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GM Must Re-Make the Mass Transit System it Murdered
Bail out General Motors? The people who murdered our mass transit system?
First let them remake what they destroyed.
GM responded to the 1970s gas crisis by handing over the American market to energy-efficient Toyota and Honda.
GM met the rise of the hybrids with "light trucks."
GM built a small electric car, leased a pilot fleet to consumers who loved it, and then forcibly confiscated and trashed them all.
GM now wants to market a $40,000 electric Volt that looks like a cross between a Hummer and a Cadillac and will do nothing to meet the Solartopian needs of a green-powered Earth.
For this alone, GM's managers should never be allowed to make another car, let alone take our tax money to stay in business.
But there is also a trillion-dollar skeleton in GM's closet.
This is the company that murdered our mass transit system.
The assertion comes from Bradford Snell, a government researcher whose definitive report damning GM has been a vehicular lightening rod since its 1974 debut. Its attackers and defenders are legion. But some facts are irrefutable:
In a 1922 memo that will live in infamy, GM President Alfred P. Sloan established a unit aimed at dumping electrified mass transit in favor of gas-burning cars, trucks and buses.
Just one American family in 10 then owned an automobile. Instead, we loved our 44,000 miles of passenger rail routes managed by 1,200 companies employing 300,000 Americans who ran 15 billion annual trips generating an income of $1 billion. According to Snell, "virtually every city and town in America of more than 2,500 people had its own electric rail system."
But GM lost $65 million in 1921. So Sloan enlisted Standard Oil (now Exxon), Philips Petroleum, glass and rubber companies and an army of financiers and politicians to kill mass transit.
The campaigns varied, as did the economic and technical health of many of the systems themselves. Some now argue that buses would have transcended many of the rail lines anyway. More likely, they would have hybridized and complemented each other.
But with a varied arsenal of political and financial subterfuges, GM helped gut the core of America's train and trolley systems. It was the murder of our rail systems that made our "love affair" with the car a tragedy of necessity.
In 1949 a complex federal prosecution for related crimes resulted in an anti-trust fine against GM of a whopping $5000. For years thereafter GM continued to bury electric rail systems by "bustituting" gas-fired vehicles.
Then came the interstates. After driving his Allied forces into Berlin on Hitler's Autobahn, Dwight Eisenhower brought home a passion for America's biggest public works project. Some 40,000 miles of vital eco-systems were eventually paved under.
In habitat destruction, oil addiction, global warming, outright traffic deaths (some 40,000/year and more), ancillary ailments and wars for oil, the automobile embodies the worst ecological catastrophe in human history.
Should current General Motors management be made to pay for the ancient sins of Alfred Sloan?
Since the 1880s, American corporations have claimed human rights under the law. Tasking one now with human responsibilities could set a great precedent.
GM has certainly proved itself unable to make cars that can compete while healing a global-warmed planet.
So let's convert the company's infrastructure to churn out trolley cars, monorails, passenger trains, truly green buses.
FDR forced Detroit to manufacture the tanks, planes and guns that won World War 2 (try buying a 1944 Chevrolet!). Now let a reinvented GM make the "weapons" to win the climate war and energy independence.
It demands re-tooling and re-training. But GM's special role in history must now evolve into using its infrastructure to restore the mass transit system---and ecological balance---it has helped destroy.
71 Comments so far
Show AllYes yes yes. The automakers must retool to build high efficiency vehicles or they shouldn't get a dime. It might be good in the long run for these behemoths to fail. There is ample creativity and motivation in the population to create the alternatives we need in order to survive. The short-sighted greedy corporate mind has demonstrated it's willingness to sacrifice the common good in order to make money. A person doing this could easily be diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder.
Just like we need to stop electing psychopaths to the halls of power (Bush, Cheney et al) we need those corporate holders of great wealth to behave like contributing members of the community or they should be allowed to fall down at their altar of greed.
