"Real conservatives" have apparently decided to create a 3rd political party that consists of Republicans who are true to fundamental conservative principles and ideas as compared to "regular" Republicans who don't consider our President to be a Black Panther Fascist Socialist who was born in Kenya. These honest-to-God genuine Conservatives who are out to save the United States of America are calling themselves, appropriately enough, "conservatives" and are part of a grassroots "conservative movement" that intends to win elections in 2010 and 2012 and regain some of the ground the movement lost because of America's disaffection with George W. Bush.I could care less who they say are. What's important is at the end of the day they don't want President Obama to get the economy going again. They don't want to see people get back to work for another 3 years. They don't want to make health care more accessible to more Americans. And they look to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck for answers.
Not surprisingly, a lot of Americans, both Democrats and "regular" Republicans, have a problem with this approach and, as as a result, these "conservatives" will never, ever make up more than an impotent, radicalized faction of the Republican Party that talks loud and loses elections not only for their candidates but for mainstream Republican representatives from which they draw votes.
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19 comments:
"What's important is at the end of the day they don't want President Obama to get the economy going again."
Conservatives would love to see Obama get the economy going in a principled way that will provide long term sustainability. Dumping money into failing automakers to hold on to UAW votes is an example of a policy with a short term stimulus effect, but a long term disastrous effect on the economy. Hmm, how can I make a liberal understand....Ok....Its sort of like drug use, Rick. It may make you feel good in the short run, but in the long run it will kill you.
"They don't want to make health care more accessible to more Americans."
Conservatives have been saying for a loooong time we need to make health care more affordable, which makes it more accessible. Unlike innumerate folks in government, conservatives realize you can't spend money you don't have forever. Obamacare may make you feel warm and fuzzy in the short run, but in the long run it will make accessibility and quality worse. How can I make a liberal understand....hmm..Ok.. remember how you bought that hybrid Toyota that was really expensive but you wanted to "make a statement," then later because of the car payments you couldn't pay your grocery bills? Well its sort of like that.
Probably one of your most hate-fueled, ranting posts of the year, Rick.
I prefer the term "special Republican", Rick.
Still, Charlie Crist is our quarterback. FML.
KoC, you make the typical mistake of the Extreme Right: assuming that it's the liberals you have to convince. It's not. It's rational people. People who can see that simplistic solutions do not always solve complicated problems.
Had we allowed GM to fail, we'd be looking back on the Great Depression as "the good ol' days."
It's not about "not spending money." It's about spending the money wisely, something Republicans preach but never practice.
Hm... KofC compares liberals to drug addicts and then accuses Rick of writing a "hate-filled rant."
Ironic, that.
CLJ-
I agree with you that our country should be run rationally, not emotionally. If more people felt that way, we could actually get the country on track.
"Had we allowed GM to fail, we'd be looking back on the Great Depression as "the good ol' days.""
CLJ, I don't agree with this statement. But I don't consider your argument irrational. I won't deny that there would be a short-term loss of jobs. But GM's failure is inevitable. I think there are ways to soften the blow for the workers affected without perpetuating an inefficient behemoth, only making matters worse down the line. Why not provide tax breaks to successful automakers who hire displaced GM workers? Tax breaks to build plants in GM abandoned areas, or if possible buy out GM plants to be put to use making cars that people that people actually want to buy? GM has to be wound down and let go. We can soften the blow, not prop up a lie.
Maybe you don't like my ideas. But a rational person like yourself, CLJ, can see that just because a person favors alternative policies to a bailout, he is not ipso facto a sadist who gets his jollies watching people loose their jobs. Unfortunately, there appear to be certain bloggers who believe otherwise. I don't think those bloggers are very rational, do you?
"It's about spending the money wisely, something Republicans preach but never practice."
I agree. But its not just Republicans. Government never spends money wisely. It has built-in incentives to do the opposite. Medicare, Medicade, Social Security, all in deep financial trouble and circling the bankruptcy drain. But Obamacare will be fiscally sound because Obama says so? That's not very rational, is it CLJ?
Bobby-
No such accusation was intended. Let me beat Rick to the punch: Rush was addicted to pain killers.
In retrospect, pointing out the hate-driven nature of Rick's post was unnecessary.
Care to address the underlying policy argument? Do you drive a GM car?
KofC...The Obama Administration has a plan to fix the economy that they are implementing. You can agree with it or disagree with it, but the bottom line is that Republicans want the President to fail across the board. It's a fact. So when you say that the Republicans want to succeed as long as he follows the plan they agree with, it's a straw man and it does not negate the reality that they do not want him to succeed in anything that he does. And that includes freeing Americans held in North Korea, rescuing Americans from Somali pirates or winning the Nobel Peace Prize...they want him to fail. Why do you think they cheered his unsuccessful attempt to bring the Olympics to Chicago. They wanted him to fail.
