The Toyota Republicans
Digg 
Stumble Upon 
Newsvine 
Slashdot 
Mixx 
Diigo 
Delicious 
Reddit 
Facebook
“GOP to Detroit: Drop Dead!”
So may have read the headline Friday, had not President Bush stepped in to save GM, Ford and Chrysler, which Senate Republicans had just voted to send to the knacker’s yard.
What are Republicans thinking of, pulling the plug, at Christmas, on GM, risking swift death for the greatest manufacturing company in American history, a strategic asset and pillar of the U.S. economy?
The $14 billion loan to the Big Three that Republican senators filibustered to death is just 2 percent of the $700 billion the Senate voted to bail out Wall Street. Having gone along with bailouts of Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie, Freddie and CitiGroup, why refuse a reprieve to an industry upon which millions of the best blue-collar jobs in America depend?
In a good year, Americans buy 17 million cars. A more populous EU probably buys as many. Three billion people in India, Southeast Asia and China, four times as many people as there are in the EU and United States, are moving toward the middle class. They, too, will be wanting cars. And millions of them love American cars.
Is the Republican Party so fanatic in its ideology that, rather than sin against a commandment of Milton Friedman, it is willing to see America written forever out of this fantastic market, let millions of jobs vanish and write off the industrial Midwest?
So it would seem. “Companies fail every day, and others take their place,” said Sen. Richard Shelby on “Face the Nation.”
Presumably, the companies that will “take their place,” when GM, Ford and Chrysler die, are German, Japanese or Korean, like the ones lured into Shelby’s state of Alabama, with the bait of subsidies free-market Republicans are supposed to abhor.
In 1993, Alabama put together a $258 million package to bring a Mercedes plant in. In 1999, Honda was offered $158 million to build a plant there. In 2002, Alabama won a Hyundai plant by offering a $252 million subsidy.
“We have a number of profitable automakers in America, and they should not be disadvantaged for making wise business decisions while failure is rewarded,” says Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
DeMint is referring to “profitable automakers” like BMW, which sited a plant in Spartanburg, after South Carolina offered the Germans a $150 million subsidy and $80 million to expand.
Be it BMW, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Mitsubishi or Hyundai, the South has become a sanctuary for foreign assembly plants, for which Southern states have been paying subsidies.
Fine.
But why this “Let-them-eat-cake!” coldness toward U.S. auto companies? General Motors employs more workers than all these foreign plants combined. And, unlike Mitsubishi, General Motors didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor.
Do these Southern senators understand why the foreign automakers suddenly up and decided to build plants in the United States?
It was the economic nationalism of Ronald Reagan.
When an icon of American industry, Harley-Davidson, was being run out of business by cutthroat Japanese dumping of big bikes to kill the “Harley Hog,” Reagan slapped 50 percent tariffs on their motorcycles and imposed quotas on imported Japanese cars. Message to Tokyo. If you folks want to keep selling cars here, start building them here.
Fear of Reaganism brought those foreign automakers, lickety-split, to America’s shores, not any love of Southern cooking.
Do the Republicans not yet understand how they lost the New Majority coalition that gave them three landslides and five victories in six presidential races from 1968 to 1988? Do they not know why the Reagan Democrats in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan are going home?
The Republican Party gave their jobs away!
How? By telling U.S. manufacturers they could shut plants here, get rid of their U.S. workers, build factories in Mexico, Asia or China, and ship their products back, free of charge.
Republican globalists gave U.S. manufacturers every incentive to go abroad and take their jobs with them, the jobs of Middle America.
And, for 30 years, that is what U.S. manufacturers have done, have been forced to do, as their competitors closed down and moved their plants abroad in search of low-wage Third World labor.
It’s Herbert Hoover time in here, Vice President Cheney is said to have told the Senate Republicans — as they prepared to march out onto the floor and turn thumbs down on any reprieve for General Motors.
In today’s world, America faces nationalistic trade rivals who manipulate currencies, employ nontariff barriers, subsidize their manufacturers, rebate value-added taxes on exports to us and impose value-added taxes on imports from us, all to capture our markets and kill our great companies. And we have a Republican Party blissfully ignorant that we live in a world of us or them. It doesn’t even know who “us” is.
