GM Gets To Dump Its Polluted Sites

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

[WindBourne]

Both GM ans Chrysler were let off the hook on the 10's (or it is hundreds) of billions that they owed. Then we forced Chrysler to be sold to Fiat for next to nothing. Fiat Will keep it open for th next 2 years and then close all American plants (unless some are newer than theirs) after absorbing the IP. GM is currently forcing their partners to move operations to China, rather than keep them here. Chinese gov. is insisting on it (jingoism at its best). Worse, we are STILL subsidizing them with loans as well as CARS garbage. What should have happened is that GM and Chrysler SHOULD have been broken up into multiple companies and than allowed to compete. The problem with both of these was BAD CEOS. OTH, if you break them up, then you have multiple CEOs, which is likely to leave at least several of them doing OK to great. As it is, these companies will be gone within 5 years.

Re:Sweet

[clang_jangle]

They don't merely want to do that, they actually do it. A corporate entity's rights are vastly superior to those granted a human citizen here in the US. That's what makes this country a socialist state for the rich, and a totalitarian state for everyone else.

Re:What do you want them to do?

[Rogerborg]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[dontmakemethink]

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

[zippthorne]

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

[Nimey]

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

[FriendlyPrimate]

The assumptions made in this post are ridiculous. Everything would have be rosy if GM had just been allowed to go bankrupt? GM wasn't ENTIRELY at fault for their downfall. Don't forget that nobody is purchasing cars because of the financial crisis. They would still be around if that had not occurred. You say that someone like Toyota would have swooped in an bought up the pieces. But how realistic is that? NO car companies are doing well right now, not even Toyota. This isn't the environment for car companies to be expanding. Maybe in a couple of years they could have bought up the pieces. But by then, all the domestic parts manufacturers would have long gone bankrupt (but I guess you'd blame their demise on bad management also, right?), and people would have been out of a job for years. That would have had a devastating ripple effect on the rest of the economy (25% unemployment, etc...). Fear of working for a Japanese or French boss has nothing to do with it. I'm no fan of GM (or unions for that matter), but letting GM and Chrysler disappear would have decimated our economy. Obama made the best choice given the grim options he had. Implying that free-market principles would have fixed everything in the end is just plain wrong, unless you think that letting the U.S. economy go in the toilet is okay, since other economies (like China, which isn't burdened with things like environmental regulations and minimum wage laws) would "fill the gap".

Re:Both GM and Chrysler were handle poorly

[linzeal]

It is because of the 'Cadillac' health care plans at GM, it is like 30-40% of that number. If the US is going to compete with the rest of the world if absolutely needs fucking universal health care.

Re:Here is a Reason Why the Free Market Works Best

[cdrguru]

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

[floodo1]

I get so sick of hearing the idea the old false idea that consumer purchasing is a feedback mechanism. Mostly it is, but in countless situations people don't "vote with their dollars" (so to speak). There are all sorts of non-self-interested reasons to buy something, like my girlfriend likes it more, or that I simply can't afford what's in my best interest, or maybe I don't have time to buy what's in my interest (like eating fast food instead of cooking). The very people that invented the simple portrait of consumer dollars representing consumer interest are the very people that now realize the mistake that they made. Perhaps the most obvious influence here is the power of marketing.

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

[Haxzaw]

I am not a Bush basher or an Obama apologist, but Bush started the whole thing. By stating, "However, because Americans allowed Washington (and Barack Hussein Obama) to effectively nationalize GM", you ignore the fact that Bush started the bailout nonsense. True that Obama has taken it to a whole new level, but he sure didn't start it. Of course, one could look back several years at the first bailout of Chrysler as the starting point, but that was a different situation, and Chrysler paid the loan off. I see no reason to believe that the banks or car companies will ever pay back any of this money. Americans don't necessarily fear working for these other countries' companies, and Americans didn't nationalize the car companies, the Government made the mess, and the companies are not nationalized - the Government does not own them.