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Goodbye, GM
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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.
6. 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).
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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 MooreMMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
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137 Comments so far
Show AllOkay State Department, US Chamber of Commerce, NYT, WaPo, CNN, Fox Noise, WaPo, Heritage Foundation, AEI, Republican Party, and WSJ no more complaints about Hugo Chaves and the Bolivarian Sociailist Revolution in Venezuela. He isn't doing anything you are not now and have not been doing with GM, Banks, AIG, and others.
Except that in Venezuela both the government which supplies the capitalization and the workers who actually produce the wealth determine how the businesses will be run and must be answered to by management. How different is that than our current economicly irresponsible mess?
No wonder his Chinese audience laughed at Secretary of Treasury Geithner when he told them earlier today that their investments were safe in the US. How unsettlibng to have to address an audinece that doesn't buy your carefully nurtured spin.
Poet
Yes, but Geithner is helping China get into the IMF. How wonderful the world will be then.
China's already entering the world of yuppie capitalism. Entering the IMF won't make them any happier and I don't think they'll forgive us. They had better look at the freedom Latin America has gained as a result of withdrawing from the IMF.
China will war against the 'barbarian' IMF once they find they have stepped into that debt trap.
I'm willing to wager that China will smack the IMF just before she falls into IMF's trap. China knows everything about the US's unfettered capitalism and they're pretty tough to fool.
I'm inclined to agree. The Chinese didn't get to be where they are today by being ignorant about economics. As for the IMF, I suspect the Chinese know a helluva lot about the IMF and how it works.
"may you live in interesting times"
I agree with most of MM's thoughts, particularly on the short-sighted behavior of GM. And while I also agree on the need for more and better public transportation I also think there will always be a need for personal transportation as well. it just needs to be more benign, which means it needs to be electric and provided by renewable sources.
For example, I'm a carpenter in business for myself. I go to peoples houses and fix them and thus have to take a load of tools with me. I can't load them from my garage to a nearby bus, have the bus stop at the lumber yard for 2x4's and wait at a street address while I unload.
And while a stiffer gas tax would encourage better transportation usage it would fall hardest on working folks and families.
Again, lot of good ideas here but it seems to make the most sense to force GM to make affordable electric cars for us rather than getting them into the wind turbine business which they know nothing about and which other people are already doing.
Nebraska,
You're right, there always will be a need for personal transportation - that's what feet and bicycles are for.
Seriously, I'm pretty sure there will be some sort of personal transport, but equally, there is a huge need to restructure our way of life so that we don't need to be driving all over Hell's half acre. Smaller, walkable cities and towns and jobs within the cities and towns (within walking, cycling, mass-transit distance) are part of the solution, not merely replacing one form of individualistic transportation with another. We really need to start thinking and imagining outside our current box.
As for GM - good riddance. There once was a dandy form of mass transit in this country - the trolley. GM bought up most of the trolley systems in this country, tore up the rails, and trashed the trolley cars. Hence, a land filled with automobile-clogged highways and byways and air filled with carbon monoxide and dioxide. Government Motors can do no worse than what General Motors did.
http://www.culturechange.org/issue10/taken-for-a-ride.htm
I think that people who comment that promoters of car-free cities want to abolish trucks needed for service or delivery livelihoods (some go as far as even saying we want to abolish ambulances) are waving a big red herring. Of course service/delivery trucks and ambulances will still be used. But those represent just a small fraction of the motor vehicle traffic.
Cars will always be needed in rural areas and small towns and trips from the city to outdoor recreation activities. But there is no reason that national or state parks, resorts and wild recreation areas can't be served by by buses. Existing examples are the ski bus service that the Utah transit authority runs (Right-wing SL City has a generously funded public transit system that puts Pittsburgh's, funding-cut plagued system to shame - even though far more Pittsburgers use public transit - go figure) - or the Denver - Winter Park ski train. Also the hiker shuttles used in the White Mts. of New Hampshire.
"it would fall hardest on working folks and families."
Since you claim to be a carpenter, that means you, right?
