It is obvious that the out going admin intends to bankrupt our country before they leave and they have demonstrated their distain for not only the USA but the American worker also . Packaged in their free trade agreements are incentives for companies that relocate to the USA where they pay lower wages to the American worker than Detroit and the health care and other benefits offered to the workers are subsidised by the foreign countries . Detroit has been begging for some help for years but our congress and WH refuses them any help . This has been the case during the past four admins . So Detroit must try to compete under these conditions . All of the auto plants in the USA are assembly plants . Take a trip to the docks at San Fran and watch the large ships arrive with thousands of complete Toyota's and other foreign autos with the assembly parts for their fake manufacturing plants here . Except for the health care costs and the taxes (which is part of the incentive package for foreign company relocation to the USA) Detroit can go toe to toe with any of the foreign makes . (If the MSM would stop the lies and innuendos about Detroit quality that would help also) Detroit is being held to a biased standard by our government which is paid by lobbyist for foreign countries . Tax payer money leaves here to assist other countries who pay lobbyist who pay our law makers and executors to send more money and more jobs . The only way to fix this is to stop signing free trade agreements and cut the funds to USAID .

Anne Onymous
The documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" should be viewed by Congress with the Auto moguls in attendance. The destruction of the EV1 set the industry back decades, GM was out in front of all auto makers with their technology. The fact that Exxon Mobil bought the patent for the battery for the electric car shines the spotlight on that culprit as well. Bail out the auto industry? GM has to have all of the EV1 designs etc., are we to pay for the industry to take them out and dust them off? Some kind of help is needed for those thousands of workers and related industries, but not without many, many strings attached, and a lot of supervision. First step should be a blanket firing of those exec - no parachutes, golden or otherwise.

The government contracts with companies like Boeing to build billion dollar war planes with out expecting to get any of the money back. I think that instead of a bailout, the government should contract with GM, Ford, and Chrysler to produce a million plugin hybred compact cars based on the Cobalt, Focus, and Neon platforms. The companies would not have to advertize or market the cars since the government would be buying them. Unlike war planes, the government could get some of the money back by selling the cars to consumers at a loss if the cost of making such cars is too high. It's more than we get back from Boeing. Once the car companies are used to making such cars, the cost would come down and, they could make profitable plugin hybreds or even fully electric cars in the future.

"Novus Ordo Seclorum". The official translation of this motto is "A New Order of the Ages". The Latin word "Novus" means "New", and "Ordo" means "Order". The Latin word "Seclorum" and its English equivalent "Secular" both share the same three alternative definitions: (1) "Secular" - without religion; (2) "Worldly" - of this world; and (3) "From century to century" - or from age to age. Thus, the motto "Novus Ordo Seclorum" has three different but equally valid translations:

New Secular Order
New World Order
New Order of the Ages

"While Republicans like to blame the auto industry's problems on them, saying they have demanded too much pay, and too much in healthcare benefits, it's not their fault that GM and Ford executives have been stupid and greedy and short-sighted..."

This is the same GOP that supported the High-profit, Low-wage and Low-job-growth of the George Bush economy. They also allowed these auto manufacturers to continue making automobiles that didn't meet the miles-per-gallon standards that were already on the books from the 1980s. Meanwhile, they were taking major campaign contributions from the oil companies that love gas guzzling cars.

Wow.....talk about being stupid, greedy and short-sighted!

These public serpents also seem to believe that they are the only people who deserve to have healthcare benefits and automatic cost-of-living increases.

The dislocation between perceptions and reality is immense among this group. What hypocrisy!

snydly

"The bailouts are aimed at rescuing managers and investors" is true and disappointing.

The owners of the system are operating the system for the benefit of the owners.

Who woulda thunk it??

But wait...They have made the boodle by mass marketing to the middle class.
If there's no middle class, there's no mass market. No mass market, no boodle.
So in lieu of selling anything, they're looting the world via borrowed and, soon, printed money, circling the wagons to wait out the climate change storm. What storm, you ask? Check out the IPCC chart Gore put in his movie and book. Read it like a Native tracker would read a trail.

