Could the Right Wing Media Finally Have it Right?

Granted, when the right wing, especially lunatics such as Hugh Hewitt threaten to do anything, it's all too easy to automatically dismiss them for being on the wrong side. After all, if they were consistently on the right side of issues they wouldn't be a fragmented minority almost surely doomed to get even smaller by next year's midterms.

However, the GM bailout isn't about party lines and dismissing the conservative media's anti-nationalization position on the matter automatically puts their opponents in the uncomfortable position of defending their own indefensible positions: Why would you continue buying vehicles from a company that made the beastly, gas-sucking Hummer? Why should we have bailed out a major automaker that had wound up putting thousands of assembly line workers and dealers out of work, anyway? Why would you want to subsidize a corporation that took the easy way out by filing for bankruptcy and was given permission by the Obama administration to replace the employee pension plan with next to worthless company stock (and in violation of federal law)?

It could be the conservative media's position is rooted in typical ignorance and "the sky is falling" alarmism but their tack could very well be the right one to take and perhaps even liberals and Green voters on the other side of the political spectrum may join in this proposed boycott.

Perhaps it's too early to tell since the Bush-era bailouts went into effect but the forming consensus is that bailouts do not work for several reasons: We have bailed out insurance giants like AIG and they paid out over $200,000,000 in bonuses after getting a whopping $180 billion and spent $440,000 on a retreat and was about to do the same thing until someone blew the whistle.

We've given out billions more to failing banks that then sat on the money like a territorial leprechaun sitting atop a pot of gold and refused to make loans even to qualified homeowners, even when it was apparent that much of the reason for the bank bailouts was to free up equity and other forms of liquidity for John Q. Homeowner.

And the TARP extension to the major automakers has only resulted in bankruptcy, federal receivorship, worthless employee pension funds and tens of thousands of automakers and dealers out of work.

Bailouts, plain and simple, do not help homeowners keep their houses any more than they help factory workers and car dealers keep their jobs.

So perhaps the progressive Buy American! mantra has a lot less punch these days and ought to take a back seat to what the right wing media is proposing: Teaching these corrupt, remorselessly greedy execuphiles not only in GM but in every corporation that the American people are fed up with their irresponsible arrogance and incompetence and that we ultimately have the power to put them out of business.