Mark Steyn: We're in the fast lane to Bailoutistan

Orange County Register ^ | 12/19/08 | Mark Steyn

[tips up]

General Motors now has a market valuation about a third of Bed, Bath & Beyond, and no one says your Swash 700 Elongated Biscuit Toilet Seat Bidet is too big to fail. GM has a market capitalization of about $2.4 billion. For purposes of comparison, Toyota's market cap is $100 billion and change (the change being bigger than the whole of GM). General Motors, like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small money-losing auto subsidiary. The UAW is AARP in an Edsel: It has three times as many retirees and widows as "workers" (I use the term loosely). GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people.

[tips up]

Mark Steyn hits another home run with all the issues of the day.

For every GM worker making a car, ten are not making a car but are getting health care benefits. Unbelievable....

[RightOnline]

He’s spot-on, of course.............as usual.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

We’re also in the fast lane to Babylon...

[Always Right]

Who bails out the bailouts?

[Republic Rocker]

I love Steyn, but I also read him now holding my breath as it points out how screwed up we usually are.....

[org.whodat]

The Chinese and their billions of people!!

[Sioux-san]

He’s my very favorite Canadian immigrant to America (next to my Mom).

[Popman]

"Drive the USA in your Chevrolet!" sang Dinah. "America's the greatest land of all!" America had road movies. With car chases. Thelma and Louise drove their vehicle off the cliff and, unlike the Old Three, they didn't demand American taxpayers come along for the ride.

LOL. Gotta love Steyn

[Doohickey]

Hopey Changemas

Perfect.

[ladyjane]

That’s where we’re all heading - one worker for every ten person on the dole.

[dinodino]

Yep. Both UAW management and rank-and-file should be ashamed of themselves. In a just world they would all be unemployed.

[Girlene]

General Motors, like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small money-losing auto subsidiary. - - Absolutely true. Legacy costs are destroying GM.

Ah, California. The Golden State! To a penniless immigrant named Arnold Schwarzenegger, it was a land of plenty. Now Arnold is an immigrant of plenty in a penniless land. What's the motto on the license plates? "Ah'll be back …for more of your money!" In California you don't have to be an orange to have your pips squeezed. The Terminator makes Gray Davis look like Calvin Coolidge. Care to terminate a government program, Governor? Hey, great idea! We'll hire 200 people to do an impact study on terminating the Department of Impact Study Regulation and get back to you in a decade. And when Gov. Girlyman has run out of state taxpayers to fleece for his ever-more-bloated bureaucracy, he'll go to Washington to plead for a federal bailout of Cantaffordya.

Hilarious. Too bad it's true.

[tips up]

The UAW is slowly killing their golden goose.

While I am disappointed that Bush gave them additional bail out money yesterday, I think he just wanted the “path of least resistance” in his last days. This whole mess will be in the lap of Barry and the Dems in a month.

Unions smart to give no concessions to Bush at this point since Barry and the Dems certainly won’t ask for concessions. The unions will squeeze the Big 3 dry until they are dead.

[230FMJ]

30 years ago I would listen to a Jackson Browne album whenever I wanted to feel really bad.

These Days I just read Mark Steyn.

I wish he wasn’t so damn right.

[wgflyer]

Mark Steyn is sounding more and more like Ann Coulter. I suppose that, once the reality of modern USA is seen through the fog of liberalism, such sarcasm is the only way to describe it. Seriously, how can one depict our national suicide in an other way?

Well said, Mr. Steyn.

[wgflyer]

“While I am disappointed that Bush gave them additional bail out money yesterday, I think he just wanted the “path of least resistance” in his last days.”

No. I think he is giving us a final, glaring display of his economic ignorance and lack of respect for the entreprenauristic spirit that built this country, and the tax payers who’ve footed the bill for his folly.

[abenaki]

An immigrant steering Kallyforneea to shipwreck:
An illegal immigrant in the Oval office:
An immigrant telling the truth:
2009 is going to be interesting, at least!

[realdifferent1]

Unbelievable....

No it is not. Everyone here bitches about the UAW, but it take two parties to make a contract.

The UAW is not the primary cause of the automakers problems, it's the idiots that manage the automakers that are to blame. They kept caving in to every stupid-assed demand made upon them.

[Popman]

The UAW is slowly killing their golden goose.

Dude, it's dead and plucked, buttered up and baked at 375' for 4 hours already eaten and digested and passed masking it's way to the sewage plant.

We're next.

[Sender]

"And on that cheery note let me wish you a very Hopey Changemas."

Hopey Changemas, Mark Steyn, and a Hopey New Deal!