WILL OBAMA SAVE THE DETROIT 3?[Get the
latest “TRUTH WITH SPEEDZZTER” here]
It could have been worse.
Barack Obama’s cadre of leftist greeniacs could have achieved a filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate. But as it stands, the election of an untested, liberal mulatto from the corrupt Chicago machine -- based on a potent Molotov cocktail of racial identity politics, disgust over the Iraq War, and the collapse of credit markets -- has
ignited a radical, divisive brush fire for “change” in American politics. To borrow a flourish from the libertarian novelist Ayn Rand,
the “looters” are now in charge. Now Obama will be forced to deliver “change” for the special interest groups who boosted him in half a decade from academic obscurity to leader-elect of the Western world.
Obama’s soaring rhetoric is no substitute for actually marshaling through the “change” he so obliquely promised.
Obama’s labor union supporters will demand he blast through a
ban on secret ballot union elections. They will require a “change” to organizing laws that are
even more anti-employer than the liberal ones in place in the 1930s. They will expect Obama to
pack the federal courts with activist, pro-union, anti-corporate judges. They will accept nothing less than a
defacto federalization of health insurance. They will anticipate Obama’s ruse of renegotiating trade deals to ensure fair labor and environmental standards to create
a new protectionism. They will force Obama to pony up millions to insure the Detroit 3 hang on until a new generation of
electrified micro-cars are forced on the American consumer under a draconian 55+ m.p.g. Corporate Average Fuel Economy regime. Could any of this benefit the Detroit 3 automakers? Maybe.
Obama’s strong-arm tilt toward organized labor may help the hapless United Autoworkers Union to do what it was supposed to do decades ago –
unionize the invading Japanese auto assembly plants and force them into the Detroit 3's horrible cost structure with “pattern bargaining.”
Obama’s tax and health care plans may pave the way for increases in the business costs for the Japanese invaders and “spread the wealth” around from the transplants to other sectors of the economy. Such costs will be passed on to consumers, negating much of “Team Japan’s” cost advantage and forcing them to consider the same sorts of short-sighted quality compromises that plagued the Detroit 3 in the 1970s.
Obama most certainly will lavishly bail out the unionized automakers in order to “save jobs.” Such a bailout may involve the federal government assuming most of the Detroit 3's legacy costs. This would perhaps serve as a kernal to a new, nationalized "living retirement" pension system that would eventually dwarf Social Security. The costs of these expensive plans would be spread across any participants in the American economy (READ: taxpayers).
Obama’s insurance plan may
help the Detroit 3 spread some of their crushing health care burden on to the larger economy. It may also put Detroit on a more level playing field with the more socialized industrial economies of Europe.
Obama’s need to serve his organized labor masters with protectionist polices may also
increase the domestic content of all vehicles assembled in the U.S.A. Certainly, it’s not all wine and roses for the Detroit 3 in an Obama Administration. Obama will
release all the restraints from the radicals at the Environmental Protection Agency. The canard of anthropogenic “climate change” will be firmly entrenched as official American policy. Responding forcefully to the greeniac hysteria will be an ideological jihad, pursued with a hyper-religious fervor in the Obama Administration. The regulatory ratchet that tightens down restrictions on new vehicle choice and high performance will clamp down on V8s and SUVs for at least a generation. Obama will free California and other “blue states” to go even further than the federal government at mandating a fleet of bland, low-performing, electric and hybrid electric micro-cars for a new generation of forced “appliance motorists,” sacrificing automotive freedom for the “common good.”
The pitch-black malaise of the 1970s motoring is certain to return. Obama’s radical energy use policies will finish off a lot of smaller automotive businesses and will
end any semblance of the “Second Supercar Era.” It will drastically increase the price of all new vehicles and will ultimately lead to decades of increasing fuel costs.
A good possibility exists for
quid pro quos with the Detroit 3.
An Obama Administration could force the Detroit 3 to
cancel all racing and high performance parts operations to save energy and prevent circumvention of the new government motoring policy. Most likely, the radicalized congressional hearings on the Detroit bailout will feature dramatic criticisms of Detroit’s “over focus” on the high performance market niches and expensive factory-backed competition programs. Moreover, the workforce at the Detroit 3 has become so hollowed-out that it might prove impossible to comply with a mountain of new regulations and maintain credible high performance programs.
Factory-sponsored motorsports could also be banned or sharply curtailed. An Obama Administration will likely encourage
carbon pollution lawsuits against the automakers, leading to “tobacco settlement” style restrictions on marketing
anything that could be used to “unnecessarily” add carbon dioxide to the “planet’s fragile atmosphere.”
Essential programs such as Ford Racing Performance Parts, Mopar Performance, and General Motors Performance Parts may be bargained away or gutted to settle these lawsuits. The Detroit 3's staggering litigation and legal compliance costs are certain to rise. Trial lawyer “pirates” are a key Obama constituency. These greedy “highjack artists” will have a field day in an Obama-packed federal judiciary. An explosion of new forms of discrimination and labor rights will breed lawsuits. Obama appointments to the Justice Department and safety regulatory agencies will make regulatory overreaching of the Carter Administration look like
the good, old days. And these new regulations will be crafted in such a way as to bootstrap all sorts of trial-lawyer-enriching product liability claims. Compliance with a tsunami of new environmental and safety standards may overwhelm the Detroit 3 in a way not seen since the 1970s.
Fending off trial lawyer piracy and regulatory overreaching will guaranty years of employment for scores of defense and regulatory compliance lawyers. Certainly, Obama's "soak the rich" tax policy will hurt the market for luxury vehicles. Although the Detroit 3 will not be as adversely affected by this as some import OEMs, tax policy changes will likely reduce small business investment in fleet vehicles. If the economic slowdown deepens into a lengthy recession (exacerbated by tax increases and protectionism), Detroit's sales may continue to falter. Reduced military spending could also hurt U.S. automakers with reductions in fleet sales. These declines may be offset to a limited degree by increases in non-military governmental and government contractor fleet sales as the Obama Administration diverts more tax dollars into an expanded regulatory bureaucracy and public works projects.
Presumably, unionized automakers will benefit more from Obama's largesse with money borrowed from future taxpayers or snatched from the twenty percent of "haves" who already fund the vast majority of government.
In short, the Detroit 3 may survive an Obama Administration.
But will they be able to build anything of interest to connoisseurs of high performance motoring? Will we even care anymore?
Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Detroit Bailout, Ford Motor Company, GM
