Cars on The Huffington Post

General Motors Board: Bankruptcy An Option

2008-11-22T10:40:36Z

The board of directors of embattled U.S. automaker General Motors Corp is considering "all options" including bankruptcy, according to a report on the Wall Street Journal's website late on Friday.

The paper, citing people familiar with the board's thinking, said the stance puts it in conflict with chief executive Rick Wagoner, who told lawmakers this week bankruptcy is not a viable alternative for the company.

Buffett: Automakers Need Bailout Or Bankruptcy

2008-11-21T23:21:12Z

OMAHA, Neb. — Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says U.S. automakers need a new business model to better compete, whether it takes bankruptcy or a government bailout to achieve.

Buffett also says he would never serve as U.S. Treasury Secretary. The Berkshire Hathaway Inc. CEO is a member of President-elect Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board.

Max and the Marginalized: American Cars

2008-11-21T21:54:52Z

I've heard reasonable arguments from smart people on either side of the "should we bail out the autos" debate, and I unfortunately suffer from the affliction of being heavily influenced by the last person to leave the room, so my jury's out.

That said, the way the autos are treating their crisis, compared to the high finance folks of two months ago, is a stunning display of a difference of opinion on what tone to take when asking for billions of dollars. When it turned out that most of our money wasn't really money, banking collectively had its tail between its legs, as it should have. Their irresponsibility had caught up with them, they knew it, and at least to a degree they admitted it. The honesty of a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar isn't the best kind of honesty, but it's better than what we're getting from the auto companies, who are blaming most of this on the credit crunch and their labor contracts, despite years of getting consistently outsold by Honda and Toyota's line of better and more fuel-efficient small cars. It's just not the proper 'tude for someone asking for this much money.

Furthermore, I can't imagine what popular support for this bailout would look like if we removed the myth of the American car from the equation -- a myth that frankly anyone my age and under is only familiar with via Brett Michaels from Poison singing about getting dirty talk at the drive-in in the old man's Ford. (If you want to know how ridiculous the fetishization of the American car sounds to anyone who never lived it, check out "'92 Subaru" by Fountains of Wayne and observe how silly it the myth sounds with Japanese cars. And that is NOT a reason to support the bailout, BTW.)

Anyways, we wanted to make a song describing our thoughts and unease on the auto bailout's inseparability of our inflated notion of American glory associated with our automotive industry in the very style of the 70's power-pop songs that helped create the notion itself. Enjoy "In the Backs of American Cars."

Click the player to hear the song.

In the Backs of American Cars

In the backs of American cars, under the seatbelts and under the stars
The Michigan steel grows a grey hair, and catches a break on its bus fare
In the backs of most of our minds, some things are worth saving, or leaving behind
On American roads that they took here, on the fetishization of last year

The old rusty gears were rotting for years but they only bring it in when it breaks
It'll move right along, driving straight on, ignoring the squeals and the sputters and shakes
When the mouth of the mitten opens up for a hand and it draws it's penultimate breath
In the backs of American cars lurching forward to death

I've never been at the drive-in in the old man's Ford, or flown in a Phantom with suicide doors
But the radio says that it's lovely, I can't foot the bill on the memory
So if old dying dogs won't learn new tricks, it might that's pointless to fix
From an era no longer golden, tarnished by interests to which it's beholden
The rims keep on rolling

The old rusty gears were rotting for years but they only bring it in when it breaks
It'll move right along, driving straight on, ignoring the squeals and the sputters and shakes
When the mouth of the mitten opens up for a hand and it draws it's penultimate breath
In the backs of American cars lurching forward to death

In the backs of American cars, they're asking if we've got any left
In the backs of American cars, slowly lurching forward to death

Max and the Marginalized are a band and a blog. We do a song every week on the Huffington Post, all 57 of which are available for download here at our site. Add us on Facebook or MySpace.

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Should the Government Bail Out the Big Three U.S. Automakers? HuffPost Bloggers Weigh In

Gavin Newsom: Recharge America with Electric Cars

2008-11-21T19:10:31Z

Today, our country is facing a set of seemingly insurmountable problems:

• an economic meltdown of historic proportions
• a car industry crashing, because of a lack of innovation and growth
• oil dependence transferring our wealth abroad
• an extended military presence in the Middle East
• and climate change, which threatens the health of our planet

We are hearing daily of various proposed solutions -- industry bailouts and massive infrastructure projects -- geared primarily to avoid job losses and rising unemployment. These solutions promise to take us through this rough period, but take us where? What is the long term change?

