They hate America first: The 'Taint' in the Toyota probe
So far this is still out on the margins - I haven't heard it from Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, or Rush Limbaugh.
The Washington Examiner editorializes:
The other conflict of interest is with the government's major partner in GM ownership, the United Auto Workers union. Aside from the fact Toyota has for decades successfully resisted UAW attempts to organize the Japanese automaker's U.S. work force, the UAW is among the most powerful special interests doling out campaign contributions to congressmen sitting in judgment of the stricken car company on two key House panels. Nineteen of 36 Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee cashed sizable UAW campaign contribution checks to their 2010 re-election campaigns, including the present and immediate past chairmen, Henry Waxman and John Dingell. Similarly, 12 of 25 Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee got such checks. Are Democrats who have long claimed that money corrupts politics now so brazen as to claim they are exempt from such special interests influences?
Instapundit linked to that, as well as other articles of that ilk. He forgot to mention just then that he writes for the Washington Examiner, but he's not really hiding it, he touts his own articles elsewhere.
The interesting thing is, we don't hear any complaining from Toyota. Japan has made their auto industry a national priority, and makes no bones about it. Toyota may have negotiated big tax breaks from Arizona, but at least they haven't been whining. Good for them. They are probably quite embarrassed at the excesses to which the politicans they support have gone.
We need to do what the Japanese have done - make our auto industry a national priority. Already there are conservatives saying they would not buy a bailoutmobile, even if they liked the car and price. While American companies outsource too, we need to start calculating the American jobs created per car - and fight for them. Toyota is honest enough about the percentage of their parts that are imported to the USA.
I'm sure some misguided soul looking for the Kausfiles is ready to call me a protectionist, if not a socialist. Yet China is explicit - they will only revalue the Yuan to the the extend it does not harm their expanding export industry. This is not free trade - and they are getting ready to sell us cars in a few years.
It's not even in the long term interests of the Chinese government to buy dollars to maintain an artificial exchange rate, distorting interest rates as they reinvest those dollars until at last the bubble collapses. I'm not sure if we still have time to prevent that, but we do need to try - and even if the worst happens, we will need to start valuing our industry to rebuild.
Republicans are eager to accuse the Democrats of heedlessly wasting taxpayer money in every way except one - they insist the government is more interested in turning a profit on its GM stock than in helping American workers. But we already have a trade deficit, and losing the auto industry might be not a straw but a whole bale on the camel's back.
We should avoid direct subsidies to the auto industry as much as we can - that doesn't seem to be how Japan and China do it where they are most successful. But we need to start by agreeing it is a national priority, except possibly to a certain Senator from Arizona.