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Ear to the Ground

Auto Bailout Comes With Car Czar, Standard

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Posted on Dec 8, 2008
Flickr / SteelCityHobbies

White House and congressional leaders have agreed to bail out the auto industry. Detroit will get $15 billion in loans and, to make sure the Big Three keep running after their warranties expire, a so-called car czar will oversee long-term restructuring. And because we’re really serious about getting this right, George W. Bush gets to pick the car czar. D’oh!


AP via Google:

Congressional Democrats sent the White House an emergency $15 billion auto bailout plan Monday, complete with provision of a “car czar” to oversee the industry’s reinvention of itself. The Bush administration said there had been progress toward agreement but pressed further negotiations into the night.

The measure would rush bridge loans to Detroit’s struggling Big Three but would also demand that the auto industry restructure itself in order to survive and would put an overseer chosen by President George W. Bush in charge of monitoring that effort, according to the draft obtained by The Associated Press.

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By samosamo, December 9, 2008 at 5:37 pm #

By Jim Yell, December 9 at 7:14 am

I agree about stop using the ‘czar’ term for representatives of our government. But that is some of the last shit being thrown into our faces from a hopefully departing administration which is also a small part of their final acts of robbing the people. Then we will have to worry about the succeeding administration continuing the robbery.
And ‘how’ is explained by knowing that there is someone that will continue pumping all this free money into those incompetent and treasonous corporatist’s pockets as long as it can be done after crooks w & dick have left and are sitting on that proverbial front porch ‘remembering them good old days’.
I suggest reading Thom Hartmann’s book ‘Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class’ where pretty much the whole process of taking control by who he call the ‘cons’ is explained and he gives actions to be taken to counter react this neocon take over. Very insightful reading for most anyone.

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By uglyfemale, December 9, 2008 at 2:59 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

So the $15billion bailout will come from a fund geared to create more fuel-efficient vehicles.  Therfore don’t look for any electric, flex-fuel, biodiels, clean-burning diesel cars in the next administration.  My suggestion for car czar?  LEE IOCOCCA.

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By Jim Yell, December 9, 2008 at 12:14 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

One thing that should be stopped is the naming of public officials “Czar”. It is a name that has no status having been pre-empted from the Roman Empire a study in unresponsive and unaccountable power and used by the Russian Nobility who were a bunch of egocentric gangsters. So why are we calling any of our appointed leaders “Czar”, after all the Czar of Russia was an unresponsive and unbending idiot and what good did he do for Russia?

Now to the really real reason I am not feeling secure, the most lawless and irresponsible President to ever hold office in our country is being allowed to personally hand pick the “Auto-Czar” and this is supposed to work How?

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By samosamo, December 9, 2008 at 6:01 am #

You know these big 3 will be back in the spring. That is when they will have celebrated on this $15,000,000,000.00 corporate welfare bailout. The ceo s will have made their millions, the upper management will make theirs and the golden parachutes will rain down from heaven.
Goddamn milton friedmann’s bullshit economics and goddamn the elected officials giving them all they want. Shock doctrine for america for not playing the elite’s ball game. Just read Naomi Klein’s book to see how it will play out; and it will take years from which not many will survive or recover, just ask South American countries, Indonesia, europe and all the other countries that were forced by the World Bank and the IMF and all those private corporate central banks to embrace this economic insanity; just one more attempt at trying the same thing over again and hoping for ta different result(only with the supid bovid americans, it just may work this time).
And as John Lowell above says, who is next in line. Truly, a very strange way to ‘recreate’ the american economy. Maybe our future generations will have the balls to stand up and physically go after these ‘elite bastard’ and put them in their place.

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By John Lowell, December 9, 2008 at 1:48 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Who’s next in line? It won’t be your small business when its line of credit is maxed out, believe me. And it won’t be your small business when the tax man comes as he will for your portion of the wherewithall to take care of Bank America, Citigroup, General Motors and Chrysler. I’ve just named four organizations who wouldn’t do squat for me - or you - if I needed them and here I am, against my will, at the mercy of filth whose careers depend upon largesse from these businesses and who care not a wit about me.

The strikers at the Chicago windows factory are on to something unique. They are holding Bank America responsible for its shenanigans where the reptiles in this and in the upcoming administrations simply won’t. Similarly, hard working, responsible credit card holders ought to organize and threaten a mass default unless given relief from the usurious interest rates they face month after month. Next they should turn their wrath on the political system that makes possible the robbery and extortion we’re now witnessing. Never has the influence of the powerful and the powerlessness of the weakest among us been more evident than in the obscene bailouts our “public servants” have dished out over the last several months.

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