In a contest between pie-in-the-sky public transportation and expensive roadbuilding plans, the winner is nobody since people generally don’t want to buy much of anything except more complaints about others. The Onion said it best with a headline where a survey said “98% of Americans Approve of Public Transportation for Others”. I doubt the Onion story went into the financing of that plan, but it’s quite obvious where it wouldn’t come from.

In a contest between pie-in-the-sky public transportation and expensive roadbuilding plans, the winner is nobody since people generally don’t want to buy much of anything except more complaints about others. The Onion said it best with a headline where a survey said “98% of Americans Approve of Public Transportation for Others”. I doubt the Onion story went into the financing of that plan, but it’s quite obvious where it wouldn’t come from.

On the one hand, “progressives” hate the idea of most everyone being able to afford their own personal transportation. … On the other hand, they can’t let those precious UAW jobs go away…

It’s simple: Obamotors will pay all those UAW guys to build cheap bicycles so we can get from our high-rise subsidized apartment blocks to our agricultural or industrial commune jobs.

Those pictures you used to see of the streets of Beijing choked with people on bikes, all dressed like Chairman Mao? That’s us in a few years.

On the other hand, they can’t let those precious UAW jobs go away, so what is to be done? My own suspicion is that they will enact policies that make car ownership more and more expensive, but that Government Motors will shift more of their production toward mass transit vehicles which states and cities will be pressured/required to buy. After all, since the common people can’t afford to buy cars anymore, it will be the Government’s obligation to make sure that there is an adequate public transportation infrastructure everywhere in America.
Barf.

You’re right, this won’t end well.
But it will be funny, so we have that going for us.

This whole auto thing is not going to end well.

“Restructuring” involves making and executing decisions where people lose their jobs, factories close or are made vastly more efficient through automation, layer upon layer of management is sent packing to teach at some unfortunate midwestern graduate schools, UAW labor contracts are brought into reality and unprofitable car lines are halted( see encyclopedia under “deadwood: removal of”). while all remaining effort is expended on profitable growth oriented parts of the business.

My question is “How does adding a layer of political patronage and favortism help a company make these decisions?”

Here’s a quick answer – It doesn’t.

And so it has been. They’ve appointed some 31 year old called Brian Deese to manage the resturcturing. He appears to have not quite graduated form Yale Law School,has never set foot in an automotive plant and in fact appears to have no business experience of any kind. If we were in “Atlas Shrugged” (and it’s not clear that we aren’t), this guy would be the character known as the wet nurse.