Bailout Babbling at the New York Times: Brooks and Herbert take Both Sides of the Issue

The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[1]--celebrates its first century of unerring propaganda secretion with an unblemished  record of apologizing for Communism, propping up losers and dope addicts, celebrating dictators and despots in their opinion columns, pushing unionism and scrounging for new ways to reinvent Marxism.  But, sometimes, the writers who pose as journalists seem to demonstrate that they have no knowledge of what mumblings bubble forth from the word processors in the very next cell and wander off in different political directions.  When such a lack of coordination is allowed to germinate and infect the neurons of those who would be expected to sing in the same chorus, on key and on time, we view chaos.  Today we celebrate chaos of reason from the Times.

At first glance at this pulp  we might theorize that this effect is merely a display of independent thinking and the process of arriving at the proper political position on the matter of bailouts via the handy use of dialectics, but this theory demands that the Times management is either asleep or on drugs in this case. You cannot have opposing views in any coherent political organization. This notion fractures dogma and leads to dissention.

The first writer who threw his jumbled thoughts into the tank was the Resident EcoNazi Thomas L. Friedman who screeds:

“How could these companies be so bad for so long? Clearly the combination of a very un-innovative business culture, visionless management and overly generous labor contracts explains a lot of it. It led to a situation whereby General Motors could make money only by selling big, gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s and trucks.[2] [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Apparently, we are not going to be educated on how the government burdened the auto makers with rules, regulations and constraints that added costs and forced the design and sale of uncompetitive cars. The absurd C.A.F.E. standards and the California boutique mixtures apparently only helped Detroit descend into bankruptcy. [3]

Upon pondering this declaration I wondered.

I wonder if our business green expert at the Times is aware that Toyota and certain German and other Japanese and automakers make SUVs that only get 20 mpg in the US and they make good profits selling them.[4] This is nonsense. GM makes small fuel efficient cars and sells them all over the world.

When we feed a covey of frogs near the pond we expect to hear the same old croaking by the chorus and Friedman dutifully blames the auto manufacturers for not being clean and green.  Friedman exceeds the boundaries of his tether, however, when he brazenly attempts to implant doubt on the question over the wisdom of overly generous labor contracts--that provide the funds and political power for Detroit and also much of the liberal world. This is a form of heresy. What does he suggest here? That the wages be reduced so the Detroit bunch can be more competitive? This is a facet of capitalism that is so abhorrent to the left that they usually cannot even mention the free market for labor. To think that wages might rise and fall are unthinkable to the left.

Next up on deck with a view from a different perch is the Senior Resident in Racism Bob Herbert, who dependably cranks out his rote leftist fluff in an article that has this nonsense:

“This whole matter needs some intensive thought. At the moment, Washington has tremendous leverage over the failing auto industry. The government should craft a rescue plan that is both tough and very, very smart. That means dragging the industry (kicking and screaming, no doubt) into the 21st century by insisting on ironclad commitments to design and develop vehicles that make sense economically and that serve the nation’s long-term energy security requirements.”[5]-- “The famous Daily News headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead” ran on Oct. 30, 1975.”[6]-- ‘Drop Dead’ Is Not an Option by Bob Herbert Op-Ed Columnist November 15, 2008 

Bob’s screed launches off with an intensively thoughtless historical indictment of Gerald Ford’s refusal to bail out NYC in the 1970s and wanders around to economics and finally proffers a spoonful of the usual stroking juice of the current tax monster EcoNazism.[7]  He insists on economic sensibility and insists on a tunnel-vision theorem to control designs.  Herbert is little more than an affirmative action chum chucker and we are amused that he pretends at deep thought. He misses his chance to bring race into this issue as this industry and the cities they reside in are a grand haven for minorities to be shielded from various hideous crimes. Detroit has 5.16 times the average murder rate and most of the victims are black. He could have at least blamed Gerald Ford for part of that. Crime might rise if the unemployment levels shot up in that utopia and the failure to subsidize minorities should have been discussed and denounced as prima facie evidence of racism. Bob Herbert miscued here.

Then enters our tokenized conservative token who offers this theme:

“Democrats from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi want to grant immortality to General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. They have decided to follow an earlier $25 billion loan with a $50 billion bailout, which would inevitably be followed by more billions later, because if these companies are not permitted to go bankrupt now, they never will be.”[8]-- Bailout to Nowhere by David Brooks Op-Ed Columnist Published: November 14, 2008

Yes, and this is tantamount to just burning money in some big hole near the city while adoring and performing exotic rites in the fumes. It really makes no political sense as the money could be used to bribe folk in the Red states as the Blue states are rolled in the proper dumb dust and will push the proper election button in the booths with no hint of thinking or a heart beat.

And more:

“A Detroit bailout would set a precedent for every single politically connected corporation in America. There already is a long line of lobbyists bidding for federal money. If Detroit gets money, then everyone would have a case. “--David Brooks

Yes, and this is much worse than socialism where, presumably, the corporations are treated with a level and mannerly dose of contempt.  The political jewel hidden in the much here is that the Big Three might be number one sugar daddies and have their management max out their political contributions for every pipsqueak who can hum the old left liberal tunes and wants a seat in the power somewhere in the US.

