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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."
Heads you alone win, tails you and everyone else loses.
As radio announcer Thom Hartmann says, corporations want to privatize the profit and dump the liabilities on the commons. That's the ticket.
They have no money to pay for it. Even if the government didn't excuse the debt, it wouldn't ever be paid.
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.
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?
Horseshit. The unions were much more complicit in the downfall of GM and Chrysler than the last few crops of CEO's at either company. Moreover, given the stock holdings that the union was given at GM, anything bad that happens to that company is now completely their fault. The fact that they sold most of it is absolutely no excuse.
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.
While the bankrupcy itself was unusual, it's not unusual at all for corporations to receive relief on environmental cleanup and associated fines during bankruptcy. State and Federal governments ends up with the tab for the cleanup.
And since when does the federal government own up to things?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
Votator.com implements a fair voting scheme (free
Welcome to the real world. No one likes the government, unless of course the government is giving them a free lunch.
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
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
You going to blame the JANITOR as well? In the end this was PURELY about BAD MANAGEMENT. It is THEIR JOB to made decisions. It is THEIR job to MAKE MONEY. The vast majority of car companies HAVE UNIONS (all of the europeans) and YET, they make money. In fact, the best one currently is VW. They are going like gangbusters. Why? BECAUSE OF GOOD MANAGEMENT.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
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.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
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...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
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...
oogly boogly!
the total cost of employing someone at the imports were roughly $38 an hour compared to $78 am hour at GM.
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
I'm not sure what is wrong with your Google finger but this information is nothing new 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.
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.
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
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.
"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?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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.
Do you see the FNORDS? I refuse to post anonymously, as I am fireproof!
Wow, your post is so fucking wrong it's amazing. You're one of these guys who thinks that capitalism has some kind of magic fucking pixie dust that makes everything wonderful. Guess what, it doesn't. The system is gamed in every fucking way imaginable to make sure the playing fields are anything but level and that the so called "invisble hand" does nothing but stroke very specific benefactors.
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.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
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.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
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.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
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.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
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.
You want to know why we are seeing the slow death of the US car companies? It is actually very simple: Free trade is a lie. does anybody remember when we had TVs and stereos made in the USA? I do, and I remember what killed them. Free trade is a lie. It is a lie and a fantasy because you can NOT call allowing countries like China, which allow the corps to poison the land and their own people, to place their products on the same shelf as those that don't fill the air and ground and water with toxins "free trade". It is like placing you HS football team against the Denver broncos and them having the refs fixed for the Bronco to boot.
That is why I am predicting that we are heading for a Soviet Union style collapse. It is because our government has become so corrupted by special interests that they know work against their own countrymen under the guise of "free trade" which simply doesn't exist. your company can't compete with a Chinese one, simply because we don't allow you to poison us. You can't compete with an Indian that gets a master's degree for less than 20 grand, yet thanks to H1-B you are expected to live on the same wages as he. this system is simply unsustainable and WILL collapse. There is simply no other outcome. You can't export all the jobs and continue to import all the goods and expect the economy to continue to function. There WILL be a total collapse, the only question is when.
But what you see now happening to the auto companies is the same as what happened to the manufacturing sector before them. They had to compete with those that had unfair advantages and of course they lost. can't very well win a rigged game, now can we?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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 ...
How, exactly, is dropping union contracts (screwing workers) the right thing?
The contracts weren't economically feasible, and that's one of the things you do in a bankruptcy: you either liquidate the business (chapter 7 or 13), or you restructure it (chapter 11) to make it a viable operation going forward.
The worst part of the bailouts and the bankruptcy is the terrible precedent it sets: the president decided to override the existing body of law that we have to deal with failed businesses. The upshot is that you'd have to be fucking nuts to invest in or loan money to any company with a union, because of the danger of the union getting the government to change the rules on the fly.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Both of these add up to the tired right wing line that the market is always greater than the government.
I would state that somewhat differently: I would prefer to buy what I choose, than to have my earnings taken from me to buy what you choose. Whether my decisions meet your approval or not, they're mine to make if I'm a free man.
Scratch a liberal, find an autocrat.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."