Canada and U.S. now own GM.

Government Motors.

I’ll sell you my share.

Good now I dont haveto make my next payment if we own it :stuck_out_tongue:

$50 billion to save 19,000 jobs. Anyone have a calculator?

$2,631,579 per job saved.:frowning:

When do we get our company cars?

They can have my job for half of that. :wink:

Goodbye, GM
by Michael Moore

June 1, 2009

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM’s birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented “planned obsolescence” – the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one – has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh – and that wouldn’t start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the “inferior” Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to “improve” the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company’s body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with – dare I say it – joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know – who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let’s be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we’ve allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is “reorganized” by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made “Roger & Me,” I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

  1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war – a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call “cars” may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn’t give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true – that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

  1. Don’t put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce – and most of those who have been laid off – employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

  2. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades – and we don’t even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven’t used it, is criminal. Let’s hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

  3. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

  4. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

  5. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we’re going to have automobiles, let’s have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories – that simply isn’t true).

  6. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

  7. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.

  8. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that’s a start. Please, please, please don’t save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don’t throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.

100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front – and the back – seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it’s over. It’s a new day and a new century. The President – and the UAW – must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.

So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

Yours,
Michael Moore

What can be said but that Michale Moore is a Socialist Utopian with a very poor understanding of capitalism and freedom.

Did any of his points make sense to anyone here?

He is full of s**t. and apparently never saw my 1990 Olds Cutlass that gave me 650,000 trouble free Km. of driving and would routinely deliver 42MPG ( Imperial Gallons).
The truth is that the General makes some really good cars and trucks and that the company has fallen victim to the rapacious unions and their life long health care plans. Hopefully after chapter 11 the General can turn things around . . . as long as they don’t have to produce Obamobiles of course.

[FONT=Verdana]Canada owns 12% and US owns 60% that leaves 28%. GM refused to build cars and trucks that people wanted to buy.
The way I see it when California passed laws requiring more efficient car GM went to the Federal government and had those laws declared unconstitutional. So the people said “Fine there is no law that says I have to buy your cars so I will not”. Now the Bloody Government has overruled the people and given our money to GM when we decided not to. Now we get nothing for our tax dollars. Every time the government bails a broke mismanaged company out, the company usually goes broke anyway. It just takes longer and costs more.
[/FONT]

Jonathan Glancey
guardian.co.uk,

When and why did General Motors slot into reverse gear? How did this weather vane of the US economy become a car crash of a corporation? Debates will doubtless rage for years to come. The immediate cause, or one of them, appears to be the GM’s relatively new-found, and ultimately ill-advised, dependence on SUVs. These pumped-up gas-guzzlers have been driving on borrowed time ever since they became popular in the early 1990s.

Sales of GM SUVs fell by 30% last year as fuel prices rose; they had been the most profitable cars in the corporation’s global line-up. From 1931 to 2007, GM had been the automotive industry’s global leader, a five-star general; today, bankrupt, it is about to be bailed out by the Federal government with a little help from the Canadians.

Although GM did begin investing in small, or smaller, cars in the US at much the same time as SUVs hit the big time, they have never been as attractive as the Japanese opposition. Well, would you choose a GM Saturn over a Toyota or Honda? Somehow, it’s hard not to feel that GM’s designers have never really had their heart in the idea of truly compact cars. When we think of the glory days of GM, it’s the big, fast and magnificently flashy muscle cars of the 50s and 60s that still roar to mind with the burbling sound of mighty V8 engines throbbing in our ears, and tyre-screeching films starring Steve McQueen in our eyes.

Think of great GM design, and think of Bill Mitchell’s sensational, shark-like 1963 Corvette Stingray, or his peerless 1963 Buick Riviera. Mitchell’s predecessor at head of styling at GM was the legendary Harley Earl, who gave us concept cars, like the 1958 Firebird III, that spoke of the space age, and the outrageously finned Chevrolets and Cadillacs of the late 50s. Elvis Presley and senior Soviet apparatchiks loved them. Even Che Guevara drove, badly, around revolutionary Cuba in a metallic green Harley Earl Chevy. Clearly what was good for General Motors was not necessarily good for the US.

