By Michael Moore
I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.
As I sit here in GM’s birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am 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 America now own a car 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 Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that 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 Flint 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 Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, 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. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first 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 New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven’t used it, is criminal. Let’s hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five 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 Pacific Ocean 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 Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.
Yours,
Michael Moore
Linda, they were irrigation ditches. There are many ways to help the poor. I know people who were laid off but didn’t sit around blaming GM or other employers or the president, and instead went to work in Mississipi helping rebuild houses as volunteers.
I’m just saying that people can blame blame blame all they want, but they should point the finger at themselves and ask what did I do to help – how am I contributing? Michael Moore wants to blame McDonald’s and the autoworkers and all hunters and fishermen, and thinks that cubans have the better deal in health care – ok so more power to him it is a free country and he can say what he wants. I can disagree with him and if Eric wants to kick me off of PW he can do that too.
I read the president’s speech today and felt a powerful spiritual grace lifting me up as I read. It was a thrilling moment and I’m still thinking about what it might mean to the world.
I do wonder, did the locals find the ditches useful? To meet their needs? Perhaps so, and if so, then wonderful! On the other hand, were “upgrade” projects requested or imposed? Far too often – after centuries of thinking that we are “beyond the crusades” people (often religious organizations) continue to impose their ideas/ideals of what is “right” upon other cultures/communities. Is this what we are doing now as we discuss from afar the plight of GM employees?
Patty, what do you think that the global GM-based economies need? Have you touched them recently? Perhaps Mr. Moore lifts that big American fork to his mouth while dining with Flint neighbors and listening to their stories? Perhaps he wishes to find a way – his mission in life as a filmmaker it would seem – to share those stories with other people who are interested in changing the world we live in?
NOW is a really opportune time (as is any time) to accept/look/listen with our neighbors as we move into the future with PLANS to improve quality of life based on individual and community needs.
Mr. Moore needs to be cheered (despite your agreement or disagreement with his suggestions) for his insightfulness and willingness to suggest that WE NEED A PRACTICLE PLAN OF ACTION to change what has been done “wrong”. Read between the lines. He’s not saying “do what I say” he’s saying “Do what I do!” AS in Take Action – and Action can be Practicle.
To me, his suggestions seem well grounded in common-sense; take what you have and turn in around into what you want. Do we want alternative power sources etc? How can we “re-tool” what we have to not only get from A to B but keep roofs over heads and food on tables?
Patty – what do YOU suggest we do with GM? What are your suggestions for the future of a large community of Americans and others?
I submit to you that purchasing a FORD for your next vehicle is not even remotely in the ballpark regarding the questions we face today nationally and globally.
Further, I submit to you that Mr. Moore’s suggestions are not about Fear. They are all about Taking Action – that is to say they are precisly the opposity of what you feel; they are about having NO fear.
BTW — “planned obsolensence” is not such a bad idea IF it is coupled with ReUse/ReCycle/ReClaim. There have been international standards set to enforce this principle for decades – and by which many other countries/companies abide. We TOO can impose RESPONSIBILITY upon manufactures in America – it just takes the voice/s of the People.
With Love,
Linda
Mystes, oh yeah – I was thinking about love and forgiveness the whole time I was getting honked over the last few months of disasters. The fear is out of control.
Patty Exclaims: “Fear is what makes this world go around. Without it, we’d have all transcended into heaven already and the world would disappear. Fear works on both sides of the aisle.”
What!!? This isn’t heaven? Are you sure? There’s a bumper sticker around here that says: “On Earth as it is in Austin,” … so maybe you just need to move a few miles south.
As for ‘fear’ making the world go ’round, Patricia Proctor, you SO know better than that!! The only thing people are *really* afraid of is not being loved. Once that simple fact is stuck in your craw, the solution is obvious and ever-ready, no?
****
Man, I am having the weirdest, weirdest day. Everything is working out, but it feels like my own, personal Mercury retrograde. On steroids. With a twist.
Back to it…
xo
m
Fear is what makes this world go around. Without it, we’d have all transcended into heaven already and the world would disappear. Fear works on both sides of the aisle.
I’ve spent my time on the bus….have Mexican, Indian, Black, Jew, and Japanese relatives. I’ve dug ditches in Mexico, trying to help improve lives. Oh yes – you can volunteer for missions groups or whatever, and do your part. But do you? I don’t think Michael Moore ever did anything harder than lift a big American fork to his mouth.
The thing is, you don’t know what wonderful new inventions will be here tomorrow that will fix some of the problems today. I’ll keep the Buick.
Michael Moore is once again completely full of shit. Does he really think people in the rural communities want to take the bus to work? What would that do, add like 3 hours to your workday?
Economically disadvantaged people in the city spend a lot of time on the bus, too. On the plus side, you have time to read, reflect, get to know someone on the bus a little better. Though I know more than a few folks in my current area of the country (southern U.S.) would consider it a come-down… not to mention the “horror” of having to sit next to a black person or a Mexican. *rolls eyes* But that’s their pride speaking, and frankly I have no patience with peoples’ pridefulness these days.