It seems to me that we are seeing very real demonstrable proof that greed and individualism not only do not serve the common good but work against the common good. If we are to survive we must learn to focus on the big picture.
Good article!! We need to jump start mass transit, extend rail lines, build better cars and give some of those new jobs to auto workers.
Evidently there are hundreds of billions of $$$ lying around that could be used for that.
Joe
May this article by some miracle make it to Obama's desk!!!
Send it to him - his campaign set up a site for the purpose.
Oregoncharles
www.change.gov
The Office of the President-elect soliciting our visions and ideas ... Go for it!
Thanks, Cee,
Oregoncharles
I hope to see a more detailed proposal for converting GM.
A preliminary sketch:
They're bankrupt, aren't they?
How about outright nationalization? The Dept. of Transportation buys the assets, goes through their patents and research projects, and starts them building the stuff we NEED.
They could also, a la FDR, be ordered to convert to building mass-transit systems.
But first, remove the entire top echelon of management: their corruption and incompetence are plain for all to see.
Parenthetically: the problem with letting them go bankrupt is that it cancels their union contracts. We need to strengthen unions, not close them down. Of course, a nationalized GM could form a partnership with the union for a new line of production - but that would probably require a genuinely progressive administration.
Oregoncharles
"They're bankrupt, aren't they?"
"They could also, a la FDR, be ordered to convert to building mass-transit systems."
You can't "order" a business to be in a business they don't wish to be in. The stockholders can just vote to disolve the company out of existance.
"The stockholders can just vote to disolve the company out of existance."
Imagine what that would do for the stockholders' equity...
"Imagine what that would do for the stockholders' equity..."
What would they get if the government thugs decided to nationalize the company? This isn't a very smart route to take the discussion, the mainstrean electorate would never stand for such a thing, end of story.
I think the mainstrean electorate would stand for such a thing.
I doubt if 5% of the electorate would support nationalizing GM.
jakenewton November 16th, 2008 5:24 pm
I doubt if 5% of the electorate would support nationalizing GM.
It depends upon how its framed. The banks are already being nationalized.
Essentailly, the whole economy was nationalized during WWs 1 and 2, but much moreso during the latter. It would be far more efficient to converrt all existing cars and trucks to electric drive rather than retooling and manufacturing a whole new electric fleet. But this will only help preserve the dysfunctional Car Culture and the rampant individualism it supports.
"I doubt if 5% of the electorate would support nationalizing GM."
You betcha! There's no way the people who support Wall Street bailouts, Social Security, Medicare, free education, farm subsidies, free roads, subsidized airlines, a war for oil, government interference in drug/pharmaceutical markets, the FDA, the DEA, the ATF, the ICE and the Coast Guard will stand for interference in this important industry.
Just as soon as the good republicans of Alaska start refusing their socialist, Alaska Permanent Fund checks, I'll believe that people will object. Then you and me we can go snow skiing in Death Valley.
Get real. The car companies will get bailed out if they have to give the cars away.
Fighting the forces of rather dim lighting wherever they may be found!!
"The car companies will get bailed out if they have to give the cars away. "
Yes, the new congress may very well support the current proposal for low cost *loans*. I was talking about nationalization, the mainstream electorate will not support that.
"They're bankrupt, aren't they?"
That was a "no" on that issue.
I hope Obama will read your comments and be genuinely progressive.
Send them to him.
In 1984, Harper's Magazine published an article on how a conspiracy of automakers, oil companies and tire manufacturers destroyed the mass transit system in Los Angeles which was, at the time, probably the best in the United States. You could ride the great distances between Southern California cities on street cars. It was an amazing system and if it had been left alone and improved upon over the subsequent decades, would have been one of the greatest in the world. It was deliberately destroyed so freeways could be built, cars, buses and tires sold by the hundreds of thousands. L.A.'s horrendous smog and nightmare traffic also resulted. Many, many years later the perpetrators wound up in court and were given a slap on the wrist. They should all have gone to prison with extended sentences.