When it comes to changes to the car industry itself we see only small steps after decades of resistance. Improving car mileage slightly over the next 4 years is not the transformative change that is needed. Converting the industry to hybrid cars 10 years after the Toyota Prius was delivered to market looks to the past, not the future.

Yesterday, joined by San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums I announced a nine-step policy plan for transforming the Bay Area into the "Electric Vehicle (EV) Capital of the U.S." In support of this initiative Better Place, a global electric transportation company announced that it would enter the U.S. market with California as its first state, beginning in the Bay Area.

Commercial availability of electric cars is targeted to begin in 2012, and Better Place estimates its network investment in the Bay Area will total $1 billion when the system is fully deployed. I welcomed Better Place's announcement and anticipate many other EV companies will focus on the Bay Area as a top-priority market.

Electric vehicles represent an overarching, game-changing solution that allows us to transform, and recharge the American transportation sector for the 21st century. By accelerating the conversion of the car industry from its oil dependent past, to a new electric century, we can jump start the car industry, eliminate our dependence on oil, reduce our required presence in the middle east, create millions of jobs, and eliminate a significant portion of our CO2 emissions.

This plan ties together a triangle of influence that can get our nation back on track: Detroit car makers who know how to scale production, working in concert with San Francisco's culture of innovation, aided by Sacramento and Washington DC policy-making. The goal is to create a sustainable strategic advantage for the US instead of a series of bailouts.

As California prepares to launch this electric recharge infrastructure project, it can also serve as a blueprint for a more widely integrated solution.

California can generate upwards of $2.5B in new investment in jobs and the economy for the infrastructure effort, with billions more in cars and battery sales to consumers. The nation as a whole can trigger tens of billions in infrastructure, manufacturing and innovation investment. At the same time, this conversion reduces the cost to the consumer and nation per mile we drive. California, followed by the western US states of Oregon and Washington are ready to drive this effort.

Listen to the Gavin Newsom Show this Saturday at 11AM PST on Green 960 AM. My guest this week is the director of "Milk" Gus Van Sant. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California. The movie opens nationwide on November 26th.

Rick Horowitz: At the Pump: Down with Gas!

2008-11-21T17:59:47Z

MILWAUKEE -- At exactly 12:01 p.m. on Saturday, November 15, 2008, I saw something I was sure I'd never see again in my lifetime.
I saw a "1" as the first digit of a gas-station sign.

That's right: Gasoline -- good old American, straight-from-the-Persian-Gulf-or-somewhere-just-as-scary gasoline -- at under $2.00 per gallon.
Just a hair under $2.00 -- $1.99.9, to be precise, at the Citgo station about a mile from here -- and that last "9" in the tiniest of type, as it always is, in the hope that we'll simply ignore it.

And then, at 1:25 that same afternoon -- less than 90 minutes later -- at a Citgo Express station just down the block: Gas was going for $1.98.9.
And it was definitely going. All four pumps were occupied, and there were cars and vans out into the street, waiting their turn at the cheap stuff.

Just think of it: Gas at a dollar-something a gallon. (Even a dollar-and-almost-another-dollar-something a gallon.)
It was amazing. Incredible.

Where's the disco ball? Where's the leisure suit?
On Saturday morning, it had been $2.05 at the same Citgo Express, and $2.11 at a BP station across the street. On Friday, the BP had been $2.17. Any time now, it's bound to drop to $2.09, and then $2.02, and then...
Gas prices in free-fall -- it's like watching the stock market!

And all this just days after ExxonMobil reported making it through the third quarter with a measly $14.83 billion in profit, a new record.
(I'll pause for a moment, so that all of us who used words like "obscene" to describe ExxonMobil's third-quarter numbers can pass the hat to help them get through these tough times.
That didn't take long.)

If this new trend keeps up --
That's the question, isn't it? Will this new trend keep up?
I'm perfectly willing to believe that gas prices are down because of the worldwide economic slowdown. I'm perfectly willing to believe the logical, straightforward, supply-and-demand explanation -- rather than, say, believe that there's some nefarious price-manipulation conspiracy being carried out by
a) the oil companies; or
b) the oil-producing countries; or
c) the SUV Appreciation Society
to drop gas prices so low that alternative energy sources suddenly seem like a bad bet. So low that smaller, more fuel-efficient cars -- let alone hybrids -- suddenly seem beside the point.
I'm willing to believe it. I'm even willing to be happy about all the extra money I'm keeping in my wallet with every tankful.

