Hey! where’s my bailout?

it’s nice to see General Motors making a logical decision that recognizes things are changing and that we all need to wake up to realities we’ve ignored for decades, at least since 1929 if not earlier: survival over the long term is impossible without sustainable, reality-based decisions

refusing life support for a company that isn't making it is a Business 101 decision; we need more such sensibility, especially among those who spend my money, i.e. governments; how ironic that GM's bosses don’t believe governments should apply the Saab logic to them

the most important question is why more taxpayers aren’t speaking out about using our money to support failing multinational companies from the Wall Street, Enron, Lehman Brothers, Etc School of Business Administration, especially a company like GM that is still paying its executives obscene wages, building cars fewer of us want to buy, and repeating broken promises about electric vehicles out of one side of its corporate mouth while out of the other side resurrecting a 60s-era gasoline-powered muscle car, the Camaro, and making the Corvette, another greenhouse-gas generator, more powerful than ever

governments should apply the Golden Rule and treat GM the way GM is treating Saab; GM won't be the first large company to go bankrupt and it certainly won't be the last

governments definitely have a major role here, but it's not to prop up private-sector capitalist entrepreneurs who can no longer survive in today's world because they've ignored evolving realities

the first priority, of course, is to redirect bailout money toward minimizing the difficulties auto workers will face and help them transition to the long-predicted green "future" that's here now; might be a good time to make some reality-based revisions to bring employment insurance into the 21st Century; this will, of course, require that federal cabinet ministers stop suggesting some workers find temporary [and paltry] bridge financing more lucrative than a pay cheque

the next step would be to direct what's left of the requested auto bailout money to help design and develop the infrastructure Canada needs to make electric and other non-hydrocarbon vehicles more practical

and, of course, GM must go on the auction block if it cannot successfully restructure itself in today's market, just as dozens of North American automobile manufacturers and other companies have over the past century, and just as GM expects Saab to try today; GM's been losing money for too long to expect a taxpayer bailout; hell, it might even survive corporately under new ownership as a sustainable company, albeit one making different and fewer models than GM has been

maybe if someone buys the rights to Chrysler's Viper they'll pick up GM's Corvette, too; who knows? after the dust settles there might still be a future for boutique companies making specialty and niche products, such as Ferraris or Hummers

there's a bright future for companies like ZENN or Tesla, and government should be supporting and promoting them as a diversion from our previous unsustainable path

perhaps governments could help launch a new Canadian company, buying some of GM's assets like the plug-in Volt and introducing new model lines, such as up-dated and redesigned EVs, a more-practical, less-expensive version of the Tesla, or a plug-in Viper, all engineered for Canadian weather and potentially profitable exports

that might initially cost more than what the gasoline-car companies are asking for today, but it’s more likely to be seen in hindsight as a sensible and sustainable investment

and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel [pun intended]; we already have the seeds for transition, from ZENN cars and others to hundreds if not thousands of electrical conversions across Canada

the will is here

the technology is here, and getting better every day

it’s time we stopped throwing money into a broken bucket

more next time

Blessed Be