Sack cloth, ashes, and a megaphone. The only way...

I am a human being. I am too big to fail.

Chevy had an electric car back in 1999 (I think). The car was leased to a limited market in So Calif. People who had them loved them. Chevy took them all back, refused to sell them at any price to those who had been driving them, and, except for one or two given to museums, destroyed the entire fleet. Now they are trying to reinvent the wheel. I guess they lost (or destroyed) the plans and specs along with the cars, because I've heard reports that the Volt barely goes, and is far from being ready to roll out to consumers. What morons. And they want a bail out? We might as well give the money to squirrels, with the same expectation of having a viable auto industry emerge.

a day of thanksgiving. we get dave lindorf and david michael green on the same day.

great job cd!!!

Dave Lindorff has thrown out a few canards regarding GM and their electric car the Volt in particular that need to be addressed. That he charges that GM is run by idiots goes without saying. It takes a ostrich like view to ignore the fact that petroleum is a finite resource and it will not remain cheap forever and in turn market the most fuel thirsty cars on the market while killing a government program designed to make cars that get 80 mpg and kill the one product, the EV-1 that would lead to a practical electric car.

First he heaps scorn on the car because it's all electric range is 40 miles per charge. In fact 80% of the commuting public drives 40 miles or less to and from work. He then goes on to criticize the fact that it has a 1.5 liter engine for "charging the Volt's huge lithium-ion battery". The engine is used to eliminate the 'range anxiety' issue that most consumers will have when they consider purchasing an electric vehicle. When the car is used as a commuter vehicle the engine will remain off most of the time so long as the car is plugged in at night to charge. Further, a 16 KW battery pack is a little undersized in comparison to pure EVs like the Ford Ranger EV, the Chevy S-10E EV or the even the ill-fated GM EV-1. The battery pack was made smaller to reduce costs.

This leads to the next charge which is that at $40,000.00 the people to whom the car would be marketed would not be able to afford the car. In fact there is a lot of anticipation for the car's release in 2010. There are 10,000 cars that are expected to be released in the first year and 60,000 in 2011 up to 2015 when full scale production is projected beyond. There is a lot of interest in the car. There is even a long waiting list to purchase the car. The biggest cost of the car is the Lithium-Manganese batteries but the cost of these batteries is expected to go down when mass-marketing of the batteries increases. There is no practical reason, in the long run, that a full size electric car cannot be made that is also affordable to the general public. Projections are that the cost of the Toyota Prius is expected to go down due to the reduction in cost of the batteries and electric motor and electronic components.

To his credit Lindorff illustrates the cost of a the Roadster at $100,000 by startup Tesla but he suggests that it could be built for less at a price that an average family can afford. Which is pricessly the point of the Volt. If he thought that the battery pack in the Volt was large at 16 Kwh, he should take a look at the Tesla Roadster's battery pack. It contains 6831 16850 batteries that pack a total of 53 kwh of electricity. The major cost of the car is the batteries plus the advanced and 95% efficient power inverter that manages a brushless AC induction motor. Making this vehicle cheaper will eventually happen with future generations which Tesla has had to put on hold due to the economic downturn. For Tesla to be viable it had to market upscale to customers with deep enough pockets to demonstrate demand and to cast off lingering doubts about the performance and viability of electric cars.

Lindorff then suggests that a market exists for smaller electric vehicles and that GM should market those cars. While GM did make a small electric vehicle, the EV-1, and it was wildly popular with its lessees where the public at large knew about the car they had questions regarding range and passenger capacity that would have kept it as a niche car. There are other manufacturers making small electric vehicles now that are affordable like the Chrysler GEM car, the Zenn Motors NEV car or the Zap but they are affordable because most of them, except for the Zap, are Neighborhood Electric Vehicles and are thus limited to a speed of 25 mph and have a range of 25 miles which would make these EVs niche vehicles. They also would not comply with Federal collision and impact regulations. You drive one of these vehicles with the knowledge of this and in fact many of these EVs are three wheelers with the exception of the Zenn car and the GEM car. In short these cars have failed to capture the publics' imagination and have sold in the few tens and low hundreds of vehicles. It's important to note that these companies have been around for 10 or even 15 years.

