On Thursday, General Motors and Ford found out that Standard & Poor’s, one of the major bond rating services, had downgraded their debt to junk. GM suffered the additional indignity of not even being deemed the highest quality junk.
Gosh, the two biggest automakers are not considered a good financial risk anymore? How could that be?
The two largest carmakers in the United States have been hurt by increased competition and by their own costs, which are bloated in part by the need to pay for the health care of retired workers.
But God-forbid we have any sort of government-sponsored, single-payer, universal health care coverage in America! Why, that would be socialized medicine!
(You know, I think it just might be big corporate America that finally brings about universal health care. They’re going to look at those health cost bottom lines and say, “Hey, since when did we get in the business of protecting people? Isn’t that why we have a government? We here to make cars for gawdsakes!”)
Rising oil prices may finally be putting a dent in American demand for sport utility vehicles, which have been a solid profit center for the automakers.
American automakers have bet the farm on big, luxury, gas-guzzling fuckyoumobiles, and meanwhile, sales of hybrid vehicles are up and Toyota and Nissan and Honda are making a killing on small, gas-sipping light trucks and passenger cars. Gosh, if only we had a comparative analogue in recent American history from which we could have learned an important lesson (paging late 1970’s gas lines, you have a call on the white irony phone…)
But, no, we have a Texas oilman in the White House. So it’s still huge tax breaks for buying automotive monstrosities, no budging whatsoever on the minimum MPG requirements for American vehicles, lip-service toward alternative sources of energy (that are produced by burning coal!), and hey, let’s dig up ANWR so Japan can have a few barrels ten years from now.
Now in the interest of full disclosure, I am one of those driving a big gas-guzzling fuckyoumobile; a 12 MPG 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee to be exact. I offer sincere apologies; I felt I needed a big rig to haul my large PA speakers and bass amplifiers for gigs. And I try to do my part by walking to work and the grocery store and riding my bike, the bus, and the light rail system here in Portland whenever possible. I estimate my monthly gas bill to be about equal to someone driving a decent-fuel-economy passenger car on a 45-minute commute five days a week. My Jeep is driven two days a week, tops.
And I hold no grudge to SUV owners, necessarily, like I hold no grudge against Wal-Mart shoppers. That is, if Wal-Mart is the only place you can afford to shop and the SUV is the only vehicle you can drive that fits your needs (like if you’re a mother of eight; what are you supposed to do, put four kids in the trunk of your Prius?) My grudge is against the big corporations and the government that could do something to alleviate the situation, but do not. The government could raise CAFE standards by a couple of MPG, but they do not. They could offer tax incentives for gas-friendly vehicles instead of SUV’s, but they don’t. Ford & GM could advertise their hybrids more aggressively, but they have the American Idol kids singing about SUV’s instead.
Still, when the paper is paid off on the Jeep, it is getting traded in for a deisel van and converted to biodiesel. You do know that the diesel engine was first invented to run on cannabis hempseed oil, don’t you? Rudolph Diesel found it to be the most useful and plentiful natural oil to be found. Imagine – American vehicles running on biodiesel from American-grown hempseed. No more kow-towing to the Saudi Royal Family. No more wars for oil.
(Hmm, universal health care, dismantling the oil industry, and legalized hemp all in one post? What sort of commie-pinko leftist site am I running here? Why do I hate America so much?)