Folks in the rural communities will do what they must–just as they have always done, just as people EVERYWHERE have always done. I’d like to think they perhaps they will simply be grateful to have a job to go to.
I still have a pretty good job in this economy, but I also think jobs are highly overrated. Possibly that’s why I still have one right now. Because I’m not “attached” to it for my basic sense of security in this world. And because I wouldn’t bitch like a spoiled brat if it took me an extra 3 hours to get there.
Vicvega got it right: “The American Way…..build crap, spend money, buy crap we don’t need (like a new car every two years), repeat, repeat, repeat.”
THAT’S what’s “completely full of shit.”
Wouldn’t it be a DREAM if the next transportation device I used were environmentally friendly, people friendly, global economics friendly etc etc.
I ask you, Friends, what (do you think) are the massive steps needed to re-direct the mind-set of the People Who Created and Supported GM and all the organizations modeled just the same (past, present, future)?
Shame on you. God has already told us that the flood’s only gonna come once – as in He’s not planning on rescuing us from our folly/s in one fell swoop again. One change only to rebuild on more solid ground. Now it’s up to us to sop up the mess we’ve made, and it seems to me we can only do that one step at a time.
No doubt planned obsolencense, like any greed-based plan, will always turn around and bite the instigators.
Kudos to Michael Moore. His perspective is well worth respecting and considering. And keep in mind too that here we are engulfed by a fear-based society — the man’s got balls to speak out publicly in a form we just might be able to understand.
BTW, I too grew up in Detroit. No, I mean DETROIT. Inner City and all. Friends scattered about what’s left of Michigan. Stories to tell? You bet. I for one don’t fault the people who are trying to keep food on the table and roof over their heads.
(Although I LOVE the idea of EVERYONE in America who works for a greedy-ass corporation to just not go to work again. Haha! What a RIOT that would be.)
I DO fault the American people for supporting organizations that are fucking them with one hand as they take their money with the other. Why DO you own an American car?
All Power to the Re-Tooling of GM (I am not intimately acquainted with just how far reaching the GM empire extends – but it is vast. Obama has not taken the position he has taken on GM because it is a little bitty American car company that’s going under.)
Love and Lots and Lots of Light,
Linda
Shape – yes indeedy. My old 95 Buick is still running strong with over 400,000 miles on it, but it is looking more and more like my next vehicle will be a FORD.
A Chinese company bought Hummer today. How sickening.
Patty – yes i totally agree. before reading any articles that confirmed this intentional lack of quality in manufacturing, i have always said that i firmly believe that the mechanical devices (large or small) that break and die so easily b/c of incompetence/lack of quality – whether that is intentional or not, that’s the way i feel it is. it seems to have gotten a lot better overall in the past several years though, at least for me.
Those auto workers are the biggest goof-offs and goof-ups ever. I’ve heard various relatives talk about how the employees would run bad parts to get the OT. When my brother worked at Chrysler back in the 70s, he said it only took 2 hours to make production (2 hours!) and then the workers would go down to the corner bar for the rest of the day, return at quitting time and clock out. My brother never went back to Chrysler after the big 70s lay-offs.
It is unrealistic to blame management for our car buying habits. Are you kidding?! We LOVE new cars and the latest gadgets too! If they build cars to last 10 years, my bet is we won’t be buying them. The Postal Service vehicles are built to last 10 years – do you want to drive one of them? I doubt it, seriously! In reality, they probably run about 20 years with proper care, yet no-one takes the USPS seriously!
Michael Moore is once again completely full of shit. Does he really think people in the rural communities want to take the bus to work? What would that do, add like 3 hours to your workday? Thanks a lot – we might as well live in China with thought processes like the ones presented here! A $2.00 tax!!! What an idiot!!! Why don’t you move to North Korea and see how much trouble you can stir up there!
As someone who grew up in Detroit, and as the daughter of a man who worked in the American Automotive Industry for 40 years, let me be the first to share my Father’s account of his days there: they knew EXACTLY what they were doing even back in the 50s and 60s, building gas guzzlers, putting out god-awful emmissions=all for the MONEY.
THIS is what everyone should be talking about. The American Way…..build crap, spend money, buy crap we don’t need (like a new car every two years), repeat, repeat, repeat. It’s not JUST the car companies….it’s production/manufacturing in this country as a majority. I heard someone from GM being interviewed today on NPR and he actually said the words “We just need to get people buying the cars again”….which sounded delusional and totally out of touch with reality. Someone needs to send in someone to teach these people about the New Paradigm.
As for my Father, he got jerked around and screwed over several times before getting outta dodge and heading to Toyota for the last 15 years of his career. In his words upon retirement, “Best Job I ever had.”
Watch out for auto-pilot cynical thoughts of ‘this ain’t never gonna happen’ ’cause we are in a moment in history when some of this actually could occur.
For a start, we know Obama will read this and comprehend it and is not a member of a family with roots in the oil industry!
Hallelujah and Amen.