATO Institute, during the day they go short the dollar and long the Euro. In the last three and a half years, the Euro is up 40 percent versus the dollar, meaning those whose livelihood depends on an honest assessment of our economy have voted with their feet.

No one seriously believes that the U.S.’s current profligacy will end other than badly, but neither the steel industry nor any other sector of the business community appears willing to stand up and say that the emperor has no clothes. Each year we are selling almost a trillion dollars of our seed corn and mortgaging forever our future so that we can dance the night away while our poor go hungry and our roads and bridges crumble.

The growth of China and India can be a great opportunity. But not if we, as Lenin so aptly put it, sell them the rope with which to hang us. Steel industry managers need to repudiate the race-to the bottom model of globalization. We need world trade that brings the bottom up, not the top down, and we need to tell the American government to do what every one of its trading partners does – stand up for those who operate on their soil.

So here is Ron Bloom writing in a Socialist Paper advocating for Socialist policies in 2006, you’ll see later he continues the energy policy, but under the guise of Climate Change. You can also see the elements of class warfare, attacking of the free market,  and a quote from Lenin, how nice. He has managed to stay out of the spotlight since being appointed but there is a scandal that can be tied to, if not him, his agenda. What factors were used to determine which dealerships were closed by GM?

Stuart Varney explaining Ron Bloom’s extreme Union bias in a debate with Mike Papantonio

News report about Ron Bloom being called to testify before the Senate Banking Committee

Here’s Senator Hutchinson questioning Ron Bloom after the takeover of General Motors on why were certain auto dealers closed

And what do we know now? One condition for the closures of dealerships, according to Inspector General Neal M. Barofsky of TARP was consideration race and gender.

From his Report: ” Factors affecting the decisions of General Motors and Chrysler to reduce their dealership networks”

GM officials attributed these inconsistencies primarily to a desire to maintain coverage in certain rural areas where they have a competitive advantage over import auto companies that are not typically located in rural areas, although ultimately close to half of all of the GM dealerships identified for termination were in rural areas. Other dealerships were retained because they were recently appointed, were key wholesale parts dealers, or were minority- or woman-owned dealerships. Page 22

Is this Obama manufacturing policy being carried out through Ron Bloom? Protect minorities but fire everyone else?

Here is Ron Bloom advocating for a Green Agenda in a “Clearn Energy Economy Forum”