We need a new team on the field and a new coach who believes with Vince Lombardi that “winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Filed under: Economics, Politics
An outstanding column with some brilliant lines. The last two paragraphs are especially powerful, and bear repeating:
In today’s world, America faces nationalistic trade rivals who manipulate currencies, employ nontariff barriers, subsidize their manufacturers, rebate value-added taxes on exports to us and impose value-added taxes on imports from us, all to capture our markets and kill our great companies. And we have a Republican Party blissfully ignorant that we live in a world of us or them. It doesn’t even know who “us” is.
We need a new team on the field and a new coach who believes with Vince Lombardi that “winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”
I almost agree. But, I am indeed old enough to remember Reagan’s tariffs. And I remember that Detroit responded to their lack of competition by turning out cars that were simply awful.
1. Letting the auto industry go bankrupt isn’t the same as saying “drop dead” In fact, it will give them the opportunity to get the parasitic unions off their backs. Democrats know this. The bailout won’t save the auto industry anyway. It will merely waste some money delaying the inevitable: Bankruptcy. Democrats know this.
2. Snotty regionalism has no place in this debate. If the auto industry wants to open factories in the South, the South will welcome them.
3. This isn’t a question of U.S. manufacturers vs. Foreign manufactures. This is a question of auto union infested manufactures vs. manufacturers not infested with auto unions.
http://rightklik.blogspot.com/
With all due respect to the author, no matter how many columns he publishes on this particular issue, no matter how passionately he invokes nationalistic sentiments, political strategies, or genuine, past injustices, there is no way to get around this simple moral principle:
It is immoral for someone to forcibly take wealth from you that is rightfully yours in order to give it to someone else, even if the person receiving it is in honest need; to do so is a blatant act of theft. Forced wealth redistribution is an immoral act condemned in free societies.
Furthermore, to commit such an act is highly illegal under our system of law — imagine a Salvation Army worker waving a gun rather than ringing a bell — unless you happen to work for the IRS and the ones receiving the stolen booty are a powerful or popular special interest group with a great deal of political clout or votes. That was the case with all the various, immoral bailouts and subsidies to date, and that is also the case with this proposed automaker bailout.
If the Republicans who blocked the bailout in the Senate did so out of principle (i.e., “Thou shalt not steal,” a commandment which did not originate with Milton Friedman) rather than political self-interest (however unlikely), then God bless them. If acting with such principles means that the Republican Party is doomed, then let it be doomed for honorable reasons rather than engage in unprincipled, pandering pragmatism to maintain its power and funding. One just wishes congressional Republicans had stuck to their guns during all those years of “compassionate conservatism” when doing so meant facing the wrath of the Executive Branch.
Yes, there have been innumerable other immoral bailouts and preceding immoral activities that helped put the American automakers into their current situation, especially in the past year; however, two or two thousand wrongs still do not make a right, so past wrongs cannot morally justify committing yet another wrong, even if it is a less costly one than earlier ones.
But what about the autoworkers who will lose their jobs? And what about those who work in related industries who will lose their jobs, especially around Christmas? If media pundits are sincerely concerned about those individuals or the companies which employee them, then they should immediately found and promote a voluntary charity (Save American Automakers), funding it with their own monies and other voluntary donations, rather than wait around for the federal government to take action in accordance with the flawed maxim, “From each American taxpayer according to his ability, to each American automaker/autoworker according to its/his need.”
Lastly, in a moral society, no business or industry whatsoever should be allowed to privatize its profits but socialize its losses, and the solution is not to have it also socialize its profits via nationalization, the path currently favored by those in the Treasury Department. If the Big Three automakers go under, who is to say that an even more competitive and efficient American (not foreign) automaker cannot rise from the ashes, providing better jobs to those displaced workers than the ones they lost, as has happened time after time in American economic history? Would American automakers have even had the chance to become as successful as they were if the horse and buggy industry had been bailed out and continually subsidized by taxpayers via the federal government over the past century?
Oh yes, I knew somewhere in the comments–as is the case every time an article such as this is printed–I would find a comment along the lines of, “it’s all those snotty, money grubbing, lazy unionists’ fault.”
I suppose it is easy to make such comments from a distance, but these reactionary platitudes fail to address the realities of the world we live in.
