Pony up Assholes

Barone has a great piece regarding a proposed bailout of Detroit over at Rasmussen, parts of which go like this:

The Detroit Three were unprofitable well before the current financial crisis hit, and GM is reportedly hemorrhaging $1 billion a month. The huge cost of lavish employee and retiree health care benefits, negotiated with the United Auto Workers (UAW), makes it impossible for the companies to sell for a profit anything but the big cars and SUVs that, after gas prices hit $4 a gallon last spring, almost no one wants to buy.

He further points out the futility of seeking to keep things just like they are with the the UAW demanding enforcement of 5,000 pages of work rules; retirement benefits that cannot be sustained, and lavish medical plans that nobody anywhere has. A bailout must pass hoping that bailing out the companies will result in stuff working out. They won't. Chapter 11 is the only way for them to survive.

But keeping the Detroit Three in their present form, with their extravagant health care benefits and the union's 5,000 pages of work rules, is an exercise in preserving in amber the America of the past.

And of course the Detroit Three will not be the last flagging enterprises to line up for government subsidy.

Read the rest of it here. McCardle basically makes the same points in the Left Wing Atlantic and Robert Reich has stated that the Big Three must go bankrupt. Go here for a GM YouTube response, it's propaganda but it's good anyway.