GM’s budget going postal

Posted by Marc Hodak on March 6, 2010 under Governance, Politics | 2 Comments to Read

The main reason that the USPS will never make any money is that it can’t get rid of its infrastructure.  It must have a post office in every district and letter carriers visiting every house six (soon to be five?) days a week.  They can’t get rid of their post offices because Congress pays the bills, and no congressman is willing to let their post office get shut down.  They won’t give up universal delivery because their unions, who help elect those congressmen, don’t want to give up those jobs with, say, requiring rural people to come into town to pick up their mail, like they do their groceries and sundries.

I know there are all sorts of other arguments out there about why we need a postal service in the age of the internet, with UPS, FedEx and a whole industry of couriers and delivery services, etc., but they’re all irrelevant against the political considerations.  With congressional support, the USPS exists in its present form.  Without congressional support, it doesn’t.

Now that Congress has similar control over Government Motors, are we seeing the same political pressure take hold in that firm?

GM would not offer any details on Friday about which dealerships it was reinstating and where they are located. It said it chose the 661 based on a variety of criteria, including sales and other business factors.

For you, my loyal readers, I have obtained the criteria and their weighting from an unimpeachable source.  Here they are:

1)  Is the dealership in the district of a congressman or woman on a key house committee? (40%)

2) Is the dealer’s owner a major contributor to the political campaign of a key congressman or woman?  (30%)

3) Will our losses from keeping this dealership open be less than the congressionally imposed costs of arbitration required to shut them down? (25%)

4)  Is there anything else about this dealership’s sales or other business factors that we didn’t consider when we originally decided they weren’t worth keeping around that might have gotten us to change our minds?  (5%)

What I don’t understand is why the media that reported this are pretending that these factors are being weighted any other way.