Month: November 2008

The impending meltdown, many years in the making, of the Big Three American automakers is all over the news these days. No doubt the automakers and their employees considered an Obama victory combined with a Democratic Senate the best of all possible opportunities to get the aid they will need to survive. As usual, all of the "not with my tax dollars!" bitching has dominated the professional and corn-pone opinion on the subject. What escapes these deep thinkers is that, one way or another, we're all going to be picking up the tab for the Big Three. It is a question of which of two distinct alternatives we prefer. On one hand we can provide obscene sums of money to keep them afloat.
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On the other hand we can let them file Chapter 7 and pay for their sins through the bankruptcy courts and via the explosion in social spending that would inevitably result from tossing a million blue-collar workers out on the street.

The story is pretty cut-and-dried on the talk radio level. Greedy executives / greedy UAW members made their own beds and now must sleep therein, and we'd have an easier time working up sympathy (and cash) if they didn't make such shitty cars. Here is the problem. Actually, here are several problems.

1. The sheer size of the two automakers who remain publicly traded (Ford, GM) is staggering. Probably beyond the comprehension of 99% of the people passing off-cuff judgment on letting them go bankrupt. Bankruptcy requires some manner of keeping oneself operating while under protection of the court. While this often comes from something called debtor-in-possession loans, with the banking industry tenuously gripping their last thread of sanity (and solvency), who's going to pony up the tens of billions that are required? That is the point that everyone seems to be missing. They need cash right now. They haven't enough money to keep the lights on and the water running much longer. They have no cash, no credit, and no one willing to lend them a handshake. That's why…..

2. If they file BK, it's not going to be the re-organization (Ch. 11) that people think of when they hear a business has gone bankrupt. GM in particular is staring straight down the barrel of Chapter 7 – liquidating everything down to the copper wire in the walls. With no automaker (even the vaunted Toyota) in a financial position to pick up the pieces, within 30 minutes of a Ch. 7 filing by GM there would be 7000 dealers, a half-million employees, 479,000 retirees, and an entire industry of contractors/suppliers who would be out on the street. There is not a goddamn thing else for any of those people to do right now. GM might be a lousy investment for the government or anyone else, but the auto industry is providing too many meal tickets right now to disappear overnight.

3. Government will inevitably end up doling out billions in assistance after a liquidation or even a milder bankruptcy. Note this cute quote:

Instead, G.M. should submit a prepackaged bankruptcy, laying out steps it plans to enact once in Chapter 11 protection, said Mr. Ackman, who is not a major holder of G.M. shares.

"I'd rather the government's money be used to train people for other jobs," Mr. Ackman said.

We can thank Bill Clinton for making this platitude part of BusinessLogic. We'll just "re-train" or "educate" people in some vague and unspecified way for some vague and unspecified jobs that don't exist. There is some industry right now with a million high-paying jobs, the kind on which people can actually support a family, waiting to be filled. If only Americans would get some "training" to make themselves qualified! We've heard this horseshit for 20 years and we know exactly where it leads – failure. Specifically, it leads to some combination of menial service industry work (think Arby's or Wal-Mart) and massive dependence on welfare, unemployment, Medicaid, and every other manner of social spending. Government and "the taxpayers" are going to foot quite a bill either way. It may end up costing significantly more when we consider how the implosion of such a large industry would decrease tax revenues.

4. People will still fly on a bankrupt airline because all they are buying is 90 minutes in coach before they walk away. People will not buy a car from a bankrupt automaker. A car is a major purchase and a long-term committment. Warranties, the ability to get parts and service in the future, and the re-sale value of the cars (check eBay Motors for an Oldsmobile if you're skeptical) are all important concerns for buyers. So in filing bankruptcy, GM/Ford/Chrysler would essentially be committing suicide. The only way out of bankruptcy would be to sell a shit-ton of cars. And a bankrupt automaker can't sell cars. Repeat circular argument as necessary.

