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A LETTER to my Member of Parliament:

Dear Bob,

Perhaps I] am wrong. I hope so. But I fear I see a corporate welfare bum polishing his gold- plated begging cup. General Motors. One of the biggest com- panies on the planet.

Skid Road bums I -:n handle. They only cost a! Besides, there, but for the, ~f God, gol.

Corporate welfare bums are different. They don’t ask, they demand. They don’t ask me. They insist that my government turn me upside down and shake money out of my pockets for them.

Corporate handouts take many forms, most of them obscure. Tax relief. Grants in aid. Government low interest loans or govern- ment-guaranteed loans. Sometimes jt’s a new form of import trickery

*"..0n this continent free enterprise is applied selectively. Corner groceries can indulge in free enterprise and profit or go broke. But not big companies ... Why? ... Because they are big...”’

to shield a corporation from competition.

Hidden or open, the taxpayer pays the bill.

We went through this a few years ago with Chrysler, a com- pany so badly run that had it been a corer grocery store it would have gone broke and been taken over by new management long be- fore.

Chrysler’s executives insisted that their well-being was the re- sponsibility of the taxpayers of the United States and Canada.

About the only question either government asked was whether they would carry the money home in their own baskets or did they want it delivered by Brinks?

What if we next get GM, bigger than Chrysler and greedier?

General Motors once sold almost half of all the cars bought on this continent. GM’s market share has dropped to about a third. A lot of unsold cars.

There are other bad signs.

We are seeing self-pity, one of the prominent characteristics of any panhandler.

George Eads, chief economist of the corporation, said recently that the Japanese share of the American car market will not stop increasing until American manu- facturers make cars as good as the Japanese, something, he said, they are not doing.

It would be hard to state the

| Paulitics & Perspectives

Pau Sr. PIERRE

principle of a free market economy more neatly. Those who serve their customers will prosper. Those who don’t will perish. Precisely what Adam Smith had in mind. Free enterprise, it’s some- times called.

But on this continent free enterprise is applied selectively. Corner groceries can indulge in free enterprise ard profit or go broke. So can farmers, truckers, popcorn sellers, carpentry shops, the owners of mushroom planta- tions, and prostitutes. But not big companies such as Massey Ferguson, Chrysler or Generai Motors. Why not them? Because they are big, that’s why not.

What is bad for General Motors has to be bad for all of us, so all of us are expected to do some- thing and not just stand there squeezing our wallets until the knuckles turn white.

We must pay money to North American car makers and if we won’t pay to buy their cars then we shall have to pay and not get a

car.

Please understand, Mr. MP, this letter is not to ask you to try to reverse the full current of mod- ern history and force GM or any other huge corporation to submit to free competition. I ask only that you try to change the rules for mendicant corporations,

To this end, recall a few facts: One of GM’s board members, H. Ross Perot, himself a successful entrepreneur, was outraged by the last wave of firings in the com- pany. Workers lost jobs while ex- ecutives took raises. Mr. Perot called it disgraceful. He said it publicly, and so loudly that he was bought off GM's board of directors for $700 million.

Some of the shareholders would rather have kept the $700 million and listened to the criticism.

This month was just as bad. Retiring GM chairman Roger Smith had his pension doubled to $1.2 million per annum. The State of Michigan, which holds a block of GM stock, tried to prevent it,

but couldn’t.

The experience of the chairman should be compared with that of one of the workers fired while Mr. Smith was repelling GM custom- ers. The quotation appears in the book In Search of Excellence:

“I guess I got laid off because I make poor quality cars. But in 16 years, not once was I ever asked for a suggestion as to how to do my job better. Not once.’’ He did not get a million dollar a year pension.

So, to my request. It’s a modest one, surely. But it is realistic.

Before my government gives my next handout to any corporate welfare bum, could there not be a condition imposed requiring that the entire management responsible for that company’s plight be fired? No golden parachutes. Just, down the road you go, Charlie.

Imagine how that would en- courage productivity from the white collar class in 20, 40 or 100 other big corporations.

Governments say their bailouts save thousands of jobs. Not exact- ly. Governments save the pay, perks and pensions of failed exec- utives. They reward failure.

9 - Friday, June 22, 1990 - North Shore News

N. Van man faces sex-related charges

A NORTH Vancouver man has been ordered to stand trial on a variety of sexual assault-related charges after a recent North Van- couver provincial court prelimi- nary hearing.

Alan Paul Nahanee, 31, is charged with two counts of sexual assault, one count of gross in- decency and one countcf touching a child for a sexual purpose.

The charges stem from incidents alleged to have occurred between January 1987 and March 1989,

Nahanee will next appear in Vancouver county court on July 11 to set a trial date.

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