Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: The UAW’s Dilemma - 3.24.11

The United Auto Workers union is holding its bargaining convention in Detroit this week. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says the labor movement is facing big challenges.

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You may not have noticed, but the United Auto Workers union has been holding its bargaining convention in Detroit this week.

Every four years, union leaders get together to plan and map out their strategy for negotiating a new contract with the automakers. Once, this convention was an enormous deal, intensely covered by both local and national labor media. The big question every time was -- which company would be the strike target?

Years ago, the union came up with the concept of “pattern bargaining.” One company -- Ford, General Motors, or Chrysler, would be selected as the target. Union officials would then try and hammer out a contact with that automaker first.

Sometimes they’d have to go on strike to achieve that; sometimes not. Meanwhile, the workers at the other companies would keep working under the old labor agreements.

Once the new contract was finally hammered out, the unions would then go to the other two automakers and say -- “okay; this is what we negotiated with them; this is what you need to agree to as well. No fooling around; take it or leave it; sign or we walk.”

That’s how it’s been done for many, many years. In the past, there were sometimes historic strikes which led to historic settlements that gradually won the workers everything from paid vacations to profit sharing to dental care, on top of high wages.

But as all the world knows, excesses and globalization caught up with the auto companies. General Motors and Chrysler nearly went out of business less than two years ago. They survived in part because the union was willing to make major concessions.

New hires, for example, now make half of what a longtime autoworker does -- $14 an hour, or #29,000 a year. The union decided that and other sacrifices were necessary to keep their employers alive.

Well, the world is different now. Ford and General Motors are now making profits in the billions. Chrysler is believed close to profitability, and at any rate, has a new owner with deep pockets.

Many in the UAW believe it is their turn to be rewarded and compensated for the sacrifices they’ve made. The companies, however, talk as if the concessions need to be permanent. They know the day when they dominated the national and even world auto markets are gone.

Some of the union’s clout is gone, too. Thirty-odd years ago, the UAW had one point six million members nationwide. Today, that’s down to three hundred and fifty thousand. A third of those aren’t even in auto-related occupations. Put another way, ninety percent of the blue-collar, General Motors jobs in the state in 1979 are gone.

When the bargaining talks begin in earnest later this year, the UAW isn’t just out to get a better contract. Union President Bob King knows the union is in a struggle to stay relevant, and survive.

He knows the union’s future depends on whether it can begin organizing workers at the “transplants” -- those factories built by foreign automakers in America. So far, they’ve had no success.

The union’s future depends on changing that. For those interested in the labor movement, we’re likely to be in for a few very interesting years.

Essay: General Motors Wins a Star - 2.25.11

General Motors posted its first yearly profit last year since 2004. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about what that means.

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Two years ago, when President Obama decided to spend billions to prop up General Motors, and then to guide it through a cushioned, “soft landing” bankruptcy, there were a lot of doubters. Many thought nature should have been allowed to take its course, and that the once-mighty General should have been allowed to die.

At the time, a commentator on NBC News said “As the GM bailout goes, so goes the Obama presidency.”

But you won’t find Republicans saying that today. General Motors has come roaring back in a way that’s astonished virtually everyone in the industry, not to mention those who talk for a living.

Yesterday, we learned for the first time since 2004, GM ended last year with a profit -- four point seven billion dollars. That was also its biggest profit since the go-go year of 1999.

What‘s more, there are cautious expectations that GM will do even better this year, as the nationwide automotive market continues to recover. One strike against the General is that it still doesn‘t have a lot of exciting new product, as they call new cars in the auto business. They do have two new small vehicles which are adequate if not exciting, the Buick Verano and Chevrolet Sonic.

And the much-ballyhooed, plug-in, mostly electric Chevy Volt is only now emerging from the shadows and getting into showrooms across the nation. Spokesmen for the automaker say there are other exciting new products, choices and technologies in the pipeline, and that we ain’t seen nothing yet.

All this is good news. Had General Motors been allowed to go out of existence, the ripple effect could have resulted in a loss of a million or more jobs nationwide. Yesterday, GM was even able to announce that the company had resumed giving grants to the arts, through not on the same scale as in the pre-bankruptcy days.

Yet there’s a ghost nagging in my ear.

The ghost of auto writer Jerry Flint, who covered this company for more than half a century. Flint died last year, but when GM was on the rocks a few years ago he told me something I’ll never forget.