Lastly, I challenge you to find the "hate" in this post. It's a calm and collected analysis of the Radical Right and the damage they're doing to the Republican Party. I can back up everything, including the obscene characterizations of our President with references. So I'm lost as to where you find the hate.
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KofC, I own both a GM car and a Ford. I also grew up in the auto belt and I know that if GM failed, it would not just affect Detroit or the people that work there alone. It will hurt the people in Toledo who work at the companies like Dana or Bendix who supply the parts, and it will hurt the people in Benzonia, Michigan, a little town 300 miles from Detroit where they have a 30-employee supplier of relays for the switches that move the power seats. And if that company fails, then those people are out of work. Then they can't buy the snowmobiles that they ride in the winter, so the snowmobile dealer has a bad year and has to lay off some of the people that work there. I think you get the idea of the ripple effect, and while tax breaks to an entrepreneur who is planning a start-up at the old plant sounds great, you can't pay people -- or the mortgage -- with a tax break. Magnify this by the number of GM plants around the country and you see why it's probably not a good idea to just let GM fail, even that's the way capitalism works.
The usual whipping boy for GM's problems is the UAW and their outrageous contract demands. Well, I know a lot of folks that worked in the auto industry, and it's a brutal job on the line; dangerous in the extreme and exacting as well as tedious, and when you actually see what a real autoworker earns and what he or she goes through to get it, I doubt there are many people here -- myself included -- who would do the job.
Considering what the auto industry has given to the country over the last 100 years, giving them a helping hand in a time of extremis doesn't seem like altogether a bad thing, especially if they pay it back with interest, as Chrysler did when we bailed them out 30 years ago.
By the way, among all the people I have known over the last 50 years who work in the auto industry, I can count the number of liberals or Democrats on one hand. Most of them are hard-core hard-hat old-style Republicans.
"Conservatives have been saying for a loooong time we need to make health care more affordable, which makes it more accessible."
I want to know who specifically these conservatives are. Name names, KoC. Leading guys, not some obscure
And if you actually have one or two, how come they have been so ineffectual at communicating their message and getting the party they are aligned with to get legislation passed? They had eight years.
Bobby: Every thinking American contemplated these issues during the bail-out. Nobody wanted to send taxpayer money to support an company that had consistently and arrogantly mishandled its business, but nobody wanted ordinary laborers to pay the price for that mismanagement by losing their livliehoods. A classic Lose-Lose. As Americans, we Lost-Lost.
The traditional Republican/conservative approach has been worthless at best: declaring war on the unions, encouraging corporate profits at the expense of quality and safety, supporting management's initiatives to lobby, postpone environmental improvements, etc.
I just finished reading Rivethead, too.
squathole, I don't defend the auto companies for their management techniques; it WAS arrogant, especially after World War II when they were the only game in town and they sneered at the foreign cars as just an annoyance, like a gnat. But you're right; the line workers had absolutely no say in what management did.
The other point I want to make about giving companies tax breaks is that even if you don't call it welfare, that's exactly what it is. And when a city or a state promises a company all these incentives to come in and build a plant, someone else has to make up for all the revenue lost when the company doesn't have to pay property taxes. They still use the infrastructure, and they still bring in workers and their families, and the tax revenue from those additional incomes or sales taxes doesn't make up the difference. A classic case was in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, where they went to great lengths to get Intel to build a plant there. It was great; it provided a lot of jobs for a lot of people. But the water and sewer system couldn't handle all the new building of homes and businesses, and they didn't have the money to pay for it. The schools were overcrowded, and the state didn't have the money to expand them. And there's never a guarantee that the company won't find a better place to build -- i.e. in India -- and then bolt, leaving Rio Rancho with a great big empty factory and a whole lot of out-of-work people on unemployment. Even if they had an iron-clad agreement with state, the penalty they'd pay for breaking the compact would be a rounding error compared to what it would cost the state, and the company could write it off as a loss... on their taxes.
(Full disclosure: I belong to a union of sorts; the Dramatists Guild, which protects writers from unscrupulous producers and guarantees royalties for our work. We don't go on strike; we get writer's block.)
Bobby-
So then what is the end game? Let's assume for a moment that everything you said is true. The American taxpayer is just supposed to keep on funding GM and other "too big to fail" enterprises forever? There must be some sort of middle ground where such inefficient and unwanted behemoths can be wound down slowly. Because the deeper the government gets into this mess, the worse it will get. All of the sudden, we'll see renewed calls for tariffs on foreign import cars (you know, that ones that Americans mostly choose to buy). We'll start isolating ourselves from the world economy, and things will just get worse.
