Lex's 5 step bailout plan

After ducking shoes over the weekend, President Bush gets back to his truly important presidential duties this week. Deciding who to bomb? No that’s child’s play. President Bush must decide who to bailout next. Of course, we all knew it would come to this.

Bailouts beget bailouts. Even kids know that. If you can’t draw a single customer selling lemonade for nickel a cup, you’ll have the neighborhood lined up around the block if you give it away. Businessmen know that sales are just another form of the giveaway. People who wouldn’t walk by a Neimen Markus (aka Needless Markup), are suddenly drawn in by a three letter word S-A-L-E. Just a bit of Joe Biden humor there.

So President Bush will soon decide on the nature of the auto bailout. P-E Obama is talking about appointing an auto Tsar. Paul Volker’s name has been dropped to serve as the auto Tsar. I’m sure he’s nice guy, but what the hell does he know about building cars? Seems to me we’re always making the same mistakes. When something positively needs to be done, the US government goes out and appoints a "Tsar" who doesn't know the first thing about what it is he's Tsaring to run it. Besides did the Tsar thing really work out all that well for the Russian people? Instead of a Tsar, maybe we ought to be appointing competent managers.

Here’s what needs to be done if the taxpayer is going to bailout automakers:

Step one: Appoint a competent manger. Maybe Mitt Romney ought to oversee the US auto bailout. At least he has some experience in MI and with automakers. If not Mitt how about Jack Welsh? Welsh got things done at GE. What we don’t need is a business as usual Washington insider.

Step two: Restrict compensation for auto and UNION execs to two-and-half-times the highest hourly wage of employees. Hey, if we’re headed down the socialist road, might as well go all the way. We hear a lot about the auto execs “compensation packages.” We need to make sure the union chiefs are restricted as well.

Step three: No more “jobs banks.” If 15,000 union workers are going to be paid to sit on their butts, the pay will come from union funds. Let’s see how long the rank and file will put up with that arrangement.

Step four: Any US taxpayer who buys a big three auto in 09 gets a $2,000 tax break. Yeah, it’s a bit protectionist. But there is no reason the taxpayers who are paying the bill ought not benefit from the bailout as well.

Step five: Ensure a reliable, reasonably priced and abundant source of fuel to power the cars. An uncertain energy policy is hurting car makers by making buyers skeptical about buying. Let’s face facts here, a long haul car capable of seating a family of four or five isn’t going to run on wind, solar or even batteries in what’s left of Lex’s lifetime. Let’s make sure there is fuel to put into these beautiful cars we're going to be building to make them go. If we don’t do that, we might as well waste the bailout money on a nationwide light rail system.