Friday, December 05, 2008
Don’t let the auto industry crisis “go to waste”: use it break the unions and deregulate energy (just as Reagan did in 1981)
The crisis faced by the US auto industry has both a superficial cause and a deep-seated long-term cause. The superficial cause is the recent spike of gasoline prices to over $4 a gallon. This was a purely artificial phenomenon, not based on energy production costs, or on looming exhaustion of supplies. The spike in prices was entirely a product of the Democratic Party's energy obstructionism.
Democrats are anti-nuclear, anti-coal, anti-oil-shale, anti-tar-sands, and their new anti-CO2 gig makes them anti-everything but the ludicrous “green” triumvirate of solar, wind and bio-fuels. Solar will be big once we figure out how to store it, but we are talking about today folks, where the anti-CO2 hysteria is all based on lies. The planet is cooling, not warming, and the CO2 externality is unambiguously positive, not negative. If anything we should be subsidizing its production, not restricting it. (Every time I see the now ubiquitous epithet “green” I immediately think “morons.”)
If America aggressively exploits its massive fossil resources, we can have gasoline at 1950s prices (in real terms), for much longer than we will need to rely on this primitive energy source. Instead, thanks to 40 years of Democrat energy obstructionism, we are vulnerable to energy prices much higher than $4 a gallon. We have just seen the merest taste of what a crimp in foreign oil supplies can do, with much of the money going directly to our original terror war enemies, the Saudis, who have spent more than a hundred billion dollars spreading their murder-cult version of Islam around the globe.
Continued energy vulnerability is a death knell for U.S. automakers, whose main success has been with big cars and trucks that get relatively low gas mileage. The spike in gas prices absolutely clobbered the gas guzzler sector of the market, which is the immediate cause of the U.S. industry’s current straits.
The artificiality of this year's energy crisis is no justification for a bail out of the industry that it ruined. The called-for remedy in such a situation, where temporary circumstances push businesses into bankruptcy, is re-organization. A reorganization strips the previous owners of their equity (the proper consequence for all business failure), and it provides the opportunity to strip away the union agreements that are the industry's long-term problem. It is the unions that make our auto industry uncompetitive. The unions have to be broken, destroyed, annihilated, or at least knocked back to something approaching a competitive wage, if our auto industry is to survive for any period of time.
In every other market it is illegal for sellers of a product to collude on price, or on any other demands, and rightly so. An efficient economy requires competition and this is as true in the labor market as anywhere else. Unions ought to be illegal, plain and simple, and they always should have been illegal. Now that they have destroyed another of our most important industries, it's time to jettison this antisocial institution (and when--not if--they try to maintain their position with their traditional eruptions of violence, it will be time to start treating union enforcers as the domestic terrorists they are).
Reagan broke the unions and deregulated oil
Come on Obama. We know you believe in Jeremiah Wright's call to strip white people of undeserved privilege. You didn’t sit in the pews every week for 20 years for nothing. There is not actually a whole lot of undeserved white privilege around, but there is some of it, and the auto unions are a glaring example (no less so because they also confer a modicum of undeserved black privilege). Make auto workers compete for their livings like everyone else and they will out-compete anybody, until our auto industry employs many more than it does today.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," says Obama’s chief advisor Rahm Emanuel, and he’s right, as long as we are talking about using a crisis to fix the actual problems that created the crisis. The actual problems in the case of the auto industry are unionization and energy obstructionism, both of which are wholly owned by the Democrats. If Obama would cut loose those twin albatrosses he could set his presidency on the road to success early. I hope he does it, even though I dearly want to see him voted out in four years, because unlike the dirtbag Democrats, I always want what is best for America, regardless of which political party is helped or hindered by any particular American success.
Democrats strove mightily for five straight years to lose the Iraq war because they thought it would help their electoral prospects (just like they de-funded the Vietnam war after it was already won, just to cover up how wrong they were to oppose the war as un-winnable for so many years). Stinking heap of traitorous scum, and morally smug about it too. That’s not just a moral IQ of zero. That's a negative IQ. And it's more than half the country at this point. We are so screwed.
I’m not saying Democrats are moral trash in every way, only in their politics. We're talking about some of my favorite people in the world here, who just happen to be politically insane. For most Democrats, it’s not even their fault. They just believe what they read in the newspaper, without ever figuring out that the press is completely dominated by the most radical left wing a$$#oles that the 60’s produced. That’s where they went: to academia and the press, and lots of well meaning people are simply duped by the daily barrage of disinformation.
Obama shows every indication of being one of the worst placed dupes in history. The President Elect actually seems to believe that:
UPDATE: Heritage and Stiglitz both advocate for restructuring. UAW fighting tooth and nail for bailout, both to hang on to their uncompetitive remuneration, and their malignantly hostile work rules. At thes same time, these dirtbags are teaming up with the Democratic Party corrupt-o-cracy to strip American workers of secret ballots in votes on unionization. That will let unions use their thuggery and power over careers to coerce workers onto going/staying union, where their dues get diverted into Democrat campaign coffers. Will tax dollars be shoveled by the billions into propping up this confluence of moral trash?
All indications are that Obama has the instincts of Hugo Chavez and will take every opportunity to amass corrupt power. What else can we expect from a man whose entire pre-election resume consisted of "community organizing" for ACORN's project of systematic vote fraud? Still, we are yet to see what he will do once, as president, he actually has the power to sway the nation's course.
