ONLY ONE-IN-FOUR CHANCE OF AVOIDING DETROIT 3 BANKRUPTCY

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In the wake of the legislative branch’s abject failure to hog-tie the United Auto Workers union and pass necessary bridge loans for the Detroit 3, the U.S. Treasury Department is busy working on a TARP-based interim Detroit 3 aid package.It’s shaping up to be a rehash of the plan that passed the U.S. House, including a “Car Czar” with the power to force bankruptcy.

In other words, “meet the new boss . . . same as the old boss.”

The emerging Bush plan does what the U.A.W.’s Ron Gettelfinger and his strike-happy cronies anticipated – it merely passes the ball to the union-beholden OBAMAcrats.

According to Bloomberg,

“The likeliest U.S. aid package will be loans and a so- called prepackaged bankruptcy to get the automakers through to 2009, Moody’s Investors Service said in a note today. There’s only a one-in-four probability the U.S. will bail out the automakers with no bankruptcy, analyst J. Bruce Clark said.”

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen – apparently no fan of using any TARP money to help the Detroit 3 weather the financial and regulatory hurricane created by previous federal policies and market tampering – uses the “long-term viability” code wording for coerced U.A.W. give-backs:

“The terms would be very critical, and we would have to assure ourselves that this was a step on the path to long-term viability.”

Of course an Obama-controlled Treasury Department would have virtually no force to make the U.A.W. accept across-the-board, market-based wages and benefits by early 2009, if ever. Yet under the emerging Bush plan, the Treasury Department would function as the de facto “Car Czar” and could (theoretically) force bankruptcy if the participating members of the Detroit 3 failed to demonstrate “long-term viability” by late March 2009.

In practical terms, however, the Bush plan would be a “toothless tiger.”

Why?

In short, because of Barack Obama and his fealty to organized labor.

Most certainly, Ron Gettelfinger and other union hacks would pressure the OBAMAcrats against forcing bankruptcy (pre-packaged or otherwise) without substantial guarantees of a wage and benefit premium for pre-existing U.A.W. members and/or swift passage of the anti-secret ballot “card check” legislation.

Sensing this, the politicians beholden to non-union Southern “invader” auto plant interests continue to campaign vigorously against any help for the Detroit 3.

One of the latest to join the Richard Shelby-ite “just say no” chorus is South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford: Sanford wrote President Bush yesterday to “not to consider the bank bailout fund for automakers because it would open the ‘floodgates’ for other troubled industries.”

“We are at a tipping point in moving from a market-based economy to a politically based economy,” Sanford said.

Sanford’s state is host to a B.M.W. “invader” assembly plant that was built with SUBSTANTIAL public aid:

In 1992 South Carolina ushered in the new wave of investment by foreign carmakers in the South by offering BMW a package that was ultimately worth an estimated $150 million. A decade later, the state put up an additional $80 million in infrastructure aid when BMW decided to expand its operations in the state.

Sanford and the Shelby-ites also wholly ignore the pervasive federal role in weakening the Detroit 3 through decades of wrong-headed anti-trust, trade, labor, energy, tax, and foreign policies and anti-market-based regulation. To suggest that the Detroit 3's problems are solely “market-based” is ludicrous, if not empty-headed. There has been no true “free market” in light vehicles for decades.

Sanford and the Shelby-ites also ignore the critical importance of the Detroit 3 to America’s basic industrial capacity. They ignore the virtual impossibility of recreating any of the Detroit 3 in any reasonable period of time should they be liquidated. They ignore the virtual certainty of double-digit unemployment and a economic depression should the Detroit 3 fail.

Instead, Sanford and the Shelby-ites maneuver their political rhetoric not for level-headed, principled policy reasons, but for political and parochial gains. They are not looking out for our national interest. They are no better than the greedy pirates at the U.A.W. in developing a solution for a crisis of political creation.

The drums of Chapter 11 continue to sound. But the emerging question – assuming that the Bush Administration staves off the immediate, forced bankruptcy threat – is: Will the OBAMAcrats get tough with the U.A.W. and/or force the Detroit 3 into bankruptcy to address the wage and benefit disparity problem?

