A Quick Fix for the Gas Addicts
Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 by billFrom NY Times
By Thomas L. Friedman
Is there a company more dangerous to America’s future than General Motors? Surely, the sooner this company gets taken over by Toyota, the better off our country will be.
Why? Like a crack dealer looking to keep his addicts on a tight leash, G.M. announced its “fuel price protection program” on May 23. If you live in Florida or California and buy certain G.M. vehicles by July 5, the company will guarantee you gasoline at a cap price of $1.99 a gallon for one year — with no limit on mileage. Guzzle away.
As The Associated Press explained the program, each month for one year, G.M. will give customers who buy these cars “a credit on a prepaid card based on their estimated fuel usage. Fuel usage will be calculated by the miles they drive, as recorded by OnStar, and the vehicle’s fuel economy rating. G.M. will credit drivers the difference between the average price per gallon in their state and the $1.99 cap.” Consumers won’t get any credits if gas prices fall below $1.99.
“This program gives consumers an opportunity to experience the highly fuel-efficient vehicles G.M. has to offer in the mid-size segment,” Dave Borchelt, G.M.’s Southeast general manager, said in the company’s official statement. Oh, really?
Eligible vehicles in California include the 2006 and 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban (half-ton models only), Impala and Monte Carlo sedans, G.M.C. Yukon and Yukon XL S.U.V.’s (half-ton models only), Hummer H2 and H3 S.U.V.’s, the Cadillac SRX S.U.V., and the Pontiac Grand Prix and Buick Lucerne sedans. Eligible vehicles in Florida include the 2006 and 2007 Chevrolet Impala and Monte Carlo, Pontiac Grand Prix and Buick LaCrosse.
Let’s see, the 6,400-pound Hummer H2 averages around nine miles per gallon. It really is great that G.M. is giving more Americans the opportunity to experience nine-miles-per-gallon driving. And the hulking Chevy Suburban gets around 15 miles per gallon. It will be wonderful if more Americans can experience that too — with G.M.-subsidized gas.
Our military is in a war on terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan with an enemy who is fueled by our gasoline purchases. So we are financing both sides in the war on terror. And what are we doing about that? Not only is GM subsidizing its gas-guzzlers, but not a single member of Congress, liberal or conservative, will stand up and demand what most of them know: that we must have some kind of gasoline tax to compel Americans to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles and to compel Detroit to make them.
Where are the presidential aspirants on this issue? I have yet to hear John McCain, Mitt Romney, George Allen, Al Gore or Hillary Clinton support at least a $3.50 floor price for gasoline, so that it will never fall below that level and the alternatives can really flower and spread.
But if you go to G.M.’s Web site, here’s what you will see: an ad with a young African-American boy saluting an American flag, above the following offer for U.S. military personnel: “In appreciation of your commitment to our country, G.M. extends a $500 exclusive offer to active duty military and reserves when you purchase or lease select 2005, 2006 or 2007 G.M. cars, trucks and S.U.V.’s — just show your military ID!”
That’s really touching. First G.M. offers a gasoline subsidy so more Americans can get hooked on nine-mile-per-gallon Hummers, and then it offers a discount to the soldiers who have to protect the oil lines to keep G.M.’s gas guzzlers guzzling. Here’s a rule of thumb: The more Hummers we have on the road in America, the more military Humvees we will need in the Middle East.
You want to do something patriotic, G.M., Ford and Daimler-Chrysler? Why don’t you stop using your diminishing pools of cash to buy votes so Congress will never impose improved mileage standards? That kind of strategy is why Toyota today is worth $198.9 billion and G.M. $15.8 billion. G.M. is worth just slightly more than Harley-Davidson, the motorcycle company ($13.6 billion).
President Bush remarked the other day how agonizingly tough it is for a president to send young Americans to war. Yet, he’s ready to do that, but he’s not ready to look Detroit or Congress in the eye and demand that we put in place the fuel-efficiency legislation that will weaken the forces of theocracy and autocracy that are killing our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan — because it might cost Republicans votes or campaign contributions.
This whole thing is a travesty. We can’t keep asking young Americans to make the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan if we as a society are not ready to make even the most minimal sacrifice to help them.
Your comment on GM (Gas Addicts) shows you are not a good American-Very poor taste in slamming GM. I worked for GM 30 years and thank God they exist.
If you think that Toyota and Nissan are better, get your sorry, ignorant butt to one of thier dealerships and see what types of full size gas guzzlers they are making. I don’t know what you have been smoking, but my guess is that you wouldn’t drive an American car if your life depended on it. At least GM sponsors E85 which is a whole lot better then the hybrid crap that Toyota is pushing.
