My family had outgrown the old Ranger we used to go camping in, and going camping in a minivan just ain’t right. We took the Tundra camping up in the mountains last week, and it hauled all our gear while handling the roughest 4 wheel drive trails. It also serves as a vehicle the whole family can go to church in without a fight breaking out because somebody touched somebody (those with kids will understand.)
A smartass liberal at work chided me, since I’ve always been a Buy American guy, but I countered that buying a Toyota is buying American. My truck was made in Texas by American workers, and Toyota took not one dime of bailout money. Toyota did clean up on the cash for clunkers debacle, through no fault of their own, but by the free choice exercised by American consumers.
Your federal government…
…gave Chrysler’s secured creditors, who would have had priority in a normal bankruptcy, 29 cents on the dollar. Chrysler’s unions, on the other hand, got more than 40 cents, even though they are equivalent to low-priority lenders. This made a mockery of longstanding bankruptcy law, something that will make credit markets wary of lending to political sacred cows in the future. (Shikha Dalmia – Driving to Delusionville)Obama also favored unionized workers over non-unionized ones:
All United Auto Workers retirees at Delphi, GM’s auto supplier, got 100 percent of their pension and retirement benefits. But 21,000 nonunion, salaried employees lost up to 70 percent of their pensions, and all of their life and health insurance.Shikha Dalmia goes on to say that GM and Chrysler shirked the opportunity to lower labor costs. At $58/hour, they are still higher than relatively high Toyota, but can’t touch Toyota’s quality and reliability standards. Worse, they come nowhere close to $40/hour Hyunai and Kia. She concludes,
“The bailout prepared GM and Chrysler to compete with the industry leaders of yesterday, not tomorrow.”Finally, the bailout of GM and Chrysler rewarded failure and punished prudence and fiscal discipline:
By bailing out GM, the administration rewarded its recklessness and penalized Ford’s prudence. Every company that feels it is too big to fail, or is a national icon or major regional employer, will wonder whether it makes more business sense to save for a rainy day or simply hold out for taxpayer assistance.And contrary to the propagandistic Obamablather, GM still owes you and me over $13 billion, twice that if you figure in generous tax breaks. Buy a vehicle from a car company that shamelessly put such a permanent dent in the US Treasury? That would be downright un-American. I’ll stick to my Fords and Toyotas.
Source for all quotes:
Shikha Dalmia – Driving to Delusionville
