My take on the auto industry bailout

Like anyone cares about my take, right? I haven't posted much about it, but I'm fully torn on the issue:
Under no circumstances should government money be given to private enterprise unless it is in the form of government contracts that were won under a competitive bidding system. (i.e. if we want to give cash to GM, why don't we have all government agencies drive Chevy Cobalts for a while?)

However, as we learned in the [not so] Great Depression, letting industry collapse is what made what could have been a Pretty Good Depression a Great Depression instead. History teaches, we ought to learn.

One thing, semi-unrelated, that I'd like to point out because I for one was fooled by the propaganda: Your average Big 3 Union employee does NOT, I'll go ahead and repeat, DOES NOT cost around $75 as we've been told by anti union politicians. They only cost that much if you average in the costs of ALL CURRENT AND FORMER employees. In other words: Most of the cost comes from the people that have done their time and retired with a beauty pension all future generations will only read about in history books. The average UAW employee costs $45 per hour. THIS IS ONLY about $5 more per hour than the Toyota Plants down south. THE UNION WAGES ARE NOT THE PROBLEM!!! (Does everyone know that the most verbose opponents of the bailout bill were those senators down south with Toyota plants in their districts? Does everyone realize that the main reason the auto makers bailout bill couldn't pass the senate is because of intense lobbying by Toyota and Honda et al.???? This got SO LITTLE PRESS, its disturbing. I don't like that foreign companies have that much power over our own senate...) Sources for this long and rambling paragraph: Newsweek and NPR. Sorry for not providing links to the stories...

Here's a couple of comics I think sum it up pretty good: