No Charity For Auto Makers
Today’s S.F. Chronicle has at least ten stories related to the trauma U. S. car producers are facing…GM Pontiac, etc.. and how they need our help to pressure the congress to bail them out.
I want to pressure congress to speed their demise.
‘Twould be grand indeed if the American car industry “tanked”.
Our country’s so-called love affair with cars was in fact an arranged marriage, enforced by unchecked business practices and the cold-blooded murder of the municipally owned rail lines. The reason the Euros are so far behind (and why they still have operating railroads) is because no one convinced them to rip up the tracks after WWII. I guess maybe they felt like not everyone in that war-demolished continent had access to a personal car and that trains are an efficient way of hauling people around cheaply.
Being as they were already built an’ all…
Ach, let’s let Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy, impale consumerism in his pure dead brilliant strip.
Note: interested future Zippy fans can go to his website, and there’s even a button called “Strip Search” that lets you page through his impressive compendium….He also sells his ‘annual’ each year, which keeps a firm grip on that pin-headed alternative reality that keeps us fans…’sane’. Sort of…
. With an RSS feed
BUY NOW!
Jacquie Phelan's Weblog 
Bicycles for the masses — that’s the ticket. What a better world it would be. I suppose I’m dreaming, but I’d like the US govt to bail out the country instead of bailing out the auto industry by converting our infrastructure to bike transport and helping restructure our food production and distribution regimes to something sensible and less centralized. And vegan.
Cars have “accelerated” our lives! They’ve brought us pollution, stress, wars, more money for the richest and more poverty for the poorest… These Frankensteins of our times have created a world which turns against the clock.
Bikes are the real thing. Riding a bike makes us feel free, alive, and gives us the perspective and the time we need. I believe they would bring us a much better future, indeed. The magic word has already been said here, and it’s not “Abracadabra”, but “Government”.
Are we being Utopian? Maybe… or maybe not. So what?
Una abraçada!
At the very same time that the auto makers are on life support, our city government is giving millions of dollars to our local car dealers to build more robust dealerships if they promise to keep their dealerships within the county for the next 20 YEARS! This is all in hopes of keeping the tax dollars local. There is an obvious denial and/or failure to recognize that the age of automobiles is coming to an end. It’s foolish to think that all we need to do is find some new magic fuel, and the auto culture will continue to grow and flourish. Even if the auto makers went away today, there are probably enough existing vehicles on the road to last several decades. It’s time to let the big car companies die.
As long as we keep the UPS trucks running that deliver our bike parts…
A friend of mine has said “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. A good description of our auto-centric society.
I won’t go so far as to say that cars should find an immediate demise. I suspect most of us use them. Hell, if we used them judiciously, we would not be in the trouble we are in. The bottom line, though, is that the American public deserves as much scorn as the Big Three, given that the Big Three were not having any trouble selling their wares, that is, until the roof caved in.
As far as Detroit’s upper management? They should be lined up against the wall. Tens of thousands of direct jobs and millions of indirect jobs are at risk from their short-term greed. If Detroit had managed for the long haul, we would have a U.S. built electric car for cities, and U.S. built hybrids for the highways. And we would be riding our bicycles without fear of egocentric maniacs in 6,000 lb. SUVs who act like they alone own the road.