Time For a Political Sit Down

I have said it before and I will repeat it until it happens. The Republican Party at the state and national level needs to sit down with at least some sectors of organized labor and corporate America to save our industrial sector.

Left wing Democrats are the enemy of business and industrial labor. Nothing makes this more clear than this year's "war on coal." Seventy-nine revoked permits that were pending and one of a mine operating for two years show West Virginia that Obama hates this state and teh coal industry in general. I doubt that other traditional industrial workers are seeing any love from the federal government until they are laid off.

Cap and trade and regulatory warfare will kill off this country's industrial sector. Labor and corporate America both lose in this struggle to deindustrialize the United States. It is time for the Republican Party to address this issue with everyone concerned.

At least sit down and talk with unions like the UMWA whose rank and file have started changing their registrations anyway. Find out how the two sides can work to bring back American industry. labor needs to open itself up to the realities of competitive advantage while we need to examine the fact that this country can no longer look the other way when competing nations do not adhere to accepted fair trade practices.

The very notion of a GOP/labor reconciliation will terrify the left. They take labor for granted in the same way as they ignore minorities. It's time to make this happen.

Horse Drawn Wagons and Newspapers

A paper commissioned by the Columbia University Journalism School basically says the government should step in to save the newspapers across the county. One of the nations largest newspapers, The New York Times, recently announced it is laying off additional workers as its market share contracts adding fuel to the fire that the print media needs saving. My questions; Why?

In 1900 when the automobile industry was beginning to grow I wonder if there was talk of saving the horse drawn wagon industry? After all the horse drawn wagon industry was an important part of the transportation industry and had been for many years. The horse drawn wagon manufacturers in 1900 and the Newspaper producers today are in the same position. They are in an industry that is in transition.

In 1900 the transportation industry did not go away. It evolved into motorized transport. Some of those companies that saw the change coming evolved. Consider Studebaker. Studebaker had been around since the Civil War building wagons for the US Military and at the turn of the 20th Century they realized they were not in the business of making wagons, but in the business of providing transportation products. The survived for nearly another 70 year by switching to building cars and trucks. They successfully made the transition from horse and buggy to automobiles to survive much longer than their contemporaries.

The newspaper industry is the modern horse drawn wagon industry. It does not need a bailout from the government, in fact no industry does. The first thing the newspaper industry needs to do it realize they are not in the newspaper business, they are in the news information business. Perhaps the New York Times and the Washington Post may not survive, but that is OK because somebody will take their place.

While Studebaker made the transition at the turn of the 20th Century, we also saw the rise of the replacement transportation companies like Dodge, Ford and Chevrolet. As we transition into the 21st Century we are already seeing the replacement for the newspapers in publications like The Drudge Report, Breitbart and Bloomberg.

The newspapers do not need a bailout, they need to die a natural death. In a few years a newspaper will be about as useful to a modern world as a horse drawn wagon built in a government subsidized factory.

This Could Help Car and Truck Sales

I Feel Better About Helping Automakers Than Banks

Call me crazy on this, but I do not feel the same anxiety about helping the Big Three that I did about the banks.

I supported the bank bailout because, well, we kind of had to. Banks are the engine of the economy and we all have a vested interest in seeing them survive. Without solid banking in the US, the world hits depression quickly. I believed it had to be done, but I did not have to like it.

The automakers are kind of a different story. Basically they followed the rules. The market wanted larger vehicles and that's what the Big Three gave them. The unions wanted strong salary and benefit deals and for the most part harmony has been maintained with them. You have to give credit to an industry that keeps good labor relations, satisfies the market, and turns a slim profit every once in awhile. Sure they do make some bad decisions, but they work on a much more slim profit margin than almost anyone else.

Fact is that this is a national security issue as well as an economic one. We need to remember that during wartime, we will need these factories to churn out tanks rather than automobiles. Of course we have seen jobs being sent to Mexico over the past decade, but perhaps we can reverse that.

Instead of a bailout, let us increase the number and call it something else. Call it a reinvestment. Instead of giving them enough to help them get by, let's set them up for the future. To stay in the United States, auto plants must completely modernize in the same fashion as the coal industry. How much will it take to get these operations into the twenty-first century while giving the UAW enough to make sure that these workers have a soft place to land, or can retrain? This would not only help automakers, but also invigorate our technology sector.

In return, for the next ten years, each American who can prove they paid taxes in 2009 should get a $200 rebate when they purchase a new vehicle from the Big Three. This would be a one time rebate. The federal government should also be able to count on very good deals from automakers providing vehicles in that same time span.

I just don't think that we can allow automakers to just go down the tubes. It doesn't make sense on a number of levels.