Don’t count on it.

THE WAITING GAME: STICKING A CORK[ER] IN IT.

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The Detroit 3 automakers are still waiting for President Bush to act on granting short-term relief from the crisis that Washington politicians mostly created.

Meanwhile President Bush ducked shoes thrown by the Egyptian press in Iraq (and undoubtedly everyone in the de facto OBAMAcrats propaganda ministry (a/k/a “newsrooms”) at the New York Times and NBC cheered).

Tennessee Senator Bob Corker continued to push for the “poison pill” condition of near-immediate pay and benefits equity between the Japanese invader auto plants and the Detroit 3 plants hostage by the concessions-weary United Auto Workers union.

Do-nothings such as Alabama Senator Richard "Tokyo Rose" Shelby still do the bidding of the government-subsidized Japanese invaders by standing against any intervention whatsoever to help the Detroit 3 cope with the Federal and state governments’ decades of bleeding the lifeblood out of the Detroit 3 with scores of bad policies, outright market tampering (e.g. Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards) and $100,000,000,000.00+ in unfunded mandates.

U.A.W. boss Ron Gettelfinger and his henchmen, along with a small phalanx of fellow-traveling OBAMAcrat pundits on cable television, continued to defend their collective rejection of market-based wages and benefits for the Detroit 3.

In other words, General Motors and Chrysler are left twisting in the wind on nooses tied by Congress and the U.A.W.

And they are incurring millions in pre-bankruptcy planning expenses and legal fees during the delay.

Gettelfinger, who would be a finalist for the Heisman Trophy of Stupid if it were awarded, is attempting to wait out the clock on the Bush Administration and the current Congress. He’s "betting the farm” that Bush will write a $15,000,000,000.00 blank check before year’s end to stave off the imminent bankruptcies of both Chrysler and GM.

Gettelfinger seemingly believes that if the over-paid and increasingly unpopular U.A.W. can just make it to the “promised land” of Obama’s inauguration, then the glory days of strong-arm labor tactics will receive a sudden rebirth in America.

Why the delay? Why play the waiting game? Why the apparent gamble?

In the fantasy world of Ron Gettelfinger and the hard-core, anti-management union bosses, all of the Detroit 3's structural problems will evaporate when the OBAMAcrats banish the secret ballot labor election and require employers to allow labor goons to infect non-union companies with adversarial unions through a public sign-up sheet.

Gettelfinger apparently believes that the Japanese invader assembly plants will suddenly become unionized when all U.A.W. muscle has to do is hector and intimidate a mere majority of “scab” workers into signing a union card in public. Then the U.A.W. will be empowered to run the same sorts of “pattern bargaining” hijacks against Toyota, Honda and Nissan that have proven so costly against the Detroit 3 for the past 60+ years.

Gettelfinger also may be planning to off-load a significant portion of the Union’s “VEBA” obligations onto the Feds, as everyone associated with parasitic “organized” labor dreams for nationalization of health care and “reform” of the pension system. If the costs of the U.A.W.’s platnum-plated benefit plans are spread across industry, then the Detroit 3 wouldn’t be so disadvantaged in comparison to their invader competitors (conveniently forgetting about the growing disparity in production costs between American versus off-shore plants that are outside the extortion of U.S. labor unions).

Gettelfinger also expects the OBAMAcrats to gut NAFTA and reign in so-called free trade under the pretexts of U.S. environmental and labor standards.

Accordingly, Gettelfinger and his looters (and the scores of OBAMAcrats who are beholden to them) understand that the dead-on-arrival Corker plan is “kryptonite.” The argument goes “if unionized workers can’t get more pay and better benefits than ‘scabs,’ why would anyone ever join a union again.”

Of course the inherent stupidity of relying on that argument in the current environment is obvious:

It increases public skepticism and disdain for unions.

It implies that unionization is really nothing more than shaking down employers for more than prevailing market levels of wages and benefits.