The worst thing that could happen to GM, he said, would be for the struggling automaker to have a sudden unexpected success as it struggled to remake itself. That, he told me, could bring back all the old arrogance that got GM into so much trouble.

I think that’s not as likely to happen now, certainly not for a while. CEO Dan Akerson is a telecommunications guy by training, not a product of the insular and incestuous GM culture.

Yesterday, he spoke as if he was pleased with his company’s new concentration on small cars, vehicles traditionally disdained by auto executives who were hot to reap the big profits that came from selling giant gas guzzling SUVs. I think Akerson knows that one profitable year does not an industry turnaround make.

And we should know that however nice it is to have the General back in the black, it will never again employ hundreds of thousands of us at high wages, nor will it lead us to a new, bright future. That will be up to a lot of captains and lieutenants. Up to, that is, all of us.

Essay: The UAW and the Transplants - 1.14.11

United Auto Workers’ President Bob King is gearing up for another attempt to organize Japanese transplant factories. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks it could be the union’s last stand.

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History and literature are full of stories of gallant last stands. Stories in which the remnants of a once-mighty army sally forth against a far more powerful foe. Most of the time, they realize they have no chance. In some cases, they hope for a miracle.

Or at least they hope that their epic final charge inspires future generations. Maybe even, becomes the stuff of legends.

I was reminded of all that this week, when I learned that the United Auto Workers union has set aside sixty million dollars in an effort to organize transplant factories. Those are auto plants here in the United States that are owned by foreign automakers, like Toyota.

Many are in the South. None are in Michigan. And the UAW has utterly failed to organize any of the transplant factories, except for a few joint ventures with Detroit automakers.

This is not an accident.

Foreign automakers have deliberately located their plants as far from UAW-influenced areas as possible, and spent heavily in a successful effort to discourage workers from turning to the union.

Meanwhile, during the last two decades, the number of transplant factory workers has steadily increased, while the number of workers represented by the UAW has nosedived.

Thirty years ago, the union Walter Reuther built had more than a million and a half members. The most recent statistics show that has fallen to barely 350,000, many of whom aren‘t auto workers.

Mark Gaffney, head of the AFL-CIO in Michigan, once told me that unless something changed, that by 2012, there would be more U.S. auto workers not represented by the UAW than were represented by the union. If that happened, he hinted, the union would be doomed. Now, new UAW leader Bob King has vowed to do something about it. He isn’t, however, pounding his fist on the table like a 1940s labor leader, vowing to succeed or die trying.

Instead, King told the Automotive News World Congress the other day that he intended to fight for fair union elections in the transplants. “We just have to convince them we’re not the evil empire that they think,” he said. Twenty years ago, when asked about the union, Japanese auto makers generally made polite noises, and at least tried to sound reasonable. Today, they feel less need to do so. When told of King’s remarks, one spokesman sniffed, “Honda has had no dialogue with the UAW, and has no interest in a discussion with them.”

But the UAW needs to try to start that discussion and score some victories. Some think they may be able to succeed with Mercedes Benz before the Japanese and Koreans. For now, all King is saying is that the UAW wants a fair shake.

Last summer, I met a retired Ford manager who told me that years ago, King, who already had a law degree, went to work for him in a plant. Why are you doing this?” the older man asked.

“Because I intend to be the next Walter Reuther someday,” King supposedly told him. One thing‘s for sure. If Bob King can find a way to organize America‘s transplant factories, he’ll give his union a new lease on life. And that would make Walter Reuther very glad.

Essay: The Governor and the Auto Show - 1.12.11

Governor Rick Snyder visited the auto show yesterday. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks his visit may provide some clues as to how he might govern.

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Governor Rick Snyder visited the Detroit auto show yesterday, something governors traditionally do. They greet the CEOs, make nice comments about the new models, and disappear.

I can’t recall a single thing any politician has said at the auto show that was worth remembering. But this year is a little different. Two years ago, it was highly uncertain whether there would be either an domestic auto industry or an auto show in 2011.

What’s more, almost nobody in the industry or the state had ever heard of Rick Snyder, and nobody imagined he’d be governor.

Well, the auto industry is a good bit healthier today, and the state is getting used to a governor who doesn’t like to wear a tie, and doesn’t mind being called a nerd. Like other governors before him, Snyder didn’t say anything especially stirring at the auto show. But he did a few things worth noting. He didn’t just visit what we might now call the not-so-big three, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. He stopped by Kia and Hyundai and Toyota too.

