Real Progress!

Investor's Business Daily is less than thrilled over the prospects of a federally administered recovery plan for the ailing domestic automobile industry.

[...] That leaves the latest bright idea from Congress: a broad, federally mandated restructuring of the Big Three in exchange for financial help. Congress would in essence become the Big Three's uber-manager, telling them how to become profitable again.

Excuse us, but are we supposed to believe that the same Congress responsible for next year's estimated $1 trillion deficit can profitably run a market-sensitive company like a car manufacturer?

Or that the same Congress that sat on its hands as the financial meltdown unfolded and helped create the mess will know how to financially restructure America's highly complex auto business?

Or that the people who just last year imposed $85 billion in new "efficiency" standards on a teetering industry will be savvy enough to run them anywhere but further into the ground?

As IBD goes on to point out, there is only one Democrat member of the Senate Banking Committee (that would be the committee that the Big 3 has had to pander to these past few days,) that has any experience at all in private enterprise other than working stints in law firms. This does not give me that warm fuzzy feeling.

The deck is stacked against the domestics right now. Huge unsustainable labor contracts, crippling legacy costs, creeping regulation, and an activist government that has empowered a belligerant work force, have all contributed greatly to the system's failure, and the only way to reasonably expect a successful rescue of the failing companies would be to move forward with a radically altered business environment--one that favors the Big 3.

To this though, there may be some contention.

Will the UAW willingly give up any of its gained power? Will environmentalists and socialists willingly retreat from their hard earned gains on energy and the environment? Will bureaucrats admit that their busybody interferences have helped to drive an industry to the brink and pull back on regulations?

No, no, and no. (Don't believe me? Look at all those Youtube videos of Ron Gettelfinger, Al Gore, and Barney Frank.)

The course of action directed from Washington will most likely be, lend the companies billions upon billions of dollars, leave all the external forces substantially in place, and have government lawyers oversee the administration of the companies in the proper (and government enlightened) way. All of this, of course, while refusing to recognize that the plan is doomed to fail by definition, not by adherence.

The only way to save the Big 3 is through bankruptcy, and we have already been told that this is "not an option." It would seem the only alternative then is keep the companies operating in a mode that is already proven to fail.

Money down a rat hole.

And that is real progress!