Some common versions of the Act of Contrition that Catholics say at the end of confession include the line “I will avoid the near occasion of sin.” The idea is that it is wrong to put yourself in a position rife with opportunities and temptations for wrongdoing. Evidence increasingly suggests that the Detroit bailout is just such an occasion of sin
First, there’s the eye-opener in today’s Detroit Free Press, peering inside the Chrysler bailout, concluding, “Not since President Harry S. Truman seized the American steel industry in 1952 has America seen such a bold exercise of federal power over a vital organ of the U.S. economy.” One highlight, a Chrysler executive gets off the phone with car czar Steve Ratner and emails his colleagues, “We need a deal with Fiat today. We were told to pretty much take it.”
Then, following the story of Barney Frank and the GM plant in his district, we got a pledge from Sen. Carl Levin that Michigan’s lawmakers are “going to do what every other representative and member of the Senate will do from these states and districts. There’ll be plenty of jawboning, persuasion.” A.C. Kleinhieder writes that business appears to be losing out to politics, which is bad news for a plantin Spring Hill, Tenn., especially considering Republican Sen. Bob Corker, Tenn., led the opposition to the Detroit bailout.
Congressmen fighting to keep factories alive in their districts is nothing new, of course, but will GM’s and Chrysler’s executives really feel they are at all free to say no when lawmakers lean on them now?
