How about we DON’T flush billions down the toilet?
Michael Moore has outlined a plan that would solve the problem of the Big 3, but will Congress listen to him or the other millions of people who are against throwing billions into the wind?
We all know what would happen if Congress would give $25 billion $34 billion to Ford, GM and Chrysler, the same thing that happened to Wall Street — massive layoffs of thousands of people, a yo-yo stock market, a continuing recession.
Read further to learn about Moore’s plan to save the Big 3 (no, not by giving them billions of taxpayers’ money), and in turn save our economy, jobs, and the environment.
Michael Moore’s plan:
“1. Transporting Americans is and should be one of the most important functions our government must address. And because we are facing a massive economic, energy and environmental crisis, the new president and Congress must do what Franklin Roosevelt did when he was faced with a crisis (and ordered the auto industry to stop building cars and instead build tanks and planes): The Big 3 are, from this point forward, to build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil and, more importantly to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones.
“2. You could buy ALL the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion. Why should we give GM $18 billion or $25 billion or anything? Take the money and buy the company! (You’re going to demand collateral anyway if you give them the “loan,” and because we know they will default on that loan, you’re going to own the company in the end as it is. So why wait? Just buy them out now.)
“3. None of us want government officials running a car company, but there are some very smart transportation geniuses who could be hired to do this. We need a Marshall Plan to switch us off oil-dependent vehicles and get us into the 21st century.
This proposal is not radical or rocket science. It just takes one of the smartest people ever to run for the presidency to pull it off. What I’m proposing has worked before. The national rail system was in shambles in the ’70s. The government took it over. A decade later it was turning a profit, so the government returned it to private/public hands, and got a couple billion dollars put back in the treasury.”
Why don’t we build up our national rail system and local metro lines so that people can actually get to their jobs (or better jobs that may be currently unaccessible to them) without having to drive? Building permanent train routes would also create jobs, and how is that not better than temporarily bailing out GM, Ford, and Chrysler?
“…More importantly, it will create millions more. It literally could pull us out of this recession.”
Source: The Huffington Post
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Bailout 2008, a poem by David Jeffrey:
Like a bloodied warrior,
laying broken and torn.
Like a dying soldier, hopeless and forlorn.
But the blood, it be green,
the color of money.
And the soldier is an economy,
and it is anything but funny.
Broken are it’s people and shattered are their dreams.
Thanks to the ultra rich and their full proof schemes.
It is a tragedy with more pain to come.
Finance will be Hell, and their wills will be done.
http://www.voicesnet.org/allpoemsoneauthor.aspx?memberid=982900010