Michael Moore On “Goodbye GM”

Michael Moore wrote an essay/letter on Monday, the day that General Motors officially declared bankruptcy and the American public became 60% owners of what could possibly be an obsolete car company.

Moore lives in Flint, Michigan, the heart of GM country and has a few really good ideas of what to do with it now. I couldn’t have written a better letter. I hope the President and the public reads it and takes it to heart.

Since we are 60% owners of the company, we do have some say in what the company produces now, correct?

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company’s body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with — dare I say it — joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know — who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let’s be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we’ve allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is “reorganized” by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. … read the whole letter and nine ideas moore has for GM on michaelmoore.com