“We’re going to have riots.”

That was the prediction of Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., about the consequences of using billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to bail out troubled industries like Detroit’s Big Three automakers.

Speaking to Carter Clews, executive editor of the news bureau of Americans for Limited Government, DeMint elaborated on why he thinks an auto industry bailout will trigger social discord.

“Already people are rioting because they’re losing their jobs and somebody else has been bailed out,” DeMint said. “And the unfairness of it becomes more and more evident as we go along, because the auto companies may be hurting, but there are very few companies that aren’t hurting. And they’re going to hurt. We don’t have enough money to bail everyone out.”

The Daily Blog isn’t certain which “riots” Sen. DeMint was citing. But the unfairness implicit in bailing out only some troubled companies was a primary factor in the recent occupation by employees of a window manufacturing plant in Chicago.

Workers at the plant were told by management that they were going to be laid off without compensation because the Bank of America had told the company it was cutting off credit. The employees cried foul, noting that Bank of America had itself received $25 billion as part of the federal government’s recent bailout of the financial industry.

The workers ended their protest only after the bank, under pressure from Illinois lawmakers, agreed to provide a $1.35-million loan to fund severance pay and accrued vacation pay for those who were losing their jobs.

Associated Press reported that a crowd of about 100 demonstrators protested in downtown Chicago yesterday while negotiators met to hammer out the bank funding deal.

“They got bailed out,” the demonstrators chanted. “We got sold out.”

— Tom McFeely