Morton Kondrake, on the Obama’s Friday presser:

Well, look, if you start bailing out the auto companies, who do you not bail out? As Charles [Krauthammer] says, the financial institutions are like a public utility. Now he said that under the industry is the bedrock of the American manufacturing. That may be true, but, nonetheless, there are a lot of other manufacturing companies that will be going under. And what about retail stores and the retail industry? They’re going under, too. I don’t see why you can’t let General Motors go bankrupt. It’s not going to cease to exist. There will still be a General Motors. It would be reorganized. There would be better management, presumably. They could get rid of some of their debt, maybe loosen up on their labor contracts, and so on.

His comments are on the mark. What purpose is served by giving taxpayer money to auto companies? This would send an unmistakable signal to all of failing corporate America that anyone can line up for handouts at the new White House. No mistake is too great, no mismanagement is too severe, no ridiculous labor arrangement is too unrealistic to prevent gorging at the public trough.

Surely some coalition of fiscal conservatives, Blue Dog Democrats, liberal Democrats (don’t they hate corporate welfare?), and environmentalists (why are we spending taxpayer money on cars instead of new energy technology?) could be formed on this issue. It could prevent an arrangement by which the taxpayers subsidize horrid management. That would certainly be reaching across the aisle for the public good.