It assumes that even if “OBAMA Claus” stuffs the AFL-CIO/Teamsters stocking with the anti-secret ballot “Card Check” legislation, the U.A.W. will still somehow fail to unionize the invader assembly plants.

It ignores all of the other functions that unions allegedly perform for their members.

More importantly, it focuses the American electorate on U.A.W. greed and hubris at the rotten heart of the Detroit 3's problems. Such tone-deaf U.A.W. rhetoric and head-in-the-sand selfishness is killing off more consumer interest in union-made Detroit 3 products than perhaps even a bankruptcy filing would.

If Gettelfinger really had any faith in the grand schemes of organized labor being adopted after Obama occupies the White House, then he’d take the Corker gamble for the sake of public relations, knowing that unionized invader plants would soon become a part of the U.A.W. fold and anticipating a new round of “pattern bargaining” with the Japanese.

On the other hand, the Japanese have been known to shutter plants rather than give in to union arm-twisting (see e.g. Bridgestone-Firestone). So perhaps Gettelfinger doesn’t really believe Obama will deliver enough “change” to suit the U.A.W.

Thus, the U.A.W. is ironically banking on a weakened president that they’ve consistently opposed and whom they vehemently hate to “push the ball” into 2009.

Lame duck President Bush, for his part, seems to be playing along with Gettelfinger’s gamble:

"An abrupt bankruptcy for autos could be devastating for the economy," Bush told reporters aboard Air Force One during an unannounced trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. "We're now in the process of working with the stakeholders on a way forward. We're not quite ready to announce that yet."

Senator Corker, however, mistakenly expects President Bush to be more resolute.

“Corker urged the White House to seek similar concessions from the auto companies and their unions in return for the money. ‘Of course, the benefit they have - they don't have to negotiate. They can say this money is available but it's only available under these conditions,’ he said in a broadcast interview.”

Given the minimal time and the razor-thin G.O.P. strength in the legislative branch, Corker’s position is a pipe dream.

Unless President Bush is prepared for the extraordinary step of using his powers under the Taft-Hartley Act (which would be immediately undone once Obama reaches office), Corker’s “cram down” plan simply will not work outside of Chapter 11. Gettelfinger's bunch undoubtedly knows that. In bankruptcy, of course, a politically-insulated judge would be the barber poised to give the U.A.W. its “haircut.”

Clearly, none of the alternatives are attractive. Letting GM and Chrysler fail – actually to be sacrificed on altar of partisan politics – and pushing the U.S.A. into a depression is unconscionable. But giving Gettelfinger and the anti-free market U.A.W. a free pass is noxious.

President Bush will probably blink in the U.A.W.- G.O.P. staring contest. "'I think it's very likely the White House will do what it said it's going to do, not allow the auto industry to collapse,' said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., among several auto state lawmakers optimistic about the funding."

Then it becomes Obama’s problem.

ANDY CARD'S "NOT PLAYING WITH A FULL DECK" ON ROMNEY

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Former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card has stumbled into the camp of self-appointed elite leaders of the GOP who are shilling for the Gucci Chameleon, "Slick Willard" Mitt Romney as a candidate for vice president.

Card told Newsmax that Romney would be at the "top" of Card's list for Veeps (as if Andy Card's list of potential vice presidents is a burning question)

Card further opined:

[Slick Willard’s] attractive, he was knowledgeable, he didn’t stumble too many times, so I don’t think that he suffers from foot-in-mouth disease . . . He is appropriately respected for his understanding of the economy and how it works and what decisions must be made that complement the ability for people to have jobs. He’s filled with integrity, and he’s a proven winner in a Democratic state.”

Of course, Card admits the obvious -- that Romney probably wouldn't be able to deliver Massachusetts to the GOP in November.

And Card apparently believes that McCain could simply trample over Evangelical voters, who like mind-numbed robots will always "take one for the team:"

“When it comes right down to it, the evangelical community will recognize the values of a Republican candidate for president as compared to a Democrat candidate for president” . . . “And I think they’re such good citizens that they won’t stay home. They’ll actually show up and vote, and I think that they’ll vote for the Republican nominee.”