Brooks sums up with:

“But the larger principle is over the nature of America’s political system. Is this country going to slide into progressive corporatism, a merger of corporate and federal power that will inevitably stifle competition, empower corporate and federal bureaucrats and protect entrenched interests? Or is the U.S. going to stick with its historic model: Helping workers weather the storms of a dynamic economy, but preserving the dynamism that is the core of the country’s success. “--David Brooks

Brooks correctly signals socialism in on the horizon. It is interesting that a recovering conservative might suffer flashbacks from his earlier leanings and question the very process that was able to transform Marxism and its cousin Fascism into rotting masses. As a reeducated conservative he should have wallowed in the kind of rhetoric that Friedman and Krugman [our igNoble Leechette[9][10] routinely pump down the pipe. His warning that the dynamism of the corporations would be in jeopardy actually fits with the zero-growth parasites that have destroyed much of Europe and provides comfort for their Snail Darter antics. We need to review the history of government-business interactions in Europe to understand the scope and depth of this capitalism-destroying movement.  

The Manifesto tells us:

“The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralized the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralization.”—Communist Manifesto 1848.

But, Communism in the USSR controlled all means of production. There, power and money were also concentrated in the hands of a very few thus rendering this indictment somewhat silly. The difference between the Marxian and feudalism in the Manifesto is merely those who can keep control of power. That the Marxists would simply slide back into capitalism was the fear of Leon Trotsky who had to flee paradise to Mexico.  It is now our government who wants to centralize means of production and effect a political centralization. Fascism handles this a bit more smoothly than Stalinism.

“Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule.”—Communist Manifesto 1848.

From Fascism we read:

“The Nazis viewed private property rights as conditional upon the mode of use. If the property was not being used to further Nazi goals, it could be nationalized. Government takeovers and threats of takeovers were used to encourage complance[sic] with government production plans, even if following these plans cost profits for companies.”

The conditional utility of the means of production fits well here. If we cannot produce autos that are politically correct then we need to nationalize the auto industry. This works for the left.

Thesis to antithesis to synthesis:

What all this may lead up to is an attempt to institute a “planned economy or directed economy [which]  is an economic system in which the government or workers' councils manages the economy[11]” at least in part on the auto industry.  When the government becomes the owner and/or the back-bench executive officers of any corporation then the business acumen is replaced with the inefficiency and divisiveness that is characteristic of government. This is creeping socialism with the added complication that special interests groups have demands and restrictions on design, materials of composition, function and the final use of the product.

Worse, this measure means that other competent and profitable automakers would be in competition with the government-financed incompetent auto business with the probable result that the government interactions with management would render the Big Three the least profitable in the auto group. The outcome of this would be an inferior selection of cars at elevated prices subsidized by the taxpayer.  This would look like AMTRAK.

The auto industry is already a primary target of environmental supremacists [EcoNazis] who have been able to attract politicians like Al Gore[12] or the Princeling of Wails[13] and the feeder industries that produce the starting materials for this industry are similar targets of the Zero-Growth energy haters. The Carbon Cap system has probably already contributed to the Depression in Europe. England has foolishly voted to limit CO₂ emissions by 80% by some target date and this will crush their society and all this is based on the preposterous lie that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. Obama has threatened to shut down coal companies if they cannot produce energy sans CO₂.[14] The fact that the strange notion that CO₂ is a pollutant ranks well with the works of Mesmer, the Snake Oil Society and Merlin and  is actually amplified by  the faulty  predictions by the computer models. Moronic theatre like the lyrics inscribed in the famous book Limits to Growth[15] whose sophistical computer models clearly predicted, with ringing praise from the ‘scientists,’ that we would run out of oil, copper and lead by 1992 by and natural gas reservoirs by 1993.  I had to deal with these fools  on the corporate and ‘innovative level’ in the 90s. Apparently, they missed a few inputs as their GIGO[16] reward is all they have left.[17] The fact that they have predicted the opposite temperature gyrations of the earth merely strengthens the resolve of those who would peddle plastic gold for gain. The fact that the models were useless just means we need to spend more money in ‘research’ to make them produce a more believable political fairy tail. The global warming Zombies look like fools given the recent drop in earth surface temperature.[18]

The politicians cannot deal effectively with the thorny issue of overly generous labor contracts. To keep unions as benefactors of leftist political themes the wages and benefits of the auto industry could not be downsized. Indeed, a nationalization of the auto industries would call for higher wages and even better benefits and the threat of unionizing the competitive auto makers would drive them out of the country. That would leave us with an urgent need to build even bigger government-controlled behemoths to meet the consumer demand and all this would be connected to the taxpayer.

Amusingly, the usual leftist song about ‘public transportation’ is absent from this circus. Given a rational reasoning scenario conjured up by the leftist government, the unions and the environments we would assume that they might outlaw cars altogether. That will come in the future.

The straying from the narrow dogmatic leftist ditch by the Three Supplicants[19] is probably justified by the Trial Balloon Theory that nobody knows what to do with the now worthless Detroit Big Three.  Merely publicly voicing the issues and injecting stock leftist clichés and complaints are the litter that soaks up the stink from the instant literary cat crap and that keeps the New York Times financially afloat, at least for the time being.  We are probably entering a time of severe depression and the NYT editorial staff persons are worried. The Times faces bankruptcy itself. In truth, the employees of the Big Three and other lesser-grade corporations will pay the ultimate price of unemployment and bankruptcy because the ‘smart money’ has already sold off and can circumvent the mindless tax whoring of O’Bozo and his rabid leftists. We will buy cars from the nonunion corporations as a matter of policy and good politics.

The liberals have never learned about capitalism and that is an advantage to conservatives.

rycK

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com