And I still know it can't last.
This is the fluke, right now -- not the four-dollar-plus gallon we were buying just a couple of months ago. The four-dollar-plus gallon is the future -- unless there's a five- or a six-dollar gallon already oozing toward these shores.

We can start singing "Happy Days Are Here Again" if we want to, and let Detroit off the hook when it comes to new, higher mileage standards. We can ignore what the rise of China and India are eventually going to do -- unless they do it even sooner -- to the competition for fossil fuels, and the price of same.

Gas prices are down -- it's party time! Let's roll!
We can say that. Of course, we can also have a big picnic out on the lawn when the eye of the hurricane passes briefly overhead.

All it takes is a hearty appetite, and a good-old-American willingness to forget that the rest of the storm is still headed our way.

Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com.

The Real News: What to Do With Detroit?

2008-11-21T17:25:35Z

Jim Stanford and Justin Fox debate the pros and cons of allowing the auto industry to go bankrupt at TheRealNews.com.

November 21 - The US is agonizing over what help to offer to its foundering auto industry. Ford and GM stock prices have hit 23 and 66-year lows, respectively, as a direct result of the global credit crisis. Now, to save themselves from insolvency, American automakers are in the process of securing a $25 billion bailout package from Congress. Jim Stanford, economist for the Canadian Auto Workers' Union, and Justin Fox, writer of Time Magazine's "Curious Capitalist" column, join The Real News for the first in a three-installment discussion about the legitimacy of the auto industry's claim on American taxpayer dollars.

Stanford offers his assessment of the situation's severity: "Even if you were willing to buy a new car--and who would want to buy a new car these days if you read the headlines--you can't get credit to buy a new car, car dealers can't get credit to place wholesale orders with the auto companies... It's a very, very grim situation, no doubt about it."

Fox counters with skepticism about auto industry claims that the credit crisis represents a marked exception from the workings of the market-as-usual: "They were already in the process of getting ready for a new era and they just, sort of, ran out of time... We have Chapter 11. It's designed to help companies stay alive when they're dealing with their debts."

Meanwhile, Stanford holds that ordinary bankruptcy protection would be insufficient. "Governments around the world have always been proactive in growing and nurturing industries like the auto industry," he says. "In North America for the last couple of decades, we haven't done that."

Stanford continues: "It's no coincidence North American companies are on death's door."

Part Two will detail more of Justin Fox's Chapter 11 proposal and will be posted on Saturday November 22 at TheRealNews.com.

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Should the Government Bail Out the Big Three U.S. Automakers? HuffPost Bloggers Weigh In

James Moore: A Kid from Car Country

2008-11-21T16:30:56Z

At 35,000 feet, northbound up the Mississippi River Valley, the roads below appear as footpaths running beyond the eye's reach. They are paved, of course, but many of them served as migratory trails that carried millions of southerners north of the Mason-Dixon to work in the car factories and steel plants of the Post World War II automotive boom.

The Dixie Diaspora was composed of African-Americans and low income whites leaving the uncertainty of farming for a regular paycheck on assembly lines in factory towns like Flint, Detroit, Saginaw, and countless other Midwest cities now derisively referred to as The Rust Belt. African-Americans, of course, were motivated by both the economic considerations of farm labor and the additional aspiration of less racism.

The car industry made America the planet's economic power and the people who stood the line and bolted on tires and dropped engines onto chassis and snapped on fancy trim are the workers who carried the country on their back. After fighting to save the world from oppression, they took up the fight for fair wages, health care, and retirement pensions and built history's greatest labor movement.

My parents, a sharecropper father from Mississippi and an immigrant mother from Newfoundland, were forced to abandon the land of the South for the line of the North. Daddy came home from the war hoping to farm but sharecropping was a modern form of indentured servitude and indoor plumbing and electricity had great appeal for my Ma. When a boyhood pal rolled into the cotton patch in a new Buick he bought with his wages from a job at Fisher Body in Flint, my parents destinies were altered.

Daddy had about $680 after the last season's cotton had been sold and he bought four bus tickets to Flint after getting a promise that our family could sleep on the floor of a friend's apartment. They arrived on a Saturday and Monday morning Daddy went and stood in a line outside of the Buick Motor Division Plant #36 and his farm boy muscles got him a job doing heavy lifting. He had dreamed of growing long rows of cotton and corn and riding horses and fishing in Mississippi but he was going indoors away from the sun.

"We all did what we had to do, buddy boy," he told me. "They was good jobs and it was how I'd could take care a y'all."

