Day Three

Actual posting today! Hurrah! Mickey tackles the unique quandary of Ford, which is probably healthy enough to not need bailout funds and may or may not want its brethren to be rescued. Naturally, Mickey dances right past the fact that a unionized Ford was somehow capable of improving quality and changing to meet the marketplace (two things unions are categorically incapable of doing according to the Gospel of Mickey) and the possibility that better management might be responsible for their comparative success. Instead, he finds himself in quite the dilemma:

Brian Faughnan argues that's good for Ford, because GM and Chrysler (if the latter still exists) will be under the thumb of the "car czar" and Congress--and therefore under pressure to reduce their profitable truck and SUV business "in favor of the green cars that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and Barney Frank regard as the wave of the future."

But Kirk Petersen argues that it's bad for Ford to not go bankrupt, if the GM and Chrysler bailouts include bankruptcy-style UAW concessions--which could leave Ford as the high cost producer.

Behind one door are ... Democrats! Behind the other? Unions! Ahhh! The horror!

One could point out that neither Democrats nor unions bear primary responsibility for the current economic climate, but that would be silly. Sure, we're enduring the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, but think about how much worse things would be if Democrats or unions were running things.

You see, Mickey's an optimist. You see a glass as half empty, he sees it as a reactionary Republican senator from a right-to-work state.

Actually, I don't know enough to know which side is right.

Cage match! Two stupid bedrock conservative assumptions enter! Only one shall leave!

Also, should this sentence be a permanent Kausfiles disclosure? I say yes.

A prepackaged bankruptcy that gets the government out of making these decisions--with attendant well-padded influence-peddling on all sides--looks increasingly appealing.

Really? A plan that gets the government out of making decisions while allowing companies to break union contracts looks appealing to Mickey? You don't say. Tack on a rider starting construction of a border fence and outlawing the L.A. Times and you've got yourselves an endorsement!

Thought experiment: if Democrats introduced a bill allowing the border fence, but mandating union construction workers, and the L.A. Times opposed it, would Mickey's head explode like the dude in Scanners?

Discuss.