While GM and Ford were scrambling to come up with better mileage in the 70’s, Toyota moved in and showed those clowns in Detroit what quality and economy was about. They built cars that got superior mileage then and still do today.
You never hear the Japanese or other foreign car makers complaining about the standards the Congress have legislated, they just comply and do it right the first time.
It comes down to this build a better mouse trap and ….
T0: Bill Stevens in previous comment. I recalled a few years back, a GM spokesman saying that they would skip the Hybrid and develop hydrogen cars, they wouldn’t waste their time with Hybrids. Look whose pushing Hybrids now.
Americans drive gas-guzzlers because lets face it, they are mad at the world and have to look down on everyone else. If you will notice closely, you will see that suv and truck drivers like to tailgate and use their middle fingers. What trash they are!!! What in the heck has happened to our country?
America sucks
Come on Stan… don’t confuse America with American politicians.
Hummers – Not just for sitting Presidents anymore!
I’ve seen these applied, gratis, to the rear ends of Hummers:
REAL TROOPS ARE DYING
SO THAT I CAN
PLAY SOLDIER IN THIS
And this:
6. HUM JOB; (also) a performer of a hum job.
1970 Landy Underground Dict. 107: Hummer. . . One who engages in oral copulation of the testicles by putting them in the mouth and humming.
1972 PFC, U.S. Army STRATCOM-Taiwan (coll. J. Ball): I’m gonna go out and get me a hummer! 1979 T. Baum Carny 118: You know what to do if the marks [at a carnival strip show] can’t get up? . . . You know what a hummer is? 1994 Details (July) 62: The predictable hummers in the back of the tour bus.
* * *
What Fuels These Mortals Be [Guzzling]
This is my reaction to that quaint, recent attempt by some, using the Web, to boycott Exxon and Mobil — the alleged Bad Guys making our gasoline too expensive.
Please, make no mistake; I am no fan of bully-sized multinationals, including those two. However, I think the current prices are still lower, when adjusted for inflation, than in years past.
Be that as it may, we are in Iraq because so many cretinous, shortsighted, infantile Americans know nothing about world events and history. . . or the connections between their actions (and choices) and said events and history. Among those [obscene] choices is the stupifying popularity of SUV’s and Hummers. (Why so many Republicans would be seen in a truck emblazoned with the name of Clinton’s favorite “high crime and/or misdemeanor” is really beyond me.) Especially nauseating is the sight of those conspicuous consumers PLAYING SOLDIER in their $60k toys (Hummers) while REAL soldiers, in REAL Humvees, are dying to protect their supposed right to such toys, fueled by cheap gasoline. “Support Our Troops”, my ass.
I’m also ashamed of so many of my fellow boomers, and Americans in general, who have yet to learn (with over 30 years to have done so) the lessons of Earth Day, and the 70’s oil embargo. These decades of talk — and all it is, among citizens and politicians alike, is talk — about “energy independence” mean nothing, and will continue to mean nothing, until PAIN (boo-hoo!) causes the average clueless, pampered North American to demand fuel-efficient vehicles, think more about carpooling and the wiser use of fuel, and actually support the development of the sundry alternative energy sources and technologies available to us — which, by the way, will finally become competitive with the petroleum lifestyle (and hence feasible), now that the latter is approaching a more realistic price.
Why do I say “more realistic”? Because, among other things, we who share this globe with other people are now seeing the basics of Supply and Demand at
work. . . in the shape of, among other things, growing demand for oil from the one billion Chinese, and their burgeoning economy. (They’re actually emulating the U.S.– the greatest country anywhere, ever — by clamoring for cars, fuel for their factories, and heat for their modern homes. Who would’ve thunk it?)
While I certainly realize that there IS such a thing in this world as price-gouging and price-fixing (witness Enron and the California fuel crisis they fomented), that alone does not explain the current price rises. Nor will vigorous policing to prevent undue profiteering hold off the inevitable for very long.
And it IS inevitable.
I would also advise my fellow citizens to get used to the idea of a REAL shock to the world oil market, and the global economy, that will accompany the nearly-inevitable fall of the monumentally corrupt and despotic House of Saud (the royal family ruling Saudi Arabia, and great “friends” of the U.S.) Either the Muslim Brotherhood of their numerous cousins will eventually bring down that house of cards, and much of our guaranteed flow of cheap oil with it. (Unless, of course, Bush & Co. succeed in their plan to establish an invincible U.S. military presence throughout the region, sufficient to actually protect and control the oil. But, even were we to agree that that’s a laudible goal, no one actually paying heed to our already-overextended military, and our deficit-funded economy — not to mention the ineptitude of Bush & Co. — actually believes such a thing is possible.)
In short, dear friends, what we are seeing is chickens coming home to roost.
–J.D. Glick, J.D.
Washington State