GM Gets To Dump Its Polluted Sites 336
ParticleGirl writes with this excerpt from the Detroit Free Press:
"GM's unusual, government-engineered bankruptcy allowed the Detroit automaker to emerge as a new company — and to shed billions in liabilities, including claims that governments had against GM for polluting. Environmental liabilities estimated at $530 million were left with the old GM, which has only $1.2 billion to wind down. Administrative fees and other claims will soak up that money, and state and local officials told the Free Press they fear the cleanups will be shortchanged. ... The New York Attorney General's Office, seeking to protect environmental claims for cleanup at Massena and other sites, argued that federal and state regulatory requirements should not be eliminated by a bankruptcy sale. ... But [US Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber] ruled otherwise."
LLC's in a nutshell (Score:1, Insightful)
Heads you alone win, tails you and everyone else loses.
Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
As radio announcer Thom Hartmann says, corporations want to privatize the profit and dump the liabilities on the commons. That's the ticket.
What do you want them to do? (Score:5, Insightful)
They have no money to pay for it. Even if the government didn't excuse the debt, it wouldn't ever be paid.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:4, Insightful)
No, no, and no.
GM and Chrysler should have been left to die. Period. They're businesses sucked and so did they're products.
The only thing the government bailouts did was keep these bloated poorly run companies alive for a few more years - at the taxpayer's expense. In the meantime, the execs and union members have a few more years of being over paid - at the taxpayer's expense. A few years from now, they'll be back exactly where they were a few months ago and we'll be a few hundred billion dollars poorer.
Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best (Score:5, Insightful)
However, because Americans allowed Washington (and Barack Hussein Obama) to effectively nationalize GM, Americans received the worst of all worlds. Washington poured billions of dollars into the company, and that money comes from future taxpayers. GM retains its rotten management although some talking heads at the very top of the pyramid were replaced: that management misread the market and failed to steer research and development toward highly efficiently small cars when gas prices were skyrocketing. Unions with their gold-plated medical insurance (now paid by the government) retain a stranglehold on the company, now literally owning part of GM.
Worst of all, we discover that the "new" GM will not be paying the costs of cleaning up the environmental pollution that the "old" GM caused.
We could have avoided all these problems if either Toyota or Renault had purchased the relevant bits of GM. Why do Americans "fear" working for a Japanese or French boss so much they are willing to nationalize a car company?
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this surprising? (Score:4, Insightful)
They declared bankruptcy.. the company failed and went into bankruptcy protection in an attempt to salvage something.
Their shareholders (owners) lost billions of dollars, and the GM of old is no more.
Yes, it's important to recognize the responsibilities of old-GM that are not being addressed now that they are gone. But, this should not be surprising, and it's not that unusual either.
unusual not (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What do you want them to do? (Score:3, Insightful)
exactly. The alternative is that GM goes completely out of business and is no longer a going concern, and then the liability of cleanup still falls on government, if it ever got done at all.
So, there's not really good news anywhere in all this. I hate it just as much as anyone else, but we need to be practical.
Re:Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best (Score:3, Insightful)
If GM had escaped from its union contracts through a bankruptcy, it would have started a trend of other severly underwater employers using the same tactic to escape their union responsibilities. No Democrat administration could possibly allow the end of union featherbedding and union gold-plated benefits. Hence the bailout, with the assurance that the unions would continue to receive their benefits.
There was no other way it was going to happen without a Reaganesque union-busting administration at the helm. Obama is going to give us unions whether we want them or not through the fair choice act, so how could he destroy them?
GM is just another government agency (Score:3, Insightful)
And since when does the federal government own up to things?
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:4, Insightful)
It's funny how companies talk about free-market and ask the government not to regulate their market when the economy is good. But then when the economy goes bad, they put their tails between theirs legs and they ask for government help.
This is no longer a free-market A government owned car compagny? It feels like communism.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:4, Insightful)
Welcome to the real world. No one likes the government, unless of course the government is giving them a free lunch.
Re:Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best (Score:1, Insightful)
LOL. Is this some game where we say the opposite of what is true? It's deregulation that allows the market to go nuts.
Obama has taken trickle down to the wrong level (Score:5, Insightful)
Wall Street, instead of having to wait for Reagan's tax breaks to make money found a new comer who accelerated the plan buy just paying them the money upfront.
GM and Chrysler were bailed out for Wall Street and the Unions. Though don't confuse Unions with the rank and file, I am talking about the leadership who decides where the money is spent and offer muscle to intimidate anyone the administration doesn't like (see AFL-CIO's new leader who thinks murder and violence are fine if you can get away with it - or pay it off).