So while a small electric vehicle has tremendous appeal to the EV first adopters it is in fact a tough sell to the public at large. The public will want a car closer to what the Volt offers and when the costs come down it will be a mainstream vehicle. Gasoline powered cars costs were high when they were first produced but came down before they were adopted 100 years ago. This will also be the case for the Volt and cars of that type too.

snydly

As helpful as it is for the top 10% to save the top 10%, there are still not enough of them for more than a couple good meals.

Gotta save the pyramid from the bottom up. The little pyramid with the eye in it trying to float away with all the loot... won't make it. It's too heavy with loot to fly, and the parachutes were traded by Milo Minderbinder to the Chinese for worthless paper. The best it can hope for is a soft landing in the dust that was once the middle class.

pyramid=fire-in-the-middle.
Novus Ordem Seclorum---delayed due to whether.

Save Main St, not Wall St.

Cheers,
snydly---master of mixed metaphor, healer of worlds, Foole of It

One of the best ideas is to let the oil companies bail them out since they made the largest profits from Detroit gas guzzlers.

GM and Ford don't make electric cars or fuel efficient cars because the same rich people who own most of the stock in the oil companies own most of the stock in the American auto companies.

Why would they want to make cars that work against their own economic interests?

Bailout Illusions
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Re: Oil prices "...soar because demand has been exceeding both production and supply..." The larger influences on the price of gas at the pump are: The decision of how much crude to produce by the OPEC cartel (a combination in restraint of trade that would be illegal in the U.S.) to optimize their profits, (2) the winking relationship of the very few oil processors and distributors (Exxon/Mobil, BP, etc) and (3) the machinations of the U.S. futures market -- (4) all tolerated if not encouraged by a complicit American government, many of whose top-level incumbents have been, are yet, or will be again in the oil "bidness."
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Re the sizing of the problem as affecting "...125,000 unionized workers..." at G.M. and Ford. This is minimizing the problem. There are several hundreds of thousands of employees at the Big Three, including salaried employees. There are several hundreds of thousands more who would become jobless in the manufacturing supplier chain and support services, transportation, machinery and equipment, maintenance, etc. Beyond these there is the gamut of other businesses that depend upon selling products and services to automobile people who would become jobless. The multiplier effect would cascade down and across the economy, devastating the industrial Midwest, and afflicting other kinds of business across the country to ultimately cost the economy an incremental loss of jobs from between five to ten millions.
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Re: "...Democrats don't want to be seen as ignoring the fate of G.M.'s workers..." Of course not, nor can the nation afford that they would.
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Re: "...Let G.M. and Ford sink" and perhaps one of the "fragments" would "...see the wisdom of developing what the public really needs..." which you submit is some kind of mini car. Regardless of your case for the lack of foresight on the part of American automotive managers, we, the nation cannot afford the destruction quite possibly of our entire economy just to punish them. We will indeed require that they keep going, that their segment contributes to the economy until such time as they and their products can be replaced prudently, without major crisis to the national economy, and until such a time that other solutions to transportation are developed that now exist no further than in our imagination.
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Re: "...What is needed is a two-seater little car..." That would take some time, not only in product development, but in complete re-tooling, and quite possibly significant change in our infrastructure, roads, bridges, safety provisions, changes in our human habits, etc., etc. I would propose that -- infrastructure changes being needed -- those changes be made to accommodate a real urban, inter-urban, and national mass transit system. As a kid in distant suburbia (of Philadelphia) I could walk to a bus line, a trolley line, and two different commuter train lines, any of which could connect me to the city, and thence to the world. Not a bad solution. It would take quite a few years (ten? fifteen?) to implement such. In the meantime we need to provide $50 Million (a mere seven percent of the Wall Street bailout) to the Big Three and thereby hopefully avoid economic disaster across the nation.
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Then we can start thinking about Plan B.