The governor seems to have spent a fair amount of time with Sergio Marchionne, who is head of Chrysler, but also runs what is now its parent company, the Italian automaker Fiat.

And perhaps most remarkably, Snyder met with a number of alternative and renewable energy companies at a private reception yesterday before giving his formal remarks at the auto show.

His message seemed to be this: His administration is all about bringing the jobs of the future to Michigan, wherever they are to be found and whatever it takes to create them here. To quote our new governor, “It is companies, it is innovators, it is entrepreneurs who are going to create a better future for Michigan.”

As he sees it, his job is to make sure they find a fertile seed bed. Or as he put it, “We are committed to creating the very best environment in the world to create that formula for success.”

Next week, when he makes his state of the state speech, and next month, when he unveils his first budget, we’ll get a better idea how he intends to make that come about. My guess is that his approach will completely please neither Republicans nor Democrats. Governor Snyder wants to lessen the tax burden on business, and do so without raising taxes. That’s going to mean massive sacrifices across the board, unless someone repeals the laws of mathematics. Yet Rick Snyder also has signaled a commitment to common sense over ideology.

And that may force some revenue increases out of sheer necessity. The governor knows that nobody is about to bring new high-tech industry to a state where the infrastructure is falling apart and where the public schools have failed. He owes his success in part to the three degrees he’s earned from the University of Michigan, and I assume he values public higher education as well.

Yesterday, the governor praised the spirit that brought the auto industry back from its near-death experience.

He’s clearly hoping to do the same as well, with the business he’s running these days, an outfit called the state of Michigan.

Stay tuned for further developments.

Essay: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines - 11.19.10

The annual Automotive Authors Book Fair gets underway in Detroit tomorrow. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry was mesmerized by a new book about a bad car...

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There’s no denying that the auto industry has had a shaky couple of years, no matter how well the new GM stock is doing.

But the automotive book industry is something else again. It seems the domestic auto companies’ near-death experience has inspired car writers to park themselves at their keyboards. As a result, the Friends of the Detroit Public Library is now sponsoring an annual Automotive Authors Book Fair.

This year’s takes place tomorrow afternoon, at the library’s Skillman branch behind the massive new Compuware Headquarters.

There will be more than twenty authors there. Paul Ingrassia will show off his excellent “Crash Course,” a new account of the domestic industry’s decline and fall.

There are books on the Model T, Studebaker, Nash, and Hudson, for nostalgia buffs.

There are books on Mustangs and Corvettes, cruising Woodward Avenue, car models and chrome, and even, for the anti-auto contrarian, Robert Gabrick‘s “Going the Greyhound Way.”

But one book in particular caught my eye. A flashy yellow model, with a tow truck on the front, called “The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History.”

I picked it up, started reading, and found it fascinating. So I called the author, Jason Vuic (as in, rhymes with Buick.) He isn’t a car guy at all. He’s a young historian of Eastern Europe who was tired of academic writing, and was fascinated by the Yugo story.

If you are too young to remember, the Yugo was a brief counter-cultural phenomenon that streaked across the conspicuously consuming world of the 1980s. In a time of wretched excess, it promised cheap, no-frills transportation, sort of what the original Volkswagen Beetle had been two decades before.

Buying one even seemed slightly daring; the Cold War hadn’t quite ended, and the Yugo was a communist car from a communist country. Plus, it cost just under four thousand dollars - the cheapest car on the market. Unfortunately, it was a lemon. A no-frills lemon. No glove compartment, no radio, no air-conditioning, no automatic transmission, no air bags and hand-cranked windows.

They broke down; they stalled out, they could be destroyed in a crash going twenty miles an hour. One really did blow off the Mackinac Bridge. Don’t ask what happened to the driver. Promoter Malcolm Bricklin, a carnival barker of a man, managed to sell America on the Yugo, but they didn’t stay sold for long.

Bricklin sold out in time to make a few million, but everyone else took a hit and ran off the road. Even Yugoslavia lost money; they sold the cars to us below cost, mainly to get hard currency.

Yugoslavia collapsed in 1991; Yugo America went bankrupt the next year. But while the fun or agony lasted, nearly one hundred and fifty thousand were sold. They didn’t hold up well. Today, there are seventeen million cars registered in Florida. One is a Yugo.

Actually, Vuic says, the Yugo wasn’t really the worst car ever sold in America. A “motorcycle with doors” called the Subaru 360 was. But the Yugo is firmly ensconced in automotive history as the bad car pop icon of all time. I’m not really sure what all this means.