GM had the ultimate sweet heart deal of the two rescues. Not only did they get out of cleaning up all their pollution they also got a tax bump by keeping the tax write offs from bad GM to prop up new GM. Hence companies which play by the book and make sensible deals like Ford get doubly screwed.
Send Washington a message, avoid GM and Chrysler products. We are being run over by the goons in Washington and since our vote counts for very little the next year the only fight we have left is our pocketbooks
Re:Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best (Score:5, Insightful)
You sound disparaging of unions. Businesses are always pulling crap. They'll take everything we let them take. They're always looking for an angle, always trying to game the system. They feel they must, to stay competitive. If we let them, they would lower wages to nothing, pay in "company credit" good only at the highly profitable, highly marked up company store, lobby for bad laws that are entirely too favorable to them, and use our police, paid for by our taxes, to enforce those laws. Unions arose in defense against this sort of abuse. The workers saw that the corporations got their way through organized might that no individual could hope to match. They had to organize. For their part, many businesses are secretly glad of restraints that work. They're often unwise but not completely stupid, they know there are destructive forms of competition. It's a comfort to know they don't have to engage in some of that sort of competition because their competitors can't do it either. Some of their protesting is for form. A pity the free market extremists don't see that.
Businesses are like professional athletes who are so committed they'll do anything they can to win. Taking performance enhancing drugs would be the least of it. How about busting a competitor's knees? Bribing or threatening the officials, or the competition? Sabotaging facilities, or the competitors? Pretty easy to win if the competition's transportation couldn't get them to the game, or they all came down with the flu. Then there's changing the rules of the game. Suppose a team got a dubious rule passed that coincidentally bars most of an opposing team's players from playing, while disqualifying almost none of their own? Then later on rails against those same rules as examples of government red tape and interference, when they themselves were the ones who put those rules there? It's easier to bully governments into making changes if they've first been made to look stupid and incompetent. We have to have good rules and enforcement, unless you'd prefer chaos and seeing all the best athletes dead of stress, steroid abuse, and the myriad other hazards of the profession before age 30?
This dumping of polluted sites is classic. Mining operations pull that one all the time. They get to estimate how much pollution their operation will cause, because they wrote the laws on that. Naturally they underestimate as much as they can. For a few years they mine the material and rake in the profits. They shelter those profits, and then declare bankruptcy and leave us to clean up the massive mess they made. Of course the mess is ten times more expensive to clean up than they estimated, and because they planned to declare bankruptcy all along, they did nothing to mitigate the mess when it would have been cheaper.
Re:Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for letting me know when I could stop reading your post.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:2, Insightful)
Rational expectations (Score:3, Insightful)
The fundamental basis of Chicago economics (which we've been using for the past 40 years) is that people and thus businesses are rational actors and make decisions that are best for their own interests.
That's pernicious fucking bullshit. People and companies make irrational decisions all the time. Consider the EPA cleanup mess: according to the idea of rational expectations, the prospect of having to pay for an EPA cleanup would be a strong deterrent to polluting. In reality, nobody cares, because the person who decides whether to pollute will be gone by the time the consequences of a decision to pollute become apparent. Thus, the company as a whole makes a rather irrational decision to pollute regardless.
You need proactive enforcement to stop these kinds of violations. Generally, trying t stop a given behavior by threatening companies (or people) with consequences over a time horizon of a few years is completely ineffective in stopping that behavior.
Re:Sweet (Score:2, Insightful)
After being convicted of killing a person they are allowed to continue conducting business. A citizen would be incarcerated, effectively ending their ability to conduct business.
Re:Sweet (Score:2, Insightful)
The ability to crush private people with legal costs. It's not spelled out on the books but they'd be stupid to do that.
Re:What do you want them to do? (Score:3, Insightful)
The alternative is that GM goes completely out of business and is no longer a going concern, and then the liability of cleanup still falls on government, if it ever got done at all.
$530 million is a lot of money, but what's the total salary and benefits of GM's BoD and C*O-level executives? I'll bet it's in the billions. Make them pay for it -- by garnishment of wages if they stay on, or if they quit, make the IRS responsible for collecting the money. I guarantee you, we (as in We, The People) will get the money back. They might, I don't know, have to sell off a few private jets or something. Boo hoo.
Oh wait, that would be socialist and if it became standard practice we might scare off the top talent who have the unique skills needed to run American business! Oh noes!
Re:Sweet (Score:3, Insightful)
They can deduct their cost of living from their income to offset the taxes they have to pay.
Try deducting your car's mileage or your restaurant or grocery bills or depreciating your house, car, furniture, appliances, etc. on your next return and see where that gets you.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, in business, it's cruel to be kind in so many ways.
