First, he says GM has already addressed the stuff we're asking them to address, and that it hasn't worked. If we extend the sentence to say, 'YET', we're still without an estimated time of arrival at the other side.

"Responding to fierce competition" implies to my reading eyes that they weren't expecting competition. On our very shores? The Japs? An electric Cooper Mini is being launched as we kvetch. That's the Germans. But to continue with what Rick wrote, the response was to increase fuel efficiency and cut costs. They've cut their employee work force in half already. If there isn't enough profit in a car to pay for the car, the next car, and to make good on the deal they made with legacy workers, then they are as viable as any other concern would be, right?

Quality and innovation come in paragraph 4, but now it's too late. If we're still questioning the quality of American cars, then it's too late to address quality. He brags on the Volt, which I have been excited by for years now. But the Volt isn't coming until 2010. BMW developed the all-electric Mini 2-seater in 10 months, debuting it at the LA car show this weekend, while Rick and his Detroit peers try using government largess to move to the other side.

So if we guarantee $25,000,000,000 in loans to retool for efficiency (in manufacturing- the 2009 Escalade Hybrid still gets worse mileage than the 1908 Model T), where will it get GM? Is there a plan, a storyboard? And if we shell out another $25,000,000,000, that will get us to the end of January?

I really, really do want GM to make it to the other side, but the inventory already in stores has to be melted down and recast. As they retool for that, they should look for ways to grow in the recycling industry. And I'd rather see them fail before Barack Obama moves into his new office. Keeping them open a little longer requires keeping the gauze over our eyes, and this is an hour of reckoning.

This may come down to a choice between government propping ailing domestic industry, and government being called upon to become the paycheck distributor. I think we need a moratorium on foreclosures, a wave of self-assessment to force people like us to really decide whether we have the mettle to eek out a mortgage payment and still raise children, a bill to empower homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages (Even non-distressed owners. Imagine how different the competition for capital becomes when the high FICO people re-enter the debt market.), and a national turning toward risky new energy, conveyance and distribution technologies and the million new jobs in it.

Nobody wants people to lose their livelihoods. But we're talking about coal mining. The decision we as a country with policy and law need to make is whether young people should be initiated in coal mining or old people. Should we fight reason to ensure the continuation of internal combustion as the means to transport 150-200lbs of human and a ton of car 50 miles to perform menial tasks all day and go back the way they came? Our entire economy is framed by burning gasoline at regular intervals. If there were only one seat in the car, maybe it wouldn't have to weigh so much, require so much fuel, require such a long parking space, so much iron, polyester...

The energy crisis we are in now started in the 1970s. Then came the '80s, and look what that brought. Wrought. The 1980s wrought. "Wrought" sounds more severe, Biblical. It let society hit the pause button while phony money was turned into asexually proliferating bacteria. It was all about money. Nothing else could explain the overwhelming vapidity, superficiality and mediocrity of that era's definition of success. It was good for art though, as it separated the art required to soothe the deluded, experiment with the fringes, and lift the darker subculture. We got Phil Collins, Robert Maplethorpe and even more polyester. But it got the manufacturing sector moving- offshore. And it got the financial sector moving- offshore. And it did nothing to address the energy crisis, just started sending resources up the socioeconomic food chain. Trickle Down Economics, remember? The solution to the energy crisis was dropped as Raygun dismantled President Carter's rooftop solar/passive hot water heater.

Last year, 402,744 Americans died in coal mines. This figure is probably Fox-News high. But these industries, the energy sector and the automotive sector are woven together. They complement each other: "Nice Hat!"; "Hey- love the irritated mucus membranes on our children's alveoli!"

The auto slump has more to do with Americans no longer needing as many cars as 'Detroit' makes. We don't need all of these brands. Some people want a huge car, and they should be able to get one- and pay to feed it. Some people want to have a smaller footprint, and they should get one, and they should benefit from the selflessness. Some people want the latest thing, the highest technology, and they just aren't buying an American Car- never mind the on-board WiFi, we're not supposed to be typing in traffic anyway.

So now, since we're waking up and not shopping at every moment, while we're driving up efficiency in every other aspect of our postmodern lives, including retail, medical care, sports training, building design, we have to look at Dig-It-Up-and-Burn-It as a charming relic of an earlier time. And we have to see the carburated Mustang in the garage and the fuel-injected Stingray in the same dim candle light the Rembrandt school made so archetypal.

And we have to stop hanging society from it. From them. From Detroit or from Texas. From oil and gas and coal and these cars they make. It's geopolitical pathology.

Josh Marshall teased us with a little no-comments blurb: Could the $700,000,000,000 be gone before January 20 without saving us from the GOP base?

Of course. The number came out of their head, with the knowledge they wouldn't be able to sustain the circle jerk much longer and they'd have to find somewhere else to get free money/bonuses- and only while they're still the boss can they expect the boss to reward their performance, such performance being measurably bad and such incentives being pointless.

Look what happened when the current 'President' came in. There was what, a half-trillion dollars in the bank? They took it. By any means necessary. That's why the 'President' balks at using the bailout funds to help capitalize the Big Three- too many mouths to feed besides theirs.

GM pays its CEO $1.65 Million base salary to preside over the decline. Toyota pays its CEO a $900,000 base. $28 per hour is what a senior automaker gets, or a little under $60K/ year. This guy makes no decisions about where to allocate capital to produce and market better cars. He's aware of Toyota and their wacky Prius, but he BUILDS an ESCALADE HYBRID getting under 20 miles from a gallon of gas.

Benefits and pensions are not the problem. They are part of the baseline requirement for someone to survive. The lifestyle of someone making $60K is not substantially different from the life of the guy making $50K or $45K. But it's a different planet entirely when you factor the difference between the highest-paid line guy and the captain of the ship. Both stand to lose their jobs when the ship hits the rocks, right? But who's taking the risk?

I suggest that, like other sales jobs, the CEO of each automaker, and especially the financial rackets, should be pretty high, and that like other sales jobs should be based at $30,000.  

What's the difference in lifestyle between $2M (Wagoner will get a bonus for something this year) and $900,000? From $900K to $300K? Can't measure it. The difference between $65,000 and $2,000,000? Also immeasurable. The guy on the line gets paid to complete a shift, which is attached to a quota. But the guy writing the Employee Compensation Manual also signs his own checks.