Or was the working class flavor of your text just there as a convincing style?
Force GM into its tomb. You can commit yourself right here, right now, to support open standard industrial designs so that all garage workshops may produce 200 mpg vehicles, and everything else. Yes, this eliminates efficiencies of scale. But we don't need that, because we don't need the volume. The economy will be strong and stable, under such an industrial model when the people decide they want such an economy. Your demands create your economy. Your demands create your society. Commit yourselves, right here, right now to support such an economy/society through your individual exchange/association.
They're called bio-diesel trucks
Great ideas from Mr. Moore, except that the country is run by greedy psychopaths who will squeeze the last bit of wealth out of the coutry. Obama included.
Yes, Mr. Moore's advice to Obama is a bit ludicrous, isn't it. Obama promised to listen to those below, in fact maintained that it was necessary for his success. That seems to be a lie. Based on his record so far, I'd say we had better get used to it.
Obama's actions since 1/20/09 have demonstrated that his allegance lies with the the wealthiest 2%, not the 98%. He knows that enough of the 98% think a rock star president is pretty damn cool, that he doesn't have to worry about them complaining.
While GM workers and creditors may suffer, GM is another "too big to fail" company that has reached the holy grail of corporate welfare. Their top dogs are loving every minute of it.
I was thinking along the same lines. Moore writes as if the US government were some sort of functional democratic system, ignoring that it has evolved into a completely criminal organization that merely transfers wealth to the wealthy.
Poet June 1st, 2009 8:50 am....Just about everyone, but the American people realize we have been bamboozled out of trillions...no wonder the Chinese are laughing. Thing is, are they laughing WITH Geithner or laughing AT We the People who cowardly sit back and let it all happen. Maybe both, eh?
michael moore - the left's dumpy frumpy fat boy who balances the scales against fat boy limbaugh - the right wing bullet headed turd of the airwaves
we have the right wing drug addict who can't get an erection juxtaposed against the left wing wanker who doesn't seem to care if he ever gets one again
as chomsky says - the controllers provide the illusion of a dialog
there you have it - the ying and the yang
the mutt and the jeff
nowhere near as amusing as abbot and costello
michael has suggestions - nothing wrong with that - but his evisceration of gm goes beyond the pale
his lies about gm - called "roger and me" made his career so he should be a little more contrite because he knows all those folks getting laid off will not be retooled into other industries
fat chance - pardon the pun - of that happening - its sad that both fat boy and fat mike have the bullypulpits they enjoy
neither of them know what they are talking about
but between them they provide the illusion of choice
the illusion of dialog
ma g June 1st, 2009 9:10 am............Wow...what's with all the "fat talk"? What purpose does that serve in a civilized dialogue?
civilized - you got the nerve to bandy that word about in the united states of america
please
i guess you feel the word fuck is completely out of the question
i could have used bloated, distended, obese
substitute them if it makes you feel better
Nothing constructive, just a lot of junk food. Who's fat, ma g?
I have nerve to ask for civilized conversation on a public forum? ........."Obscenity who really cares"...RZ.....Pointless personal attacks are something else.
hey angry
do you have anything to say
i mean...really
you sound like a cheney disinfo guy
ma g June 1st, 2009 2:25 pm...........Go away, son...your a fly on my butt......flick...flick...CIAO
you add absolutely nothing to the conversation.
get back under your bridge, troll!
ma g --
I'm thinking that your Chomsky citation "the controllers provide the illusion of a dialog" refers more to what we're seeing on most mainstream network and cable outlets. That is, we're usually seeing debates between the political "middle" and the political "right wing"--rather than a true debate between the left and the right.
