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As an european, it is kind of hard to grasp the fact that most hypermilers seem to have been in favor of Obama, but now Obama is fighting for a bailout for the Detroit car companies and the republicans (and Bush, it seems - but Bush can be bought by some kind of trade-agreement with a south-american country) are telling Detroit to 'drop dead' ...

As an American, it's kind of hard for me to understand the politics here too.

They're politicians. They're inconsistent, fickle, and in it
for the money and cronyism by definition. The only "change" is
clinking into the pockets of the already too wealthy.
.
_H*

The government lets airlines die left and right and never bails them out, like Pan Am, Eastern, Western, ATA, Aloha, Braniff, etc. My airline went into bankruptcy then came out fortunately, and where was the government?

Now these slow-to-adapt car companies are a huge emergency? I don't get it.

For that matter they let practically everything go bankrupt in the country, except certain things.

Know why they are bailing them out?????

The Union. United Auto Workers union stands to lose a quarter million members who pay dues money every month! The union pays politicians who are mainly democrats who are always pro-union. This is why the democrats are so "loving" the the auto workers now.

The dems don't want to kill their golden goose of support.

Know why they are bailing them out?????

The Union. United Auto Workers union stands to lose a quarter million members who pay dues money every month! The union pays politicians who are mainly democrats who are always pro-union. This is why the democrats are so "loving" the the auto workers now.

The dems don't want to kill their golden goose of support.

That makes perfect sense as to why it is so important to "Save the cars"

The union issue is a piece of it, but it's also just a simple matter of red state / blue state politics and Dems delivering to their states.

Even though red states in 2000 already received much more in per capita federal expenditure than they paid in per capita federal taxation, that excess has actually increased over the past 8 years. That's due to red state backed federal government looking out for its red states constituency. It's why interior red states received much more per capita Homeland Security funding than New York / LA, despite the higher risk in those cities.

The MSNBC Drop Dead article mentioned how the foreign automakers are more dominant in the South. I was going to bring that up, but they beat me to it.

So yeah, now a blue state government is looking out for blue states.

As an european, it is kind of hard to grasp the fact that most hypermilers seem to have been in favor of Obama, but now Obama is fighting for a bailout for the Detroit car companies and the republicans (and Bush, it seems - but Bush can be bought by some kind of trade-agreement with a south-american country) are telling Detroit to 'drop dead' ...

And I should point out that there is no correlation between being a hypermiler and supporting/opposing a bailout. They are mutually exclusive.

Bush and his cronies allowed Big Oil to squeeze every dime they could out our economy with almost double the price of gas in a short time period. Look who Cheney picked up at the Airport yesterday and you can see what it was all about. The Big 3 gave what Americans wanted to drive, now Americans can't afford to drive them. Even with the quick drop in oil and gas prices, it maybe to late for the Big 3 to make it. Bush has left us with a big mess to clean up.

Many of us Hypermiler seen this coming and bought fuel efficient vehicles to weather Big Oil and Bush's storm. Now it's payback time for Big Oil and to make it impossible for them to do this again.

GaryG

And I should point out that there is no correlation between being a hypermiler and supporting/opposing a bailout. They are mutually exclusive.

Make that 'orthogonal' or 'uncorrelated', not 'mutually exclusive'.

Make that 'orthogonal' or 'uncorrelated', not 'mutually exclusive'.

Double quotes are preferable to single quotes ;) :):):):)

How's this? "Hypermiler status" and "Big 3 Bailout opinion" are mutually exclusive.

As an european, it is kind of hard to grasp the fact that most hypermilers seem to have been in favor of Obama, but now Obama is fighting for a bailout for the Detroit car companies and the republicans (and Bush, it seems - but Bush can be bought by some kind of trade-agreement with a south-american country) are telling Detroit to 'drop dead' ...

I live here and still can't figure it out. I opposed both Obama and McCain, I opposed the bailout for Wall Street, and I oppose the bailout for Detroit.

Shriek,

American politics does not make a lot of sense.

Both parties are farther apart and choose to fight more rather than form a consensus on what the do agree on.

Shriek,

American politics does not make a lot of sense.

Both parties are farther apart and choose to fight more rather than form a consensus on what the do agree on.

I think the main parties are pretty close together on most issues and often have to find silly semantic disputes to differentiate themselves. I think that's what makes American politics so confusing to outsiders. Different interest groups benefit depending on which party is in power is probably the biggest systematic difference between the two.

