[sustran] Michael Moore wishes GM a long good night ...
Ashok Sreenivas
ashok.sreenivas at gmail.com
Wed Jun 3 01:56:02 JST 2009
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2009/06/somebody-was-bound-to-put-the-boot-into-gm-and-it-might-as-well-be-him/
Goodbye, GM …by Michael Moore
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….
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