I would love to see and hear more from Moore, Chomsky, Bernie Sanders and other left-of-center thinkers than the near-constant barrage of apologists for corporate America that we normally see in mainstream media. Unfortunately, the corporate-controlled media merely PRETEND that they present a true debate between left and right, and the true left is rarely heard from. That's why Moore has to make his own documentaries. It's only then--when his films are applauded by the average citizen--that the media feels compelled to have him on every so often. They'd really rather that he go away!
hey true:
michael rose to fame on the back of roger and me
the whole film hinges on his unfulfilled dream of "meeting and talking" with roger smith - chairman of gm
well he was given not one but two interviews for the film by roger smith
you would never know that by watching the film
also - the scene where michael has his mike turned off at the gm stockholder's meeting was a complete fabrication - never happened
michael's friends are people who don't know him
most who do know him find him to be a jerk, self-aggrandizing, meglomanical type of guy
and insincere
his function is to give the illusion of dialog
Boy oh boy does baby have a Chakra problem...and no job, and no education, and no health care...and tool in hand...
Mr M doesn't hide behind a psuedo name. What is more, he has a proven track record of being correct with assesments regarding American culture. Evenso, such bravery and intelligence some how encourages another Troll to crawl out from under it's bridge to fling fecal matter like the most base of primates, eh Ma G?
ma g - Pretending I am Glinda, The Good Witch, of the Wizard of Oz, I gently lay my wand on your head, then on each shoulder and then on your heart. Then, I cast this spell: "Everytime you look in a mirror, my dear ma g, you will only be able to see the dark, dirty ugliness within you. Your face totally contorted and your eyes ugly with viciousness are all you will see, and so will everyone else who comes in contact with you."
Where are you coming from anyway, ma g? Your nastiness, which likely is a habit, is so unnecessary.
Remember, next time ... everytime ... you look in the mirror that maybe you need to rethink your own self. As Glinda and myself I will wish that for you too.
Michael Moore is a talented, dedicated and constructive person trying to help his own city and state and country. What he says makes sense. Sometimes I might disagree with something he says, but I respect him greatly.
Unfortunately, we have been taken over by people who could care less about the country and the people who live in it. And it is WE ... the People who have to be strong enough and kind enough and compassionate enough and smart enough to take it back. And that's an uphill road all the way and near an impossible dream now.
If you get that, maybe someday when you look in the mirror, you will see a face you like, and the feelings of a kind heart shining through your eyes, and that will be a gain for the country with the possible dream that sometimes came close, but now has slipped away ... again.
peace, cm
The sad fact is that the government and society IS reflective of what the majority is like deep down (and when no one is looking), even if it pretends to be something else when the cameras are rolling.
I do not agree with the argument that government is reflective of what the majoriy of society.
Not in a first past the post, most votes takes all, even if the winner of the most votes still did not get a majority, electoral system. No way.
hey galinda
pretend that you are living in the real world
call 9/11 and get some help
keep your thoughts about imaginary wands and such to your closest friends
too bad though that you have given up on the country
hopefully it won't be too long before the mexicans repatriate their stolen lands from the right wing christian crazies who control it now
wave a wand at that
ma g -
1. I very much live in the real world, and as most of us know, that ain't easy.
2. I never give up on my country. It's been home for almost 73 years, and it's in bigger trouble now than it has ever been in because its principles and dreams have been gutted. Everything became a fast buck and worrying more about having the latest designer jeans, and not ever thinking about the poor souls who made them for slave wages in some other country, and most of all, the nation is dying because so few have been or are paying attention to the fast-talking liars redesigning the government to suit themselves, and it's the ordinary people who are getting it in the neck, and the recourses to this fact are becoming fewer.
3. I'd love to be able to wave a wand to restore to people their lives, their lands, and have a world of mutual respect, compassion and appreciation for all our diversities and all our different abilities ... without a small percentage of bozos thinking they deserve to have it all on their terms, and it's perfectly okay if some people literally have to eat dirt to fill their stomachs.
4. The most difficult thing for any of us who are so angry and sad and frustrated about what is happening, no matter what area or country we come from, is not to turn on each other, but somehow channel and transform our anger into some good action even if it is small ... just talking to someone and informing them if their ears are half-way open and they want to know.
5. peace to you, ma g
/cm
5.
Ah, I just got done reading this in my inbox. I was thinking the same exact things...order the damn car companies to build what we need. Who said central planning is always bad? It sure helped us win WW2.