First, as has been shown in recent weeks. The employees of the big three in those “evil” northern states are not on average paid significantly higher wages than the employees of the foreign automakers in those “good” southern states.
Therefore, the oft mentioned cost discreapancies between what it cost the big three to manufacture a vehicle as compared to the foreign automakers with US operations is a matter of legacy costs.
Yet, none of the blame it on the evil unionists commenters ever addressrs why it is that the big three have these legacy costs and the foreign competitors don’t. Never have I seen it mentioned that in Germany, Korea, or Japan the government provides to varying degrees health and retirement benefits for domestic workers, and thus provides the companies with a comparative advantage. Nor, have I seen it mentioned that in these countries the governments also frequently provide funding for research and development.
I suppose I would have an easier time looking upon these evil unionists with the disgust it appears I should if it could be proven to me that they really took their supposedly exorbitant wages and benefits and ran off to some tropical island to spend their retirement years sipping cocktails, but alas I don’t think this will pass.
I suppose in a few years when the blame it on the unionists crowd approaches retirement and realizes that their 401 K’s and IRA’s haven’t actually increased in value by ten percent per annum they might then realize why those evil unionists bargained for defined benefit pensions and retirement health benefits.
“In today’s world, America faces nationalistic trade rivals who manipulate currencies, employ nontariff barriers, subsidize their manufacturers, rebate value-added taxes on exports to us and impose value-added taxes on imports from us, all to capture our markets and kill our great companies. And we have a Republican Party blissfully ignorant that we live in a world of us or them. It doesn’t even know who “us” is.”
Well said.
This seems to me exactly why real free trade should be pursued, rather than managed, reciprocal trade (not really trade at all, as it’s not resultant of market supply and demand) or worse yet, trade wars and the death spiral of protectionism, which is what Pat appears to be advocating here.
He is correct, however, that the Republicans are oblivious, ignorant fools who do not understand genuine free-market scholarship, but rather do and say what their corporate benefactors (and their think-tanking front men) tell them.
When a trading partner is engaged in a lot of statist interventionism to unjustly benefit their domestic producers, the answer is not to emulate them, but penalize them to the EXACT proportion of the benefit they accrue from the domestic support, until you can negotiate a trade deal where market participants, not governments, decide who’s products win or lose.
The free-enterprise environment that engenders comparative advantages can only be cultivated if governments get out of the way, limiting their involvement to enforcing the law in cases of force, fraud and violations of property rights–laws, lest we forget, based on values that preceded modern states with their positivist legalism and bureaucracy.
POLITICS always fouls up sound economic policy–and then we blame the consequences of central planning on whatever residual economic freedom we have left, and proscribe more central planning to fix it. Give me a break.
Buchanan’s point (one ignored by the cynical corporatists of the GOP and apparently beyond the ken of libertarian ideologues) is that there is no “free market” or “free trade” and there never has been. There are interests, pursued both by individuals and the states in which they live, which use (and have long used) the levers of government to advance them. We’re the only ones “playing” by this phony free trade game, but, as is also Buchanan’s point, we’re not really playing it either. We’re just “managing trade” to the benefit of multi-national corporations.
And Jason, spare me the whiny Southern sensitivities and the tedious union-bashing. Buchanan’s point is, contra Demint’s self-serving nonsense about “profitable” (but unnamed) auto companies, the foreign transplants extracted hundreds of millions of gov’t subsidies to locate where they are. What’s ignored also is the steady increase in operating costs at those plants (as the Detroit Free Press detailed in a republished article on an internal Toyota memo on the subject.)
The mostly Southern GOP Senators who have pontificated on the subject (and their courtiers in the “Right”) have mostly just shown themselves to be ignorant boobs who do not actually know the current competitive state of the industry. (The mythology of Detroit building cars “nobody wants” is unsupported by fact, but I’d have to write an article longer than Pat’s to detail it all.)
I also can’t help but be amused by the hyper-patriot Southerners selling themselves to the Japanese, Koreans and Germans and somehow it yet further showing their righteousness. What a laugh. Confectionary patriotism all around. Like the form of sugar, it looks good on top, but evaporates when you touch it.
