As congressmen everywhere sing their own praises for saving the auto industry for 1 week, we must remember that this program is using borrowed money. Our government is throwing around a billion dollars at a time like it is petty cash. Now they plan on authorizing another 2 billion before the DOT releases data to show if it is actually working.
No doubt it is selling cars, but probably not the ones the UAW wishes. The Ford Focus is on top of the list, but the rest are foreign cars. Yes, probably made in American plants but it still probably burns the car czar up. In case you did not realize it, the car czar was recently replaced with ‘union label hatchet-man’ Ron Bloom. Nice little gotcha when you weren’t looking move by the admin. But is the plan really working. Alan Greenspan said a couple of days ago that the only reason the program was working at all was because the economy is already improving on its own…implemented 6 months ago and it probably would have been a flop. There is also the historical case of a similar program in Germany. The results of this case showed that consumers simply shifted their spending to stay within their budget. So now we have the government determining what industries will survive in a recession by means on subsidizing. Even the environmental component of the plan does not hold merit. Take this into consideration. A person trades in a truck for another vehicle that gets only 1 more mpg. This person gets a $3500 rebate, the old car gets destroyed as required by the program (driving up used car prices), and then a new car must be made. Does this process sound environmentally friendly? Not really. It is not a long term solution anyways. It is a political move in dire times.
When it comes down to it, it is simply more government intervention into private industry. Subsidizing is simply the government doing this with your tax dollars. It once again brings GM into the light. They have been handed $60 billion in tax dollars under the assumption that they will once again become profitable. It is very reminiscent of Amtrak.
Amtrak was initially started in 1971 by President Nixon. It was funded with $140 million in direct government aid and loans with the expectation that it would be profitable on its own in 3 years. 30 plus years later it has never once had a profitable year and receives over a billion of your tax dollars every year. (1.3 from the stimulus alone) But this 1971 government intervention (which also was labor union driven) was not the first government intervention in the railroad industry. The problems seen in the 1960s were a result of intervention dating back as far as 1910. It started with a government rate-setting scheme and continued with more and more regulation until the private passenger rail industry was effectively killed off. It is in fact the perfect example of why the government should not have stepped in like they did for GM. You will also notice that this is not a party issue. It is a government intervention issue. Both parties over several decades have added to this problem. I am not sure what exactly should be done to fix Amtrak, but I do know that we should use this knowledge to our advantage so we do not make the same mistakes again. Unfortunately, it appears our short sighted politicians are refusing to do so.
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Free money, Free Money!!! O wait, its not free…
I’m starting to see a pattern in your blog. I think you hate anything that Democrats do, regardless of what it is. I could be wrong about this. You might be taking a reasoned and thoughtful approach to each of these issues but it doesn’t appear that way. You seem to only present one side of an issue and completely ignore the other side…hmm.
Perhaps you’ll write a blog post about how expensive foreign wars are, and how endless military spending suck up tax dollars like nothing else. That would be a really conservative position. War is ridiculously expensive. We could have health care and free education and all kinds of great things if we only scaled back our military to be equivalent to only the next 5 countries military spending. I think you’ll agree with this.
You are right. I do not agree with most things Democrats do and that is because my positions are based upon conservative principles. It is a political philosophy difference. I am very biased because of this. I think you would agree that the policies being pushed right now are very liberal as would be expected with Democrats controlling the executive and legislature. I am not a news reporter who is supposed to give both sides of a story. All my posts are oppinion based with facts to back them up. If you read some of my past posts I will go after Republicans as well if they do not represent my conservative values.
Conservatives do not believe in cutting defense spending so your assertion that this is a conservative position is not true. Wars are unfortunate and expensive, but sometimes necessary. I certainly did not want to go to war, but I understood the threats that existed and the dangers they posed to us and the rest of the world as well as the suffering of the people in Iraq.
Nothing is free and the constitution does not guarantee health care or education. Even if Congress could control their spending (which is by no means only tied to defense), I would not support the federal government controlling health care. I am for limited government.
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