Apparently the Romney-ians talking points left out the part about "holding their noses" when Evangelicals actually "show up and vote."

Already, the Democrats are trying to paint a McCain Administration, notwithstanding McCain's heterodox views and "maverick" reputation, as "four more years of George W. Bush."

For McCain to follow the advice of "W insiders" such as Andy Card and Karl Rove by picking Romney for Veep would merely reinforce the "four more years" charge in the minds of crucial independent and conservative Democrat voters.

Somehow, somebody in the GOP elite has to come to their senses and realize that in a time of economic turmoil and in the wake of the disastrous 2006 mid-term elections, the GOP cannot afford any hint of "more of the same" or a Bush coronation of the Presidential ticket.

The Gucci Chameleon is certainly "attractive" . . . to Democrats who write attack ads.

Tapping a political neophyte such as Romney, whose massive fortune was made by slashing jobs, off-shoring, and other short-term "bean counter" gimmicks, and who lead a state that “ was the third-lowest in the nation after Hurricane Katrina-hit Louisiana and Michigan," would be an absolute disaster.

Card's talking-point "belief" about Romney's attractiveness was hardly shared by the voters in the GOP primaries.

Romney's cost-per-convention-delegate may have set an all-time World record. However, Mitt Romney’s mendacity and make-overs simply didn’t sell, notwithstanding a self-financed, multi-million dollar ad campaign, a multi-million dollar GOP attack radio love-fest, the shadow war by the Romney-supporter-funded, Club For Growth, and a tidal wave of negative robo-calls.

To frame Slick Willard's appeal as a dating analogy -- a majority of voters saw Romney as like a privileged, nerdy “frat boy” lout who’d studied up on a slew of formulas on how to “pick up girls.” . . . a shallow sort of narcissist who would say “Sure, I’ll respect you in the morning,” while expecting his latest “marks” to ignore “all the girls he’s loved before (gun control, $50 abortion co-pays, millions in fee increases that “aren’t taxes,” secret timetables that “aren’t timetables”).” . . . the sort of selfish cad who would maliciously gossip against any rivals to his latest “conquest.”

Given the magnitude of Romney’s arrogance and the vast size of his checkbook, “Citizen Kane 2008" tried to hold on, long after it was apparent that he could not win any contested states, even among conservative Republicans (save his birthplace Michigan, where he sailed to a narrow win on the historic coat-tails of his father and the promise of billions in corporate welfare for the automakers, his spiritual "secret temple home" in Utah and his narrow, unimpressive showing back in Massachusetts).

But, according to Card, he didn't "stumble" too many times.

Romney has proven he can do several things. He can siphon support, drive wedges, and preview attack ad scripts for the Democrats in the fall. And he can change, like a chameleon, his approach and message with the wind.

He is not the ideological candidate for “movement conservatives” – notwithstanding all of the free and paid cheerleading from the Eastern conservative elites– because at his core, Romney is a “process” candidate, not a man of conviction.

Unlike Reagan, he has no great record of conservative thought, conservative leadership, or conservative governance.

His obvious commitment to situational ethics demonstrates that Romney has no ideological “soul.” Romney’s candidacy isn’t about advancing conservative principles – it’s about advancing Mitt Romney to his next self-aggrandizing “to do” in his Palm Pilot. It’s about giving Mitt another trophy . . . another take-over . . . another “conquest.”

Slick Willard found out that money couldn't buy him either love or the White House. So apparently he's now focused on the second best thing -- buying his way into being one heartbeat away from the Presidency.

While Romney apparently sells to Bush Administration insiders (the same people who thought that waiting until after the 2006 mid-terms to "can" Donald Rumsfeld was a good idea) and other out-of-touch Ivy League/Country Club Republicans, Romney has virtually no appeal whatsoever to the legions of ordinary rank-and-file Republicans who make up the real backbone of the GOP.

And if the Gucci Chameleon is a "no sale" to a double-digit percentage of the committed GOP faithful, Flip-Flop Mitt' s even less "attractive" to skeptical independents.

Andy Card's simply "not playing with a full deck" on the viability of Romney as a vice presidential candidate.