GMAC "bailout" Grants Rebates to Gas-guzzlers

Taxpayer money thus being used to finance GM gas-guzzlers for poor credit risks .

GM is using part of the money for no-interest loans on foreign SAAB cars, and taking price reductions to finance purchasers of Big Iron that traps them into years of inefficient driving. The net result is to enrich Big Oil, and impoverish the rest of us.

Agreeing to purchase GMAC's debt puts us in the position of validating and paying for years of GM's losing money on selling gas-guzzling SUV, trucks and bad cars to reluctant buyers. Only by cutting prices and offering financing deals that dwarfed gasoline costs was GM able to coerce such buyers. Now, by purchasing GMAC stock, those mistakes become our own mistakes, and we assume the losses and the liability.

A smarter Administration would have put conditions on the cash handed to GM: no bailout without plug-in cars, and no money to finance gas-guzzlers.

After all, it's our money, and GM is in no condition to bargain.

The same folks who complain about "hidden taxes" that support Electric cars and hybrids have no qualms about our Treasury buying stock in GMAC, secured only by hordes of past bad loans on gas-guzzlers of declining value.

Where are the so-called "conservative principles" that blocked higher MPG standards, that refused to regulate GM when it was failing to keep up with the competition? Now that GM is on life-support due to malfeasance and incompetence, these same folks now want to use our money to buy the debt of a wrecked corporation.

Instead, we need the government to just put conditions on all auto makers: if they want to do business in the USA, they must offer a plug-in all-electric EV such as the Toyota RAV4-EV, last sold in Nov., 2002.

This would not cost us a penny, it would just take our regulators doing the job they are paid to do, instead of taking bribes and emoluments from the auto companies they are supposed to be supervising. It was many years of failed oversight that is resulting in the wreckage that is now called GM.

If you could buy a plug-in car, you could avoid buying gasoline, oil and so on. The money you don't spend on gas would more than pay for a rooftop solar electric system. To drive 1000 miles per month takes 250 kilo-Watt-hours of electric energy, about what it takes to keep two old refrigerators running. The solar system to supply that much electric is about 1300 W of PV power, the payments on which are less than what gasoline would have cost.

Some say well, I live in the snow, and it wouldn't work; of, I don't have a roof!

But solar works great in Germany; you just use the right kind of panels. Germany now leads the world in solar power, putting us, with our sunny states, in the shade. And for those who don't have a roof, you do live in an apartment, which has a roof; or there is a place where you park your car that is more than enough for a 1300W solar system. It's just a matter of not making excuses, and being determined -- or not -- to solve the problem. If permitted to do so, Americans will solve any problem, frivolous arguments notwithstanding.

Allowing people to buy plug-in cars would make solarizing America self-funding, wih no need for rebates or subsidies.

That has to be better than subsidizing GM to make obsolete, gas-guzzling monster cars. Heck, GM might even start making money for a change.

The only loser would be Chevron and Big Oil, which would have less of the money that now goes into war, pollution and oil fires.

This is not fantasy: it's reality, for the hundreds of Californians who were allowed to buy the Toyota RAV4-EV, last sold in Nov., 2002, most of whom power their car with energy they make themselves, on their own rooftops.