I can’t say it any better than Pete DeLorenzo, but I can add a little.

I can’t say it any better. This is, in my opinion, mandatory reading.

http://www.autoextremist.com/current/2008/8/5/rants-457.html

Actually, I do have one thing to add.

So far, the auto industry has received little but contempt from the current White House. They had a choice of who to support in the past, and they could have chosen, through a concerted effort, to have health care taken off their expenses; but they chose not to. They have a choice now, of a candidate who has pledged at least $4 billion to aid the automakers when they are in dire need of support, versus one who promised a small prize to the first company to make a battery breakthrough - a prize which would be minor indeed compared with the guaranteed profits of such a breakthrough.

The auto industry is essential to our economy as a whole at this point. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. As a nation we pray to free trade and unrestrained capitalism, but our trading partners have other gods. China has severe restrictions on imports and domestic-industry ownership. Japan has more subtle ways of making it hard to import. We opened our borders to both of them and the jobs and skills flooded out. Find America’s telephone, computer (assembly), and radio industries, if you can; if they exist, it’s at niche levels. Your American computers are made almost exclusively in China, your televisions somewhere in Asia, your cellphones and pagers in Asia, your radios - unless you’re an audiophile - in Asia.

The leaders of the auto industry have already pledged their dollars and their votes. So has the UAW. No wonder they have no clout. It’s time for the auto executives to stand up and tell the world that they have a choice in November - and that maybe, this time, they’ll support the candidates who support them, instead of the ones who take them for granted. Perhaps they can get McCain and Obama to bid against each other for the support of the industry.

After all, we just handed a blank check to the financial industry - which will cost us, according to GAO estimates, upwards of $20 billion in actual money, not loans. The auto industry is, for the moment, only asking for loans. The way I figure it, the government shouldn’t be out there loaning billions of our dollars in the first place, but as long as we’re issuing “no-oversight, no-accountability” billions in Iraq and bailing out wealthy financiers for more billions, perhaps we should reserve a “little” money to get one of our cornerstone industries - an industry that helped this country to whip Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini by cranking out tanks, bombs, and aircraft practically at cost - past a particularly rough spot. A rough spot, I might add, partly caused by our peculiar idea that we have free trade with China and Japan, and by our citizens’ apparent and nearly unique loathing for anything made in their own country.