There’s no serious comparison between the subsidies offered by southern states to companies to set up operations in their state and what’s being discussed in Washington. The state-based subsidies were one-time offers for a siting. The offers would have been made to any company, be they Japanese, Korean or American. They’re also chump change in comparison to the billions being bruited about now.
The union issue does have something to do with costs. The magnanimous changes offered by the UAW relate only to new hires, and won’t take effect for years. Worse, when pressed on committing to a date for accepting further necessary changes, Gettelfinger balked.
However, as Mickey Kaus and others have pointed out, the labor costs aren’t the real issue. The big problem is that the UAW shows no intention of relenting on their idiotic work rules, which are what truly hampers American auto productivity. So even when the American companies make a popular auto, like the PT Cruiser, they can’t match Japanese productivity or flexibility or quality.
It’s because of these UAW rules that a company like Ford doesn’t bother to build its state-of-the-art plants in America, preferring to build them in places like Mexico or Brazil.
Yet, none of the blame it on the evil unionists commenters ever addressrs why it is that the big three have these legacy costs and the foreign competitors don’t. Never have I seen it mentioned that in Germany, Korea, or Japan the government provides to varying degrees health and retirement benefits for domestic workers, and thus provides the companies with a comparative advantage. Nor, have I seen it mentioned that in these countries the governments also frequently provide funding for research and development.
The British auto industry had a huge welfare state offering more help and subsidy than any of these three countries. We aren’t exactly fretting over competition from British Leyland these days.
All of those jokers saying let the Big 3 fail, let the Big 3 fail. They must live in some fantasy world thinking that the rest of the world will keep subsidizing their lifestyle. When the dollar crashes the Japanese won’t be selling their cars to Americans and will probably shift to the newly rich Chinese middle class. Then all the free trading idiots in this country will wish they had the ability to buy from a domestic manufacturer
And blaming US problems on unions is like assessing the poop on your windshield to dodo birds. The private industry union is almost non-existent.
Brian, your statement is puzzling. The UAW is a huge player in the auto industry. The problem with handing the D3 billions of dollars without any serious structural reform is that they’ll be back after several months in even worse condition. The GOP position is not to deny any bailout whatsoever, but to set serious conditions on it so that it won’t happen again. Otherwise, they’re going to be yet another of the debt liabilities you’re bewailing.
This has been a fun debate. So far, these are my takeaways:
Free trade does not exist.
It could exist if we could use our own trade barriers to penalize other countries in exact proportion to the benefits they are giving their exporters (assuming cheaters could be recognized).
Union work rules are as big an impediment to competitiveness as union salaries and benefits.
Salaries and benefits are being rolled back for new hires but will continue to cost the Big 3 money until generations of workers die off or until bankruptcy forces the renegotiation of wages and benefits, as well as the takeover of pensions by government.
Southerners are “whiny, hypocritical, ignorant boobs”. The reason they don’t get it is because they don’t have union jobs; instead, they have jobs that were bought for them by their state governments in unholy deals with foreign carpetbaggers.
These foreign companies only put factories here because Reagan made them.
We can’t let the American car companies go bankrupt, because they will definitely be liquidated.
American car companies are essential because:
1. They are the bedrock of the American middle class.
2. Americans are drivers, and when the dollar crashes, we don’t want to face the choice of either buying more expensive foreign cars or patching up the ones we already have (like in Cuba).
3. One day Ford will have to build tanks.
These foreign companies only put factories here because Reagan made them.
That’s not entirely true. Honda was already setting up its transplant at Marysville, OH (so they’re not all southern) in 1982, a year before the quotas were set up. Now the quotas did encourage the others, but it had some ill effects, too. First, it made Japanese cars much more profitable than they would have otherwise been because the quotas created an artificial scarcity, which allowed the manufacturers to increase their price. This profit they then sank back into their domestic market and solidified their shares. They also used that profit to fund their transplants.
As far as southern states “buying” jobs, I’d want to see more information on those “subsidies.” Were they direct cash payments, as Buchanan seems to imply, or were they in form of tax breaks and infrastructure improvements. Offset against this, the constant source of government contracts available to the D3 for fleet requirements.
Let’s look at your three points:
First, are the car companies the bedrock of the middle class? I don’t see that. That might have been so as little as 20 years ago, but not now. They’re a rather small segment of the economy.
