McCain: No bailouts, automakers

The Wall Street Journal Washington Wire writes that McCain didn’t make promises he wouldn’t keep in Ohio today;

McCain said he would do whatever he could to assist the ailing companies but stopped short of considering a bailout. “It depends on what you mean by a bailout,” he said in response to a Wall Street Journal reporter’s question. “If you’re talking about it in the classic terms, I’m afraid not.”

And he’s right. US automakers have been riding the ass-end of auto trends since 1978. They’re in this problem because they can’t think ahead to auto-buyers’ fickle “next thing”. They did fine when they dictated to the public what the public should buy, but they’ve proved inflexible to the market, while those sneaky little Japanese crap-box manufacturers have led the way.

McCain then put on his Democrat hat and promised taxpayer dollars for R&D;

Instead, he reiterated that if elected in November his plan is to invest in research and development. “I would like to invest American federal dollars in pure research and development as we move forward with new technologies, whether they be flex fuel or whether it be hydrogen or whether it be the electric capability,” he said. After developing such technologies “we’ve gotta hand it over to the private enterprise and the automotive companies.”

Horseshit. Let the automakers invest in future technologies – it’s not the government’s job to pour bad money after worse into wasteful development. If the automakers REALLY wanted to beat the Japanese, they’d get ahead of them instead of wasting their lobbying dollars on  trying to influence government to give them MY money and trying to get the government to put tariffs on import cars.

Give Americans a reason to buy American cars instead of trying to charge us more for NOT buying American cars, for crap’s sake.

With gas at 4 bucks a gallon, you’d think that American ingenuity would come up something viable and innovative instead of just making more copycat Jap shit boxes.

Category: Economy, John McCain/Sarah Palin, Politics