But it was sure fun to read about.

Essay: Worrying About The General

General Motors is on a roll, with an exciting new car and a new stock offering tomorrow expected to rake in billions. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says we might want to be a little cautious.

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No doubt about it; this has been a tremendous week for General Motors. Everybody is going crazy over the Chevy Volt, the sort-of-electric car that has already won top honors as the car of the year from Motor Trend and Automobile Magazines. It’s won those awards, I should add, even though it isn’t in the showrooms yet. General Motors is also making money again -- two billion in the third quarter, four billion dollars so far for the year. And tomorrow, in the greatest anticipated sale since the Oklahoma land rush of 1889, the once-bankrupt General is expected to take in billions when it once again offers stock to the general public. That will be good for all of us. The more stock General Motors sells, the more it will be able to repay the U.S. Treasury, which invested almost fifty billion to save General Motors when it was on the point of death less than two years ago. Beyond doubt, one question has been answered: The auto bailout worked, and was worth it. Now, the public response to what Wall Street calls an IPO, or initial public offering of GM stock has been so strong and so positive that the expected price keeps going up and up. Demand seems so strong that General Motors has decided to offer even more shares to the public when trading opens tomorrow. If things go as well as expected, the taxpayers could be twelve billion richer by the end of the day, and “Government Motors” will no longer exist. At least, Washington’s share of GM will have fallen from more than sixty percent of the company to only about a third. But there’s a ghost whispering in my ear, the ghost of Jerry Flint, the dean of auto writers, who died in August. “The worst thing that could happen to GM after this mess is some big early success,“ he told me a couple years ago. He feared that could revive GM’s old unjustified arrogance. I was reminded of that today when I read that Cadillac is thinking about introducing a subcompact car tentatively called the ULC -- for Urban Luxury Compact. There is a picture of the prototype in today’s papers; it looks, if you know your entomology, like a stink bug. This may just be the stupidest idea in modern automotive history. Cadillac buyers want a look that says size and elegance. They do not think less is more and they do not vote for the Green Party. GM should know better. Cadillac tried this before in the early ‘80s with a compact Caddy called the Cimarron. It flopped, big time. All this should remind us that the reborn General Motors is still very much a work in progress. It’s management is new and largely untested. The company has shed a lot of debt, thanks to the bankruptcy process, but still has underfunded pension obligations. The Volt is still really an unknown quantity. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t buy stock in the new GM. Just remember, people lost their life’s savings last year because they held on to stock in the old GM. Wall Street is, after all, just like any other street. You need to look both ways, and be careful.

Essay: Zooming Back - 10.13.2010

General Motors and Chrysler have emerged from bankruptcy and Ford is making money again. But how healthy is the domestic auto industry today? Michigan Radio’s political analyst Jack Lessenberry talked with two experts…

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Less than two years ago, the domestic auto industry had been given up for dead by many political and economic analysts.

Plenty of United States senators opposed bailing General Motors and Chrysler out, saying that would be a futile waste of taxpayer money. But Presidents Bush and Obama disagreed.

They funneled taxpayer billions to both firms, which then went through a form of cushioned bankruptcy last year, and emerged leaner, meaner, and still making cars. Chrysler was more or less required by the government to merge with Fiat.

General Motors buried Pontiac and dumped Hummer and Saab, and all sorts of other negative assets. Now, to virtually everyone’s surprise, GM is hanging in and making money.

And so is Ford, the only automaker not to go through bankruptcy. But how are these companies really doing?

Is this a brief and government-manufactured rally, the industry’s last hurrah before the Chinese cars arrive?

Or is our domestic auto industry really on the mend? To get some answers, I spent some time recently with two automotive experts: David E. Davis, a former race car driver, founder of Automobile Magazine and perhaps the best-known automotive journalist, and Dr. Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Ann Arbor-based CAR, the Center for Automotive Research.

They were both fairly bullish on the future. McAlinden told me he never thought General Motors would return to profitability so quickly. He believes that while the legendary car maker still has problems, they are aware of them. They think they have now built some equity and credibility with the buying public.

Davis offered a caveat. He thinks the Cadillac division is “moving off in the wrong direction,” by designing too-edgy vehicles, that he says “look like something out of Jules Verne.”

Sean McAlinden didn’t fully agree. But both men were in perfect agreement that there are times when one man can make a difference, and right now, that man is Al Mulally at Ford.

