This may be an aside...but I personally don't like GM products. They're rife with flaws.
I think anyone could say that about nearly any company. There were, and are, models that Honda sells for example, that constantly break down. Then there are others that are really good.
And sometimes, things change over time. Cadillac for example used to be one of the most reliable. Then during the 80s after massive government regulations crunched the car industry, they produced some of the worst crap on the market. Now I'd say they are about par.
Ford is the only company I'd like to take a risk on reviving. The F-150 can't be beat with a stick. We should just make the F-150 the official american automoblie...
Ford has done a remarkably good job as of late. Although I just... hate trucks so much. Not that I have something against them, but if I don't have some reason to get one, ugh... give me a real car. Two doors, 8 cylinders, 4 wheels, and lots of room. I think my next auto will be a Lincoln Mark VIII.
Let them go bankrupt otherwise. They made bad investments in gas hogs thanks to their cohorts: BigOil. Now we're supposed to reward them for depriving us and our nation, collectively, of a superior and competitive product that gets top notch MPG or even the volt-line that they wilfully scrapped in favor of the Hummer..
As stated before, the "gas hogs" have actually been their profitable business. Further, BigOil doesn't effect what cars GM produces or the EV1 and VOLT, Saturn, Geo, and Chevy Aveo projects would never have been funded.
The reason the EV1 was scrapped was because it was a money loser. No doubt part of the reason they got into this mess was blowing money on zero-return-on-investment programs like the EV1.
And the answer is, no we do not reward them for jack. They should not get one single dollar of tax payer money ever.
You know..in the interest of fairness...I made some bad investments a couple of years ago that put me in a position of possibly bankruptcy..to the tune of 300K. I want Congress to bail me out. Seriously. If they do this for other entities, why am I excluded? That's called descrimination, and is illegal. People depend on my financial solvency to make my little community thrive. If that is the logic for bailing out the car companies, I want that same logic to apply to my situation...for it is exactly the same.
Discrimination? Everyone makes judgements. You have judged the oil companies, yes? If you are married, I wager you likely didn't just pick up any random screwed up person. You like discriminated between some that you met, over others.
Do you not get what politics is about yet? They don't give a crap about you. They care about power and money and votes. You are not going to lobby hundreds of thousands of dollar to senators to keep the bailout coming to "protect Union jobs". Or to keep the plant open, like GMAC might now that they have federal funds. Or the way Fannie and Freddie did to keep regulators off them.
You are not going to provide them massive control over the industry, the way controlling one of the largest auto manufacturers in the world will.
You are not going to be looked at like a political move to gain votes, unlike some idiots might vote for some senators because they kept GM open and that prevented a recession (*COUGH*).
They are not interested in solving problems. Nor are they keen on new technologies. If you do not provide lobbing money, control over a large section of the economy, or can be used as a political football to gain votes...
your nobody.
