Goodbye, GM
by Michael Moore
Monday 01 June 2009
Visit article original @ MichaelMoore.com
I write this on the morning of the end of the
once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President
of the
General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.
As I sit here in GM's birthplace,
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
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
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
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
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.
2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM
to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the
current workforce - and most of those who have been
laid off - employed so that they can build the new
modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start
the conversion work now.
3. Announce that we will have bullet trains
criss-crossing this country in the next five years.
bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them.
Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late:
under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains
for nearly five decades - and we don't even have one!
The fact that the technology already exists for us to
go from
we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the
unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over
the country.
and a half. This can be done and done now.
4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit
lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build
those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people
everywhere to install and run this system.
5. For people in rural areas not served by the train
lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.
6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid
or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a
few years for people to get used to the new ways to
transport ourselves, so if we're going to have
automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be
building these next month (do not believe anyone who
tells you it will take years to retool the factories -
that simply isn't true).
7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to
facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other
means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of
millions of solar panels right now. And there is an
eager and skilled workforce who can build them.
8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by
hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who
convert their home to alternative energy.
9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on
every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to
switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new
rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.
Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save
GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do
nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is
not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a
company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a
strange odor to fill the car.
100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors
convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles
and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation.
Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal
combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so
long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out
in the front - and the back - seat. We watched movies
on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR
tracks across the country, and saw the
for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And
now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The
President - and the UAW - must seize this moment and
create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.
Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic
disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that
night and went on to live another 97 years.
So can we survive our own Titanic in all the
we can do a better job.
Yours, Michael Moore MMFlint@aol.com MichaelMoore.com
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