Say Anything Blog

I tended to give Obama a pass (except for poking fun at him) when he said that 10,000 people died in the Kansas Tornado.  (The correct number was 12).

But now I think he’s like Gore (overcrowded classrooms etc) willing to make up anything he has to to make a point.

Obama this week flew to Detroit to deliver his message that the U.S. auto industry is the villain for “investing in bigger and faster cars while foreign competitors invested in more fuel-efficient technology.”

The domestics certainly haven’t flooded showrooms with gas/electric hybrids like the Japanese. But in fairness, the newest Japanese assembly plant in the U.S. produces 14-m.p.g. Toyota Tundra pickups, not Prius hybrids rated at 60 m.p.g.

“While our fuel standards haven’t moved from 27.5 miles per gallon in two decades, both China and Japan have surpassed us, with Japanese cars now getting an average of 45 miles to the gallon,” Obama said.

“I’m not sure where he got that figure,” Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said. “No carmaker gets 45 m.p.g. Ours is closer to 30 m.p.g.”

What a fool.  Anyone with a grip on reality would realize that while the Japanese car makers make smaller cars they aren’t that much smaller.  And anybody who’s not an idiot would realize what kind of car makes 40 miles per gallon and then realize how few there are out there.

Finally anyone who’s aware would realize that the American consumer wants to buy the cars they want to buy.  The reason why GM doesn’t make a ton of small bitty bitty cars is because they wouldn’t sell.  The American consumer does not want to buy a little clown car to drive their 2.4 kids to the park.

It really would be asking too much of Obama to notice how many new small cars are selling now under the new market conditions.  The price of gas has more or less doubled and the market has moved to reflect that.  We don’t need his stinking meddling in the market to tell us what to drive.

I’m even more frightened by this:

Obama did offer Detroit an olive branch, a choice of federal dollars to pay for up to $7 billion of the domestics’ annual health-care costs for retirees through 2017 or $3 billion through 2017 to help retool plants to build more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Retiree health care at GM alone cost $5 billion last year, so $7 billion for the entire industry over 10 years was more austere than august.

A long time ago the auto industry and unions made a terrible mistake by agreeing to pay for retiree health care.  Right now they both are suffering for it.  So why should we taxpayers be held to account for their stupidity and lack of foresight?