CURRENT
FEATURE COLUMN
Dan
Calabrese
Another Big 3 Federal Bailout? Michigan
Hits the Automotive Crack Pipe
Again
Wyoming,
MICHIGAN – When you subsidize something, you get
more of it. Especially when you subsidize economic
insanity.
Since
Michigan is dependent upon economic insanity like
a crack addict needs his next fix – and looks
every bit as much the worse for wear – it is sadly
no surprise that the state’s entire 17-member
congressional delegation, Republicans and
Democrats alike, are developing a plan to secure
$27 billion in federal aid for the Big Three
domestic automakers.
General
Motors, Ford and Chrysler are teetering on the
brink of extinction. Michigan, which bet it all on
these three companies long ago, is like the
battered wife who can’t leave her husband because
she hasn’t had a job in years, and in between
beatings he gives her grocery
money.
To
live here is to share, however unwillingly, in the
Alice in Wonderland dream world the Big Three have
called home for generations. The underpinnings of
this world were laid long ago, early in a
different century, when Henry Ford arrogantly
declared that consumers could have their cars in
any color they wanted, “as long as it was basic
black.”
I
know. It’s not funny. But you had to be there, and
you have to be here. The automotive world speaks
it own language, clings to its own perceptions and
operates – above all else – on the presumption
that it is too big to fail. The 1979 federal
bailout of Chrysler made a young Democratic
congressman from Pleasant Ridge a hero, and soon
Michigan’s governor. It set a precedent – when
there is no other way, Uncle Sam will come to the
rescue – that today is spurring Michigan’s Capitol
Hill delegation to the only action they
know.
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