Auto Execs Fly Corporate Jets to DC, Tin Cups in Hand (anyone else notice its just another bunch of white guys?)
Great Washington Post article by columnist Dana Milbank, titled: “Auto Execs Fly Corporate Jets to D.C., Tin Cups in Hand
The Big Three CEOs — Richard Wagoner of General Motors, left, Robert Nardelli of Chrysler and Alan Mulally of Ford — went begging on the Hill. (By Chip Somodevilla — Getty Images)
There are 24 daily nonstop flights from Detroit to the Washington area. Richard Wagoner, Alan Mulally and Robert Nardelli probably should have taken one of them.
Instead, the chief executives of the Big Three automakers opted to fly their company jets to the capital for their hearings this week before the Senate and House — an ill-timed display of corporate excess for a trio of executives begging for an additional $25 billion from the public trough this week.
The photo of the Auto Execs caught my eye.
Have you noticed lately how the huge majority of business leaders asking for bailouts are old, white guys? Now my dad was an old white guy, my brothers are white guys, my sons will be old white guys, but its such a cliche in business that the old white guys parade around at the top of corporations, unable to understand or have empathy for their customers.
These guys had thousands of chances to whip their companies into new paradigms. They’ve known we need smaller cars with better gas mileage. But they wanted to sell big, huge tanks. So they did!
Now they’re flying private jets, at a fuel/carrying cost of $20,000, to ask for bailout money from overburdened Americans, the same Americans who’ve been looking for smaller, less costly cars! Excuse me? NO.
They should have taken Greyhound. Or carpooled. But they don’t pay their own transportation costs, so they have no idea how the rest of us live.
I took this photo at my kid’s sporting event: a huge luxury SUV, with GOP and Support our Troops stickers, pulled up and onto a curbed red zone, so the driver wouldn’t have to park in the parking lot like the rest of the families.
Same thoughtlessness as these auto execs, flying their huge planes in while their employees are wondering how they’ll survive the winter.
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