This is not a burden for the new government, it is an opportunity. It is an opportunity to take an important but broken industry out behind the woodshed and give them a thorough ass-beating. In my ideal world, a bailout would resemble the finest moment of a TV show I generally find severely overrated: Christopher's intervention for heroin addiction on The Sopranos. To make a long story short, it begins as the classic "Let me tell you how your addiction has hurt me" intervention led by a social worker and quickly degenerates into a mob beatdown. A perfect bailout would look pretty similar.
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Sure, guys, we'll bail you out. Now here's our list of conditions. No more bloated payrolls, no more skimping on parts so your cars fall apart at 12,000 miles, no more 5800-pound V8 behemoth Expeditions and Tahoes that nobody fucking needs, no more excuses about how they don't have the technology to increase efficiency (every single advance in engine technology for the past 100 years has been purposefully directed toward increasing horsepower, which compensates for Americans' little dicks), no more redundant marketing and "badge engineering" (GM currently sells about 5 different versions of every vehicle it makes), no more 7000-dealer networks (Toyota makes do with about 1200), no more executives who give us things like the Cimarron and the SSR while taking home $20 million annually (hi Rick Wagoner!), and no more pissing and moaning about the free market and the "burden" of regulation every time the government dares to impose any "Draconian" legislation like CAFE on the industry.

Congress will end up spending the money one way or another.

Might as well keep a lot of people productively employed while blowing it. Give them what they need. But there's no reason outside of cowardice to hand them a check with no strings attached.

The Senate Democrats allowed Joe Lieberman to keep his powerful chairmanship because Barack Obama personally appealed for mercy toward the conniving little bastard, an act that I comprehend but cannot condone. The disconnect has a simple explanation: the President-elect is a bigger person than I am. He decided to use Holy Joe as an example of how post-partisan, inclusive, and forgiving of slings and arrows he can be. Obama is mature; bloggers who wanted to see the Senator from AIPAC publicly flogged, humiliated, and evicted are petty.

Call it petty if you must, but to dole out no punishment – not even the milquetoasty wrist-slap of re-assigning him to a different committee – is inexcusable for a man who used the past nine months to make patently clear that, if neoconservatism had an erect penis, he would promptly renounce heterosexuality and choke on it.

Joe Lieberman does not deserve punishment for supporting John McCain or failing to tow his party line. Joe Lieberman deserves punishment for being among the most aggressive, amoral, and purposefully deceptive sources of vile rhetoric against Obama, never forfeiting an opportunity to get his patronizing mug on camera to lend legitimacy to every piece of right-wing talk radio nonsense by having it come from the lips of a 'Democrat'. There is a difference between supporting the other guy and becoming his hit man. There is a difference between being a person in a crowd throwing stones and being the person leading the mob, handing out stones, and pointing out victims of opportunity. Supporting McCain would be a venial political sin among Democrats; what Lieberman did is a mortal one.

This is a man who happily carried water for not only McCain but every paranoid Bircherite fantasy of the wacky right. He noted that it's a "good question" to ask if Obama is "a Marxist." He confidently asserted that the discredited, irrelevant Obama-Ayers "issue" was "fair game." He spent months running around West Palm Beach and Broward Counties telling elderly Jewish voters that Obama was the anti-Israel boogeyman (and black!). He went on TV again and again channeling George W. Bush about Iraq. The "most progressive man ever to come out of Connecticut" decided that McCain is plenty progressive on social issues for his liking. He went from "we can't drill our way out of problems" (2005) to "Drill, Baby, Drill!" (2008). He thinks waterboarding is swell because it puts people "in no real danger." He "feared" that America "would not survive" if the Democrats (the people he claims to caucus with) hit 60 seats in the Senate. He earnestly declared that Sarah Palin is "ready to be President" and "will win with God's help." He served on the board of "Vets for Freedom", a tax-exempt, pro-war front for Obama-will-surrender-to-terrorism idiocy in bulk. He went on a speaking tour warming up crowds for Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. His support for old pal McCain apparently not craven enough, Lieberman worked his ass off to endanger Americans and the entire goddamn world by putting a vacuous hillbilly with a Jenny Jones makeover near the White House.

