Moore is Right. And Wrong
You just knew the media was going to have to probe the wisdom of the creator of Roger and Me on the auto industry bailout. But, surprisingly, Moore actually says something right! Yeah, I know you don’t believe it. Here it is:
I’ll tell you, it was hilarious just watching these CEOs there (Tuesday) and (Wednesday) testifying in Congress, saying that, you know, that the problem wasn’t theirs, you know, the cars they were building. It was the financial situation that we’re in now.
The problem is the cars they’ve been building. They’ve never listened to the consumers. They’ve just gone about it their own wrong way. I’ll tell you, you know, I’m of mixed mind about this bailout, Larry, because I don’t think these companies, with these management people, should be given a dime, because that’s just going to be money going up in smoke or off to other countries.
GM is currently building a $300 million factory in Russia right now to build SUVs, right outside of St. Petersburg. That’s where your money’s going to go, no matter what they say.
Now, granted, he thinks their big problem is building cars overseas rather than here. He makes no mention of American companies paying 50% more per hour than other companies thanks to union benefits and featherbedding. And his cure is, if anything, worse than the disease:
President-Elect Obama has to say to them, yes, we’re going to use this money to save these jobs, but we’re not going to build these gas-guzzling, unsafe vehicles any longer.
We’re going to put the companies into some sort of receivership and we, the government, are going to hold the reigns on these companies. They’re to build mass transit. They’re to build hybrid cars. They’re to build cars that use little or no gasoline.
We’re facing a national crisis, not just an economic crisis, but a crisis of the polar ice caps are melting. There’s only so much oil left under the Earth. We’re going to run out of that, if not in our children’s time, our grandchildren’s time.
There’s got to be a plan set out to find other ways to transport ourselves in other ways than using fossil fuels.
Yes, Barack Obama, who drives an SUV, certainly has the expertise to turn around a flailing industry. With his degrees in Business Management, Engineering and Chemistry, he’s the perfect man to run this industry. One day, we can look forward to the auto industry being run with the same skill and efficiency with which the government runs Amtrak.
But let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth. Mikey said something right. He was due to say something right at some point this year as one correct statement per year is his established performance level. And we, at Moorewatch, are nothing if not fair.
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