FDL's Jane Hamsher has an article on Huffington Post (with this title) presenting an angle to the automotive issue I'd never seen before.  Apparently foreign automakers are already incentivized with tax dollars to compete with our own corporations.

[in Alabama] We have Hyundai Motor Company that got $252 million in incentives. Toyota there got $29 million in incentives. Honda, $158 million and Mercedes $253 million in incentives. It just seems odd to us that we can help the financial institutions in this country and that we can offer incentives to our competitors to come here and compete against us but at the same time, we are willing to walk away from an industry that is the backbone of our economy.

I'm really pretty uninformed on the economics of the issue.  But I do know that Japan, Germany, and Korea all routinely finance their automakers - especially R&D.  So essentially, our companies have to spend profits on things competitors receive government funding for.  When you think about it, no wonder they have been innovating. I don't know about Japan, but Korea even has market protection for their vehicles.

What I didn't realize is that our own state governments were also funding these same companies with taxpayer dollars.

An interesting fact offered by a HuffPo commenter: "From 1981 to 2005 Michigan got back $.85 for every dollar in taxes sent to the federal government. Alabama got $1.71 for every dollar sent to the federal government."  Alabama gives around $700 million per year to foreign manufacturers.

I don't know what, if any, bearing this has on the bailout, but I think it's worth asking...Are the decks being stacked against our own automakers?