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."
Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What do you want them to do? (Score:3, Interesting)
In other words, fuck the environment, fuck everyone else, fuck any responsibility for anything that any corporate entity does to anyone or anything, ever. Capitalism means being able to take a huge steaming dump in the neighbor's pool and then just walk away from it, and that's the way it should be.
I think that's what you meant to say.
Or perhaps, just perhaps, the system could and should be weighted towards subdising and guaranteeing jobs that clean up pollution, rather than jobs that create it. They both keep people in work, and they both provide a service to the tax payers that are paying for them. The difference is the visibility of that service. Unfortunately, Joe Voter would rather his taxes go towards subdisising his God-given right to buy a "cheap" SUV (cheap if you ignore the tax money that he already paid to enable it to be built), than to some theoretical hippy horseshit like cleaning up the water table under his kid's schoolyard.
Sorry... sorry, I think my Soma is wearing off. For a moment there I almost thought that we don't live in the best of all possible worlds. My bad.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:2, Interesting)
So you're saying that hourly workers on the assembly lines should have refused to build the crappy designs mandated and approved by GM top management? They should have taken one look at the first Pontiac Aztek off the line and walked out in disgust? They should have refused to build any more inefficent pushrod engines when every other car company had gone to multiple overhead cams?
GM started going to hell on the day when bean counters took over top management. Until sometime in the late 1960s GM was manufacturing company, after that time they became a profitable financial company that happened to manufacture cars as an sometimes unprofitable sideline. And their products clearly reflected this reality.
Re:Sweet (Score:1, Interesting)
As someone pointed out in an earlier discussion here, that makes our country corporatist, in that the government exists for the corporations, not the other way around.
Can you make your bias any more evident (Score:3, Interesting)
The profitability of the 'new' GM requires no explanation. $533M in environmental cleanup is a negligible expense by comparison to the value of the brands GM has developed globally. If the government was willing to buy out GM entirely, obviously they would be willing to absorb the clean-up costs to facilitate GM's survival under other ownership. The costs were inevitably going to fall on taxpayers no matter who bought GM, but only by buying out GM do taxpayers stand to get anything back. Anyone wishing a company that has employed millions of Americans through to retirement to be sold to a foreign corporation over some messy dump sites has a tainted sense of patriotism. Even critics of the Obama administration should praise them for keeping GM American.
And the term "Barack Hussein Obama" is the undisputed flag of politically bigoted. Please continue using it to openly declare your ignorance and irrational paranoia.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:4, Interesting)
No, I think he's saying that the union's ratcheted up benefits and obligations upon the company, which forced those crappy designs down the line so that the margins would be high enough to pay for all those obligations. Unfortunately for GM, they depended on ever-increasing sales of ever crappier cars to maintain their obligations to the workers. Namely, the very important and conflicting obligations of workforce size and worker benefits: you can't increase worker pay/benefits without improving productivity (using automation as one of many tools) and laying off extra employees.
Well, you can, if you borrow against a future that cannot ever exist because you're simultaneously cutting corners left and right. And when sales couldn't keep up with the debt/obligations (unexpectedly, due to outside conditions), the gamble paid off: the government took on, co-signed, or relieved those costs.
Re:Perhaps, but another reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Horseshit. Why do the birthers, etc. always refer to him as Barack Hussein, but average people do not? The answer is perfectly obvious.
Re:Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do Americans "fear" working for a Japanese or French boss so much they are willing to nationalize a car company?
The first thing a Japanese boss would do is throw the union out, just as has been done in all of the Japanese car plants in the US. A French boss might not do that, but they might as well. I believe BMW threw the union out of their plant in the US.
So a foreign owner would probably mean no union. No Democrat administration could tolerate that. I don't think anyone in the federal government gives a rat's ass about what the American people want. Nobody likes the bailout situation and nobody is in favor of what happened with GM. That didn't stop the Executive Branch from doing it. Note that neither the House nor Senate ever voted on a plan for GM.
Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly (Score:2, Interesting)
The other fallacy is that governent spending / control HAS to be bad. I agree that in most situations it turns out that way (largely because of the fundamental disconnect between the interests of voters and the interests of those that represent them), but it's not inherent.
Both of these add up to the tired right wing line that the market is always greater than the government.
Re:Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best (Score:2, Interesting)