Second, There are so many foreign competitors in the market now, that even if the D3 went away, it would hardly lead to a spiral in auto prices. Too, badges like Ford, Chevy, Dodge and Jeep are just not going to go away. They have too much value in themselves, and someone will scoop them up, and they’ll probably re-employ a number of former employees.
Third, none of the car companies build military vehicles (other than fleet trucks and cars). Companies like Grumman, Stewart&Stevenson, Caterpillar and American General do that. If somehow we got into a situation that required taking over plants, we can do the same thing with transplants.
Derek’s statement on productivity is simply false. Chrysler matches Toyota’s productivity as of 2007. GM and Ford have cut the productivity gap with Toyota (the other Japanese are less productive than Toyota) by more than half as of 2007. Ford products yielded the highest quality ratings among all manufacturers in the latest JD Power and GM captured best midsize sedan (the one with Camry and Accord competing) and best large size sedan (avalon, lexus, etc.)
The UAW had already agreed to substantial changes in their job bank and has now frozen it. Its elimination is not an issue. The wage rates are approximately the same (between $25-28/hr.) Rolled up labor rates with benefits have about a $12/hr difference, but that is narrowing both from changes at the Big 3 and increases at the transplants. Finally, contra the union-bashers, labor cost make up only 10% of total cost.
As for those subsidies, since the states are projected to never get those monies back (since they include tax forgiveness not factored into amount), seems like little difference from the financing which is required for repayment (indeed a worse deal.) And Toyota stalled its Tupelo plant (indefinitely suspending) even after taking more than $300MM in subsidies.
Long live the flee market, Yankee dog!
First, that productivity rate applies only within the North American. manufacturing area. Second, Chrysler did this because, unlike Toyota, it’s not making as many of its components:
http://blog.mlive.com/grpress/2008/06/chrysler_matches_toyota_in_us.html
Ron Harbour, a partner in Oliver Wyman’s North American automotive practice, said Chrysler’s strong showing was in part due to the fact that Toyota builds more of its own parts and components. Chrysler purchases more components and subassemblies from suppliers, cutting internal labor costs.
So that strong showing is due to Chrysler going around the UAW, not through it.
But this goes to the problem, again, and I’ll admit that I should have worded my first post more carefully. Instead of “or” I should have used “and.” When the D3 can pump out more vehicles, they can’t match the quality. But when they do match or exceed the quality, they do it at the expense of productivity. Notice that Ford lagged in the NA area in productivity.
What kills them all is their lack of flexibility. When SUV sales cratered with high gas prices, none of them could respond to changing market conditions because of their structural inflexibility. Yes, the Japanese have been hit to a degree as well by the changing market: look at the expense put into the Tundra, for example, but they are flexible enough to absorb the hit.
As for those subsidies, since the states are projected to never get those monies back (since they include tax forgiveness not factored into amount), seems like little difference from the financing which is required for repayment (indeed a worse deal.) And Toyota stalled its Tupelo plant (indefinitely suspending) even after taking more than $300MM in subsidies.
First, again, it should be noted that these kinds of inducements are offered in every state, and to just about any company that promises to create a lot of jobs. There’s nothing insidious going on here. Also, Honda produces in Ohio and Toyota has long had a plant in California, which it took over from GM. So this is not a strictly southern phenomenon.
Second, states do get their investments back from the increased tax and revenues from business these companies bring. Luring a Toyota into your area is good bet because they generally tend to do quite well, and they draw in all sorts of other businesses, as well. The Tupelo plant is off for now, but that’s due to an unprecedented worldwide shock.
The D3 have had their problems for decades, and there seems to be nothing in the pending agreement showing that they won’t be back again.
One other thing: As Clive Crook pointed out in his piece, the recent increases in productivity are due to a “Come to Jesus” moment the UAW and the D3 management had under the duress of competition. Will they still maintain that pace once they know Uncle Sam will still pick them up when they fall?
