What Michael Moore has to say about saving the big 3

[FoMoJo]

Do you agree with any of it?

CNN) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reversed plans Wednesday to hold a test vote on an automakers' bailout bill on Thursday. Reid had planned to move on legislation that would have taken $25 billion from the $700 billion already approved for Wall Street and diverted it to the big three automakers.


Filmmaker Michael Moore says the collapse of General Motors could mean the loss of millions of jobs.

CNN's Larry King talked Wednesday with Michael Moore, a filmmaker with deep ties to the auto industry. Moore's father worked for General Motors for 35 years.

In 1989, Moore became an international figure for his film, "Roger and Me," which centered on the declining auto industry in his hometown of Flint, Michigan and the ripple effect on the town's residents.

The following is an edited version of the interview.

Larry King: Michael, was (the movie) prophetic?

Michael Moore: When I made that film, there were still 50,000 people working at General Motors in Flint. I mean they had eliminated 30,000 jobs, but there were still some jobs there.

Today, I think there's less than 12,000 working in the area, so it has devastated Flint. Flint was one of the first towns to go. When I made that movie almost 20 years ago, I hoped that the film would be a warning to other cities that this corporation was intent upon removing jobs from this country and taking them to Mexico and Brazil and other places.

When I made that movie that year, General Motors made a profit of over $4 billion, and they were still laying off people simply to make a bit more money, the people who helped to build the company, the workers in their hometown of Flint, Michigan, they just forgot about them and took the money and ran.

King: Since the principle was, 'We'll have the cars built elsewhere and many of the cars are built elsewhere now,' what went wrong if they were paying less out of the country to build them?

Moore: Well, what really went wrong is that General Motors has had this philosophy from the beginning that what's good for General Motors is good for the country. So, their attitude was we'll build it and you buy it. We'll tell you what to buy. You just buy it.

Eventually, the consumer got smart and said, 'You know what, I'd like a car that gets a little better gas mileage. I'd like a car that's safer on the road,' so they started to buy other cars. General Motors still wouldn't change. They still kept building the wrong cars, and more and more people stopped buying them.  Watch how Moore feels about auto bailout ?

At a certain point, you know, General Motors lost such a large part of the market share that there probably was a point of no return.

Now, here we are on the verge of this collapse. If General Motors collapses, then there goes hundreds of thousands of jobs, if not millions of jobs of the ripple effect of this.

King: And the same is true of Ford and Chrysler?

Moore: Absolutely. I'll tell you, it was hilarious just watching these CEOs there (Tuesday) and (Wednesday) testifying in Congress, saying that, you know, that the problem wasn't theirs, you know, the cars they were building. It was the financial situation that we're in now.  Watch automakers get grilled on Capitol Hill ?

The problem is the cars they've been building. They've never listened to the consumers. They've just gone about it their own wrong way. I'll tell you, you know, I'm of mixed mind about this bailout, Larry, because I don't think these companies, with these management people, should be given a dime, because that's just going to be money going up in smoke or off to other countries.

GM is currently building a $300 million factory in Russia right now to build SUVs, right outside of St. Petersburg. That's where your money's going to go, no matter what they say.

King: Why (do you have) mixed feelings?

Moore: Well, because we can't let all these people lose their jobs because of the bad decisions, the stupid decisions made by the management of these auto companies. I think what has to happen here is that Congress needs to pass some legislation, and our president-elect needs to do what Roosevelt did.


When Roosevelt came in and when World War II faced the country, Roosevelt said to General Motors and Ford, you're not going to build cars anymore. You're going to build airplanes and tanks and guns and the things that we need for this war because we have a national crisis. General Motors had to do what Roosevelt told them they had to do.

King: What do you want them to do now?

Moore: President-Elect Obama has to say to them, yes, we're going to use this money to save these jobs, but we're not going to build these gas-guzzling, unsafe vehicles any longer.

We're going to put the companies into some sort of receivership and we, the government, are going to hold the reigns on these companies. They're to build mass transit. They're to build hybrid cars. They're to build cars that use little or no gasoline.

[the Teuton]

As always, Mr. Moore really has no clue what he's talking about.

[FoMoJo]

I think this...Moore: Well, what really went wrong is that General Motors has had this philosophy from the beginning that what's good for General Motors is good for the country. So, their attitude was we'll build it and you buy it. We'll tell you what to buy. You just buy it.

Eventually, the consumer got smart and said, 'You know what, I'd like a car that gets a little better gas mileage. I'd like a car that's safer on the road,' so they started to buy other cars. General Motors still wouldn't change. They still kept building the wrong cars, and more and more people stopped buying them....makes sense.

[the Teuton]

To an extent.  GM has been building good cars, with the exception of the Cavalier, for the last 10 years.