Both agreed the former Boeing executive was the man who had turned Ford around - and that both the company and the Ford family itself need and want Mulally, who turned 65 this summer, to stay around at least for a couple more years.

Ford did manage to escape the stigma of bankruptcy, but has a problem Chrysler and GM do not: $24 billion dollars in debt.

The good news, McAlinden says, is that this should prove manageable as long as the market stays relatively good.

The better news is that thanks to the streamlining all these companies have gone through, they have to sell far fewer cars than they used to in order to break even.

As for Chrysler, both men assured me that Jeep was a world brand that is going to be healthy for the foreseeable future.

And David E. Davis said that Fiat, now essentially Chrysler’s parent company, has a lot of exciting new models in the pipeline.

Finally, I asked about China. While Chinese cars will be coming to the North American market, they still may be five years away.

There should be limits to our optimism about our domestic auto industry, economist McAlinden told me. “As an economic driver it is never going to be the force it was in the past.” But on the other hand, it is still here. Which is far better than it could have been.

Essay: Taking Stock - 8.20.10

General Motors is moving towards again offering stock to free itself from government control. But is it too early? Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry looks at the background.

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Years ago, when I first began to write about business and economics, I went to hear an expert talk about the stock market. I had the interesting theory that I might do a better job if I understood what I was writing and talking about.

I don’t remember very much about the lecture, except this: He advised that if you were young and had some cash to burn, you might want to think of investing in some high-risk new computer company, like Microsoft. It probably wouldn’t make it, but if it did, there would be big rewards at the end of the rainbow.

But if on the other hand you just needed a secure place to park your money, if you were an old fogy and not a risk-taker, then you ought to invest in something boring and totally safe.

Like General Motors. The big gray automotive monolith was then still the biggest corporation in the world. It was there; it had seemingly always been there, it always would be there.

Everybody knows that when GM President “Engine Charlie” Wilson was nominated for Secretary of Defense back in 1953, he said “I’ve always thought that what was good for the country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”

Well, nothing stays the same. If you had invested in Microsoft early on, you‘d be fabulously wealthy now. But anyone who was still clinging to General Motors stock last year lost every penny.

The company went bankrupt, and the stock became worthless. But in recent months, GM has resembled the legendary phoenix rising from the ashes. After shedding debt and obsolete factories, a smaller, sleeker General Motors is making money again.

GM has made profits of more than two billion dollars since the first of the year. But it is no longer really a private company. The U.S. government now owns most of what is sometimes sneered at as “Government Motors.” But that is expected to change soon.

General Motors is gearing up to again offer stock, so it can raise money, begin buying out the government, and once again be a technically private company. But are they rushing things?

Some think this is way too early. Others darkly suspect GM of doing this now to pay back the Obama Administration for saving the company last year. The Democrats are expected to have a hard time in the November elections, and one of their few visible achievements has been General Motors’ return from the dead.

However, there are lots of other analysts who say that this is perfect timing. The Associated Press’s Bernie Condon says “buying during bad times is the best way to make money with auto stocks, provided you have a stomach of steel."

My stomach is more like oatmeal. But my guess is that if the price is set low enough, GM could be a steal of an investment, at least for the next few years, when auto sales bounce back.

But I think potential investors should be asking more about the company. Does General Motors have it together? How does the quality and cost of their vehicles compare to the competition? Do they have a realistic, long-range business plan?

If the answer to those questions is yes, the stock offering ought to take care of itself, and of those who invest in it as well.

Essay: New Era for the General - 8.13.10

General Motors announced yesterday that with profits booming, C-E-O Ed Whitacre will step down next month. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at the automaker’s turn around…

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It’s almost hard now to remember that General Motors was dying, less than two years ago, ruined by decades of arrogance and bad management. Ruined by chairmen who acted like entitled royalty, who wasted billions on schemes unrelated to the car business.

That General Motors sold me an Oldsmobile station wagon that died after seventy thousand miles and a Buick that had horrendous electrical problems. That General Motors drove millions of us to buy Honda Accords.

That General Motors ended up begging Congress for bailout billions and was treated with open contempt by United States senators who said GM wasn’t worth the waste of one taxpayer dime. That General Motors ended by being bailed out, first by President Bush, then President Obama. It went through bankruptcy, and shed bad debt, health care obligations and obsolete factories.

In the three months before General Motors filed for bankruptcy last year, it lost $12.9 billion dollars. But since that process ended, the company has undergone a turnaround that’s hard to believe.