Here’s a link to the piece:
http://www.workforcefairness.com/article/does-obama-still-want-stronger-unions-
Finally, let me restate, that I’m not opposed to any bailout, nor are the Republicans. In fact, it wasn’t the GOP that told anyone to “drop dead”. It was the U.A.W. that turned down the GOP’s plan specifically because it included actual dated conditions. The U.A.W.’s position was essentially “Give us the money now, and we’ll see about improving things later.” Considering the trouble Detroit had to get into to get any concessions from the UAW, it’s hard to believe they’d change their tune once they had government cash.
[...] Also, this Pat Buchanan quote scores an eleven on a scale of awesome: [...]
Pat,
“Us” is wealthy people. “Them” is working people. Examined through that understanding, all the policies you mention make complete sense.
Antonius
LOL, I knew your exposure to Rachel Maddow would bring your sanity back Pat. Good onya, this is the most sane thing you’ve ever written!
All of those jokers saying let the Big 3 fail, let the Big 3 fail. They must live in some fantasy world thinking that the rest of the world will keep subsidizing their lifestyle. When the dollar crashes the Japanese won’t be selling their cars to Americans and will probably shift to the newly rich Chinese middle class. Then all the free trading idiots in this country will wish they had the ability to buy from a domestic manufacturer
It would also be unpleasant to live in a fantasyland where no new American company could possibly step in to fill the gap in the automotive market.
With some changes in regulatory policy and a good spanking for the unions, making cars in America might become a profitable enterprise again. Today, however, that’s not the case, and it’s borderline immoral to subsidize what we see today from the Big 3. I say this as a lifelong Michigan resident.
Cheap Labor Conservatives. They’ll do anything to have everybody living in a one room shack, eating a bowl of rice a day. And the south will lead the way.
[...] every incentive to go abroad and take their jobs with them, the jobs of Middle America. The American Conservative
“Cheap Labor Conservatives. They’ll do anything to have everybody living in a one room shack, eating a bowl of rice a day. And the south will lead the way.”
Feudalism is on the rise again.
I am shocked to say I agree with everything Pat Buchanan has written here. These Hoover Republicans won’t be happy until one person has 99.99% of the wealth and the rest of us our living with 30 people in a studio appartment with a diet consisting of stolen breath mints and dog food.
[...] Posted by Ravi Sometimes you just have to admire Pat Buchanan The American Conservative
[...] He calls his article “The Toyota Republicans”, and I have to admit I’m pretty much with Pat on this one. Longish money quote: The $14 billion loan to the Big Three that Republican senators filibustered to death is just 2 percent of the $700 billion the Senate voted to bail out Wall Street. Having gone along with bailouts of Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie, Freddie and CitiGroup, why refuse a reprieve to an industry upon which millions of the best blue-collar jobs in America depend? [...]
What I find absurd, besides some of these posts is that it’s fine to hand 700B to banks with NO oversight but the big 3 can’t get a bridge loan? Our tax money (and that borrowed from China) is going to banks who’s CEO’s are not getting a pay cut and continue all the lavish perks. Meanwhile, the republican clowns in congress suddenly, after 8 years of drunken sailor spending, want fiscal responsibility. Anyone that thinks letting the big 3 go under is fine, is insane. We already have record unemlpoyment. You’d like to add a million more to the count? You have no clue what that would do to the United States.
Cheap Labor Conservatives. They’ll do anything to have everybody living in a one room shack, eating a bowl of rice a day. And the south will lead the way.
Ah, I get it: the future is a place of extremes. There is no intermediate ground between today’s union automaker salaries (and their policy of paying people not to work) and the conditions that prevail in the slums of Asia.
It’s this kind of all-or-nothing brilliance that exacerbated the “Global War on Terror”, the drug war, and most other government foolishness. Scared people support radical policies based on almost-impossible scenarios of future doom.
Yeah, the future is looking increasingly like a place of extremes. Prepare.
You think you’re so separate from the workers who you would supplant Americans with? Do you not get that things are getting quicker?
Do you remember Buchanan being this direct?
Wake up.
I agree with Pat Buchanan absolutely. AND with Tom. Exactly the comment that needs to be made over and over in many venues.
Tom,
A lot of us didn’t like the bank bailout either. Even so, one stupid act does not justify yet another. Also, the financial industry has been making a number of job layoffs and cutbacks, and they’ll be facing a lot more regulation coming down the pike.