Republicans: Big Pharma, Big Oil, Evangelicals
Democrats: Labor Unions, Teachers, Ethnic Minorities

Defense contracting does well under both regimes, but the location of contract work tends to shift toward key districts dominated by the party in power.

Right now things are confused because the dominant economic ideology that the two parties have been following for the past two decades provides little guidance in the current economic crisis. You can be sure that the Republicans will oppose any plan that the Democrats propose :rolleyes:.

Still, the two parties got along better until somewhere around Vietnam and Watergate. The partisan bickering intensified more in the 1990s.

I'd have to agree on the unions... you can guarantee the UAW will get bailed out... they'll say the Big 3 but to get the money they'll still probably be forced to pay their workers $70+ an hour.

I wish I had the numbers but I know all the big union bosses make six and seven digits... hardly a common working man fighting for his rights.

Yes, Lame, they are taking care of their bank accounts, the union. They strike until the plant closes, not caring about the workers put on the street after the strike. As long as the union gets paid its dues monthly, they work on their agendas. A worker who makes too much for what he does is his own undoing. You will have to be laid off sooner or later if you are too expensive, because of a union.

Politics in the USA really is schizophrenic. A good case in point is the abortion issue. The party that supports the death penalty for criminals thinks it is criminal to perform an abortion while the other party has no problem with abortions but thinks that criminals should be rescued from the death penalty.

To make it even worse we have switched presidential and congressional officeholders so frequently that we now have a hodgepodge of laws which are frequently in conflict with each other.

jstol3, that is a GOOD point! Hooo man.

jstol3, that is a GOOD point! Hooo man.

Bow (' Bow ('!

I oppose abortion yet support the death penalty. And here's why: the baby didn't do any crime. However a murderer deserves the rope. Many pro-life groups I know of oppose both abortion and the death penalty, though.

It's quite a different situation if comparing airlines with automakers.

Airlines or more analogous to dealerships.

Boeing and McDonald Douglas are analogous to GM/FORD/MOPAR. The Feds wouldn't allow Boeing to fail.

In a competitive airline industry the failed are replaced by the more efficient. Assets are sold in the breakup of a failed airline. Jobs are shifted to growing airlines.

In a competitive auto industry GM fails and Hyundai or Toyota replaces them and cars are still made here with jobs here too. Not sure if any of the factories the US car makers have would be of interest to foreign companies though. They'd surely leave Detroit beyond.

I oppose abortion yet support the death penalty. And here's why: the baby didn't do any crime. However a murderer deserves the rope. Many pro-life groups I know of oppose both abortion and the death penalty, though.

I have no problem with death-penalty, as long as if there would be a case of someone wrongly being punished by death - everyone involved in sentencing him wrongly also get the same fate, including the judge.

Until so happens, I can not support it. It's too easy to manipulate the system of justice.

As an european, it is kind of hard to grasp the fact that most hypermilers seem to have been in favor of Obama, but now Obama is fighting for a bailout for the Detroit car companies and the republicans (and Bush, it seems - but Bush can be bought by some kind of trade-agreement with a south-american country) are telling Detroit to 'drop dead' ...

Politics in America is confusing all around, but...

As a group here we tend to fall all across the politica spectrum. We have conservatives, liberals, libertarians, authoritarians, democrats, republicans, independants, and anything else you can think of.

I'll admit the US justice system has an awful lot of miscarriages - too many guilty walk - too many innocent are convicted.

I think Björk Campaigns Against Icelandic Aluminum Plants as Dirty, Unsustainable (http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17487) illustrates how politics differs. An aluminum plant powered by geothermal energy would be viewed very favorably in the US...we are not as critical was to what truly green and sustainable is.

To go back to the OP's question: it's about jobs. As angry as we might be at Detroit's past behavior, and as disappointed as we sometimes are in the quality of their automobiles, the Big 3 represent three million jobs -- more jobs than there are in all of Norway.

I might not buy American cars anymore, but I'm glad there are people who do. I will support a bailout if I think it has a reasonable degree of success. To me there are two criteria for success: (1) the bailed-out automaker recovers, as Chrysler did in the 1980s, and (2) the amount of pain experienced by working Americans (in terms of reduced benefits, lost jobs, etc.) is lower under the bailout. Right now it is not clear to me that a bailout would ultimately save either GM or Chrysler, nor is it clear to me whether it's worse to allow hundreds of thousands or more to lose their jobs quickly or to keep a weak automaker hanging on indefinitely.

