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1) At 90K miles the Chrysler mini van's transmission self destructs. This problem has gone on for years. They haven't fixed the problem and and they don't give credit toward the repairs. That is how much Chrysler cares about their customers and their product. So why should the customers they had no regard for be forced to save the CEOs that were so blatantly incompetent?
2) Chrysler is a privately owned equity company. Why should the taxpayer bail out hedge fund owners who are well educated and know their risks?
3) GM had an electric car, the EV. Then they scrapped it. Now they are promising (with government money) that they will research and design an energy efficient car?
4) The executives of the big-three, knew that gasoline was going to be an issue in the future. They knew they would be facing a moment like this but they failed to take action. In fact, they fought every change from improved mileage standards and to improved safety standards. They continued to glamorize the large vehicles in their advertisement because they preferred the profit in the big vehicle. The big-three knew that they were too big to fail.
The employees paddle the boat. The executives steer the boat. But let the boat get into rough water and they want to throw the employees over board. Employees are people just like us. They have house payments, children in college, and a working wife. They don’t have the discretionary income that executives have. The executives need to make the sacrifice.
Let’s face it. All these discussions and the media attention is just window dressing. Both the politicians and the big-three are dancing to sell us their package.
I think that we cannot have the ripple effect of this many lost jobs in our economy right now. We need something that will take care of the people and hold the executives’ feet to the fire. So lets pass a bill that has some auditors, some consequences and some teeth in the package -- for the sake of the country.
