Team Obama’s Ecopocrisy (and folly).

We’ve already seen that the Obama administration plans to offset massive domestic spending in the same way Bill Clinton did — by slashing the defense budget. And that’s already been established as understandable for Clinton, given the end of the Cold War, but irresponsible for Obama, given the multitude of post-Cold War threats that abound.

But what’s really amazing is the galling hypocrisy of bailing out the failing automobile industry — and hence the United Auto Workers — while simultaneously slashing orders for the F-22 or C-7 programs. In other words, team Obama has no qualms with thousands or even tens of thousands of defense workers laid off, while ensuring the same can’t be said of the UAW. Artificially stimulating the economy apparently doesn’t apply to national defense. Iranian mullahs, North Korean tinpots, and Somali pirates for that matter, must be sleeping a little better tonight.

Now we have the government picking and choosing winners and losers in a market economy. ‘It’s not the UAW’s fault’ says Obama. So they’re winners.

Who are the losers? That would be the consumers, of course.

Obama’s auto-industry task force identified an overreliance on trucks and vans as a fundamental weakness that must be addressed if Chrysler is to survive, which is why an alliance with Fiat is so appealing.

A curious finding by the Obama administration, considering that 11 of GM’s 20 most-profitable vehicles are in fact trucks and SUVs. Meanwhile, as George Will noted earlier this week, hybrid sales have hit rock bottom.