He still had a great struggle. There was never enough money to make the mortgage payment, buy school clothes and groceries, or pay for a broken down old car. Ma took a job as a waitress at burger joint. Her dreams of America came from the handsome soldier in uniform on the street in front of her house in St. John's, Newfoundland. She had seen Gone with the Wind and thought she was going to the South to live on a grand plantation where waiters would serve her cool drinks and she would glide around in hoop skirts and her gallant husband would command his far estate on horseback. Instead, she lay in bed at night and watched the stars roll through the roof cracks in their sharecropper's shack and worried she had made the most important decision of her life at age seventeen and it was irredeemably wrong.

Waiting tables was better than sharecropping. But not much. They had six kids now and the car plant took care of them in a way that was not possible on the farm. But the work broke Daddy. He missed the land and the sky and animals. The noise of the line and the greasy windows of the factory were not an adequate substitute for the life he had dreamed. But he joined the union and walked the picket lines in the brutal Michigan winter for health care and better wages. He watched other people driving around in new cars he had helped to build but he could never afford to own. A million little worries and a dozen big troubles in a cold, gray place without family nearby caused him to fall to pieces. He spent time in an institution and when he was cured he had nothing to look forward to other than going back on the line. But the automobile industry gave him possibilities he was not able to find anywhere else with his tenth grade education.

He would not know what to make of what happened to the car and truck business. The idea that GM and Ford or any of the big names might be on the verge of bankruptcy would be incomprehensible to my father. How could that happen when the UAW built the cars that were designed and the American public gladly purchased them? Consumers wanted SUVs and they came off the line, until the price of gas hit $4.00 a gallon and suddenly Detroit was left with shining, glorious dinosaurs. Is that the workers' fault?

There are an estimated three million supply jobs connected to auto manufacturing in the U.S. and they will disappear if Michigan takes another financial hit. The executives have money in the bank and they will be okay but the men and women who stood the line and built the vehicles have fewer resources. Their unions have protected them some and provided benefits and pensions and good wages but the second and third generations of autoworkers may witness the collapse of what their parents and grandparents built. There will be a rush to blame this on the unions and the workers on the line but they did not make the strategic business and marketing and design decisions. They simply did their jobs and tried to get their share of a fat pie.

Things are quite bad, though. There is little left of my hometown of Flint. The city looks even grimmer than it does in Michael Moore's documentaries. Unemployment in Michigan is about ten percent officially but almost everyone seems to be looking for work and no one knows how many have simply given up and left. As much of this city seems to be deserted as it does occupied. The car and truck plants are hardly operating and many are simply shutting down. Residential neighborhoods, once bright with new paint and well-kept lawns, are rundown and weedy. People wonder what is going to happen and if anyone will be smart enough to know how to correct what has gone wrong.

In the little coffee shop where my mother used to work near the Chevrolet Truck Plant, three teenagers were sipping coffee in the early afternoon. The stools and tables were otherwise empty. The tiny restaurant used to bristle with business as the shifts changed at the factories and people came by from the businesses that thrived in the shadows of the factory walls. The 25 year old who owns the coffee shop now is displaying a kind of forced optimism.

"We're doing okay," he said. "We just don't know what comes next."

Nobody does, I thought. But once this grim place was the most alluring in America and led the country with ideas and jobs and technology and people gave up their old lives and family histories to come here and be a part of the boom. The engine of the world was built here.

And it is hard to believe we are simply going to let it run out of gas.

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Should the Government Bail Out the Big Three U.S. Automakers? HuffPost Bloggers Weigh In

Grant Cardone: How to Create a Successful Auto Manufacturer Bailout Plan

2008-11-21T12:04:43Z

I was recently asked to participate on a forum with the LA Business Journal whereby six CEO's weigh in with their opinions of the Government Bail Out of the Automotive Companies. I was asked to do so because of my twenty five years of automotive experience and my recent numerous television interviews regarding my National Foreclosure Solution Plan proposed to the Obama Adminstration that would remove all foreclosure inventory in the US by Mid 2009. This is what I proposed:

I believe it is important to our entire economic structure that the auto manufacturers are assisted at this time. However, regardless of where the money comes from, it should never be given without having a solution in place that will resolve the entire problem. Any program that does not address and handle all the components of the problem will not result in any real solution.

A successful bailout must include assisting all components involved; a) manufacturers, b) dealers, c) consumers, d) lenders and if any of these ingredients are left out the bail out will fail.

