Why them, Why now?

Duesenberg, Cord, Studebaker,Packard, and American Motors.
Some of those names anyone would recognize, some others perhaps not.

Each one was at one time a car maker in the United States. Each one produced a fine automobile for a time, but each one fell out of favor with customers for one reason or another and each one failed. In those days, government had too much to do to bail out each one. Government also did not succumb to the myth that any one sector of the economy was so vital that it could not fail.

Only recently with Amtrack and Chrysler has there been sufficient lobby power to make these ineptly run businesses indispensable. Interesting to me is that mining, steel, and textiles have slowly been shuttered in this country. Government did not step in to bail them out. Rather they let the market take its course and today we survive rather well with the changes such inaction has brought. Buildings still get built, heat still gets generated and yes, we still have clothes to wear.

What outgoing President Bush has done is give away the keys to the treasury to an arrogant elite whose sense of entitlement has impoverished us all. GM has believed its future is so entangled with the United States they cannot imagine one without the other.

I can. In fact, when the President gave GM and Chrysler good tax dollars to follow the billions they had squandered, I decided that I would not buy another American labeled automobile. I would assume that Ford will quickly follow which would make it a clean sweep. I am so incensed by such indefensible and irresponsible behavior, I will scratch these folks off my buy list. The fact is there are more brands to pick from now than can survive in a growing world market. As best I can tell, only us and the British have been foolish enough to attempt to prop up failing automotive efforts. Now RR is a BMW brand and Bentley a VW brand, and on and on it could go.

In the history of any technology, innovation and competition kept businesses alive and those who started the race often could not stay in the race. American car makers got lathargic and fat with mediocrity and greed and customer indifference. We kept telling them in surveys their work was shoddy and boring, we kept telling them we were replacing them in our hearts, and in showrooms across America their uninspiring creations stayed. Only arrogant, stupid people don't listen and they didn't.

So, now, in this United States of America where we have huge, huge problems with access to health care, growing unemployment, world wide political instability and rising national debt and deteriorating infastructure do we have the surplus tax money to prop up poorly run industries that will fail before 2009 is out.

Only in America.