If you would like to look at farm subsidy abuse go to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/interactives/farmaid/

I don’t like it but think the Big-3 need the bail out.  I’m as free-market as anyone but our country has gone past that.  We cannot afford the HUGE impact to the manufacturing sector or the entitlement claims of the unemployed.  I would like to see the bail out be accompanied with a robust strategy for fueling infrastructure upgrade and the Big-3 must transition to “green” technology.  Talk about creating jobs!  Wow, we’d need project leads, contractors, engineers, designers, assemblers, etc, etc.  Then we could export our technology and products around the world.  It could be as exciting as landing on the moon.

If we’re going to bail out transportation, why not get our train transport back on top of it’s game?  That helps the infrastructure in so many ways, not the least of which is to save lives by getting a lot of trucks off the highways. 

The Big 3, and their big unions, have taken themselves to their own demise by not listening when consumers say we want energy efficiency at affordable prices.  As long as we are paying people not to work, because that’s what deal the union cut for them, we can’t be surprised that the product that is produced is not affordable to the rest of us (workers).

If you want to put trucks on trains you really need to to talk to the railroad nobody seems to realise the railroad is private and the interstate is public I think norfolk-southern may have something to say before the government or anybody else desides to take the trucks off the road and put them on rail.

Crash of US carmakers risks three million jobs

‘The immediate shock to the economy would be felt well beyond the Detroit companies, negatively impacting the US operations of international manufacturers and suppliers as well. Nearly three million jobs would be lost in the first year if there was a 100 per cent reduction in Big Three US operations,‘ Cole said.

Regarding the railroad, I’ve been seeing pretty heavy commercials lately from railroads promoting the transport of shipping containers via rail instead of truck. One of the commercials showed traffic backed up on the interstate, with lots of trucks and cars intermingled.  Then it showed a railroad running along side the interstate, and it will full of shipping containers (of the same color of what the trucks were hauling on the interstate in the previous shot), and of course traffic on the interstate, which was reduced to only cars, was flowing normally.

Yes, our rail system is ancient as is our auto industry.  In many ways, the Big 3 did it to themselves.  And the UAW…what a joke.  They have no clue what it takes to run a business and I don’t think they care as long as they get their dues.  There are two sides of profit; revenue and cost.  The UAW has ensured costs to manufacture stay high.  Didn’t a pilot’s union recently accept a pay cut to help out struggling airlines?