AutoExtremist: Tax The Bastards

Now that self-styled AutoExtremist has acknowledged that his hometown heroes have screwed the proverbial pooch, Peter DeLorenzo wants the left and right coast elites to know they can’t afford to let Motown take a dirt nap. Rant (my favorite title so far) makes it clear that the American automobile industry IS Detroit, and Detroit IS America’s industrial pillar. “Free-market theorizing aside [ED: sure , why not?], we have long since passed the point of no return in this matter. If this country allows one of its key manufacturing pillars to slip into insolvency, it would set-off a dark chain of events that would reach into every sector of the economy and would not only devastate the states where Detroit has its manufacturing and parts facilities, but it would affect every state of the union too.” That means you, bub. To avoid this “looming economic disaster,” Sweet Pete thinks the GM – Chrysler merger’s kinda neat. “Even though I am absolutely convinced that the idea of GM acquiring Chrysler is absolutely fraught with opportunities for abject failure on a grand scale, the White House will make the decision that a managed dissolution of Chrysler over time under GM’s stewardship would be preferable than an immediate corporate blow-up.” Especially before a presidential election, eh? Having finished this adventure into realpolitik, DeLorenzo’s got a plan for America, Inc. Counter-attack!

“Don’t agree with a ‘bailout’ or ‘loan’ for Detroit? Then what if every foreign auto manufacturer – whether they have plants here or not – had to pay anywhere from $250 to $1500 per vehicle sold (on a sliding scale) to do business here? (Because no matter how much they say that they’ve created jobs in the states they operate in and that they shouldn’t be penalized for doing so, at the end of the day their profits return to their home countries, not here. And to pretend otherwise is to have your head in the sand.) And then what if that money went directly into a fund to help support American workers’ pensions or an education fund for their families?

“The bottom line in this discussion is that we have a multitude of problems in this country that will take time, sacrifice, hard work and collective effort to solve. And we’re only going to be able to do that if we’re unified as a nation, and we compete in the global marketplace as ‘America, Inc.'”

I’m a level playing field kinda guy. But is it me or is there something really scary about the tone of Peter’s rant?