No bailouts for Main Street!

I have to say all this talk about letting the automakers go bankrupt is getting on my nerves.

We're hearing all the usual junk from the right about socialism, our tax dollars, overpaid workers, free-market principles and such things as the GOP seems to view this as a chance to regroup. Even Glenn Beck, who claims to be a populist and who shills for Chevy, is on the case.

But c'mon. Didn't this stuff about socialism go out the window when we voted to hand the banking industry $700 billion? Ditto for free market principles; the market capitalists of Wall Street wasted no time in coming to beg for our money. They gave it up.

As to the idea of blowing 'our tax dollars,' that cat's out of the bag, too. We're $10 trillion in debt as a nation; we're in the hole a trillion for just this year. Tack $25 billion on to the end, and no one alive today will be repaying it. (Hell, if GM can escape its debt by declaring bankruptcy, maybe the country should try it.)

The other thing they're doing is trying to make us hate auto workers, because they have good retirement plans, health care and can't be laid off easily. Hey folks; maybe instead of asking why they have this stuff, more people should ask why more of us don't.

See, what we're talking here is perhaps 3 million jobs. Maybe more; they say one in 10 american workers, all told, are supported by the auto industry. We're talking about shutting down a good part of what little industry America still has. If this goes, we're a nation that manufactures little more than the caps for tubes of toothpaste and the thong part of things (the soles come from Korea.)

Besides, think about it this way. We can pay $25 billion, demand concessions and try to save 3 million jobs. Or we can let Obama try to use the government to create 3 million high paying jobs to replace them. How much do you think that will cost?