Without becoming as verbose as my criticisms in the David Brooks critique, I just wanted to point out a couple of things in today's NYTimes article by David E. Sanger about G.M.
After investing all that time yesterday fighting against G.O.P. rhetoric creeping into the national debate over buying a 60% stake in G.M. with tax dollars (a move that could really just be viewed as a credit-default swap of already spent bailout money - as opposed to just giving the money away and not getting any stock in return for the U.S. taxpayer), I'm yet again amazed by how the press is really politically right, and hardly ever really politically left.
Be that as it may, I still want to counter-persuade you that G.M. shouldn't be waterboarded as Socialism just yet. I think because this whole deal has the potential to succeed and thereby make people like Hugo Chavez look smart - this is why the rhetoric has become so outlandish. Here's some examples:
"And the longer the government holds on to its stake [in G.M. stock], the longer the pressures will build, from Congress and elsewhere, to intervene."
This is a critical statement that comes almost verbatim from David Brooks' op-ed. Fact is, the longer the government holds on to its stake, the more likely it will profit from it's sale and thus make a good deal for the American taxpayer. Where is the analysis that says: "here is why the government will do worse than the private market"? There isn't any. There never is. It's just demagoguery and anti-American hate speech.
The idea that government corrupts everything it touches is the hallmark of the great American political LIE that is propagated by the right-wing. Supposedly the party of Patriotism, as with most things, they are penny-wise, pound-stupid, and when I hear the constant drone of how the government can never do any good (except the military of course - they get carte-freakin'-blanche to do whatever the hell they say they should do) I also hear the deathtoll of democracy, handed to the fascists on a platter by unthinking, headline reading masses of stupid voters. Yet, despite the G.O.P.'s constant criticism of government, nine times out of ten, when the curtain gets pulled, the G.O.P. is the one with their pants down doing something as indiscreet as giving no bid contracts to war profiteers, and outsourcing military services (like food service and the like) to private contractors that do what the military used to do itself for on-the-cheap, and we end up with soldiers eating McDonalds (toxic), drinking diet Coke cans that have baked in the sun (toxic), and a military that now costs the cost of running an army, plus the cost of paying people to run it for us, plus interest on the money we borrowed to pay more for less.
Please don't let your faith in the United States and it's federal government be chipped away by unsupported statements by the right-wing press - any decent debater would ask for their evidence card on that one. This rhetorical push to the right is exactly why "Yes We Can" made waves among voters, and the mission we still have to carry out is to make government good and cool again by making it work for the people instead of against them, fighting their rhetoric with our own (even though this will earn us ridicule as sheep by the right, who ironically enough, are self-described lock-in-step sheep to begin with - the key to their religulous success).
The alternative is to let politicians screw everything up with their pants down, then convince us to let Halliburton run Medicare because, though it will cost more, at least the politicians won't be able to screw it up anymore. Instead, Halliburton can do anything it wants to and the people will have no power over it like they would have power over a politician.
(By the way, no one has proposed Medicare be run by the Dubai-based oil services company called Halliburton, I just think they make a good straw-person to attack).
Also from today's article:
"Already there are signs that both Mr. Obama and the company will face inevitable tradeoffs when political pressures, manufacturing realities and the need to maximize the interests of taxpayers and consumers come in conflict."
Maximizing the interests of taxpayers and consumers doesn't carry any pre-ordained conflict (unless you think businesses should be run to the detriment of taxpayers or consumers). The inevitable tradeoffs that will likely come from this whole process is that "business as usual" stakeholders will suffer, while the taxpayer and consumer will likely benefit (which is exactly what usually happens when government intervenes in the free market - look at the history of the seatbelt, a cheap device that car companies used to say were bad for business).
Also:
"But sooner or later, the company’s environmental goals are bound to come into conflict — again — with its overarching need to prove that the new G.M. can turn a profit, the necessary step before private investors and lenders will step back in."
I admit that Green business models are unproven, and that G.M. turning a profit will be challenging, but after the number of Green, Inc. articles that have come from the NYTimes, you'd think that this notion of inherent conflicts between environmental goals and profitability would a bit more expertly dealt with.
Next:
"Profits will also dictate decisions about building cars in lower-cost countries like South Korea or China, decisions that the old G.M. faced every day. As soon as that happens, there will be protests in Detroit and on Capitol Hill that as long as G.M. is owned by American taxpayers, its cars and components should be produced on American soil."
This is exactly the whole freakin' point of saving G.M. in the first place! Not just to save Wall Street (G.M. shareholders, who are already wiped out for now), but to save Main Street in literally dozens of Heartland Midwest towns! If profits dictate that cars be built in lower-cost countries, then G.M. shouldn't build cars anymore. If cars should be built in lower-cost countries, then why shouldn't everything be built in lower-cost countries? Maybe it should be sold there too. Maybe we should just ride bikes and run Universities to service the rest of the world - since that's all that we seem to excel at any more. Maybe we should end the cycle of Consumerism in order to elevate ourselves out of the dark ages of expansionism.
But, maybe instead we could dare to protect American workers with a few tariffs and by keeping manufacturing jobs here in America, even if we the people of 60% Shareholding in G.M. only make a hundred bucks of profit instead of a million bucks because we refused to outsource everything we possibly could in the name of profit maximization.
and Lastly:
"So, just as George Bush spent much of his presidency seeking a way out of Iraq, Mr. Obama may spend much of his seeking a way out of the morass of new government investments in the private sector. The hardest part will be knowing how to time the withdrawal of government support — a balancing act between maximizing the investment of taxpayers and risking the company’s fragile state."
Again, I emphasize that this article has crapiness taken directly from David Brooks' G.O.P. rhetoric. Iraq and Bush have nothing to do with Obama and G.M. - how thick can you get? The implication is that collecting stock for bailout money already given (which is about equal to one tenth of one percent of what we spent or are going to spend in Iraq) is politically tantamount to invading a soveriegn nation for no legitimate reason. On behalf of the soveriegn nations of the world, including this one I say: quit your shoddy rhetoric trying to convince people that government by the people can't fix Main Street. We'll do the best we can and hope everything turns out okay, like we do with everything, and Mr. Obama is still almost nothing if not hope.
Tell ya what - we'll go ahead and try this G.M. thing since we have little to lose, and if ya'll are right that the government is a bungling idiot that can't help but crap on everything it touches - then we'll go ahead and get rid of the federal government. At that point it will be useless, and State constitutions should protect us pretty well. Fortunately, I know a few militia guys that can protect us if the U.S. military decides it isn't ready to disband itself. Until then, think with your brain instead of your news articles, please.
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