BAIL MONEY
I've been thinking about government bail-outs of the auto manufacturers, which now, on both sides of the border, runs in the many billions of taxpayer dollars.
(I'm not sure yet what I think about similar bail-outs of banks -except for a natural disgust, of course - so perhaps more on that on another day. For the moment, I'll just add that to my list of reasons for being happy I am a Canadian and not otherwise.)
It seems very clear to me that the car companies as they are currently structured and focused are history.
The so-called Big Three have been making trashy products that not one person I know buys. The only place I ever see these products are on rental lots.
It is all well and good that the unions have made concessions and taken pay roll-backs to help these misguided corporations seize more of our money. But that is hardly the answer.
If Obama and Harper are so determined to save these industries, then why not ask for real change?
We'll bail-out your sorry butts if:
You start making electric cars today.
You make small cars like the Smart Car.
You take the plans and tool-ups for all your SUV's and turn them into nuclear waste.
Trucks will be built and sold to truckers, not re-designed as passenger vehicles and made exempt from pollution restrictions.
Every American preisdent and every American presidential candidate for ages has blathered on about the necessity for "freeing ourselves from the addiction to foreign oil supplies."
So?
Go ahead. Free yourself.
Go electric.
Go small.
Go You-Know-What until you can come up with real valid reasons for taxpayers to shore up these doomed and completely out-of-touch businesses.