Amen from a retired autoworker. And I agree, nationalization and integration into a comprehensive mass transit/energy angency is the way to go. It's is an outrageous absurdity of capitalism that all that machinery, that productive capacity, that human genius should be surplussed and trashed when the country is in dire need of resources to convert to green. All this mangement malfeasance comes along with the new two-tier contracts forced on autoworkers and the sloughing-off of pension obligations into underfunded VEBAs, in which the UAW takes over a therefore moribund pension program. The workers who have devoted their very souls to the auto industry must not be sacrificed. For a poetic account of life on the assembly line see www.autoplant.info.
RawFoodDude and OregonCharles,
You guys crack me up with your naive view of politics. I was that way as a child about cigarettes health problems in 1964. I thought that if the political leadership knew that cigarettes were unhealthy, they would be banned.
I grew up in the Vietnam war.
Mr. Obama is part of the political elite. He has no intension of changing the way business is done in this nation.
Only a true, revolution by an informed public will bring policies which benefit the worker, the environment, and our economy.
Have a nice day, fools.
The .3% of the population who followed Nader's campaign may remember the idea he brought up about selling our prime time TV and radio airwaves to finance real public programming on serious issues (that aren't influenced by Chevron, Merck, etc.). If we had some money to pay the Hollywood unionized crews to produce entertaining and informative shows that the general public would actually watch, we could inform each other about vital topics such as this.
I know there are very intelligent folks reading CD that might know of some real steps to take toward this goal, as well as constructive critique of the idea. I think it will take people getting organized, which means cooperation and consensus on specific actions...
Why not rent out the airwaves and so set up an income stream?
I thought FDR brought in policies which benefitted the worker, and the economy (though not the environment, since both the public and government hardly knew such a thing existed) - and without revolution.
An important point: big change is possible without (violent, or non-violent) revolution. It can sometimes come about due to official government policy.
“Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his policies have been tried.”
---John Kenneth Galbraith
What am I hearing!!! Common good, sharing, together we stand divided we fall
too much Selfishness and greed, the collective will of the people
I thought that was the lines of the Pinko Canadians up north
By the way the Canadian Peoples Own their own National bank and their private banks are regulated by it hence they banks were shielded from the USA's problems.
Learn this 80% of Canadians national Bank's debt is to their own citizens so their National Bank pays the citizens interest on their own debt.
They have National health care and all that cool stuff
However it was all under attack for the last 10 years by the conservative religious right, who want to privatise and deregulate it all.
They are called Bush Light
In the Great US of A it is:
Rugged individualism
Self made man ,
Take no Prisoners,
Every man for himself,
Full speed ahead and dam the Torpedoes
I hear that the "conservatives" are still trying in Canada.
I would like to see self-laid egg in () anytime the term self-made man is used; self-made man (self-laid egg).
It's the great American myth: "self-made man" (usually has some gov't support in some way, or family money, or as Tim Wise says in his antiracism writing, some form of white privilege) or "pulled himself up by his bootstraps", the other myth. "rugged individualism" is another way to say, "tough luck" to people who need health care, housing, etc if not rich enough to provide their own.
Both my Grandfathers came to Canada in the early 1900's.
They took advantage of a tremendous social program. No matter how hard they worked in the "Old Country" with limited education , the opportunity to own land there was minimal.
Canada offered "Free land" . Millions of acres to immigrants who would labor to clear it and plant crops.
Canada helped build the Railroad across the country to bring the goods produced to market.
Very much the same happened in the United States.
Self made is a myth.
Sioux Rose
MR. WASSERMAN: Thank you for your research, work & dedication to raise consciousness about issues that concern us all. I think, with all due respect, that the airplane holds a competitive position with the car, for the technology that has led to much damage. Were it not for planes, as TOMDISPATCH so well reports, we'd not see such efficient use of them to deploy the wares of war from enough of a distance to give the pilots a sense of immunity for the enormous pain and destruction their little trigger devices let loose.
