Automotive Bailout v. Automotive Buyout

I've decided that I don't need a degree in economics to weigh in on this subject. Enjoy.

I don't know why there's so much furor over the money lent to the automotive companies. Well, yes I do know. Many of us realize that we're loaning money to support an industry whose product is now obsolete and whose management should be fired for the fraud they've perpetrated on the United States for years. The upper echelon deserves to be fired for its singular determination to create a product that is overpriced and ecologically unsound. We seem to find it easier to blame the unions, though, while at the same time relying on the wages they earned to support the consumerist economy that Wall Street depends on. (Yes, the same Wall Street that took billions of dollars that it cannot and will not account for.) Clearly, continuance, or "business as usual", is not an option.

Furthermore, I totally understand and support the fact that closing down the Big Three would lead to unprecedented unemployment and further financial collapse. There are millions of people who stand ready to build things and who have been harder hit by the economic decession (depression + recession) than almost any area in the country, especially in the manufacturing sector. We need things and they know how to build things. Closure is not an option.

So, from where I sit, it comes down to this: what things do we really need? Well, we need electric cars. We need urban and suburban electric light rail systems. We need wind turbines and solar panel units that incorporate the latest technology that can be deployed THIS YEAR. There are probalby many more things we need that tech-savvy people could identify. And importantly, we need a skilled manufacturing base to provide these goods. Do you see where I'm going?

We HAVE people who know how to build things (and they have manufacturing facilities at the ready). We HAVE a crippling need for transportation and power goods that will once and for all stifle the cash hemorrhage that outflows to the middle east. So why aren't we truly bailing out the workers in the automotive industry by turning the "problem" into an asset? Why aren't we turning those plants around to build the things we need and using the skilled workers who need jobs to do this?

Is there some way to inject common sense into the government?