While I have a personal love for GM, Ford and Chrysler as American symbols of American industry and would hate to see any of them fail, if the individual dealers are unable to fund inventory and the American consumer is unable to get loans to buy cars and unwilling to purchase the plan will fail and the manufacturers will all be back in 2009 needing more money.

The Solution:
1) Provide the 25 billion that includes provisions whereby the auto dealers are provided with zero percent interest floor plans for a limited period of time.
2) Provide Fed Funds Rate money to consumers for all auto purchases made from 2008-2009 inventory.
3) Provide 100% tax credit for all purchases made between 2008 and June of 2009 for both wholesale and retail auto purchases.
4) Provide tax incentives to all lenders for granting these loans in order to get money flowing.

The plan above would give the manufacturer the immediate assistance he needs, provide the vitally important car dealer the help he needs, give the customers incentive to purchase, and cause lenders to start lending again. I have proposed a similar solution to resolving the real estate foreclosure issues in this country and am offering my help to successfully execute solutions to these situations.

Grant Cardone, Author and CEO of Cardone Enterprises

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Should the Government Bail Out the Big Three U.S. Automakers? HuffPost Bloggers Weigh In

Logan Nakyanzi Pollard: Do It For Me, Matchbox Man

2008-11-21T11:57:37Z

From the fireworks in DC this week, you might think the auto crisis is out of your hands, but we're all complicit: government, CEOs, autoworkers, public. The Big Three automakers are incapable of imagining and executing better on a large scale, unless forced to do so. So the problem requires a hand to say: you industry barons will design a car that will meet our new needs. You will hit marks x, y, and z. And in exchange you, car industry, will be allowed to survive.

That's a little draconian, perhaps, but "The Big Three" automakers make cars which cost too much and waste even more. And government is happy to point the finger as Sen. Chris Dodd derided the Big Three CEOs this week:

"... for the most part, the top echelons of the Big Three turned a blind eye ...They have been content to not only satisfy but to in many respects drive the demand for inefficient, gas-powered vehicles that Americans have been going broke to gas up.

They have derided hybrid vehicles as making 'no economic sense.'

They have dismissed the threat of global warming, the role played by their products in creating it, and the strong desire of the American people to do something to stop it.

The prices of GM and Ford shares have been declining steadily and have now reached historic lows.

In short, the automakers have failed to adapt to change - and shareholders are rendering judgment on that fact. They have approached 21st century challenges with a decidedly 20th century mindset - and we are all paying the price."

But this DC dressing-down was more theater than resolution, here's a sample:

REPRESENTATIVE EMANUEL CLEAVER (DEMOCRAT
Why $25 billion? I mean why not 26? Are we going to divide three into 25?

ROBERT NARDELLI (CEO)
Chrysler is asking for $7 billion.

ALAN MULALLY (CEO)
Sir, it would be the rest based on the market share.

REPRESENTATIVE EMANUEL CLEAVER (DEMOCRAT)
This is - I mean we're just spending $25 billion loosely. I mean this is loosey goosey, whatever's left, I'll take.

The Big Three CEOs didn't do much to help their cause, a morsel of contrition would have gone a long way. Rick Wagoner of GM, for example, said he'd make a pledge to not come back for more financial aid if Sen. Bob Corker (D-TN) could pledge that:

"the US economy would turn around at a certain period"

Corker can't promise that anymore than anyone else can. So 'it's the economy's fault' and nothing can be done about that, except perhaps - to give the industry what it wants.

The CEOs also showed a certain twisted stagecraft zooming in to Capitol Hill on jets; it was just the right ostentatious show of wealth that the media could show the public, the employee, the taxpayer: Now we have our villains, our inconsiderate CEOs! But like a wolf tracking a lost deer, not a surprise, these are the things that businessmen do.

At the same time, Detroit, Michigan and Indiana autoworker interests are aligning with management in this way: "Inaction is simply not an option," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said this week, adding:

"If one of the companies go over the cliff, it could take one or more with it."

In other words, the auto worker is in crisis, and the repercussion/s on our interlinked affairs (all the folks doing business connected to the behemoth car industry) will be too painful to risk having The Big Three automakers fold. So that's where autoworkers and management interests converge: save us, save yourself.

But here is what is unsaid: we need to keep making a deleterious product, so that we can keep making a living.

We could quibble over that adjective -- deleterious -- but putting that aside for another essay, let's say, we need to keep making a product so we can keep making a living. If this fact holds true, what does the public say?

