Reflections

Why Was The Chevy Driven Into The Levee?

Posted by on Jun 4, 2009 | 14 Comments

Don McLean sang the song “American Pie’ in which one verse says:

So bye bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry

But with GM having to file bankruptcy just to stay afloat, it makes one wonder who drove the Chevy into the levee?  It is easy to point fingers and blame the GM executives who may have mismanaged the company. Or to can blame the UAW for draining the company dry in demanding excessive perks.

We can blame the Republicans for their allegiance to corporate America in which they appear to be in bed with each other. Or how about the Democrats for being anti business in appearance and who want to tax the heck out of businesses. The only ones we can’t blame are the Libertarians and Independents.

We can’t blame China since they haven’t started exporting cars to the U.S. Nor can we blame Tibet since they manufacture no cars for themselves. We could blame the Japanese for building a better car than America car builders could. But how about the Koreans, Germans, Swiss, and all of the other car companies?  Should we blame them as well?

Who do you blame?

After all: isn’t it the new wave of thinking? Blame everyone except for yourself?

Drop a note and let me know what you think.

  • Buffet

    I personally blame GREED. The bastards priced themselves right outta business. The lesson to be learned here is to be content with a fair and reasonable profit.

  • Martin Kruse

    UAW wanted to get paid more and more and refused to take a paycut during downturns and bleed the company dry of cash. I have no sympathy and will not be buying a vehicle from “Government Motors”

  • leftystrat

    Wasn’t it more a question of who drove the plane into the levee in the song?

    What you’re talking about is Corporate Welfare.
    We have somehow managed to privatize profits and socialize losses.

    Now let’s all get back to Americans Idle.

  • NeverEnough It Seems

    It seems as if we appoint people to places that have NO business there! No matter whether, Gov., Corps,. (no jab intended ). People that CAN’T give you the approximate price of milk and whether it is higher than gas or not, should live off of one-half our budget, that ask to serve us as a collective. Whether DC or De t riot (misspelt on purpose). You have GM and Chrysler about to go belly up and the infinite wisdom of the Govmt. is about to print more money to cover the debt. ,,,, I read not long ago ,,, we the USA has 300 Million people and IF we gave each one One Million Dollars to buy homes and cars buy good used cars (were the monies will not go into all the money hungry bastards pockets), get a plot of land buy some acreage for cows and do our on milking. Pay our bills on time ,,,, Hell! ,,, You either get the idea by now or you are one of them!

  • DoesntBuyAmerican

    It’s more like “Bye bye, Miss American Pie” and “Hello Ms. Socialist Piece of the Pie”.

    I blame American cars because they suck, and myself for being too smart to buy one. Let them go down so we can start making something we’re actually good at. I mean besides Laws and Government.

    What are they going to do about the bankrupt Six Flags theme parks? Turn them into Gov Land?

  • Gary Bing

    GM had this misguided thing going on that they were flush and could just swallow up market share where ever they could (Saab, Hummer, etc) Then when that wasn’t enough they created a company out of thin air called Saturn, of which to this day they somehow get away with not disclosing the P&Ls of a division of a publicly traded company. Are we to finally find out now that all of us really own it now stock or not? (or lock stock and barrel=bankruptcy) GM was playing the cattleman’s role in the way to big hat ( big hat, little cattle) for decades. The last draw for me was the car ironically named like a heavily advertised toilet tissue called the Aurora by the Oldsmobile division, no less. Even more ironic when that toilette tissue was being touted those were GM’s golden years.I used to go around and remark to any who would hear “I always wanted to be able to own a car made by the ass wipes who made and named it as such..” A spokesperson for GM had the audacity to apologize for the 80′s. You even see a member of the” good old boy network” touting his car over a company that makes lawnmowers. God forbid if GM made those .Remember the rear engined Corvair, so they kind of did after all. A congressional committee was lambasting the CEo of GM saying, “You haven’t changed anything in twenty years. What makes you think it’s going to be any different now? I would have changed that to maybe 30 or forty years. “We haven’t had that spirit since 1969″ I’d be singing that at that hearing and the room would have come undone and I’d probably be escorted out by some authority. Ah. Aurora I’ll be reminded of the car, not the toilet tissue when I take a dump. Azteck was as sure a reason ever for GM stock holders to sue. I started a real row at the LA Auto show in 1999 when GM unveiled the Catera, and requested all stockholders of GM to sue. Someone told me that my stunt was reported by some in the media. The Deville is dated and has hardly any legroom for its driver. A decade old one has more front seat room. The Pontiac division (should have been scraped before even Oldsmobile0 has come out with a new four door hot rod that gets just over single digit fuel economy in the city, a Pontiac, no less.. Oh what mental midgets we have in the once largest company in the world, that status being taken over by Exxon in 1979 exactly 30 years ago.

  • http://210consulting.com/ Jeremy Blanton

    I’m an addict to that game… My best word was crazes… got me 111 points :)

  • http://www.facebook.com/tomchapin Tom Chapin

    Just use the “Ultimate Word Finder free” iphone app. It will ruin Words With Friends for you, forever. All you do is take a snapshot of the board and load it into Ultimate Word Finder app, which then runs OCR on the entire board and crunches all the possible positions and combinations. It will blow your mind. I don’t even play Words With Friends anymore because of it.

    • http://chris.pirillo.com/ Chris Pirillo

      You’re not supposed to admit to using it. :)

  • http://twitter.com/axi11a Brad Huchteman

    i am also hooked on the game. after you have played someone a couple times you can get a pretty good idea if they are using another app. I have other friends who would never or maybe hardly ever cheat. they tend to be more fun to play with in the first 3/4 of the board, but the ext-app style is best for killing the long drawn-out endings. I tend to play with whatever rules my opponent is projecting, but would rather keep all brain powered.

    • http://twitter.com/Techdude356 Tom Marly

      same

  • Jacob Burrell

    IOS copied several things that Android has had forever. The iPhone though does have a sort of “widget” but is limited to a number on top of a icon which could display number of emails or text messages.

  • http://twitter.com/joosthere Joost van Eck

    If you jailbreak an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, you are able to install something out of Cydia: SBSettings. It works almost the same way.

  • http://twitter.com/mkayeadams Melissa K. Adams

    I don’t know if I can agree with this as even a new iPhone user and no where near a “power” user I would say that I can see EVERYTHING mentioned in this article and them some right on my first page. I have my calendar, the weather, and not to mention all of my news (but I really use Twitter for that), my music (both Pandora and my iPod music), and I have not even gone pass the 33rd row of apps…