If they would have been left to normal bankruptcy, GM could have done the right thing, dropped it's union contracts, reshaped it dealers, etc.
Instead, the bankruptcy was railroaded through as quickly as possible to have the smallest impact on the unions. Ironically, this will be worse for the workers in the long run and worse for GM. Definitely worse for taxpayers as we're fleeced to shut down these companies rather than let nature take it's course.
What we're doing is the equivalent of feeding an injured deer in the winter. The deer still isn't going to survive and you wasted a lot of good food that could be used to feed more viable animals.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, what's been accomplished is worse than that. What US and Canadian taxpayers have done is essentially underwrite the inevitable move of manufacturing vehicles by Chrysler and GM to China and Mexico. I guarantee you, in ten years they won't be running any plants in the US. There will probably be more Japanese cars being made here than American cars.
Re:Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best (Score:5, Insightful)
so is he ashamed of his name again?
[sigh] Is John Sidney McCain III ashamed of his full name? If not, why didn't he use it in his campaign literature?
This wide-eyed, fake-innocent "but it's just his name" bullshit is really childish. You know perfectly well that the only reason to say "Barack Hussein Obama" in a regular political conversation is to make him sound more foreign, more menacing, more eeevil. Look, you don't like the guy, you don't like his policies, fine. There's plenty to criticize on that basis. But the Birther / Secret Muslim / Not One Of Us rhetoric accomplishes nothing except reveal much of the opposition to Obama as racist, religionist, xenophobic craziness.
Add it to Superfund (Score:4, Insightful)
Or whatever it's called.The US people are now completely crispy fried when it comes to our debt. At this point I just laugh and cry a little every time I hear about a new 'program' or 'bill' or 'solution' that comes out of the administration's or Congress's mouth.
Re:Is this surprising? (Score:3, Insightful)
They probably should have changed the name of the company at the same time, such as Universal Vehicles or something, as a holding company, and legally spun off each major division to avoid BS lawsuits like this. Keeping the same name might be nice for traditionalists, but what came out of bankruptcy is essentially a new, private company.
Re:Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps, but another reason (Score:3, Insightful)
II didnt hear him complain when they were calling our former president "Dubya"... Bama's a big boy, he doesnt need you to stick up for him...
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:3, Insightful)
And keep the 10's of thousands of people employeed in an already shitty economy. It's not so much about keeping GM alive, as keeping people in a job.
Look at the bigger picture before you sound off...
Re:What do you want them to do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Short term. Not long term. Crap accumulates. At some point you'll have to get rid of it.
Would have making the chernobyl reactor with a containment vessel cost more than what ended up being spent on cleanup and abandoning the city?
Re:Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best (Score:3, Insightful)
If you read Robert Bellah's "The Good Society", he argues that we need a strong "civil society" to offset the powers in economic realm and the political realm.
Unfortunately we just argue back and forth in the political realm as if there lies the solution to our problems.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Please show those numbers BACKED UP by real accountants and real numbers (not something pulled out of the air on Faux News). Just a bit ago, It was argued by the federal gov. that GM and Chrysler unions had to lower their average pay from 36 to 34 which is the same pay as Toyota, Honda, etc had (IIRC, the average length of time by the employees was disregarded; GM and Chrysler had on average a much higher cumulative time).
As to the 78/hour figure, I believe that includes such things as retirement and medical health pay for retirees. OTH, other nations such as Germany and France have socialized medicine where a tax is placed on the good, but it does not count against the employee.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:5, Insightful)
The money that the government used to save those "10's of thousands" of jobs didn't just magically appear. It was sucked out of the private-sector economy. Therefore, that money will not be spent on other goods and services, so other people lose their jobs. The jobs saved are easily identifiable and politically connected, while the compensating jobs lost are not. The vast majority of the jobs saved will probably be lost in a few years, so the net is a huge loss.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure what is wrong with your Google finger [google.com] but this information is nothing new [manufacturing.net] and has been a topic of discusion around the entire ordeal since well before the bailouts.
Perhaps the problem is that you are not watching Fox news because you shouldn't be that clueless over something that fucking well known. My guess is your probably not paying attention at all and only like bashing Fox news because you are an idiot who thinks it's fashionable when others do it. That's fine and all but your being pointed out.
Yep, I was right, you are not paying attention at all. Total costs of employmment is not average wages. You are arguing the shirt is green instead of red when your not even looking at the same shirt. By the way, how long ago is a bit? Is it a pinch ago, is it 01 ago, a teaspoon ago, Oh well, it's a mystery I guess.