The public loves cars but it loves the traditional fare by Ford, GM and Chrysler less. What the public has shown is an appetite for innovation, like the GM electric car, the EV-1 or the Toyota Prius. By fits and starts the public has chosen to spend less or, pay more for more sensible cars. And, in a turn perhaps more indicative of The Big Three's financial troubles, than a shift in the public's tastes for speed: NASCAR's millions of devoted fans, who want "to go fast," like Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights, may see The Big Three exit the racetrack.

Me? I'd like an Aston Martin AMV10, a Ducati motorbike, a Mini, a Porsche 911, a Lamborghini, and a Ford Mustang with a racing stripe down the middle, and all of them in black. (I'd also like a fighter jet, not because I like flipping around and shooting things but because it really goes fast.)

Up against these desires, the industry must be led to do better.

Maybe down the road we will go for more shared spaces and ways of common travel (like greater prevalence of rail and subways across the country). But for now, cars reassure us that we are special, independent and unique, we view the world from a position of speed, separation and privacy. Common travel reminds us that we are connected, that we have to share and that we are vulnerable.

While these are things to aspire to, someone needs to envision and direct the car industry for today. And when you've got half a bucket full of money and the other party has its hand out, that's a good time to start making demands.

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Should the Government Bail Out the Big Three U.S. Automakers? HuffPost Bloggers Weigh In

Brian Ross: The Neo-Cons Are Not Gone, Nor Forgotten

2008-11-21T11:37:36Z

You would think that neo-conservatives and communists would have very little in common. The scorched earth policy of the Bush Administration, in its waning days in power, though, is a classic play right out of the Russian handbook: Leave not a crumb of bread behind for your enemies.

Russia has never been defeated in a ground war because the Russians used the vastness of their country. Falling back from their borders towards Moscow, they would scorch and burn every farm, every field, to starve their enemies out and give them no shelter to support their push into Russian terrority.

The neo-cons have employed a similar political playbook.

Their handiwork is out there, lurking in the background of major news stories. From the regulatory rewiring of every branch of government, to the White House scheme to flood the new administration with executive orders, the "conservatorship" of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, to pushing the auto makers towards bankruptcy, the neo-cons are not working in the public interest, but in the interest of regaining power in four years.

Economic hardship? Middle class collapse? All would seem to be means to one end: Power.

Second Legislative Branch

The Bush Administration has used the executive branch as its own legislative system, enacting more than 250 wide-reaching executive orders that include the constitutionally questionable issues of permissible torture and a few EOs that are still classified.

Rosa Brooks in the Sunday Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times summed up the Bush EO nightmare best:

Pick your issue. The environment? A Bush administration rule transmitted on Nov. 4 hands over responsibility for assessing the environmental impact of federal ocean management decisions to advisory councils made up primarily of people tied to the commercial fishing industry -- who often have a financial stake in the outcome. Workers' rights? A new rule (effective Jan. 18) would limit workers' ability to take leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Worker and road safety? A rule announced Nov. 16 will allow trucking companies to require drivers to spend 11 consecutive hours behind the wheel. Gun control? On election day, the administration put forward a rule to end the 25-year-old ban on carrying loaded weapons in national parks. Other last-minute rules the White House is trying to ram through would allow federal and state law enforcement agencies to monitor and share information on the activities of individuals deemed merely to be "suspicious," ease rules on dumping coal mining waste into rivers and streams, and further limit women's access to contraceptives and abortions from federally funded medical providers.

As the guy on QVC says though: "Wait! That's not all!"

Locking in Neo-Con Policy Across Government

When W. entered the White House, every branch of government received a severe makeover. Those who had lobbied for organizations that polluted, or wanted to use land set aside as wildlife preserves, or who didn't get the edge that they were looking for out of a regulatory process all suddenly had their advocates lobbying the government now running the government.

Over the last three months in particular, these appointees have been stepping up the institutionalization of rules that will take months or years to reverse, if they can be reversed at all. They have until Friday to get these rules into place.

Time reports:

"A rule eliminating the mandatory, independent advice of government scientists in decisions about whether dams, highways and other projects are likely to harm species looked likely to meet the deadline, leaving the only chance for a quick reversal to Congress...

"The rules eliminate the input of federal wildlife scientists in some endangered species cases, allowing the federal agency in charge of building, authorizing or funding a project to determine for itself whether the project is likely to harm endangered wildlife and plants.

"Current regulations require independent wildlife biologists to sign off on these decisions before a project can go forward, at times modifying the design to better protect species."