1. Nobody's mentioned getting rid of 50% or more of the executives in these top-heavy behemoths. Decision making is so incredibly diffuse as to be non-existent. The buck never finds a place to rest let alone stop in the executive suites and offices.

2. Over the last few weeks we've all heard the arguments re union members "high" wages. One wag even asked why they deserved that wage given that the jobs they perforn require no special skills. I'm waiting for someone - anyone - to point out the absurdity of getting $5 million/year or more for putting a ball through a hoop or over a goal line.

Busque la verdad!

Bust this monopoly. Give small business loans to the fragments of GM.

Ever since the 1970s, Big Auto has been lying through their teeth asking for bailouts and making empty promises. When poor people can be given the DEATH PENALTY, so too can Big Auto especially since Big Auto has been an environmental and an economical disaster to this otherwise great nation of ours !

Negotiations should BEGIN with top execs volunteering to work for a TOTAL compensation (salary, benefits, bonuses, stock options, etc.) of $1 per annum. Oh, and USAns own the preferred stock they pay for. It worked for Iacocca.

Lindorff’s suggestion that Tesla and GM could team up to build carbon efficient vehicles has merit, but saying it should be done with a Saturn spinoff accepts the idea that, given the unlikelihood of nationalization, GM might as well be swept into the dustbin of history.

Listen, the physical and human assets of the big three are the available machinery, brawn and brain of America’s green future of rails and windmills. There is historical precedence for conversion of major industries to serve the public needs. During WWII, Big Steel and Auto became what was known as “Democracy’s Arsenal,” building planes, guns, tanks, and trucks. To let the big three die would waste those resources and force us to build anew, not only on the ashes of the auto industry, but on the ashes of living workers, their families, their union, and the progressive role they play in our country’s politics. Speaking as a Chrysler retiree, I am appalled by the short-sightedness and class bias of so much of the commentary in progressive sites.

Many progressive intellectuals are as blind as the capitalists: When they regard commodities, they see a relation between things, traded in a market; whereas in reality, commodities represent the productive relations between human beings, working flesh and blood. For a poetic take on that “fetishism of commodities,” to use Marx’s term, see www.autoplant.info.

Lindorf mentions buying out autoworkers. Why? If my employer folds nobody buys me out, I get to collect unemployment.

If I'm not mistaken, after the bailout of these corportations fails, or if it doesn't happen, they will end up going into bankruptcy. What's wrong with this? It should be happening now.

I'm not saying it's fair, in fact it's not, bankruptcy is different for a corporation than it is for you and me. They re-did our bankruptcy laws (yeah, the same people pushed for those changes as are now needing their own bailouts, ironic and moronic, isn't it?). But for a corporation, they will go in front of a bankruptcy judge who will figure out a way to sell off parts, decide which creditors are going to get paid and how much, and restructure the organsization. My friend whose dad worked for Ford will still get his pension (unless the PBGC goes belly up too, not out of the question these days) and the corporation will have to figure out how to become profitable with what is left.

From what I understand there are many startups in silicon valley that are having problems because they don't know how to compete in the rules-and-regulation-heavy environment of the NHTSB (national highway transportation safety board) et al. When these giants go through bankruptcy huge chunks of them will be available to be bought up by these silicon valley startups, who could then use their "expertise" in this area. Trust me, however inept these auto companies are at market analysis and engineering, they are equally adept at dealing with Washington. They could only get into such a clusterfuck by being in bed with washington.

