And if the current gas tax rate doesn’t bring in enough revenue, we should raise the rate.

So its being discussed. As I mentioned before, if these new cars are going to sell, then there needs to be an incentive implemented to in order for people to buy them. Higher gas prices would most certainly do the trick.

As to the typical “no we can't” BS from jwest and CO, it's inaccurate. Always. First, Detroit didn't “make what the consumer wanted”. They spent billions marketing what they wanted to make, because behemoths have much better profit margins than subcompacts. They LET Toyota and VW have the small car market because they couldn't be bothered with what foreign car companies saw as strong consumer demand.

As for alternative fuels, ALL fuels are massively subsidized in America. By government policy we have pushed energy production to petroleum. If incentives are shifted away from dead dinosaur fuels toward renewables, the mix of what we burn will change. It is a completely false premise that unsubsidized alternatives will only be successful if they can beat massively subsidized oil at the cash register. The prices of ALL fuels are artificial.

After thinking about your post a little more, Ned, it seems to me that indeed the bar needs to be set high so anyone involved with GM has a goal to attempt to achieve. Using your baseball analogy, the team that makes it to the World Series and wins needs to have a solid coach, someone to put all of the pieces together. Right now it doesn't seem GM has solid leadership. I could be mistaken, of course; I don't know the inner workings of the business side of things and I certainly cannot tell you much about those who are currently leading this company. But the fact is they are now broke, and they have been on this path for some time. Mark Ambinder has an interesting suggestion:

Mitt Romney Should Run GM
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/06/mitt_ro…

I know I take an attitude on some of my comments, but its hard being a center-right conservative on a site like this.

Almost every article is written from the perspective of righteous left wing dogma fueled by ignorance of the subject at hand. Ned believes in his heart the mainstream media’s collective opinion that GM’s troubles stem from building gas guzzling cars that are inferior in quality to Japanese cars. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When people blindly accept as truth the blather that comes out of news anchors, we end up with “solutions” that have no bearing on the problem. As a matter of fact, by not having the real information, public opinion usually sways to positions that exasperate the problem.

I’ll work on trying to have a bit more patients before pulling out the club of truth and hammering unsuspecting left wingers with it.

But as jwest counters to Ned, someone can try and remake GM into some green thing, but you're not addressing what got them into trouble in the first place……..too much cost structure.

Having said that, I should have tagged my comment with a bit of sarcasm. I am not advocating an increase in the gas tax, but in order for those cars to sell gas prices need to go up. I drew the analogy to the smokers just because it was an extremely heated issue a year ago when I was living in Iowa. They raised the price per pack $1 and anyone I talked to who didn't smoke didn't see a problem with it. I countered by asking about raising the tax on gas $1 and quickly those folks went on the defensive.

hmm, perhaps this will be part of the plan to get these cars to sell? Time to increase the gas tax, its that simple. We've gone after the smokers to pay for health care and those who don't smoke are generally fine with that. Higher prices for smokes means less smokers right? If we really want to get serious about generating some revenue, and cut down our emissions and our driving, perhaps a little negative reinforcement is in order. Bush said we are a country that is addicted to oil. Perhaps we need to be weened off. Higher prices for gas means less drivers, no?

You occasionally have some interesting things to say even if I don't agree with all of it but perhaps if you laid off the name-calling, sarcasm and bullying attitude (i.e. implying that “I'm always right & everyone else is stupid”) you could actually start some good informative debate.

Just offering some friendly constructive advice…

It appears you’ve bought into the leftist vision of where GM and the car industry as a whole are.

Let’s try to bring you back to reality.

GM sells the type of cars people want. The reason I say that is that they sell more of their cars than anyone else. The industry dropped from 17 million to 10 million units, so the volume was just not there to support GM’s huge overhead costs.

Obama stepped in to repay his debt to the union. GM’s main problems were legacy costs and work rules, of which work rules were the main drag. Of course, nothing has changed because of the politics of the situation.

You can’t give away a hybrid today. No one wants overpriced, complicated technology that delivers less performance. When gas is $4 per gallon they might sell, but certainly not now.

Ethanol is a farm program. Converting food to fuel is stupid at best, criminal at worst. It takes more than a gallon of fossil fuel to produce a gallon of ethanol, so where is the savings in that?

Fuel cell and battery technology has a definite leftist tilt, as they are only viable by applying fairy dust and unicorn essence to them. In typical fashion, the “greens” look only at the immediate upside and ignore the cost and pollution to bring these online and dispose of them after they are used. It must be bliss to never have to think something all the way through.

The truly scary part of this story is that Obama and his cronies think exactly the way you do. General Motors, the foundation of industrial production in the U.S., is now run by people who have no grasp of reality.

We’re screwed.