The Democrats, at the urging of the mainstream media, believe that centrist, stand-for-nothing "New Democrat" horseshit is the key to unlocking electoral success. "We can't expel Lieberman just to please Glenn Greenwald – we'll lose touch with Joe Six Pack!" Remember back in 2006 when Ned Lamont's primary victory over Lieberman was the harbinger of general election doom for the Democrats? It signaled a party over the edge, terrifying to mainstream America, and given over entirely to the rantings of socialist bloggers. We couldn't be too anti-War; Americans would never go for that! We have to take it easy; President Bush is still very popular and there is a Permanent Republican Majority, after all! The only way to win is to tone it down. Being Republican Lite is the best the other party can do. Such good advice. I would print it out and wipe my ass with it if doing so were not such a grievous insult to my ass and what passes through it.

The Democratic Party needs Joe Lieberman like I need a ballsack on my forehead; both are approximately as useful to their principals. What the Democratic Party needs is not 59 instead of 58. They need to take a goddamn stand on something, to have at least one principle for which they are willing to kick someone out of the tent. Joe Lieberman crossed every line he could find and Harry Reid and Obama have rewarded him with a political lifeline. Had they expelled him, he would have had to caucus with the GOP and essentially run as a Republican in 2012, at which point the Democratic candidate in CT would effortlessly dispatch him (if the recent loss by Christopher Shays is any indication).

The Democrats can never become like conservatives, constantly holding their own up to a battery of increasingly hysterical litmus tests. But in running from that paradigm they have risked becoming the Arizona State of political parties, resigned to churning out stupendous mediocrity by throwing open the doors and admitting every sentient mouthbreather who ambles through.

Fuck you, Joe. May you pay for your self-serving duplicity in the next life if not this one.

With a nod to Thomas Frank's methodology in What's the Matter with Kansas?:

County in which Obama did best in 2008: Prince George County, Maryland. Population 846,000. 62% African-American with the highest median income of any majority-black county. Suburban DC, with easy access to all of the DC area amenities and attractions. Primary employers: National Archives, NASA Goddard Space Center, and University of Maryland.

County in which McCain did best in 2008: King County, Texas. Population 400. Three hours from Lubbock. Median income 30% below national average. Primary economic activity: raising cattle. Entertainment and cultural activities: tending meth labs, committing suicide.

It's your call – where would you rather live, the reddest of the red or the bluest of the blue? Would you prefer San Francisco values (*winkwink* GET IT? That's where the homogays live and they're out to recruit your kids!) or Wasilla Main Street values? A vacation in Boston or in Topeka? Job-hunting in Milwaukee or in Mobile? Would you rather live under what Newt Gingrich calls "gay and secular fascism" or the fascism of the Colorado Springs all-stars?

Garrison Keillor said it very well a few years ago when noting that:

The iPod was not developed by Baptists in Waco, Texas. There may be a reason for this.

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Creative people thrive in a climate of openness and tolerance, since some great ideas start out sounding ridiculous. Creativity is a key to economic progress.

All of the five counties in which McCain earned his largest victories are in rural Texas. His largest wins at the state level were in Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Alabama. These are shitty places. They may be pretty (except for Oklahoma and Alabama) or nice to visit/transit on vacation. They may have the odd nice city here or there – Birmingham and Boise spring to mind.

But what they do not have in the larger sense is the kind of climate that encourages any kind of openness or progress. They have the kind of ass-backwards religion-as-politics ideology that is making vast swaths of this nation look like Dogpatch.

Consider this your teaser for Summer 2009, when Ed visits King County, Texas and gives the world an essay in pictures.