How about GOOD RIDDANCE GM ?!? At least now we can focus on bringing out more fuel efficient vehicles to the market and turning to public transportation.
"4. 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. "
I hope Washington Metro gets extended to Dulles already so that our trip from Sterling to Arlington isn't so rough and back as well. Even with HOV and paying the toll on 267 just to cut down some of the traffic time, my husband and I can't stand the growing heavy traffic nor having to watch more gas guzzling SUVs on the highway !
That sucks. I live in DC and haven't even used the Metro yet, the bus lines go everywhere I need to go and are much closer to my home than a Metro stop. I'm sure glad I have no need for a car.
I wished Loudoun County had more bus stops. The bus stops timing is rather limited and with the routes each of us would have to go through, it would take 3 hours for me and 2.5 hrs for him just to go from our home to work ! There were plans to extend the Orange line to Dulles Airport but ever since the gas prices dropped last year, no word on where that's going. Washington Metro is much cheaper within Washington but the price is unfairly raised once you come into Arlington and then it's much higher further out. WMATA needs to lower their fares and higher more workers to expand and maintain the infrastructure. We could take the VRE but we'd have to drive to Manassas and the time it takes would pretty much exceed the time it takes for us to drive to work. They are planning to extend to Gainesville, VA but no word on going into Loudoun County. As you probably know, traffic in Northern VA is getting worse year after year. Loudoun County used to be more rural for us country folk type but over the years it has turned into suburban sprawl hell. There's still a lot I love about the county and the growing diversity, our rural memories, and housing keeps us in the county.
The best years of my life were in San Francisco. One reason I loved it so was the ease of getting around on busses, street cars, and Bart. Not having to own a car takes an enormous burden off a person. Now I live in Tucson, and having a car is essential if you want to have any quality of life at all.
There used to be a lot of railroad work and expansion out in the midwest up to the late 19th century. I suspect GM and the rest of big auto killed it in the 20th century. The collapse of GM and its ilk and the inevitable coming of Peak Oil will force Obama to hasten the green jobs growth. Tuscon could use more workers to build a public mass transit infrastructure and maintain it too. I do not think it's impossible. Does your state legislature oppose or support public transportation? Mine is waffling about it even as the traffic worsens but we're hitting our state delegates hard and forcing them to address the issue. Don't give up.
"9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline."
I know you have to start somewhere, but to do this BEFORE providing an alternative will undoubtedly unfairly impact the poor and - think about it - make the corporate oil barons even richer. Humanity has lost its sense of the cyclical nature of time and life, and with power measured by money in the hands of the few, a linear forced march towards certain destruction of our planet is most likely. We can all do our part, but can we do theirs?
How would a tax make oil barons richer? It goes to the govt. not to them.
Where I live, most poor people alredy don't own cars. They rely of public transportation.
The probiem is, without a higher cost for fuel, people, and especially employers, won't make the home buying/renting or workplace location descision that allow commuters or shoppers to use public transit, or if they must use cars, use a car that gets 50-60 mpg (such cars are common in Europe - and they aren't expensive hybrids either). Consider the example of most parts of Europe.
Xyy June 1st, 2009 10:42 am..............There are many rural areas that have no public transportation, so even people of lower or fixed income must rely on autos just to get to town and shop. I was lucky and picked up a used Prius for under $10K. In the interim, hybrids are a good way to go....just get more in production and bring the price down. Until the people demand alternatively fueled vehicles (air, propane, water, total electric)..hybrids are a good way to go. Previous to the Prius, I was driving an '88 Custom Cruiser...$10 every time I went to town. OUCH! Now, I get 54/mpg around town.
If you go to Europe, you will see may inexpensive cars that get better fuel economy than a Prius and are not hybrids. The secret? Make the car smaller and put up with a bit less performance. A Prius would be considreed a very large car by european standards.
In areas with far more widespread rural poverty like latin America, most poor poeople get by without a car - there is this thing called hitchhiking, and frequent long-haul jitney service (called "por puestos" in Venezuela).