Democrats are anti-nuclear, anti-coal, anti-oil-shale, anti-tar-sands, and their new anti-CO2 gig makes them anti-everything but the ludicrous “green” triumvirate of solar, wind and bio-fuels. Solar will be big once we figure out how to store it, but we are talking about today folks, where the anti-CO2 hysteria is all based on lies. The planet is cooling, not warming, and the CO2 externality is unambiguously positive, not negative. If anything we should be subsidizing its production, not restricting it. (Every time I see the now ubiquitous epithet “green” I immediately think “morons.”)
If America aggressively exploits its massive fossil resources, we can have gasoline at 1950s prices (in real terms), for much longer than we will need to rely on this primitive energy source. Instead, thanks to 40 years of Democrat energy obstructionism, we are vulnerable to energy prices much higher than $4 a gallon. We have just seen the merest taste of what a crimp in foreign oil supplies can do, with much of the money going directly to our original terror war enemies, the Saudis, who have spent more than a hundred billion dollars spreading their murder-cult version of Islam around the globe.
Continued energy vulnerability is a death knell for U.S. automakers, whose main success has been with big cars and trucks that get relatively low gas mileage. The spike in gas prices absolutely clobbered the gas guzzler sector of the market, which is the immediate cause of the U.S. industry’s current straits.
The artificiality of this year's energy crisis is no justification for a bail out of the industry that it ruined. The called-for remedy in such a situation, where temporary circumstances push businesses into bankruptcy, is re-organization. A reorganization strips the previous owners of their equity (the proper consequence for all business failure), and it provides the opportunity to strip away the union agreements that are the industry's long-term problem. It is the unions that make our auto industry uncompetitive. The unions have to be broken, destroyed, annihilated, or at least knocked back to something approaching a competitive wage, if our auto industry is to survive for any period of time.
In every other market it is illegal for sellers of a product to collude on price, or on any other demands, and rightly so. An efficient economy requires competition and this is as true in the labor market as anywhere else. Unions ought to be illegal, plain and simple, and they always should have been illegal. Now that they have destroyed another of our most important industries, it's time to jettison this antisocial institution (and when--not if--they try to maintain their position with their traditional eruptions of violence, it will be time to start treating union enforcers as the domestic terrorists they are).
Reagan broke the unions and deregulated oil
Come on Obama. We know you believe in Jeremiah Wright's call to strip white people of undeserved privilege. You didn’t sit in the pews every week for 20 years for nothing. There is not actually a whole lot of undeserved white privilege around, but there is some of it, and the auto unions are a glaring example (no less so because they also confer a modicum of undeserved black privilege). Make auto workers compete for their livings like everyone else and they will out-compete anybody, until our auto industry employs many more than it does today.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," says Obama’s chief advisor Rahm Emanuel, and he’s right, as long as we are talking about using a crisis to fix the actual problems that created the crisis. The actual problems in the case of the auto industry are unionization and energy obstructionism, both of which are wholly owned by the Democrats. If Obama would cut loose those twin albatrosses he could set his presidency on the road to success early. I hope he does it, even though I dearly want to see him voted out in four years, because unlike the dirtbag Democrats, I always want what is best for America, regardless of which political party is helped or hindered by any particular American success.
Democrats strove mightily for five straight years to lose the Iraq war because they thought it would help their electoral prospects (just like they de-funded the Vietnam war after it was already won, just to cover up how wrong they were to oppose the war as un-winnable for so many years). Stinking heap of traitorous scum, and morally smug about it too. That’s not just a moral IQ of zero. That's a negative IQ. And it's more than half the country at this point. We are so screwed.
I’m not saying Democrats are moral trash in every way, only in their politics. We're talking about some of my favorite people in the world here, who just happen to be politically insane. For most Democrats, it’s not even their fault. They just believe what they read in the newspaper, without ever figuring out that the press is completely dominated by the most radical left wing a$$#oles that the 60’s produced. That’s where they went: to academia and the press, and lots of well meaning people are simply duped by the daily barrage of disinformation.
Obama shows every indication of being one of the worst placed dupes in history. The President Elect actually seems to believe that:
The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season.No , no, no , no and no. Still, if Obama has the wherewithal to figure it out, he can pull off a Reagan, whose firing of the air traffic controllers, in combination with the deregulation of the oil industry, broke the back of inflation on the spot. A decade of stagflation ended practically overnight. Obama has the same two ducks propped up in front of him, if only he has the wit to knock them down.
UPDATE: Heritage and Stiglitz both advocate for restructuring. UAW fighting tooth and nail for bailout, both to hang on to their uncompetitive remuneration, and their malignantly hostile work rules. At thes same time, these dirtbags are teaming up with the Democratic Party corrupt-o-cracy to strip American workers of secret ballots in votes on unionization. That will let unions use their thuggery and power over careers to coerce workers onto going/staying union, where their dues get diverted into Democrat campaign coffers. Will tax dollars be shoveled by the billions into propping up this confluence of moral trash?
All indications are that Obama has the instincts of Hugo Chavez and will take every opportunity to amass corrupt power. What else can we expect from a man whose entire pre-election resume consisted of "community organizing" for ACORN's project of systematic vote fraud? Still, we are yet to see what he will do once, as president, he actually has the power to sway the nation's course.