Second, no one is seriously arguing for allowing the companies to disappear. That was never on the table. What the GOP Senators wanted was serious commitments to improve the companies. We’re not just looking at a few billion here. GM alone owes about $160 billion dollars and counting. Given the fact that GM was losing money hand over fist when it competitors we’re making money, there’s no reason to believe that bill is going away. So we need some assurance that the company is going to pay it off, or the taxpayer will be stuck with the tab.
A few other incidental notes:
Toyota NA and Honda NA support the bailout, as it’ll help their suppliers and keep out other international competitors:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/15/news/companies/overseas_automakers/index.htm?postversion=2008121517
So, really, the term “Toyota Republicans” is a bit misleading.
Also, the UAW assembles a number of Mitsubishi products, and they’ve done so for a while, thus the quip about Pearl Harbor is also misplaced.
In addition, Sen. Corker’s state includes the Saturn facility, which is owned by GM, so his position isn’t based on some bad faith desire to screw over Michigan.
“And, unlike Mitsubishi, General Motors didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor.”
Sorry, Pat. I couldn’t make it beyond this statement.
What’s next? Protectionism against German automobiles because Ferdinand Porsche was decorated by the Nazis? Daimler-Benz built aircrafts that bombed American GIs?
When will we start doing the right thing instead of always trying to “do right” by the average American? We’re raising generations of perpetual adolescents.
Can we all agree that Republicans are not good, consistent representatives of the values, principles and ideas they claim to believe in? Principles that are abandoned when they become painful to uphold are not principles, they’re preferences, and seemingly weak ones at that.
An argument could be made, up until recently (like 2000), that the GOP was the lesser of evils. This has since ceased to be the case throughout the course of Bush’s regime, and is now completely bogus. At least the Dems are more honest about their intentions and vision for the economy. Repubs have been allowed to pander and bloviate with the free-market rhetoric while completely undermining sound economics in every way imaginable. They’ve been doing their best to discredit paleo conservative and libertarian scholarship every time they promote supply-side interventionism/mercantilism in the name of free enterprise. Republicans talked like they knew that democratic socialism didn’t work. But plutocratic socialism for the rich doesn’t work either. Guess they didn’t know that; they should have asked Adam Smith.
The Establishment Duopoly has the old Cold War coalition relics in a perpetual state of battered wife syndrome, on both sides. I have hope for the future, if the increasing traffic at Mises.org is any indication, but it seems people too oft forget the basic nature of the State. The Scorpion can’t help but sting, even if it means his own demise.
Not if, but when the USA hits a brick wall, we can anticipate what the Powers that Be are going to do. More importantly, what are WE going to do?
Can we all agree that Republicans are not good, consistent representatives of the values, principles and ideas they claim to believe in?
Oh, absolutely. I’m still pissed about never getting that “more humble” foreign policy we were promised in 2000. Still, on this issue, the GOP Senators are more right than wrong. The only hope the automakers and the UAW have is following their recommendations. Otherwise, they’ll go the way of the Austin Princess.
What’s next? Protectionism against German automobiles because Ferdinand Porsche was decorated by the Nazis? Daimler-Benz built aircrafts that bombed American GIs?
I guess der Volkswagen was just way too-o-o-o-o easy, eh?
The two party system is a failure. Both parties have become the worst sort of moderate. This is made all the more obvious as the extreme right and left can now be seen agreeing more often with each other than with either of the two parties. Just look back at how Pat has interacted with Eleanor Clift lately on the McLaughlin group. He agrees with her more than with John lately. We may not agree on the details, but we agree that the current system is a failure.
http://www.toyotarepublicans.com/
Derek, do you really think the USG will be taking over the Hundai plant in Pigsknuckle, Alabama if the pooh hits the fan and America needs to increase production for national defense? Really? A large portion of the MRAPs sent to Iraq were built in – drum roll – South Africa. Why? Because we couldn’t find contractors to build them fast enough in the USA. Building cars is a basic industrial process and the engineering that goes into making complicated machines cannot be lost because of shortsidedness. Ford, Chrysler and GM did more than their share during WWII. Who would pull that kind of weight if they weren’t around? Toyota? HAH! Nissan? Right. Mercedes? Please. Put the union stuff behind you and think of this in a national security frame. America, lose your domestic car companies at your own peril.