Some thoughts from another Flint native on the plight of GM:

If GM were a horse I would call the vet and have it put out of its misery. I realize how a failed GM will devastate my family as well as this entire country. I get it probably more than most people because I grew up in Flint. But there has to be a better way then giving them our hard earned tax money.

Giving them what they want is only prolonging the inevitable. And, then who is next? Who else wants to go and beg to our government for free money? Steel companies, airlines, states like California? Heck, maybe I should drive to DC in my GM car and get in line?

I wish I had the answers and I realize what a tough job our politicians have on this one. I literally feel torn in half about this. After another blow up on the phone with my mom today I also realize that I can no longer talk to her about it.

I also have family who will be financially devastated by a complete failure of the company (and are already hurting — as she notes, parts of the city of Flint are becoming a post-apocalyptic nightmare). But the current plan is just delaying the inevitable, at taxpayer expense. Their only real hope is a legitimate bankruptcy.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Flint’s (lunatic) mayor to the rescue with a plan:

Williamson is sending City Administrator Darryl Buchanan to Washington D.C. next week to tout his big idea to save the auto industry as part of the Mayors Automotive Coalition lobbying Congress for the Detroit Three’s $34-billion loan.

Williamson said under his idea, each household with a registered voter would receive a $5,000 voucher to purchase a new car. He hasn’t calculated how much the plan would cost taxpayers.

Williamson said the government should use some of the $700 billion previously set aside to bail out the financial industry to fund the vouchers.

“They’re using the money for the wrong things,” Williamson said.

He said he realizes some people may not believe that his ideas would work.

“A lot of people are in shock when I come up with these ideas,” said Williamson, who has previously touted his 2006 “Save All of America” plan aimed at saving General Motors and Delphi Corp. “Many think they’re off the wall, but I’m thinking.”

People in shock when you come up with these ideas? You don’t say…

Will there be a chicken in every pot, too?

[Late afternoon update]

Why the auto bailout sux:

4. Where are provisions for dealing with rewriting the Big Three’s union contracts? Where are provisions for preempting state franchise laws so that dealer contracts can be cancelled or rewritten? The Big Three have to reduce labor costs. They have to shed brands, which means closing some dealers. They have to develop a modern distribution system, which means fundamental changes in their relationship with the dealers.

5. It’s interesting that Ford is asking only for a line of credit rather than cash in hand. I suspect that their reluctance to take the cash now has a lot to do with Dodd’s efforts to force Rick Waggoner out at GM. It’s no secret that the current generation of Fords are modest talents, at best. Yet, so long as the Fords have their super voting rights stock, they will exercise control. One wonders whether Dodd would try to force them to give up their voting control as a condition of taking the cash.

6. If Rick Waggoner has to go, why doesn’t Ron Gettelfinger? The UAW is just as much at fault here as management.

I think we know why. And I’d be a lot more impressed with Chris Dodd’s demand that Wagoner leave if Senator Countrywide would first set an example by resigning from the Senate over his shameful role in the much larger finance disaster.

I hope that the Obama plans to resurrect the New Deal don’t include things like this:

As part of its legislation, the NRA had all kinds of detailed codes for individual industries, describing to the letter how firms must do their business. The Schechters fell under the “Code of Fair Competition for the Live Poultry Industry of the Metropolitan Area in and About the City of New York” (and you thought Atlas Shrugged was fiction….). Among the things the code prohibited was “straight killing” which meant that customers could buy a whole or half coop of chickens, but did not have the right to make any selection of particular birds (such individual selection was “straight killing”).

This last rule was in direct conflict with Kashrut laws, which also served as an informal health code in the Jewish community. As Shlaes points out, the phrase “glatt kosher” referred to the fact that the lungs of the animal were smooth (which is what “glatt” means) and therefore free of tuberculosis. Inspecting the lungs was part of the official process of conferring Kosher status on a butcher shop. Removing unhealthy animals from the stock was one of the core principles of keeping Kosher, and the rabbinical inspectors were fanatic about doing this. But so were customers. As Shlaes points out, individual customers, both retailers and their customers, had the right to refuse individual animals. This minimized the risk of an unhealthy animal getting through when both seller and buyer did such inspections. And it ensured that the kosher laws served as a health code, or perhaps something more like the Underwriters Laboratory or Good Housekeeping seal.

The Schechters, as you may have guessed, were targeted by the NRA enforcement crew. They were inspected repeatedly during the summer of 1934, which forced them to violate their own Kashrut practices, telling customers that they could not reject individual birds as keeping Kosher allowed. Not surprisingly, their deeply religious customer base began to dwindle. The constant inspection turned up a variety of violations, including allegations that they had, in fact, sold sick chickens (not surprising, if true, given that part of their own internal inspection process was negated by the NRA code itself!). They were also accused of “competing too hard” and keeping prices “too low.” Shlaes recounts a couple of hilarious exchanges between the government lawyers and the Schechters where the knowledge of the actor is much greater than the knowledge of the expert.

Eventually, the lower courts found them guilty of 60 different violations and they all served a little bit of jail time. But more important, the Schecters’ lawyer continued to appeal and the case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where the Roosevelt Administration saw it as the perfect test case of the constitutionality of the NRA, and perhaps the whole New Deal. Coverage of the case, Shlaes shows, was highly tinged with the standard anti-Semitism of the time, especially because the Schechters were right out of Jewish central casting, being immigrants with their Eastern Eurpoean cadences and traditional Jewish dress. It was the Jewish rubes of Brooklyn against the high powered WASP lawyers of the northeast corridor.

Fortunately, they ultimately won, and if was in fact the first hit against the NRA by the SCOTUS (which eventually resulted in Roosevelt’s attempt to pack the court to get it to allow him to rule unopposed). But as the bloggist points out, it’s also a demonstration of the blindness of Jews to their own interests in continuing to support Democrats in general, and Roosevelt in particular. Marxists talk about the false consciousness of the proletariat, but this seems to be a much more clear-cut example.