Is GM one of the companies that got sued and fined ($1)for destroying the trolley car systems in the late 1950s, specifically in CA? But NYC had trolley cars,too.
Yes, GM is one of those. $1 fine. It was a joke upon the people.
As a child in 1949, I could ride the Red Cars from San Bernardino all the way to Wilshire Blvd.in Los Angeles to visit my grandmother. When my older sister came to visit from Minnesota, we took the Red Car to Long Beach and the fabulous pier and beach for the day. It was not expensive. I know it did not cost much because my parents never let any of us 8 children do anything that was costly.
GM killed that for the freeways that are so polluting and congested today.
Though the U.S. could use a little 'socialism', manufacturing cars is not one of the areas the government should be involved with. Rather the government can steer the industry towards electric cars, hybrids, etc., by slightly taxing the dinosaurs (SUV's, 8 cylinder engines, F150's etc.) while using that tax money to subsidize the vehicles we want. Also the government should avoid at all costs purchasing government vehicles that don't fit the criteria of a 'green car'.
If GM goes bankrupt, then so be it. The majority of the people indirectly associated with GM are parts suppliers. They can still manufacture parts for other companies that will fill the place of GM.
Meanwhile it is important to scale back on our military industrial complex in a big way. Its time to convert that terrible waste of money into beneficial industries such as rapid transit, the development of hydrogen aircraft, energy independence and other related fields that will remove our dependency on imported oil in a hurry.
Having said all that, I'm afraid there are too many people in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, that will side with narrow corporate interests over the public interest. Obama's apparent acquiescence to the corrupt banks and inferior car industry to date is a sign that in all likelihood it will be business as usual on the Beltway.
Right on, as usual Harve!
The one thing that's missing from even the most thoughtful mainstream punditry on the energy question is the railroads, both light and intercity...for trips of up to 500 miles modern rail is faster and more energy efficient than airplanes...and rail is the key to reindustrialization of America...especially for where I live, the rustbelt that was, in WWII, the workshop of democracy...
Sam Abrams
Rochester NY
mas.smarba@gmail.com
Oh Man...
why didn't I think of that....but of course I am inspector Clousseau! Give me back my trains.
"In a 1922 memo that will live in infamy, GM President Alfred P. Sloan established a unit aimed at dumping electrified mass transit in favor of gas-burning cars, trucks and buses."
I'd like to see more about this, anyone? Nothing in the wikipedia article on Sloan.
ORBizen
"Internal Combustion" by Edwin Black is one of many to recount all the disgusting and despicable details of this saga.
Thanks, not much on line, I may have to check the public library.
"The MIT (Alfred P.) Sloan School of Management is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. It is one of the world's leading business schools, conducting research and teaching in finance, entrepreneurship, marketing, strategic management, economics, organizational behavior, industrial relations, operations management, supply chain management, information technology, and many other fields." - Wiki
Intersting article on Alfred P. Sloan who was also criticized for a complicated accounting sytem he created in addition to violating anti-trust laws: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_p_sloan
Today, "51 percent" of GMAC is owned by a private equity firm.
Don't blame just GM. Yes, they're at fault but so are the people in this country that are ready to power up their gas guzzlers. I live in the Washington D.C. area and I used to live right near a metro station. The trains do get crowded at times but for the most part, the metro buses are almost empty and yet there's always high volume traffic on the road. When I had to move because the apartment fees had gone up big time, I was nowhere near a metro station and I had to drive and it was 20 miles from my home to work and still is. When the price of gas was around 4/gal and rising, traffic became reasonable. Interestingly, at the same time, the metro rail wasn't as crowded although the ignorant fools at my work place would try to argue with me that they were. Come July and after when all of a sudden the gas prices decreased and guess what? Traffic went right back up and it's gotten so much more fucking worse that it takes 2 fucking hours to drive 20 miles to work unless I go at 5 AM ! And the evening commute is even worse. Plus there are more major accidents and explosions everyday. And if that's not enough, check out most of the employees at work. Most of them drive all the way to their shitty restaurants just for lunch. Another "nice" way to take oil for granted, isn't it? If you want to blame GM, no problem. But until society becomes less crowded with frivolous drivers who drive not because they're going to work thereby making travelling a living hell for those who have no other choice and as long as people want to show off in their big butt SUVs, pickup trucks, vans, etc ..., it's not GM who will repair the mass transit system. It's the people. And if apartments closer to the metro weren't so god damn obscenely high to the point where only the very well to do can afford them, public transportation wouldn't be languishing already. GM didn't kill public transportation. People killed public transportation !
