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."

Comments

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: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: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: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.