I agree that tax cuts are a form of welfare. But the difference between my proposal and the perpetuation of GM is that my proposal gives charity to efficient, viable enterprises as opposed to an inefficient sink hole. There's going to pain either way, but all this bailout is going to accomplish is to delay the inevitable. My proposal offers a future for both the workers and the taxpayers.
Also, I've seen the footage of the Japanese auto plants. Workers are happy, safe, empowered and efficient. Again, GM doesn't know what its doing, and is decades behind the rest of the world.
So everyone was on Bush's case, including me, for having no endgame in Iraq and Afghanistan. What's our endgame with GM and the other mega-bailouts?
Rick-
Its clear you've made up your mind that conservatives are your personal scapegoat for all that's wrong with the world. You should see somebody professional about that. Now you've even woven pirates into the mix, that somehow conservatives would like to see harm befall innocent kidnapping victims. You're off the plantation as far as I'm concerned.
I'll try one last time. My dog hurt its leg and I took it to the vet. The vet decided it was best not to give the dog pain medicine while the leg healed, because the pain would keep the dog from causing more damage to the leg. Pain medicine would just mask the underlying problem, the dog would romp and play on it without knowing something was wrong, and make things much worse. In your world, the vet is some kind of conservative sadist for thinking it best that the dog experience some pain. In my world the vet was right, the dog laid off the leg and now its stronger and better than ever. Obama is the vet that gives the pain killer, and the dog ultimately damages the leg beyond repair, becomes an incurable cripple for whom pain medicine barely works, requires massive amounts of more pain medicine that ultimately damages the kidneys and other organs, and finally the dog becomes so sickly it dies a miserable death. So in that sense, a good vet wants the dog to feel some pain, sure. It has to in order to heal. Masking the pain is a short term fix that will backfire.
You can choose to live in a world where all conservatives are mind-melded with Rush Limbaugh, but you marginalize yourself by doing so. And as long as you continue to stereotype and spread misinformation about conservatives, I'll consider your motivation irrational, i.e. hate.
The endgame is we make them accountable for what they're doing with our money and like anyone coming into a lending institution, make them prove that they will at some point be able to pay the loan back with interest. Remember, Chrysler paid back their bailout in the 1980's and the government made money.
It's not a "bailout" any more than your mortgage is a bailout because you didn't have the $100K on hand to buy your house. I don't believe in funding them forever, and the auto companies know that they are, at some point, going have to pay the money back.
By the way, I think GM learned their lesson about how Japanese companies worked. They tried that model with Saturn. QED. As I said before, I'm not defending their practices, and while I'm sorry that brands like Pontiac and Plymouth are gone, my sorrow is for the people who showed up at 6:00 a.m. at the East Gate in Pontiac in the middle of February when it was a balmy -17 year in and year out and now have to rely on the kindness of strangers. If the company failed them, why should the government? Isn't that what it's for?
Names, KoC?
I just have one question, King...
Is your dog okay?
KoD-
He's doing good, although getting on in years and with certain allergy problems. Appreciate your asking, but I can't help but wonder if Rick will address a nasty 'spam' warning to you.
Bobby-
Its obvious to the rest of us that GM learned nothing from the Japanese. I understand your somewhat emotional tie to their products. But the statistics speak for themselves: the quality is crap. Resale value, crap. Reliability, crap.
Your answer is a little confusing. Who exactly is going to fix GM? Are you implying their own shareholders weren't holding the company responsible, people who had legitimate skin in the game? If the shareholders and creditors couldn't do it, what makes you think Obama can? And why can't we transition those workers to other automakers, or other manufacturing jobs?
And what if they can't pay it back? When that fear arises, then what? A surtax on non-GM cars? A ban on foreign cars? How is any of it fair to Ford, an American manufacturer that said no to the bailout?
When's the last time you saw a 30 year old Datsun on the road, King? How about a 20 year old Mazda?
You know that '75 Vette that sold for $6500? Over 20 G's today.
Stick to Cats, King. 'Cause you're just wingin' it out here.
motorcity-
In my younger days I had a C5 corvette, I realized it was a piece of crap and dumped it. Gave me nothing but problems and expensive repair bills. It depreciated $15k in 2 years. Last time I made that mistake with an American car.
There are thousands of honda civics on the South Florida roadways with 200 or 300K miles still running strong and giving their owners no troubles.
Its not worth arguing about. Toyota, honda, ford, etc are not asking for a bailout. The consumers have spoken, GM sucks.
Besides motorcity, good liberals don't drive V8s.
KofC, my GM car is a 22-year-old Pontiac with 250,000 miles on it. I bought it new and drove it every day until I got my current Mustang. My previous Mustang was a '95 GT with the 5.0L V-8 that I bought from my mom who is more liberal than I am.
As for your other concern about default, GM announced that they will not need any more money from the feds. So you can rest a little easier knowing that the capitalist system, with a little help from us, still works.
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