Most not-so well off rural USAns are rural by choice - because they DO have cars and access to cheal gasoline. In Kentucky and West Virginia, there are mobile homes all along the backroads, while the central parts of the towns like Hazard, Harlan, Matewan, Madison, Beckley.. etc..etc. are practically abandoned and boarded up. They could move in and revitailize the homes and businesses in the towns, avoid the Wal-Mart on the by-pass and walk to take a bus to their jobs and shopping. The federal government even has generous funding programs for small-town public transit.
These are some good radical prescriptions coming from a guy who has been largely pushing compromised democrats on us over the last 6 years of so...
Moore says the fascists were defeated in WWII. They were? FOREIGN fascists were defeated. We Americans still have the Republican and Democratic Parties, the two right wings of the Property Party.
Repubs and Demos are the same false front to a oligarchy controlled America. Capitalism fascism is alive and well...
I suggest that Michael Moore and every other American read Edwin Black's book, INTERNAL COMBUSTION which gives a stunning history lesson in how it came about that we are addicted to oil and drive internal combusion engine cars when it was clear from the very beginning that electric automobiles and light rail vehicles made the most sense. It is a story of a criminal conspiracy entered into by GM, Big Oil and other players to cheat Americans insuring that money was diverted away from good ideas and into bad ones so that relatively few people could get very rich at the expense of everyone else. The conspiracy continues today. Moore has some good ideas but a good understanding of how we were cheated and continue to be cheated might help protect us from this fraud continuing or morphing in something just as bad.
I didn't read the book, but both my father and uncle worked for GM after the war (after my father gave up his military career because of the fascist ideology he saw infecting everything in this country). My father pointed out to us how this fascist monopoly game was played - even when we were too young to really understand - and taught us how fascists were a dire threat to true conservatives.
You have it right!
"The glaring stupidity of this policy"
Like the policy of people grabbing for the highest-dollar union job without a second thought about where our society was headed with such stupidity? What if all those stupid people who have worked for GM, Ford, etc, had thought about that during all those years they were raking in the dough as they destroyed our country?
"...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." You mean those people who made GM into the monster that it became, without a single thought about the country and society they were destroying in the process? Those people? Same as the ones who work in 'defense' industries, in my book. They're getting what they deserve.
"..when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses..." as if this wasn't obvious back in the '40s and '50s when I was a kid? (Back when my uncle devised a carb that would get 50mpg and GM bought the patent from him - and buried it?
"The fascists were defeated. We are now in a different kind of war..." It's the same war - and the same fascists, who were NEVER defeated in this country. That was the problem...
"the products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction..." And you didn't know that back when they were buying up street-car lines, and then bus lines, to make sure they had a monopoly on transportation? When they let you have unions, to appease the stupid workers as those same workers self-destructed their own society and country?
"...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." And the oil companies haven't been doing exactly that for the last nearly 100 years - because the people that were dying lived in other countries, and Americans don't care about them...?
"Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year... Average speed: 165 mph... They have had these high speed trains for nearly 5 decades... 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." So it took 40 years for you to figure that out? Europe also has bullet trains, convenient shopping and living, and a hell of a lot more freedom than any American - so who won the war, after all? Or did the fascists just manage to keep freedom from coming to this country - and didn't care about the rest of the world - and stupid greedy arrogant Americans slobbered up all that propaganda (BS) because it made them feel superior?
"impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline." Yeah, and already the disabled and elderly can't get volunteer drivers to take them to the hospital, let alone anywhere else - higher gas prices will finish off millions of already endangered people - which is what the fascists always do: eliminate anyone who can't help their bottom line. Hitler started with the disabled - that's how he perfected the method of mass-extermination. Now we hear about ending Social Security COLAs - at a time when food prices, energy, healthcare, and shelter are beyond reach for many already - oh, but they don't count those items as 'necessities' do they? That's the kind of BS Americans go for - let the 'useless' or 'excess population' die out. Even after every economic model shows that raising Social Security would give the largest return on investment dollars to get the economy moving again. But Americans don't believe in wise investments - unlike Europeans (especially Scandinavia) and other modern CIVILIZED countries.