Worried about global warming, or the effect it can have regionally on specific species that are endangered? Don't speak of science to neo-cons raised in some religious certitude that the planet is here for our use. The Time report continues:

"The regulations also bar federal agencies from assessing emissions of the gases blamed for global warming on species and habitats, a tactic environmentalists have tried to use to block new coal-fired power plants. But the Bush administration feels that endangered species laws should not be used to regulate greenhouse gases."

This is happening across every agency of government. Some of these rules changes will be hard to unwind as well because the Justice Department, tasked with prosecuting enforcement of many of these rules, has active cases that are being pursued under neo-con policy. It could be years.

Some of these Obama can reverse by his own Executive orders. Others, though will fall back to an obscure Gingrich-era law enacted to knock down Bill Clinton's potential executive orders called the Congressional Review Act of 1996 (CRA).

The blog at Obsidian Wing in "The Best Law You've Never Heard of" observes:

For any new rule (major or not), Congress has a limited 60-day window to repeal it via joint resolution (which must be signed by the president). Here too, if Congress adjourns within 60 days of receiving the rule submission, the whole thing starts again on Day 15 of the next congressional session.

These are the more visible, easy-to-see manifestations of neo-con power exercised. More subtle though, is my continued growing suspicion that much of the economic crisis is also being engineered by our sweet neo-cons to create an untenable situation for the Dems coming into power.

I am not going all Mel Gibson Conspiracy Theory here, but I do have to wonder about certain actions that both the Bush Administration and the Republicans on Capitol Hill are taking relative to the economy.

Political Land Mines

The biggest political land mines that the Bush Administration leaves for Obama and the Dems is Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac.

Both are GSEs, private companies backed by the government. Established to help the banking industry make more home loans, they have always been a thorn in the side of neo-con think tanks, because the idea of government support of capitalist enterprise to allow more people than "should" to their way of thinking, own homes, was totally unacceptable to their strict capitalist dogma.

Granted, Fannie and Freddie both had institutional problems, although OFHEO had been forcing them to work through them when the rest of the financial services industry went into melt-down. Granted, hedge funds and others kept shorting the stock of the two GSEs with the full knowledge that they could do this until time ended because the Feds were obligated to come to their rescue.

Putting the two giant mortgage companies into "conservatorship" stopped the shorting of the stock, but it also achieved two larger purposes far more to the neo-cons liking.

First, it made Fannie and Freddie into political whipping boys that the GOP could use to blame for the financial crisis, handy for McCain in a year where twenty-eight years of Republican excess was finally coming home to roost.

Second, though, and more important, it set up the pathway for House and Senate Republicans to press for the dismantling of the housing giants.

It also turned the companies into a giant political mess that a likely Obama administration would have to sort out. Think about it: If the Bush Administration was sure that McCain was going to win, why dump Fannie and Freddie into the Congress of a McCain Administration that, by McCain's own admission, was weak on economics?

The biggest political land-mine, though, is the bridge loan to the Big Three. Republicans are trumpeting neo-con dogma: Let the market take its course.

Why? It breaks union power, and destroys what neo-cons have always believed was an excessive corporate welfare system in the generous pension plans of the United Auto Workers. To end these practices, you have to make them fail, and fail big. The UAW and the Big Three had a transition plan for the old pension system scheduled to go on-line in 2010. The undermining of the auto industry by the collapse of the banking industry has proven a unique opportunity for the neo-cons to deliver a crushing blow to union power and establish the Right to Work state model in every state in the Union.

If you believe the Chrysler Corporation's video circulating around the web, 4.5 million American jobs depend on the auto industry. The threat that even a fraction of them could be affected could tilt the country into a second Great Depression. The auto makers are 2% of the United States Gross Domestic Product (GDP). With piling up inventories of over 180 days in many cases sitting in places like the Port of Los Angeles, even foreign auto makers are looking at staggering losses.

As General Wesley K. Clark pointed out, the fall-out of not bailing out the Big-Three could even have severe military implications:

"More challenges lie ahead for our military, and to meet them we need a strong industrial base... Automakers are developing innovative electric motors, many with permanent magnet technology, that will have immediate military use. And only the auto industry, with its vast purchasing power, is able to establish a domestic advanced battery industry. Likewise, domestic fuel cell production -- which will undoubtedly have many critical military applications -- depends on a vibrant car industry... This is, fundamentally, about national security."

So why would the GOP push the economic puritan agenda of the neo-con think-tanks?

Power, and its recovery.

