Who Deserves the Punishment?

Moore: Automakers never listened to workers, consumers

On my Facebook page yesterday (between watching woot.com with a hawk's eye during the woot-off), I posted this link about was absolutely incensed at the Big Three CEOs. In the time of their "crisis," they flew private jets - separate jets - to beg the government for a bailout. One man in the article compared it to walking into a soup kitchen in a tux. They didn't bother to fly first class, or jet-pool, or even fly like the rest of us peons do.

So, there's the article about that. And then I found Michael Moore's interview with Larry King on the Big Three and his feelings on a bailout. His feelings are mixed - his father worked for GM for nearly four decades, and he watched Flint, Michigan (where auto jobs are in high demand) descend into darkness as GM laid workers off for the past several years. He says the big decision-makers, the CEOs, the high brass should be the ones to pay for this, but not the workers who will lose their jobs if the government doesn't bail them out.

Usually, when I hear Moore talk, I hear bits and pieces; he's not my favorite guy. But then something he said perked up my ears. A lot.

When Roosevelt came in and when World War II faced the country, Roosevelt said to General Motors and Ford, you're not going to build cars anymore. You're going to build airplanes and tanks and guns and the things that we need for this war because we have a national crisis. General Motors had to do what Roosevelt told them they had to do... President-Elect Obama has to say to them, yes, we're going to use this money to save these jobs, but we're not going to build these gas-guzzling, unsafe vehicles any longer. We're going to put the companies into some sort of receivership and we, the government, are going to hold the reigns on these companies. They're to build mass transit. They're to build hybrid cars. They're to build cars that use little or no gasoline.

Can you imagine? I think Barack Obama would be a brilliant man to decide to put the Big Three to work for the betterment of this country. If you want money, then build something that is going to help everyone in the long run. Start hiring smart people to create hybrids. Help boost our train system, improve our subways, and take after Europe with encourage people to leave their cars at home in the big cities and start walking and taking public transit.

No doubt that between the carmakers and the women of WWII that this country actually had to work together during a time of such utter darkness, watching the atrocities overseas and the death toll rise, this country ended up doing something better for the greater good. Have the Big Three gotten too selfish? I think so. They think about the bottom line, for the company, and only care about swelling those numbers to keep their investors happy and their pocketbooks full.

This country is at war, no matter how you look at it. Compared to past wars this country has been involved in, the death toll is so much lower, but the enemy is invisible. They have no organization and are scattered in bits and pieces, like an IED after it explodes. We will never find all the pieces to put away the enemy, but damn it, doesn't our military need the brains and the brawn and the workshops of the American people to help them build technology to keep them safe and hunt these terrorists out? Isn't there a way that we can redeem the names of American auto companies?

I hope Obama takes a tough line on this when he finally gets to office. Throwing another $25 billion at the auto industry will just result them in running out of money by February instead of Christmastime, and then it's off to bankruptcy court for them anyway.

Edited: After a couple hours of brewing (percolating?) over this, I now wonder how the unions are looking at this. They've been surprisingly quiet. Considering Obama needed their support to get elected, now I wonder if they are worried that if the government doesn't bail out the U.S. automakers, they will have no pull in how they conduct the union. They can force a corporation to give raises and such by asking union members to stage a walk-out, but no worker in their right mind wants that right now; keeping an unskilled job is hard enough these days.

So, unions have lost one of their bargaining chips in asking their members to picket. They are also now at the mercy of the government, watching and waiting. It's pretty sad to see that the unions, while trying to put the power to the little people, is still at the mercy of someone else. Somehow everyone lost on this gamble, and I'm sure that the unions are anxious to see what this means for their members, especially if their members are forced to walk for good.