< Think before you bail... / >

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This blog has a love/hate relationship with the automobile, as the first several installments will show. Cars spew CO2, and car companies put civic responsibility on the last page of their mission statements, as footnotes buried in asterisks. But at the same time, when I heard ABC News announce that one in ten American jobs are auto-related, that old patriotism thing kicked in.

GM might deserve to die, especially for its capital crime of destroying the public transit infrastructure of towns and cities nationwide, but the country doesn't deserve to go into toxic shock after the burial. If Wall Street gets to have $700 billion of our tax dollars (of which I hear my family alone is responsible for about ten grand) to remedy the consequences of its unchecked greed and insane practices, then yes, Detroit should get some assistance for having done exactly the same things.

The car companies are slow, stupid, selfish, negligent, and ignorant, but still deserving. Because they are us.

It's complicated.

The Motley Fool says to hell with them, let 'em rust. Because they're just going to spend their bailout money and we'll get nothing for it. The Los Angeles Times takes a truly radical approach, saying that a bailout should only be given if it's got plenty of conditions — plainly stated in legally binding documents. But the Times goes even further, mentioning several arcane, archaic, and nearly obsolete concepts:

If 300 million Americans are going to borrow money to bail out an industry, then it seems only reasonable to insist that that industry take more socially responsible positions toward energy conservation, safety and the environment.

And Thomas Friedman, whose new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded tackles the issues of climate change, energy revolution, and economic transformation head-on, has weighed in on the automaker bailout issue as well. Since the New York Times requires an account (free, but still time consuming) before articles are accessible, here are highlights from Friedman's column:

How could these companies be so bad for so long? Clearly the combination of a very un-innovative business culture, visionless management and overly generous labor contracts explains a lot of it. It led to a situation whereby General Motors could make money only by selling big, gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s and trucks. Therefore, instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw way too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers.

This included striking special deals with Congress that allowed the Detroit automakers to count the mileage of gas guzzlers as being less than they really were — provided they made some cars flex-fuel capable for ethanol. It included special offers of $1.99-a-gallon gasoline for a year to any customer who purchased a gas guzzler. And it included endless lobbying to block Congress from raising the miles-per-gallon requirements. The result was an industry that became brain dead.

Nothing typified this more than statements like those of Bob Lutz, G.M.’s vice chairman. He has been quoted as saying that hybrids like the Toyota Prius “make no economic sense.” And, in February, D Magazine of Dallas quoted him as saying that global warming “is a total crock of [expletive].”

These are the guys taxpayers are being asked to bail out.

Let's frame that a little less passively and shine the responsibility light straight at the main characters: Those are the guys asking us to bail them out. These are the guys standing there with their palms up, singing "Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?" And we have every right to say Well, that totally depends on the strict and non-debatable conditions you're willing to accept.

Maybe the first of which should be a public acknowledgment that Bob Lutz is a total crock of [expletive].

The Wall Street bastards have already shown that a free handout will only be misused for more of the same corruption. The Feds can't be allowed to screw us the same way by letting the car guys do the same with theirs.
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