I no longer own General Motors. Neither do you. A couple of hours ago, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that the U.S. government has sold off its final shares of General Motors stock. For the future of the planet, this is terrible news. In 2009, with GM about to go under (thanks to decades of stupidity and greed), President Obama stepped in and offered a bailout deal -- he would save the company as long as we-the-people could own a majority of it. GM said yes and the taxpayers suddenly owned 60% of GM! The first thing the president did was fire the chairman and CEO of GM (and, speaking on behalf of my fellow Michiganders, that felt really good). Once in the drivers seat, Mr. Obama had a golden opportunity not just to save hundreds of thousands of jobs but to steer GM away from the internal combustion engine (a.k.a. Killer of Planet Earth) and create a 21st century transportation company. At the time, I suggested the president should transition GM from the building of cars that the majority of Americans no longer want into a company that would build mass transit: bullet trains, light rail, subways, streetcars, busses and the like. Have GM make the things we need for the new century, the transporting vehicles that would serve our needs and reduce the deadly emissions caused by the internal combustion engine. And, in the way the automobile created the suburbs and exburbs, this new mass transit would return a large portion of the population to living in the much more eco-friendly environment of our urban centers. Sadly, thats not what happened. Auto jobs were eliminated (before the others were saved), pensions and benefits were reduced, and wages for new hires cut in half. Obama didnt save Detroit - Detroit continues to die an apocalyptic death - he saved General Motors and he rebuilt it to do a better job of its former self. Many autoworkers are grateful for this. But no one really wanted the government to be in the business of building cars. So Obama has been selling off all the stock the public owned -- at a ten billion dollar loss! -- and giving up the control without a guarantee that GM would reinvent itself into the kind of transportation company we really need. A critical moment in history, a turning point that would have well-served the grandchildren of the future, has now evaporated so that GM can sell more Impalas. (Postscript: 100 years from now, somebody living in the interior south of this continent - the only livable area for humans, thanks to climate change - will dig up this Facebook post and ask, why the heck didnt they listen to this guy in the funny hat? Because he was wearing a funny hat, they will answer.)
Posted on: Mon, 09 Dec 2013 23:54:28 +0000
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