A couple of years back I read an article about an Engineer who worked in Detroit(and I believe it was for GM, a friend has the mag so I don't know the engineers name right now), anyway this engineer showed GM how to make any and all Large vehicles get over 60 mpg and up to over 100 depending on the load, it would take some retooling and add 5 thou on to the cost but for 5 thou more you'd get at least 6 times the mpg. GM laughed, shot him down, he quit and now has a shop in Nebraska where he retools vehicles for the rich because it costs him 35 thou to do himself, but he has a waiting list of customers, one of them is "Arnold" who's having his Big 4 wheel drive retooled. I gotta get that mag back so I can send this guy's name to my "reckless leaders" and demand IF THERE'S TOO BE A BAILOUT FOR THE BIG 3, THEN THIS GUY NEEDS TO BE PLACED IN-CHARGE AND SH-TCAN THE DETROIT HIGHERUPS, under National Security of course.

hat they really need to do is re-fit the Auto plants to assemble wind turbines and retrain the workers to that end. seems like an obvious win-win to me.

**as long as those wind turbines cant chew up birds.
That's the problem with wind. As long as it spills blood its not green.

It's not a bailout nor a robbery - at this point, it's all just a f**king joke. Think about it - Congress votes for an $850 billion bailout (which is still referred to as a $700 billion 'rescue') but has no say on the other $5 - or is it $10 - trillion the Fed has handed out to their friends already, and then it turns out said 'rescue' plan they voted for was a lie anyway.

While Congress "debates" whether to "save" Moron Big Auto with $25 billion, the Fed flips Citi $20 billion, no debate necessary. Clearly, it's all just a show.

And here's the punch line - none of that money will ever be paid back, ever. The thieves will never reform, taxes could never be raised high enough to cover, and there's no way the millions of lost jobs can ever be replaced.

As Dr. Ron Paul said on the House floor last week, it's time for rebellion and civil disobedience or the rape will never stop. Of course, he knows the majority of Americans are so brainwashed and drugged that neither will ever happen again... The new American mantra is: thank you for screwing me, sir; may I have another!?

what they really need to do is re-fit the Auto plants to assemble wind turbines and retrain the workers to that end. seems like an obvious win-win to me.

While not offering any opinion as to whteher the bailout a good or a bad thing I suggest people examine the POLITICAL reasons as to why one party or another would support such an action and the other refuse it.

It is NOT because of what is good for the country or the voter. Thier stands are based upon what is good for the party.

As example Obama wishes to ensure he supports the Union so that the Democrats can count on the Union Vote in upcoming elections.

The republicans wish to break the back of Unions as they have been doing for over 30 years.

In a nutshell this is the problem with how Party politics have evolved in democracies the world over. What is "Good for the Party" always takes precedence over what is good for the Country and its people.

When the well being of a Political party has become "The Greater Good" in a democratic society, can it really be called democracy?

PK

Last February we bought a Toyota Prius. Its one of the best cars I have owned including several BMW's. I live in the west and drive in the mountains. We get nearly 53 miles per gallon average. Toyota will dominate this market. We get better gas mileage than the Smart Car which only gets in the mid 40's.

American business and politics are two arms of organized crime. That's the only explanation of the continued rape of the American Society at all levels of life and work.

Lindorff's proposal is as idiotic as the ones he chastises. Putting many little 2 seat electric cars out there even if they were given away for free is not even a better kind of wrongness. Manufacturing any kind of car, electric or otherwise, not only wastes every resource it takes to make it, it is a fools trip further down the road to oblivion. It doesn't address the loss of two-thirds of the urban landscape to the auto, it doesn't address congestion and traffic accidents and death. We have no mass transit in the US and the suburbs are resource unsustainable even if we had one. Until we develop convenient usable mass transit, put a cork in the twat of every woman who's had more than one baby, and stop subsidizing the moronic isolated far flung suburban lifestyle through highways and fossil fuels we will be throwing diminishing resources down the sewer.

Remember GM legend Roger Smith a quarter century ago?

Why wouldn't you save THE company that institutionalized giving CEOs exhorbitant golden parachutes for very poor performance?

This isn't a bailout - it's a robbery. The American middle-class is being held up by its two political parties. It's save your ass time in D.C. And Obama is a professional save your ass kind of guy. These are welfare checks for the rich to help them over these difficult times. Our politicians are giving away our money to managers who obviously didn't manage too well and who don’t even have a real plan to stop the bleeding. Idiots yes, but robbery, not bailout.
Hoa binh