No, it didn't include already retired people. That's a separate fund and part of another accounting snafu. But it does cover wages, insurance, retirement contributions and so on for the current employees. So yes, while it is more then an average wage (which I never said differently), it is not counting people who no longer work with GM. And yes, Toyota or any other car company can be put in the exact same situation if their unions get the kind of control they had over GM.
Re:Perhaps, but another reason (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow.. Just wow.
It appears that you do have a problem with the name "Barack Hussein Obama". The elections are over and regardless of how many wack-jobs pointed out his middle name was the same a Saddom's last name or that he wasn't a natural born citizen or whatever- they lost so it just doesn't matter any more.
As for John Sidney McCain III, no that doesn't offend me, I'm not going apeshit on the interweb attempting to get people to stop using it either. However, you are. As for right wingers needing to explain why his full name wasn't used more, you have to be really mental to expect an answer for something that just happened. There was no conspiracy to hide his name, there was nothing stoping the left, right, or whoever from using it. He was introduced at the convention using his full name. You act like there is some governing board somewhere that says used this person's full name or not.
I can understand your anger at seeing "Barack Hussein Obama" now. however, your disgust is completely misguided and you just need to chill out or take a pill or something.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the broken windows fallacy. Government spending just cannot replace private sector spending, not even when they look equal on paper. Private sector spending is a feedback mechanism. Good decisions get rewarded, bad decisions punished. This means bad decisions get punished before they derail the economy to the point people die.
Government spending has no such feedback mechanism. There is no specific reason that is *has* to go wrong, but there is no reason for the government to do the right thing either. In theory government could do the same as the private sector, nothing forces the government into bad decisions.
But given the number of possible decisions, it seems unlikely to be able to choose good ones without feedback. And that's just what happens : government spending always goes wrong, for the very same reason entropy always increases. There is no good ("certain") reason shards never jump up from the floor to reform the glass you dropped of the table, and there is no good reason government spending cannot be right.
In practice however, government spending always goes awry. Not that you'll ever get democrats to accept that.
The real solution is to make certain that people have votes, and the real world has a veto. In congress the same situation as in the real world. The gold standard seems a good step in the right direction
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:2, Insightful)
There will probably be more Japanese cars being made here than American cars.
Only so long as we remain a viable market (meaning: we have disposable income to spend on cars) and a viable country for heavy industry to operate (and we're rapidly and foolishly dismantling what we have left of that.) Our government and our corporate elite are fast turning us in to a relative backwater. Now, how we're going to continue to create the wealth that gave so many people a standard of living that is the envy of many is open to question. All these fools that carry on about the new-age "service economy" don't seem to get it: there are two ways that a nation can become wealthy: sale of natural resources, or the production and sale of manufactured goods. If you have neither then, well ... welcome to the third world.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:3, Insightful)
"There will probably be more Japanese cars being made here than American cars."
No loss to the US except pride.
Since our corporate revenues go to the kleptocracy either way, why not to a well-run Japanese corporation that produces quality products and employs US workers?
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the profits, go back to a corporation that is headquartered in Japan. That's why a car that's made in Mexico, from parts made in China, and steel from Japan, can be called an "American" car, when it's got a Chrysler / GM / Ford badge on it.
Re:Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best (Score:3, Insightful)
All I heard for decades was how vitally important it was to subvert the existing authority in every possible way. Funny how subversion is a bad thing as soon as you become the establishment, eh?
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:4, Insightful)
As for your "Good decisions get rewarded, bad decisions punished" crapola, are you fucking kidding me? The fucking dickwads on Wall Street are already circle jerking the shit out of themselves with bonuses while millions more lose their jobs, retirement, and houses. So please spare me the broken windows fallacy bullshit. Power corrupts and warps anything it touches including your god, Capitalism.
FYI...I'm actually a capitalist but I'm realistic about what it is and isn't. Adam Smith was definitely on to the right idea but he didn't get it quite right. Friedman took Smith's ideas and made them far far worse.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:4, Insightful)
Very good points. I'm not too keen on government taking over healthcare, but my one consolation is that it has to get worse before it gets better. The private industry has failed, and though much of that failure is due to unmitigated greed, much of it is also due to problematic regulation and entrenched practice.