Neo-cons care about the bigger picture of their world order. That millions of Americans will suffer needlessly, and that the will of the people was clearly expressed in opposition to so many of their policies, from stem-cell research to the environment, is of little consequence.

Neo-con thinking is long-term. Democrats have been playing the short-term ground game to take power. Now that they have it, they are going to have to spend every moment unwinding the copious evils that the neo-cons have engineered into every fiber of the government.

It is the same dark, cynical thinking that brought us the Iraq war to gain a footprint in the Middle East. it is the same dark, cynical thinking from the Reagan Administration to Bush II that dismantled the Depression Era rules protecting our banking system.

This is scorch and burn, baby. Leave nothing for the enemy to establish itself again in the halls of power.

Lance Simmens: The Hits Just Keep Coming

2008-11-21T11:33:35Z

In another time and another place, the captains of the automotive industry might be tried for crimes against humanity. This week they paraded like mindless peacocks before Congress with arrogance, insolence, a brazen audacity that is almost impossible to describe. Adding further insult to injury, with collective hats in their hands, they pleaded for a monetary reprieve that would allow them to continue to hold both the American economy and millions of workers hostage to the most pernicious mismanagement of our domestic manufacturing sector history has ever recorded.

So pathetic is this sorry story that Congress was left collectively scratching its head and wondering if in fact the American people could allow even this grossest level of malfeasance to go unpunished, while at the same time realizing that the costs of allowing the industry to self-destruct most likely far outweighs the benefits of rescuing it from an ignominious death.

While the stock market, and hence the bulk of middle-class retirement savings, cascades under the relentless waves of bad economic news, while the economy sputters to a virtual halt, while unemployment claims climb to stratospheric levels and layoffs mount at a dizzying pace, deep in our hearts we know that even this clueless and callous Administration cannot afford to watch the unfolding economic apocalypse without dipping deeper into the seemingly inexhaustible money well that drains from our children's future.

It seems almost impossible to imagine a more debilitating ending to what will be one of the darkest periods in American electoral history. The hits just keep on coming. Jimmy Buffet sings "if we weren't all crazy we'd all go insane," well this seems like one of those times. It seems like the only good news we have had in a long time are the results of November 4. And keeping with the rock lyrics motif, maybe it is always "darkest just before the dawn."

We must and we will rise above it, but you simply cannot wonder how different things would have been had the Great Heist known as the 2000 election not happened. The lost lives, lost international integrity, lost savings, lost homes, lost jobs, lost momentum with respect to domestic programs, including alternative energy development, repairs of our crumbling physical infrastructure, a broken health care system, and a rapidly shrinking middle class, all point towards a government on political autopilot. We have been rudderless for some time, and it shows. The cumulative toll in terms of dollars is staggering, but in terms of damage to the societal psyche it is incalculable.

The challenges ahead are so daunting as to make even the calmest and shrewdest heads spin. The call to public service is now more urgent than at any time in our nation's history. Obama is the right person at the right time, but he will need to summon legions of individuals dedicated to the prospect of toiling in the fields to resurrect and reconstruct a strong and vibrant society.

Placing aside our anger we must strive above all things to do the right thing, and this means removing as many obstacles to progress as possible as we build a better world. It means setting aside our differences and our prejudices.

The lessons of the last eight years are harsh, yet we must learn from them and never allow them to be repeated. The next two months simply cannot go fast enough, for as we sit here today the Administration is plotting to undercut the wishes of the electorate and the opportunities for last minute mischief remain. So put on your work boots and roll up your sleeves and join in the effort to reclaim our country. Can you think of a better way to spend the next four to eight years?

Read More:

Should the Government Bail Out the Big Three U.S. Automakers? HuffPost Bloggers Weigh In

Automaker Bankruptcy Could Be "Prepackaged" By Obama Administration

2008-11-21T11:00:41Z

President-Elect Barack Obama`s transition team is exploring a swift, prepackaged bankruptcy for automakers as a possible solution to the industry's financial crisis, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Obama's team has already contacted at least one bankruptcy- law firm to say that Daniel Tarullo, a professor at Georgetown University's law school who heads Obama's economic policy working group, would call to discuss the workings of a so-called prepack, according to this person.

U.S. lawmakers yesterday postponed until December a vote on whether to give General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC a $25 billion bailout as an alternative solution. Automakers such as GM could use court protection to reduce debt and reject unfavorable contracts.

``It creates the environment to deal with GM's problems but limits government financial commitment,'' said bankruptcy lawyer Mark Bane of Ropes & Gray in New York.