It was primarily GM that destroyed mass transit after ww2 in at least 2 locales - Southern CA and SF Bay Area( the latter with collusion of Bechtel.
But I could be wrong !
In that case, why aren't people standing up to this mess? And why not the poor black and hispanics? Are they too focused on outlawing same sex marriages because of their cultural intolerance?
And why aren't people standing up to very heavy traffic in CA and fighting for public transportation and even improving it? GM may be a devil but as long as people carry on the wasteful frivolous life style and take oil for granted, don't expect any revival of mass transit.
"FDR forced Detroit to manufacture the tanks, planes, and guns that won WW2". That is why there will be a bailout. The major auto manufacturers will not be allowed to fail because the government needs them around for rapid conversion to war toys in the event of an emergency.
Seattle had electric streetcars in the 1960s - they were the only thing that could move whenever we had snow. Times gone by - a gallon of gas or a pack of cigarettes cost 25 cents. That was before Johnson debased our coinage and Nixon cut the dollar off from gold to pay for Vietnam. How we could use a 'time machine' to take us back to saner times.
Any bail out of GM (or Ford, or Chrysler) should come with strings (or rope) attached. There should be no $ for executive compensation, no $ to continue to build the dinosaur internal combustion engine cars/trucks/SUVs that no one wants to buy, no $ to advertise to sell that junk either. Any $ should be earmarked (now there is a good application of that term) to develop alternative energy vehicles. Alternatively, Neil Young (of CSNY fame) has a brilliant plan to keep the auto industry running by building the bodies without the engine and drive trains, which will allow the automobiles to have electric or hybrid engines, batteries, etc installed later. No re-tooling needed. I think it's genius.
I love the ironic humor here. GM killed the street cars and dwindling petroleum, shoddily manufactured vehickles, and stinko overpriced service is going to kill GM. It's only potential salvation might be to learn to make electric street cars to subvert the auto industry that is rapidly leaving it behind. It's almost enough to make one believe in the actual personhood of this corporation and its vulnerability to Karma just like human beings.
Poet
If you're going to have GM remake the transit system, please do the job right.
The transit system hasn't been re-invented in a very long time, except perhaps for the bullet train. The railroads had monopolies on their tracks. This locked out the lone inventors. One reason that we have so many private cars is that we had a large number of private car companies from 1900 to 1950. This created a market for lone inventors to sell their wares. This accelerated the re-invention of the private automobile in a thousand ways. As a result, cars are vastly more intelligently built than trains in ways that consumers want (although not so intelligently designed for crashes until lately, a factor which consumers often ignored up to the 1960s).
Take GM's "not invented here" philosophy and punt it over the goalpost. No more Ford Motor Company shafting the hero in "Flash of Genius". This time the hero-inventor is always a key part of the company. Make terms like "open source" part of the GM vocabulary.
GM's boss is out here now. The boss wants to make a few changes.
Hear hear. The Dems have the power. They have no excuses. If they cave, we should petition the government, demonstrate and vote the graft recipients out of office.
I am hopeful that Obama will listen to everyone like he promised and come to the inescapable conclusion that this is the only way to escape the grip of the oil and internal combustion corporations that gave us the global warming Rockefeller and Sloan condemned the earth to.
Read "Internal Combustion".