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How do we know the auto bailout is unpopular across the board?

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  December 2nd, 2008 at 12:03 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

When people on the left start favorably linking to this Wall Street Journal article, you know the bailout has problems.

[I]n the other American auto industry you rarely read about, car makers are gaining market share and adjusting amid the sales slump, without seeking a cent from the government.

These are the 12 “foreign,” or so-called transplant, producers making cars across America’s South and Midwest. Toyota, BMW, Kia and others now make 54% of the cars Americans buy. The internationals also employ some 113,000 Americans, compared with 239,000 at U.S.-owned carmakers, and several times that number indirectly.

. . . .

The root of this other industry’s success is no secret. In fact, Detroit has already adopted some of its efficiency and employment strategies, though not yet enough. To put it concisely, the transplants operate under conditions imposed by the free market. Detroit lives on Fantasy Island.

And therein lies the problem. The Democrats have set up a false dichotomy — helping American automakers and not foreign automakers.

Funny, in Democrats’ minds massive immigration of people is a good think. Hell, they’ll even embrace you if you’re illegal. But no foreigners allowed, even highly productive ones, when the foreigners are companies employing American workers.

The world has advanced too far for Democrat protectionist policies of command and control.

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  • bs

    in San Carlos, CA. Now Tesla is looking for government handouts….for a car manufacturer that produces $100K vehicles.

    I don’t think so.

  • Achance

    is the fact that most of their constituency really, really, really doesn’t like blue collar union types. You know, the guys who build cars and dumb stuff like that.

    Dealt with it years ago when I worked for the unions. I was better skilled, better educated, and better off than 95% of the the D activists and they looked down their white collar noses at me because I didn’t work behind a desk. Actually, I did work behind a desk, and a very, very nice one, but that was incomprehensible to the little snobs since I wore Levis, a Pendleton, cowboy boots, and a union jacket rather than khakis, light blue oxford cloth, a navy blazer, and penny loafers. Hell, even in those days I had a bunch of Brooks Brothers in the closet, I just didn’t wear it to the meetings they were invited to.

  • GENE_LALOR

    ** NON-STORIES IN AND OUT OF THE NEWS

    With all the real news stories out there, you have to wonder why newspapers waste newsprint and why other media waste valuable space on non-stories.

    Those stories include news that everyone already knows, news that has no redeemable journalistic value, and news that so clearly reflects the obvious that it?s tantamount to dog-bites-man accounts.

    Included in the news everyone already knows?or should know?is the revelation that the New York Times and the Washington Post virtually ignored the good news coming out of Iraq in November: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=40130.

    Good grief! What else would we expect? Those papers which are rapidly and justly headed for the scrapheap of dead liberal rags posing as newspapers have been slanting, ignoring, and twisting the news for decades.

    They and others on the Left have been printing all the news that fits their liberal agendas at least since the Viet Nam Era. Should we really have anticipated their reporting on any good news such as that now emanating from Iraq, namely, few casualties and the fact we?re finally winning that miserable war?

    This is not to say the Times and the Post serve no good purpose. Bird cages will always need lining and Fido puppies will always need piddling mats until they are housebroken.

    Among the no value reports is this tidbit concerning Democrat Al Franken?s inability to accept the reality that he lost the Senate seat in Minnesota to Republican incumbent, Senator Norm Coleman: http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/franken-may-seek-senates-help-to-win-race-2008-12-01.html.

    Initial election results showed he lost, recounts showed he lost, recounts of recounts and absentee ballots showed he lost, but instead of being a good loser, instead of the plain, old loser that Franken is, now he wants the Senate or the courts to overrule the electorate and intervene to put him into office.

    And, no, this is not Electon 2000 Redux. Then, Bush had valid reasons to seek legal remedy from SCOTUS. Franken?s only reason is his massive, incomprehensible ego.

    Do Minnesotans really want this clown to represent them?

    When?s the last time dictators voluntarily relinquished power? That occurs about as often as the NYT prints pro-American news and about as often as former, failed, comedian Al Franken was funny.

    So why bother telling us that the tinhorn, blustering, manipulative, corrupt Venezuela dictator Hugo Chavez now wants to ?hold power? for at least a dozen more years? (http://www.newser.com/story/44029/chavez-seeks-power-until-2021.html)

    It?s the equivalent of reporting that Hitler in the thirties and forties, that Stalin in the forties and fifties, and that Castro since virtually forever really didn?t wish to step down from their powerful perches.

    Of course, defeat has a way of changing dictatorial minds, (with Adolph,) and nature has its own way of removing reprobates, via death, (Josef,) or by debilitation, (Fidel).

    Sadly, Hugo is still riding high and, even more sadly, seems hale and hearty so we can?t soon expect his defeat or disablement or death.

    However, until some tragedy strikes him, let?s not pretend he?s something he is not. He?s dictator for life so be done with stories beating that dead horse until something newsworthy comes along concerning Chavez.

    One final bit of non-news that combines all the worst features of news that is not real news, not useful news, and news that is so obvious that it could qualify as the best of the worst is this report that GM, Ford, and Chrysler big wigs are again visiting D.C. and exhibiting more shameless beggary: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=acAtrgAJHgiM&refer=worldwide.

    On this their second trip to Washington with hat in hand, Detroit CEOs Rick Waggoner, Alan Mullaly, and Robert Nardelli all seem to have joined the hoi polloi by driving one of their respective company?s vehicles after being lambasted for private-jetting last time.

    With visions of bailouts dancing in their heads, Detroit?s Big Three were duly chastened but not discouraged. Whether they will agree to the one basic requisite that could get them on the road to recovery, re-negotiating contracts with the UAW, remains to be seen.

    It also remains to be seen whether the politicians will demand that as a requisite before they shell out billions in taxpayer money to companies that make inferior products and obsequiously pay exorbitant salaries to people who tighten bolts and affix mirrors to those inferior products.

    After all, aren?t average hourly wages of over $70 fair and reasonable?

    A story worth reporting would be congressional refusal to subsidize GM, Ford, and Chrysler profligacy but that will probably never happen since politicians lately are on a wild spending spree?with our money.