xcel
02-23-2007, 09:51 AM
We're like a big dysfunctional family, enablers to rich Uncle Henry -- the one who feeds our dangerous addiction to gas-guzzling behemoths. (http://www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070222/OPINION03/702220385/1148/AUTO01)
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/Hummer_H2_News.jpgLaura Berman - Detroit News - Feb. 22, 2007
In pioneer days, the covered wagons grouped into a circle at night, improvising a fortress to protect against marauders and raiding warriors.
Now, Michigan is starting to feel like an improvised fortress of huddled survivors, fearful of the wilderness beyond and wary of outsiders.
We're a bit like the shattered, post-Sept. 11 nation that George W. Bush so skillfully exploited as he went to war in Iraq: Easy to scare into submission and into uneasy silence.
My colleague Daniel Howes lit into first gentleman Daniel Mulhern the other day for publicly extolling Toyota as a paragon of good management. "For these folks," Mulhern had written about Toyota leaders, "it's not just that people are the necessary means, but that people are ends in themselves."
That's mild enough praise but for this: Implicit in Mulhern's words was a criticism of domestic auto company culture, and you could argue -- as Howes did -- that the governor's husband ought to keep such thoughts to himself.
Or you could argue, as I would, that suppressing the truth won't ever make you great.
But the controversy, aired on WJR on Wednesday, over such mild noncriticism of the mired and sinking local auto industry, says much about where we live now. This is thin skin time, even for a region that's been playing defense ever since the National Guard's tanks rolled down Eight Mile in 1967.
Just as the nation comes to grips with the issue of dependency on foreign oil, the state's congressional delegation hangs tough together -- Democrats and Republicans, committed to shoring up the auto companies.
Sen. Carl Levin and U.S. Rep. Joe Knollenberg -- to name two legislators who see the world differently -- have their brakes locked together against CAFE standards that would require SUVs to get better gas mileage.
" is the "Our motto should be: 'Alternative fuels, yes! Higher CAFE: no way!' stump speech Knollenberg is delivering these days, as if we're only months away from powering our fleets with ethanol from cornfields or Energizer batteries.
We favor the tendency to confuse cheerleading with loyalty -- and criticism with treason.
But the auto industry -- that sick elephant in our living room -- is where it is in large part because legislators and consumers have been hand-holding for so long: In Michigan, we buy Big 3 cars because we get big discounts -- and then wonder why East and West coasters, who don't have friends and families at Ford or GM, are zipping around in BMWs.
We encourage our legislators to cut the Big 3 breaks on gas mileage -- even when those vehicles are used to move kids' soccer gear and the family Labradoodle.
We're like a big dysfunctional family, enablers to rich Uncle Henry -- the one who feeds our dangerous addiction to gas-guzzling behemoths.
Tick tock. The economy is global, oil is not a replenishable resource, and the gas-guzzler is still a brontosaurus that plenty of people want. But if you let people buy a real brontosaurus, and keep it legally as a pet, you could sell millions of those, too.
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/Hummer_H2_News.jpgLaura Berman - Detroit News - Feb. 22, 2007
In pioneer days, the covered wagons grouped into a circle at night, improvising a fortress to protect against marauders and raiding warriors.
Now, Michigan is starting to feel like an improvised fortress of huddled survivors, fearful of the wilderness beyond and wary of outsiders.
We're a bit like the shattered, post-Sept. 11 nation that George W. Bush so skillfully exploited as he went to war in Iraq: Easy to scare into submission and into uneasy silence.
My colleague Daniel Howes lit into first gentleman Daniel Mulhern the other day for publicly extolling Toyota as a paragon of good management. "For these folks," Mulhern had written about Toyota leaders, "it's not just that people are the necessary means, but that people are ends in themselves."
That's mild enough praise but for this: Implicit in Mulhern's words was a criticism of domestic auto company culture, and you could argue -- as Howes did -- that the governor's husband ought to keep such thoughts to himself.
Or you could argue, as I would, that suppressing the truth won't ever make you great.
But the controversy, aired on WJR on Wednesday, over such mild noncriticism of the mired and sinking local auto industry, says much about where we live now. This is thin skin time, even for a region that's been playing defense ever since the National Guard's tanks rolled down Eight Mile in 1967.
Just as the nation comes to grips with the issue of dependency on foreign oil, the state's congressional delegation hangs tough together -- Democrats and Republicans, committed to shoring up the auto companies.
Sen. Carl Levin and U.S. Rep. Joe Knollenberg -- to name two legislators who see the world differently -- have their brakes locked together against CAFE standards that would require SUVs to get better gas mileage.
" is the "Our motto should be: 'Alternative fuels, yes! Higher CAFE: no way!' stump speech Knollenberg is delivering these days, as if we're only months away from powering our fleets with ethanol from cornfields or Energizer batteries.
We favor the tendency to confuse cheerleading with loyalty -- and criticism with treason.
But the auto industry -- that sick elephant in our living room -- is where it is in large part because legislators and consumers have been hand-holding for so long: In Michigan, we buy Big 3 cars because we get big discounts -- and then wonder why East and West coasters, who don't have friends and families at Ford or GM, are zipping around in BMWs.
We encourage our legislators to cut the Big 3 breaks on gas mileage -- even when those vehicles are used to move kids' soccer gear and the family Labradoodle.
We're like a big dysfunctional family, enablers to rich Uncle Henry -- the one who feeds our dangerous addiction to gas-guzzling behemoths.
Tick tock. The economy is global, oil is not a replenishable resource, and the gas-guzzler is still a brontosaurus that plenty of people want. But if you let people buy a real brontosaurus, and keep it legally as a pet, you could sell millions of those, too.