Posted on 12/16/2008 9:41:55 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
"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."
Okay...who?
You betcha. What we are witnessing here is why the GOP lost to a Obama. GOP thinks killing unions is the solution to electing Republicans while pouring billions into Wall Street.
When Pat saw the damage to our job economy that deficit trade deals make, he bought American. Pat learns, he is not stuck on stupid.
That’s all well and good, but the big 3 have nothing to do with national security. They are failing businesses. They are failing because of their anachronistic business model.
My biggest complaint against bailing them or any other corporation out is that it’s just plain morally wrong.
Yessiree bob, back when the US was a wealthy and powerful free country populated by American families in clean pressed clothing and not a tattoo or piercing to be seen on Main Street.
The watershed year? 1960 and the accession of JFK, the media darling of his time, in a fraudulent election, marking the final triumph of show-biz bullshiite over any vestige of reason.
They will when we have another war. A manufacturing base is crucial to a war effort.
"GOP to Detroit: Drop Dead!"
It was a lie when first used during the 1970s, and it's a lie now.
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...
Republicans pulled the plug on nothing. They offered financing on terms unacceptable to the UAW. That's why it failed.
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...
The difference, of course, is that the financial system got bailed out, not Wall Street...and I'll bet we get every dollar of that money back.
I'm amazed that Pat is suggesting that we subsidize the auto industry. At least two of the Big 3 are not financially viable long term. No banker would lend money on the terms insisted upon by the UAW.
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?
Pat should ask the UAW, who scuttled the agreement.
OH, heck, what's the point? The entire article is nonsense.
Yessiree bob, back when the US was a wealthy and powerful free country populated by American families in clean pressed clothing and not a tattoo or piercing to be seen on Main Street.
The watershed year? 1960 and the accession of JFK, the media darling of his time, in a fraudulent election, marking the final triumph of show-biz bullshiite over any vestige of reason.
BTW, American cars were really god-awful (and god-awful looking) for a long time ... but not anymore!
Yes, and it was very profitable for the Treasury.
Isn’t Pat Buchanan the idiot who was driving around during his presidential campaign in a Mercedes?
Partly true, but in this case, largely irrelevant. The problem is that the UAW is killing the host.
Buchanan drives a steam car.
Oh yes it is.
“That's what Buchanan's talking about...”
When has at Buchanan ever made any sense before, especially here on Freerepublic?
“Reagan put a tariff on the cheaper foreign competition so Ameirican manufacturing stayed in America...”
Reagan didn't stop US companies from building factories and manufacturing in any countries that their business needs demanded they do. GM/Ford have been making cars in Europe for example, for decades, and even when Reagan was in power.
“Americans can't compete with companies in China and Indonesia unless you want to live like the Chinese and Indonesians”
Americans, Europeans, everyone has to compete with goods made in China, Indonesia etc. Most electronic products, laptops, DVD players, stereos, cell phones etc are made in China right now. If American companies like Motorola for example, want to remain in business, they have no alternative but to make their products like cell phones in China, because their European rivals like Nokia have been making most of their cell phones in China for decades.
The Rs in the Senate proposed loan terms that helped to put the Big 3 on a financially sound path.
The UAW nixed the proposal.
Why?
I believe they actually have significant negative shareholder value.
A lot of cars get sold even in a down market.
Yep. He is also on record calling American cars 'lemons'. Patty'O just being Patty'O, saying whatever will get him attention..
Japanese cars also sell better in a down market because they have more value models. Domestics and Europeans do better in up markets.
I think once he said he likes Philly Cheese-steak Sandwiches..
You mean if you were black? Before drugs and welfare destroyed the intact black family? I guess you are right.
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