Lady or the Tiger

November 19, 2008

The domestic automakers have pandered to our lust for motorized monstrosities and they now want to get bailed out. Chrysler CEO, Charles Nardell, said before the Congressional Committee: "We chased the consumer demand." That means Chrysler tried to respond to what the buyers wanted and the people wanted to buy prestigious gas-guzzlers.
Many folks, of course, wondered about our dependence on foreign oil and the possibility of using up that resource and the damage we were doing to the environment. Chrysler moved very slowly in response to those thoughts. Now, it comes to "fix blame or move on" time. The public wants a scape-goat less than it wants to save all those jobs. The Congress has an opportunity now to do what's good for the country. O'Bama has stepped up to the plate and offered a very reasonable compromise: subsidized bankruptcies that will change the way the Big-3 do business. Hooray for O'Bama!

and, on another confidence-building note .....

PSU is launching a project to use the whole City of Portland, Oregon, as a research ground to study environmental sustainability.