The system is broken from top to bottom. There are a limited number of slots available for new medical students even though there is a shortage of doctors, and many good candidates get turned away (conversely, many bad candidates are accepted in years when there are more spots than good candidates). Once accepted, school is exorbitantly expensive, incurring massive debt to the students (this is a serious problem with the educational system, which is a whole other argument). Once students begin practicing (first as interns, then as residents) they work ridiculous hours, forcing sub-optimal performance in life or death situations, which leads to excessive mistakes. Mix with a sue happy populace and medical insurance costs force prices for healthcare to skyrocket. Now, very few people can afford proper medical care without insurance, and the insurance companies cheat the doctors and the patients as well as the businesses that pay a significant portion of the insurance costs. From what I have seen, it costs more per person to be covered under a business healthcare plan than it costs to buy an individual plan, but because the employer shares the burden, it costs the EMPLOYEE less, while the insurance company enjoys a larger margin.
So, much of the change needs to start with the educational system and the AMA, which no private industry can seriously expect to force. Then, changes I can't even begin to fathom need to take place in the legal system in regards to malpractice and also in terms of acceptable hours for medical professionals.
But, I digress, this is a discussion about the botched bailout of the auto industry where our elected leaders ignored the screaming of their constituents (except in Detroit) and spent over a trillion dollars of taxpayer money to line the pockets of the fat cats that paid for their elections. I don't know about you, but I am voting every single one of those fuckers out next election. Any one of them who didn't vote "no" gets a "no" vote from me to make up for their missing one - abstaining is equivalent to a "yes" vote as far as I'm concerned. And the same goes for the bank bailouts. There is no such thing as "too big to fail" - governments do it all the time, and life goes on. If a government can fail without it being the end of the world, a business certainly can.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:3, Insightful)
Bah, I forgot to write a conclusion to the statements made in my introductory paragraph. I expect that the plan for government run healthcare will fail. We've seen examples of it all over the world where nations that have had socialized medicine are realizing the mistake they made. Why our government thinks it is smarter than them when it failed to even see the economic meltdown coming, I can only imagine (I knew before the height of the housing market that it was going to burst, and I am not a professional - of course, I suspect they did too and are merely playing CYA). It will fail, and it will fail big. But out of its ashes I hope that something better than our current system will rise. It will take 10 - 15 years, I suspect, but eventually it will improve in a way that business as usual would not likely produce. So, I'm taking the long view - it's the only hope left to me.
Re:Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best (Score:2, Insightful)
Just out of interest, do you have the actual final figures of what the airline pilots negotiated and got. Do you also have the total renumeration for all the Delta executives and money spent on 'non core business'.
I'm not saying that the pilots didn't get greedy or that the executive were themselves overpaid or spending frivolously but I think it would be an interesting comparison. After all, the pilots and the planes are the money earners and probably deserve the most attention in an airline business.
Unions, like business, aren't evil. However, like anything with humans involved, once they got to much power they both seemed to be. We lived in an interesting time when both the unions and business got powerful, greedy and hurt themselves (and a heap of bystanders) in the wash up.
Blaming unions for the downfall of a business is not fair or accurate (unless of course the unions had stated 'we are brining this company down because of reason X).
Re:What do you want them to do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which conflicts with your claim that "the best job you can get is flipping burgers at some drive through joint" if GM's executives are forced to pay for the mess they have made, causing top scamming talent to flee the country.
Re:Corporatism: the coruption of capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
This is what 30 years of Reaganomics rantings have brought us to. People are so anti-government and pro-business now that we've largely swept away the important restraints on the market born from the first Great Depression and the boom and bust cycle our economy endured for our whole history. What scares me is that even after a return to pre-Great Depression boom and bust cycles, people are still crying for more of the free market that's opening the door for the corporate elite to shaft the industry. Obama even has them running his economic policies now.
People think that it's good for us to drop trade tariffs and force Americans working in safe conditions with benefits to compete against foreign indentured servants with no such protections. People also think it's a good thing that all of our industry has moved overseas under the control of foreign governments so that we can buy cheaper stuff that we increasingly can't afford. People are so brainwashed you've got old people on medicare screaming at their representatives in health care forums to stop socialized medicine! I hate to say it, but I think this is the last dance for us. Of course it wasn't a bomb that did it, we did it to ourselves.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite simply, the union workers are going to get screwed no matter what, whether it's now or later. The billions of taxpayer dollars pumped into GM and Chrysler were not a solution - it changed nothing and is only delaying the inevitable. It sounds cruel, but I would prefer we cut our losses now and move on.
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Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:2, Insightful)
Can we please stop with the alien brainwashing accusations ?
OTOH, remarks like that fully and clearly illustrate the ideas your point is based on.
It's been shown what Keynesian economics (also known as socialism) does : it prevents recovery from crises (which happen even under 100% communist systems).
Not that anyone with half a brain can seriously expect actual research to generate rational thought in you, but I'm fairly sure we'll see more brainwashing accusations. Perhaps you could call me Bush, or ...
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