The quality hasn't always been there, but the car as a whole has not always been an inferior product to Honda or Toyota.

[SVT666]

It scares me that people think Michael Moore is some kind of hero for the average Joe.  He's an idiot.  I don't like a possible bailout as muuch as the nest guy, but if the government allows the Big 3 to go under, then the really shitty problem you guys have right now is going to seem like child's play compared to what will happen.

[SVT666]

To an extent.  GM has been building good cars, with the exception of the Cavalier, for the last 10 years.

GM and Ford have both been building really good vehicles for a while now, but they're shitty cars from the 80s and 90s still haunt them.

[the Teuton]

GM and Ford have both been building really good vehicles for a while now, but they're shitty cars from the 80s and 90s still haunt them.

Exactly.

We had a Contour that was fine until 198k miles, and my other bro drives a fairly reliable Vulcan Taurus.  They're not the coolest cars on earth, but they do their jobs.

Also, for as much as that manifold gasket problem should be plaguing GM with the 3400, our engine in the Venture has not died yet (this isn't saying a lot because I know our can has been afflicted) and my parents have driven the thing more than 20,000 miles a year since we got it.  It now has close, if not more than 180k miles without dying.

None of our GMs or Fords have ever been truly bad with the exception of the our old Celebrity from 1990.

[GoCougs]

LOL - Moore is a colossal moron.

The assertion that GM has a duty to keep people employed rather than add value for shareholders is enough to make a decent person sick.

The assertion that the federal government is to nationalize Detroit such that, "...they build mass transit. They're to build hybrid cars. They're to build cars that use little or no gasoline" is un-American.

Moore and his socialist, anti-capitalist ilk are the very same people that supported the militant unions and militant governmentalism that fostered the environment that ultimately wrecked Detroit.

[the Teuton]

It would almost be a bitter justice if all three did go under just so the unions would have nowhere else to go but non-union McDonald's and Wal-Mart stores.

[FoMoJo]

To an extent.  GM has been building good cars, with the exception of the Cavalier, for the last 10 years.

The quality hasn't always been there, but the car as a whole has not always been an inferior product to Honda or Toyota.

I agree, although I don't think they got really serious until about 5 years ago.  It's a bit late though.  With all the money they were making selling pick-ups and SUVs in the '90s, instead of investing in product, they went of a shopping spree.  It's the short-term mindset that brought them to this state.

[GoCougs]

It would almost be a bitter justice if all three did go under just so the unions would have nowhere else to go but non-union McDonald's and Wal-Mart stores.

Just this morning NPR interviewed a GM retiree, pawning the story off as one of the hundreds of thousands who will have their pension and retiree health care curbed if not eliminated should Detroit declare bankruptcy or disappear altogether.

As a carpenter responsible for building maintenance and the like, the last seven years this individual said he averaged over $100k a year. Further, he opted for early retirement by taking a $62k payout.

I'm all about manipulating the system for one's one personal gain, so I do not fault this individual. In any other industry he'd have made at most $40k, had no pension or retiree health care benefits, and certainly never would have been paid $62k to quit his job. This is why Detroit must suffer its due.

[ChrisV]

GM and Ford have both been building really good vehicles for a while now, but they're shitty cars from the 80s and 90s still haunt them.

And that haunting is why this situation won't be solved with improved product. They could make the best cars on the planet in their respective categories and still would have a hard time selling them due to a perception that hasn't been factual in at least a decade.

And nationalizing the car companies is definitely not the answer.

[FoMoJo]

It scares me that people think Michael Moore is some kind of hero for the average Joe.  He's an idiot.  I don't like a possible bailout as muuch as the nest guy, but if the government allows the Big 3 to go under, then the really shitty problem you guys have right now is going to seem like child's play compared to what will happen.

LOL - Moore is a colossal moron.

The assertion that GM has a duty to keep people employed rather than add value for shareholders is enough to make a decent person sick.

The assertion that the federal government is to nationalize Detroit such that, "...they build mass transit. They're to build hybrid cars. They're to build cars that use little or no gasoline" is un-American.

Moore and his socialist, anti-capitalist ilk are the very same people that supported the militant unions and militant governmentalism that fostered the environment that ultimately wrecked Detroit.

Michael Moore is an entertainer and a very rich one.  He tells people what they want to hear.  That he cultivates the bozo image is part of his cleverness. 

I don't agree with a lot of his assertions about forcing the companies to build mass transit, etc. but I do agree that the corporate ideology has been very short-sighted and has, certainly, worked against the good of the country.  Building SUVs in Russia sounds like a pretty stupid and short-sighted idea in the economical times over the last 10 years.

[Tave]

BWAHAHAHAHA

$25 billion? that would last either GM or Ford about a year. 6 months if you split it between them.

Who wants to bet if we give them this, we'll be having the same conversation in a few months?