My guess is that most of our readers are like me: furious that the Detroit auto manufacturers are pleading their case for a bailout, when for decades, the industry not only resisted higher mileage standards but actively lobbied to obstruct improvements that consumers are now demanding, as a matter of cost and climate change.
You are asking, “When am I going to get my bailout?” And the answer is, only if your pain is measured by pound of steel or ether of financial derivatives. The $25 or $50 billion that car manufacturers are now asking for doesn’t seem indicative of “free market” values that Republicans used as a stick against “command and control” environmental regulations since the Reagan years.
Democrats are due their share of blame.
Democrat John Dingell, the 2nd longest serving member of the US House and senior Representative from Michigan’s 15th Congressional district (50 years), has been at the forefront of party leadership that insulated and protected Detroit from regulatory changes for a very long time. He turned out to be a willing ally of Big Oil and energy producers who are mostly Republicans.
I’m sure he thought he was doing the right thing by his constituents, but now that it has turned out to be the wrong thing: shouldn’t Dingell surrender his committee chairmanship of Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee? I think so.
There is no polite way of saying this, but on the other hand, there is nothing polite to be said about a core American industry whose leadership allowed our national economic interests to be frittered away while making themselves tidy fortunes.
Type the rest of the post here
4 comments:
You can thank heavy handed CAFE standards and Union dictated labor contracts for sinking the big three. They never stood a chance and quite frankly they would be better off going under to release themselves from those unfair agreements. On thebrightside of things we will get closer to realizinf Al Gore's "end of the internal combustion engine".....
Gimleteye writes: did CAFE standards and union dictated contracts sink the Big Three? I don't think so. What CAFE standards did the Big Three agree to, that foreign competitors had not already beaten the moment they were signed? When credible threats arose from Japan, did the Big Three do everything possible to match them in the "free market"? No: the Big Three bet the store on big SUV's. The reader's last comment is unintelligible but maybe there's more to explain that I don't understand.
I am disappointed, I thought this was a post about Click and Clack of the NPR radio show: Called Car Talk.
Gimleteye writes: we sometimes title our blog posts just to see who turns up!
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