Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Open to Letter to Congress-No Blank Check to the Auto Industry

As your constituent, I want you to make sure that the automobile industry does not receive any of my hard earned money unless it comes with strings attached to ensure that they use it to make safer, cleaner/greener, more fuel efficient vehicles.

The auto industry is pushing hard for as much as 50 billion dollars in loan guarantees to bail out their struggling companies. I am unsympathetic since Detroit automakers IGNORED consumer and citizen demands for cleaner, more fuel efficient vehicles and continued churning out massive, gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles to secure short-term, short-sighted profits. They disregarded rising gas prices; the very real decreases in oil availability; the harm to our country wrought by dependence on oil in unstable and hostile nations. Poor decision-making has hurt the U.S. auto industry members themselves, the auto workers, and the people of the United States who are now forced to pay higher prices on essentials.

These companies have themselves to blame. Having fought tooth and nail the very laws and regulations that would have saved their industry; U.S. employment and the environment and raised their esteem in the eyes of most Americans; they now cynically approach Congress to receive corporate welfare despite years of arrogant misjudgments and business decisions.

I am not sure how Detroit’s CEOs, whose annual pay ranges from $2 million to $12 million (even as share prices fall and losses reach the billions) can ask for this bailout with a straight face. They should be embarrassed.

It is a double hypocrisy to disdain government intervention on behalf of our common good and what was in their own best interest in favor of "free markets" and then to beg for help when their own "free" choices have led them to disaster. If they succeed in receiving a bailout-- we cannot expect gratitude but rather contempt at our being "suckers" "chumps" or whatever language con men adopt toward their victims.

If any arrangement is made at all, we are in a keen position to maximize our superior (for once) negotiating position.

Loans must be extremely tight at first, to be increased only by their COMPLIANCE to OUR TERMS. Stipulations must be in place requiring that manufactures will increase the fuel economy of their fleets beyond the weak standards set last year by the Energy Independence and Security Act and their vehicles must comply with all safety and emission standards while doing so.

If we simply acquiesce to auto industry demands without any specific demands, we lose credibility in making good on our own enforcement of laws and consequences.

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