So at this point I neither support nor oppose a bailout until I see more of the terms.

I am anti Roe-v-Wade but would prefer abortion be legal in every state that wants it. RVW was a judicial decision and it should have been made through state legislation, nothing in the constitution justifies RVW. I'm for any Judge that would overturn RVW on a constitutional basis.

Yet every state has the right to allow abortion and that was the direction pre RVW. Just 2 weeks ago Colorado firmly rejected an amendment that would have made any viable embryo a life and it was voted down 75-25. Surely if RVW was overturned most states would make it legal, but since RVW still applies the Pro side isn't acting. What the pro side should be doing is making RVW obsolete through state amendments that specifically guarantee the right to abortion.

The Pro side could also try to pass a federal amendment to guarantee the right to an abortion, but I predict we will see no more amendments in my lifetime since the courts and congress don't uphold the constitution anyway.

As an American, it's kind of hard for me to understand the politics here too.

I'm with this guy.

Actually GM is really facing a bad time ahead - with the new fuel economy mandates, they have to figure out how to sell a car that will get the required mileage, profitably. GM's legacy cost profile (things like insurance, pensions, etc.) really makes it impossible for them to sell a competitive, economical automobile profitably, whie import marques assembling in the US have a much more favourable cost structure. I don't know if Ford and/or Chrysler are in the same boat with this or not, though.

...nothing in the constitution justifies RVW.

I find the reasoning of Roe suspect myself. But agreeing is no fun. So let's pretend I don't. :)

The liberty clause of the 14th amendment justifies Roe.

It has been cited historically during the Lochner era 100 years ago to strike down minimum wage laws & union agreements to protect a "freedom (liberty) to contract" without government interference, and it has been cited more recently in cases from Griswold to Roe to Lawrence to protect a "private sexual liberty" free from government interference.

The courts will often trump the liberty clause of the 14th amendment when there is a "compelling state interest" to trump it. And in Roe, they do!...........to some degree in trimester #2, and completely in trimester #3.

Among those who attempt to measure & quantify political data, there's very little disagreement that the last 30-40 years have witnessed significantly increased political party polarization. There is a lot of disagreement on the causes though:

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/500/medium/House_and_Senate_Polar_46-109-thumb.jpg

What's important to understand is the anomaly that is 1932-1968. This era was defined by a great consensus...........a general bias towards economic liberalism and social conservativism.

This was primarily a result of the strong yet unwieldy Democratic majorities that dominated during this time. To hold the dominant New Deal coalition together, Dem leaders were constantly trying to keep the peace between Northern Dem liberals and Southern Dem populists.

Both were supportive of New Deal liberal economics. However, the former was supportive of efforts to eliminate social injustices that burdened women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, and others while the latter was determined to maintain the social orders that had existed for some time.

As a result, there was very little polarization between the parties. Democrats dominated because most could find a home within some portion of the party. Republicans were marginalized, and only enjoyed electoral success as Dem-lite or by driving wedges into the New Deal coalition.

There was, however, a tremendous amount of polarization WITHIN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY that masked the polarization among the parties themselves. Eventually, this house of cards caved in on itself as the social movements of the 60s & 70s made the Dem coalition completely dysfunctional.

What you've see since 1968 over time is the "great sorting". As a result, today there are clear distinctions between the two parties that have not existed since the roaring 20s. Gone forever are the consensus election landslides of 1964, 1972, & 1984. It's 1896-1928 all over again, and this new era of choice is a good thing.

Edit: If your interest in politics does not extend much beyond the Rodney King "can't we all just get along" school of political theory, then you might not think this new era is a good thing. But I suggest you move beyond that school of political theory. :)

It is not just the Fourteenth Amendment, it's the combination of the Fourteenth and the Ninth.

The Ninth states that our rights are not limited to those enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Thomas Jefferson insisted that our rights are inherent (i.e., not merely granted by the government) and far broader than those included in a simple short list. He would not agree to the Bill of Rights without the Ninth Amendment calling this out, and envisioned a steady progression of additional rights being recognized by future generations -- a dream that has been fulfilled as we have freed the slaves, granted racial minorities and women the vote, and so forth.

