Thursday, April 02, 2009

Bailout Greens

In these times of eco-troubles, we are trying to balance economy with the environment, often at odds. We don't seem to have clear view of better times, and does that view include greener solutions? You can be ecological all you want when you can afford it. Keep this in mind for a minute.

I was thinking about Beloved Barrack's gambit of putting the screws to the automakers for the People's Loan.

More power to him.

Then I thought if I were the typical arrogant automaker of old, see how I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here, I'd be looking for financing where the attached strings aren't cramping my style. So I'm thinking to myself in my Japanese-made S.U.V. on my way to my shrink, who would have the kind of money for a bailout of the magnitude we're talking about here? When the Boss-man of the richest country in the world is taking you to task, you have to wonder how grim your state of affairs really is.

It comes to me: who has money enough to buy God with an Amex?

The oil companies.

In these times of hardship, they are still making a killing, so to speak. So why is it, exactly, that the oil companies aren't fronting up the cash for the automakers?

Remember my first statement in this post?

For one thing, the eco-world would have an unholy fit I'm sure, and for obvious reasons.

But then the debt that Blessed-Barrack and other world leaders are incurring to recover the economy will come out of our taxes for the next several generations, I'm thinking a hundred years, maybe more.

And the loan to save some 1/2 million jobs and an intrinsic way of life is part of this debt.

But that particular way of life isn't exactly green. More cars? Fuel efficient? Hmm, I must refer to the arrogance of bad-old GM for instance which destroyed the EV-1 Impact full-electric vehicles.

And as the Indians are aspiring to a safer mode of individual transportation, Tata comes under fire for wanting to produce cheap gas lawnmower-engined vehicles to replace the family motorcycle. Of course the eco-world is all dead set against the Indians putting all those cheap cars on the road, but we certainly want to keep our own auto industry alive. Huh?

So you can go green or you can save a way of life, but it seems you can't do both. Or maybe there is?

Maybe Bailout-Barrack should put the screws onto the automakers: they get the cash only for alternate-fuel designed cars!

Nah.

Retrofitting American compacts would probably put them at around $67,000 each and they would still be cheap, unreliable crap.