GM’s current range, with the exception of glamorous, if questionable, sports cars like the latest Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, make glum viewing. Enormous SUVs and tank-like vehicles like the Hummer compete for showroom space with banal, small sedans. Some of the bigger “light trucks” and SUVs, like the Chevrolet HHR, look as if they have been inflated with tyre pumps and injected with large quantities of lard. Nearly all these machines look as if they could lose weight. They have truly become too big for anyone’s, including GM’s, good.

While some of us will still glance admiringly, or pop-eyed, at a 1930 V16 Cadillac, a Bill Mitchell Buick Riviera or a Harley Earl Chevrolet Impala, a leaner, cleaner GM can, ultimately, only ever be good for all of us.

While GM has made numerous bad business decisions blaming the SUV is self serving for someone who lives in country(U.K) that taxes the snot out of gasoline so than no one can afford to drive one.

GM would still be whole if the US had bothered to drill for the oil on our own territory.

I blame the politicians, the environmentalists, the GM management and the unions in about that order for it’s demise.

As a share holder in GM,I am waiting for my Cadillac to be delivered to my driveway,of course I must be dreaming as for the next,who knows how many years GM will have there hands in tax payers pockets
Harry

Why? Because the politicians did not force GM to build efficient cars that did not need continuous maintenance.

Why? Because the environmentalists wanted clean air to breath.

Why? Because GM refused to build efficient and reliable cars that the other manufacturers were building and people were buying istead.

Why? The employees are the victims in this mess. Very convenient to blame the victim isn’t it.

The employees negotiated unsustainable and uncompetitive contracts and the management was dumb enough to let them get away with it.

Short sighted thinking on both their parts and now the Fed has chosen to bail them out and screw the bond holders in the process.

Excuse me if I think that bad decisions should be paid for by those who made them.:shock:

Why not blame the guys with the highest salaries of all? :cool::cool::cool::cool::cool:

Why? Because the politicians did not force GM to build efficient cars that did not need continuous maintenance. POLITICIANS FORCED THE AUTO INDUSTRY IN RUSSIA TO BUILD CARS TOO. LET’S COUNT OUR LUCKY STARS.

Why? Because the environmentalists wanted clean air to breath. ALL VEHICLES MUST CONFORM TO THE SAME ENVIRONMENTAL STANDARDS NOT JUST THE JAPANESE. THIS IS A NON SQUIRTER.

Why? Because GM refused to build efficient and reliable cars that the other manufacturers were building and people were buying istead. G.M. BUILDS NUMEROUS MODELS THAT GET ‘GOOD MILEAGE’ THE PROBLEM IS THAT THEY ARE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS MORE THAN THE COMPETITION. IT COSTS TOYOTA $37 / HR TO BUILD A CAR, IT COST G.M. $68. SEE THE PROBLEM?

Why? The employees are the victims in this mess. Very convenient to blame the victim isn’t it. THE EMPLOYEES ARE THE ‘VICTIMS’ OF THE GREED AND AVARICE OF THEIR OWN UNIONS AND THE STUPIDITY OF THE MANAGEMENT OF THE BIG THREE WHO THOUGHT THAT THEY COULD SIGN CONFISCATORY CONTRACTS AND HEALTH CARE DEALS AND NEVER PAY THE PIPER.

I say let GM and any other incompetent auto makers go down. The void will be filled by a more competent auto maker, such as BMW, Audi, VW and Mercedes. I have the exact thoughts when it comes to airlines BTW. I’m well aware of the impact it will have on the families involved and our economy in the short term but I feel it is time for a change, a more positive change for the betterment of the industry.
Our respective Governments should be ashamed of themselves for sailing on a ship that was destined to sink.

If Volkswagen, BMW, Audi or Mercedes had to conduct business under these conditions they would be on that same sinking boat.