auto bailout

For Detroit’s automakers, the bad news just got worse. Just hours after Chrysler announced a request for $5 billion more in federal help to prevent bankruptcy, General Motors indicated it might need as much as $16.6 billion more. Combined, the two companies have already received $17.4 billion in emergency loans since December.
From The Associated Press:

Spencer sends over the story that General Motors has tried to keep quiet.
Following Sunday’s Super Bowl, the automaker — keeping with a marketing tradition — awarded the game’s MVP with the car of his choice. Santonio Holmes, the Steelers wide-out who caught the game’s winning touchdown, chose a Cadillac Hybrid Platinum. Price tag: $85,200.
Why we [...]

In his fifth press conference in as many days this week, President-elect Obama completed his cabinet appointments, tapping Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) as secretary of labor and Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) as secretary of transportation. He also named former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk as the U.S. trade representative, a cabinet-level post, and selected Karen Mills [...]

When Senate Republicans last week killed a $14-billion bailout of Detroit’s sputtering automakers, they reduced the debate to what they consider its essence: the power of organized labor.

The news coverage today is all about how the greedy auto workers and their unions refused to accept the oh-so-reasonable compromise proposed by Senate Republicans that would require them to quickly drop their wages and benefits to match those of foreign-owned plants.
But none of the mainstream news coverage I’ve seen – whether in the New [...]

The argument goes, if it costs more to drive, car-shoppers will opt for more efficient cars, giving the Big Three incentive to build them.

As Congress and the White House wrangle over the conditions of a possible Detroit bailout, many Democrats want the conditional guarantee that, in return for the cash, the Big Three will drop lawsuits against California and more than a dozen other states that want to tighten tailpipe emission standards — a provision opposed by the [...]

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) offers a new angle today on the Detroit bailout, saying that he’ll support the plan only if the automakers stop trying to kill states’ efforts to tighten emission standards.
California has famously applied for an Environmental Protection Agency waiver forcing emission reductions of 30 percent by 2016. But the automakers claim the [...]

It needs no mention that the current White House has been among the most unilateral-minded administration’s in the country’s history. Indeed, President George W. Bush has bucked Congress on a long list of high-profile legislative proposals — everything from the farm bill to SCHIP — while also asserting his right to ignore certain laws already [...]