GM made a profit of $1.3 billion dollars in the last three months. Worldwide revenue was ten billion greater than in the same period a year ago. Over the last month, the company has been preparing a stock offering, so they could pay back the taxpayers and no longer be known as “Government Motors.”

Then, yesterday, Edward Whitacre Jr., architect of GM’s comeback from the dead, suddenly announced he would step down as CEO at the end of this month, and resign as board chairman at the end of this year. He’ll be replaced by a man he groomed for the job, fellow board member Daniel Akerson.

The two men seem similar - hard-driven, task-oriented, former telecommunications executives. Neither has a car background,

But that didn‘t seem to hamper Ed Whitacre in the least. He made tough decisions, promoted those who were performing and got rid of those who weren‘t. His priority was to save and focus the company. There were many who doubted that it could be done.

But Whitacre did it - for now, at least. And not just on paper. General Motors is making profits not by shuffling paper but by selling cars, and selling them in North America.

The company is adding to its cash reserves, running lean and mean without any new massive recalls or quality complaints.

That doesn’t mean General Motors can go back to business as usual. Ford made twice as much in the last quarter.

General Motors’ market share is below 20 percent, and could easily be overtaken by Ford, Toyota, or both.

And while GM can issue stock, it still needs to convince investors that it is safe to buy and a good investment besides.

Ed Whitacre, however, can return to Texas knowing that he succeeded beyond almost anyone’s expectations. He probably could have led GM till his teeth fell out. But he left when he had the mess cleaned up and the motor running. just like he said he would.

What’s baffling is that the Democrats don’t seem to be trying to score political points off GM’s revival. Republicans mostly wanted to let it die. President Obama insisted on trying to save GM, appointed Whitaker to run it, and hundreds of thousands of jobs were saved.

That sure beats the alternative, especially in Michigan.

Essay: Saving Capitalism - 7.30.10

President Obama is in Michigan today to visit some auto plants that might not be running today, if it hadn't been for the bailout. Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry takes a look at what this means.

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Years ago, I heard the author Gore Vidal talking about Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was as hated in his own time by some people as President Obama is today. Vidal, who had grown up in the moneyed world of Washington society, was baffled by the right-wing reaction.

"After all, he saved capitalism," he said. "I'm not necessarily sure that was such a good thing, but he saved it, all right."

President Obama was scheduled to visit several Chrysler and General Motors auto factories in Detroit today. Now, nobody is saying that this president saved capitalism. But he did save the auto industry, at least for now, and with it the state of Michigan.

Here's a funny thing about automotive industry bailouts that you may not have realized. They have a history of working. A lot of people, including me, were heavily skeptical when the government extended loan guarantees to Chrysler back in 1979.

Not only did they enable the automaker to survive and eventually again thrive, but the loans were all paid off ahead of time.

Chrysler's later troubles and the ill-advised sale to Daimler were not the government's fault. The economy isn't all that great today, but we should take a moment and think about how bad things looked less than two years ago. It seemed very possible, even likely, that both Chrysler and GM would go out of business.

Ford looked pretty shaky as well. Economists at the Center for Automotive Research told me at the time that if General Motors and Chrysler went out of business, the ripple effect could mean the rapid loss of millions of jobs. That consequences would have been something that looked a lot like the Great Depression.

But that didn't happen, first because of billions in loans the government extended to both automakers -- a process even former President George W. Bush thought necessary. After that, the government helped GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy proceedings cushioned to help them achieve a soft landing.

Today, Chrysler and GM are not only still alive, but making money in what is anything but a strong market. GM has even paid back almost seven billion, ahead of schedule.

Tom Walsh, an auto industry columnist, notes in today's Detroit Free Press that the strings attached to the bailout helped the automakers reshape themselves into leaner and meaner machines.

There was of course a downside; many people still lost their jobs. The unions made concessions that mean that any new hires will not be able to afford the middle-class lifestyle generations of auto workers managed to achieve. But the industry gained a new lease on life, and it did so because of a partnership with government that was immensely beneficial to the so-called private sector.

That ought to be as plain as a pickup truck. But on the Free Press's web site, bloggers had posted a stream of hateful comments under Walsh's column, saying the President was, among other things, a Maoist. Other than exhibiting appalling ignorance about what that means, I think this nasty and close-minded polarization is more disturbing than any boneheaded policy decisions could be.

Increasingly, we seem to be a place where people scream at each other, instead of talking to each other. If that continues, the auto crisis could end up the least of our problems.