My concern there is that anything the government touches never seems to stay competitive globally – take, for example, education.

Additionally – having lived in Michigan – while I understand the devastation it would bring to lose the Detroit auto industry to that state, I also understand something else: this isn’t a bail out of the Big 3; it’s a bail out of the UAW. The unions have ruined the auto industry; my grandparents’ motto – auto factory workers – was always this: “don’t work too hard.”

For too long, Democrats have been in bed with mob-run labor unions. The idea of the liberal illuminati handing over taxpayer dollars to organized crime makes me ill. And make no bones about it: that is exactly what the labor unions are, and everyone in Detroit knows it. As for me? I don’t want my tax money to send Tony Soprano on vacation.

Let. Them. Die!

I, for one, am absolutely sick and tired of reading about Detroit and their insipid, protected, coddled, unionized and “too-big-to-fail” minions. I *know* this will be a major blow, but when will we clean out the rot? If we keep transfusing them with taxpayer loot, they’ll never learn.

Can’t risk it? If you told someone 30 years ago that TWA, PanAm, Eastern (Airlines), Data General, Warner Brothers, Texaco, ShellOil, or even AMC Motors (I could go on, of course) would be dead or acquired by the 21st century you’d have gotten blank stares. It’s the nature of the market. Subsidizing them puts politician’s and bureaucrat’s whims above the public’s (and their wallet’s) choosing. And as any good European will tell you, that’s a trough where the pigs are *never* satisfied.

Th

Why Chrysler (besides the fact that they’re goners anyway?) GM and Ford are at least trying to produce hybrids and electrics. Chrysler isn’t, outside of press releases.Actually, Chrysler spent a great deal of money co-developing the two-mode hybrid. Like GM, they have tried to bring it to market in the logical place: the vehicles that need it the most and that are most able to use it (since it is genuinely hard to scale it down in volume and weight).

If you love freedom, you should want to see GM go, since they are the ones planning to produce cars that can be shut down remotely by satellite (using OnStar). This is done in the name of giving police departments the authority to stop high-speed chases. Do you think it will stop there?

For many years, the US auto market was a near monopoly for the UAW. Between trying to cut costs and trying to respond to other government mandates, the Big Three outsourced a lot of their technology (and a lot of risk) and helped create the situation we’re in, but they did it in response to government action.

The best thing we can do is require that government aid be matched by ‘reorganization’ in bankruptcy court. Some of that aid might go to picking up ‘underfunded’ medical benefits for pensioners, with the proviso that people now employed contribute more towards those benefits, and accept a future cap based on ability to pay. And the unions should run the funds that will pay out for those benefits.

Now, will G.W.Bush buy into this and go public with it? No. Would the press pay attention if he did? Well, the Wall Street Journal would, and a few others. Would Congress even nibble at the idea? No. But it would be the right thing and the conservative thing to do.

Now House Majority Leader Pelosi wants to take our tax money to subsidize them to no lasting effect, and taxpayers won’t even get a crappy Cobalt or Vega for the yard.