Let the Big 3 Crash, but not mine
So let the Big 3 crash, but not mine.....
I love my car. Just like my four Town Cars before it--not one of them bought new--my current ‘04 model has heated seats. They suit my aging bottom just fine this winter.
I hate to think of ever buying what may be a better foreign car. After all, my dad’s old Texas National Guard comrades were prisoners in those infamous World War II death marches the Japanese wrought.
But now the Detroit automakers are being forced to change, to get more like those of Japan (and the red-state South), featuring higher mpg’s, less pollution, and of course much lower wages.
If they won’t, they’ll not get that $25 billion pledged by Congress to make them become greener, or the extra $25 billion of our tax money they say they need to avoid bankruptcy.
Don’t they know we’re hurting, that our spendthrift government shouldn’t be bailing out companies which can’t cut it? Never mind how unfair it was to bail out the fat-cat bankers but not them.
Listen to Mitt Romney, son of George of American Motors fame: “Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retir ee burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.”--in New York Times.
In other words, we’d just be pouring even more of our tax money down the drain. Yes, but what about the death of Detroit otherwise? Baloney. Remember, the steel industry died years ago in Pittsburgh, and the last I heard, the Steelers were doing quite well.
That’s easy for me to say, you’re growling. True, given my age, I may never again need to shop for another car and besides, my foreseeable financial needs are covered by a handsome government pension.
So I’m set, just so long as Eddie’s Repair Shop right here in Stafford remains viable. Which reminds me. While I love my Town Car, its dealers are intolerable and should be taken out behind the barn and shot. SPCA and PETA be damned.
Dealers charge lots more than Eddie’s does for repairs and maintenance, do no better a job, act like they’re doing you a favor, and “When are you going to trade that rattletrap in for our shiny new one over yonder in the showroom?” Even their coffee is lousy. And in cahoots with Detroit automakers, they're trying to squeeze out shops like Eddie's.
I really won’t miss them. I know. Dealers hawking foreign models may be no better. But that’s a problem for the greenies driving their oh-so-environmentally-chic models, not me.
Aside from agreeing that it’s good to have cleaner air, you know what I think of saving my heirs from the imagined ravages of global warming. Hock-tooie.
In the first place, our world stopped warming 10 years ago, or hadn’t you noticed? True, NASA “scientists” announced last month that October had been the warmest for that month on record.
But wait. There was a teensy error. October really wasn’t. Seems it was only the 70th warmest October in the past 114 years. So all the draconian save-the-environment things we’re going to have to do to avoid global warming aren’t necessary. To wit: it’s getting colder.
Yeah, I’m one of those few wacky deniers on climate change, right? Perhaps not. The last time lots of citizens got to express themselves on such matters, via the November ballots, they smeared Al Gore’s greenies.
Consider: Among five major energy and environmental ballot initiatives from California to Missouri, voters turned down all but one. And by the way, don’t you feel sorry now for last summer’s panic buyers of costly new gas-saving models, now that prices at the pump are down again to way less than $2 a gallon? You betcha.
Maybe, like with the easing concern over gas prices, some of us folks might be getting wiser. Good. As a recent survey by Texas A&M scientists showed, “More informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming.”
Finally, as for Detroit’s Big Three, I’d guess it’s pretty soon going to be survival of the fittest, after Chapter 11 bankruptcies, of course. The nail in their coffin might have been the private jets they flew to attend those Washington congressional hearings. (And now, Greyhound?)
In any event, Mr. Obama will surely do something soon to ease the impact on the union auto workers who supported him so much. He’d better, or they just might become racist.
I love my car. Just like my four Town Cars before it--not one of them bought new--my current ‘04 model has heated seats. They suit my aging bottom just fine this winter.
I hate to think of ever buying what may be a better foreign car. After all, my dad’s old Texas National Guard comrades were prisoners in those infamous World War II death marches the Japanese wrought.
But now the Detroit automakers are being forced to change, to get more like those of Japan (and the red-state South), featuring higher mpg’s, less pollution, and of course much lower wages.
If they won’t, they’ll not get that $25 billion pledged by Congress to make them become greener, or the extra $25 billion of our tax money they say they need to avoid bankruptcy.
Don’t they know we’re hurting, that our spendthrift government shouldn’t be bailing out companies which can’t cut it? Never mind how unfair it was to bail out the fat-cat bankers but not them.
Listen to Mitt Romney, son of George of American Motors fame: “Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retir ee burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.”--in New York Times.
In other words, we’d just be pouring even more of our tax money down the drain. Yes, but what about the death of Detroit otherwise? Baloney. Remember, the steel industry died years ago in Pittsburgh, and the last I heard, the Steelers were doing quite well.
That’s easy for me to say, you’re growling. True, given my age, I may never again need to shop for another car and besides, my foreseeable financial needs are covered by a handsome government pension.
So I’m set, just so long as Eddie’s Repair Shop right here in Stafford remains viable. Which reminds me. While I love my Town Car, its dealers are intolerable and should be taken out behind the barn and shot. SPCA and PETA be damned.
Dealers charge lots more than Eddie’s does for repairs and maintenance, do no better a job, act like they’re doing you a favor, and “When are you going to trade that rattletrap in for our shiny new one over yonder in the showroom?” Even their coffee is lousy. And in cahoots with Detroit automakers, they're trying to squeeze out shops like Eddie's.
I really won’t miss them. I know. Dealers hawking foreign models may be no better. But that’s a problem for the greenies driving their oh-so-environmentally-chic models, not me.
Aside from agreeing that it’s good to have cleaner air, you know what I think of saving my heirs from the imagined ravages of global warming. Hock-tooie.
In the first place, our world stopped warming 10 years ago, or hadn’t you noticed? True, NASA “scientists” announced last month that October had been the warmest for that month on record.
But wait. There was a teensy error. October really wasn’t. Seems it was only the 70th warmest October in the past 114 years. So all the draconian save-the-environment things we’re going to have to do to avoid global warming aren’t necessary. To wit: it’s getting colder.
Yeah, I’m one of those few wacky deniers on climate change, right? Perhaps not. The last time lots of citizens got to express themselves on such matters, via the November ballots, they smeared Al Gore’s greenies.
Consider: Among five major energy and environmental ballot initiatives from California to Missouri, voters turned down all but one. And by the way, don’t you feel sorry now for last summer’s panic buyers of costly new gas-saving models, now that prices at the pump are down again to way less than $2 a gallon? You betcha.
Maybe, like with the easing concern over gas prices, some of us folks might be getting wiser. Good. As a recent survey by Texas A&M scientists showed, “More informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming.”
Finally, as for Detroit’s Big Three, I’d guess it’s pretty soon going to be survival of the fittest, after Chapter 11 bankruptcies, of course. The nail in their coffin might have been the private jets they flew to attend those Washington congressional hearings. (And now, Greyhound?)
In any event, Mr. Obama will surely do something soon to ease the impact on the union auto workers who supported him so much. He’d better, or they just might become racist.
posted by Ben Blankenship at
7:46 PM
