When Barack Obama decided to bail out the US auto industry, I was one of the naysayers. I was wrong. There’s no shame in being wrong, so I admit this happily. I had not thought through the consequences of letting the auto industry fail, albeit deservedly, the millions of lost jobs, the increase in the trade deficit, and most most of all the impact on unions. Had I been right, I could not celebrate this great news.
General Motors—which still exists as a manufacturing entity thanks to the Obama administration—is set to do something that should make native son Michael Moore very happy: make a major manufacturing investment in Flint, MI:
General Motors Co. is expected to announce Monday it will invest about $300 million to build a new full-size truck at its Flint Assembly plant, according to sources familiar with the plans.
The investment will create or retain hundreds of jobs, the sources said.
GM spokeswoman Kim Carpenter declined to comment other than to say: "We have some exciting news and we look forward to sharing it on Monday," when company and union executives have scheduled a morning news conference in Flint.
Now, let’s remember who thinks those jobs shouldn’t exist because GM received government assistance. Starting with Michele Bachmann:
We all know GM is now Government Motors because it’s owned by the American people. It’s been nationalized. There is no private corporations the way we used to think of GM. Now, the main stockholder is the American Government.
Or how about the Republican National Committee, which produced a 90-second web ad attacking Obama for his decision to save the American auto industry?…
Inserted from <Daily Kos>
Here’s that ad:
The reason I have no shame in being wrong is that I admitted it. But Republicans doubled down and continue to attack labor.
6 Responses to “Great News For Flint, MI”
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Yep all the restructuring took was wiping out all of the old stock and any value anyone including pension plans and individuals with 401’s held, out and issuing a new IPO. That and about $30 an hour in wage and benefit concessions from the UAW in the two tier pay agreement. Hell if they drop wages another $8 dollars an hour ($14-8=6) the autoworker will just about be on par with Mexican autoworkers which car makers soon enough found was still more expensive than Asia.
Sorry Tom but this is not a case of If you build it they will come, it is a case of may as well use an existing facility that has a preconditioned state tax give away because we can’t get a tax break anywhere else right now. GM is about committed to building in America as TaTa motors is. The question to be answered is where does the supply chain start and end and is this just an assembly point for foreign made goods?
I’ll buy one of those American made Fords when they come out! 😈
http://www.freep.com/article/20110715/BUSINESS0101/110715046/GM-pour-300M-into-Flint-assembly-plant-keep-add-jobs?odyssey=nav%7Chead
Sounds pretty good to me. What am I missing?
The bailout did work unlike Wall St which only worked for the banksters.
I was one of the people pulling for GM to be bailed out – one of my all time favorite cars was a Chevy. I loved that car and had sooo much fun in it, but it was only a 2 door and having kids with rear facing cars seats wasn’t really conducive to having a 2 door car, so I had to sell it. It’s come back twice to me for a new title which says to me, it wants to come home. 😉 I was all for the bailout of the car companies because millions of other jobs are attached to that. WE invented the car and it would have been a shame to lose both of them, especially since they are still reasonably priced, reliable (mine had 175K miles on it and still rode like it was brand new and it looked brand new too because I took really good care of that car) and just great cars.
I WASN’T for the bailout of the banks because I didn’t care if they all failed because by that time, I was so pissed off at Chase (where I kept my money for 25 years), I was ready to go downtown and burn down that building – yeah, I was that pissed off because I didn’t think they needed the money (which it turns out that they didn’t) and they were paying their CEOs and other execs such obnoxious salaries that again they didn’t need the money. Paulson and his little friend made the whole deal up and we paid for it. Paulson should be in jail for fraud. And he MADE all of the banks take the money, even if they didn’t need it so we wouldn’t know who was going down and who wasn’t. And they paid that money back and basically no interest. It was a crime. The only good thing they did was make Chase buy WaMu – sucked to be them. But we still took all their bad loans and they’ll never repay those back – to say nothing of Freddie and Fannie. 😡 😡 😡 😡
I don’t think I would have had much luck burning down Chase – the building is HUGE and it’s concrete. I think explosives would have been required and I would have done it at night, so no one got hurt. I’m not that mean. 😛