The Ninth Amendment acknowledges not only rights which it has been invoked explicitly to defend (the right to not have to testify against one's spouse, the right to contraception, and per RvW the right to an abortion) but a much greater reservoir of rights (the right to travel, the right to associate, the right to marry, etc.) that we often take for granted and often aren't explicitly protected by any law.

It might be one thing to argue that abortion doesn't qualify as a Ninth Amendment right, but the so-called "Strict Constructionist" movement argues that we shouldn't recognize any rights that aren't explicitly enumerated in the Constitution. In effect they are arguing for nullification of the Ninth Amendment. In their zeal to outlaw abortion at all costs, the Strict Constructionists are wielding a sledgehammer that jeopardizes a broad range of rights that are supposed to be retained by the citizenry. We have justices who espouse this philosophy already sitting on the Supreme Court. I don't see how someone can claim to defend the Constitution out of one side of their mouth while condemning the Ninth Amendment out of the other side.

WriConsult, nice post.


It might be one thing to argue that abortion doesn't qualify as a Ninth Amendment right, but the so-called "Strict Constructionist" movement argues that we shouldn't recognize any rights that aren't explicitly enumerated in the Constitution. In effect they are arguing for nullification of the Ninth Amendment.

Indeed. Robert Bork has called the ninth amendmend an "inkblot".....meaning that because the un-enumerated rights provision could conceivably be applied anywhere and everywhere, it is therefore opaque enough to be disregarded entirely..............to be treated as if an inkblot were spilled over the text itself.

Somewhat ironic for a textual originalist.

I try to avoid social issues, but The Declaration of Independance states the right of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"...considering the numerious policies that have gone bad, I have no faith in the government defining where life begins and ends.

WriConsult, nice post.



Indeed. Robert Bork has called the ninth amendmend an "inkblot".....meaning that because the un-enumerated rights provision could conceivably be applied anywhere and everywhere, it is therefore opaque enough to be disregarded entirely..............to be treated as if an inkblot were spilled over the text itself.

Somewhat ironic for a textual originalist.

I don't know if I agree with Bork or not, I take the the 9th to mean "If the right hasn't been taken by law you still have it". The fed constitution started as a simple limit to fed power, not a granting of rights, and the 9th simply states that. The right to bear arms was given in the 2nd on a federal level, but from the 10th, any state can make gun laws, but the feds can't. Until the 14th and then after quite awhile the constitution meant nothing except to limit the feds, each state had a constitution that had similar amendments but no direct tie to the Fed limits. Some say the 14th made the Feds supercede the states, but few that signed 14th would have agreed.

Since the constitution has been totally distorted using the 14th in context Bork may be right, the 9th means nothing, and apparently you can add the 10th as well.

I try to avoid social issues, but The Declaration of Independance states the right of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"...considering the numerious policies that have gone bad, I have no faith in the government defining where life begins and ends.

Clearly the framers had no interst in controlling at a federal level what we injest.

Clearly the framers had no interst in controlling at a federal level what we injest.I hope this is not an invite in discussion of abortion and euthanisia? For the record, I favor neither. I hold no illusions that I'm going to change minds on those two issues, but hope no one thinks they are going to change my convictions either.

I was hoping to have a break from such hot topics now thet the election is over - let's move on

I hope this is not an invite in discussion of abortion and euthanisia? For the record, I favor neither. I hold no illusions that I'm going to change minds on those two issues, but hope no one thinks they are going to change my convictions either.

I was hoping to have a break from such hot topics now thet the election is over - let's move on

I was thinking federal drug laws, but federal euthansia and abortion controls would apply. The fed/supreme court never interfered with state abortions rights but has stepped in on state drug and euthanasia rights presumably using the 14th but not the 9th or 10th. Where in the constitution does the fed have are right to ignore a state allowing medical marijuana?

I'm interested in a constitutional discussion.

I'm relieved this was not a the start of a for/against, but again, I hope we can move on and stick to the thread's them American politics can be irrational.

I'm a dem, voted Obama, but am opposed to a automobile bailout. I actually like the Republican form of government - keep government small, and local if possible! However to be a Democrat or a Republican has become more about the issues and less about how government is managed. I'm very much on the democrat side when it comes to most issues (this one's an exception) which is why I voted the way I did.