I won't spend much time pontificating on this, just cut and paste Peter Karmanos, Jr., letter to Senator Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, regarding Shelby's hypocrisy on the auto industry loan.
A taste from his letter;
"The intent of this letter, however, is not to take you to task for the inaccuracy of your comments or for the over-simplicity of your views, but rather to point out the hypocrisy of your position as it relates to Alabama’s (the state for which you have served as senator since 1987) recent history of providing subsidies to manufacturing. During the segment on Meet the Press, you stated that:
We don’t need government—governmental subsidies for manufacturing in this country. It’s the French model, it’s the wrong road. We will pay for it. The average American tax payer is going to pay dearly for this, if I’m not wrong."
Karmanos points out the following hypocrisy of Shelby's grandstanding;
Alabama offered $253 million incentive package to Mercedes Benz
Alabama offered to train the workers, clear and improve the site and upgrade utilities
Alabama agreed to purchase 2,500 Mercedes Benz vehicles
Alabama gave Mercedes Benz a piece of land worth between $250-300 million.
This was all done in the early 1990's while Shelby was a US Senator from Alabama (since 1987).
More of the letter:
"With all due respect, Senator, where was your outrage when all this was going on? Perhaps on principal you did disagree with your colleagues in the Alabama State Government over these subsidies, but I don’t recall you ever going out and publicly decrying Alabama’s subsidization strategy. I certainly don’t recall you going in front of the nation (as you did this past Sunday) to discuss what a big mistake Alabama was making in providing subsidies to Mercedes Benz. If you had, however, you could have talked about how, applying free market principles, Alabama shouldn’t have had to resort to subsidies to land Mercedes Benz.
Competitively speaking, if Alabama had been the strongest candidate under consideration (i.e. highest quality infrastructure, workforce, research and development facilities, business climate, etc.), then subsidies shouldn’t have been required."
Link to this letter here;
http://www.uaw.org/...
However, Karmanos is no friend of unions as shown in this article here;
http://www.detnews.com/...
I don't know what happened that would make him change his mind with the exception if the Big 3 fail, there might not be a Compuware.
Yet, Shelby's stance is clear--if money can help keep the UAW afloat, HELL NO. But, if it is to put money into a situation which probably will not support the union (and his state)--HELL YES.