what is good for the country is good for General Motors and vice versa

It is now the law of Miami, soon to be nationwide, that a major league baseball (MLB) team is in the interests of the public good. Thus public financing that is limited by law to financing for projects that serve "the public good" is available to a private entity - the local MLB team.

In a court decision from the Miami-Dade Circuit Court, it was upheld that public financing of a baseball stadium for the Florida Marlins baseball team served the public good and is thus allowed (and available). This is the Miami Herald article on September 10, 2008 -
http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/baseball/florida-marlins/story/679722.html

Earlier this week the federal government took over mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and appears to be preparing to bail out the latest failing investment bank, Lehman Brothers. On Monday morning after the takeover announcement, the financial news cable channel CNBC, had numerous talking heads explaining how there was really nothing else the government could do due to the large scope of shareholders - "it would touch everyone". Occasionally a voice was raised that "isn't this socialism?" but fewer were willing to call it what it really is - corporate welfare. Tip of the hat to Jim Rogers, a man with money in the market who said on CNBC: "America is more communist than China is right now. You can see that this is welfare of the rich, it is socialism for the rich… it's just bailing out financial institutions," Rogers said. http://www.cnbc.com/id/26603489

So despite the decline of General Motors, things remain the same, although the names have been changed. If it is good for the country it is good for the corporation, public or private, and if it is good for the corporation, of course it is good for the nation. When the Marlins start play in their new publicly financed stadium, I hope the public good includes food and beer concession prices that are more reasonable than at my current favorite publicly financed (and given away to the team owners) MLB stadium, Nationals Park in Washington, DC (awaiting the selling of the name to yet another corporate entity).




from Wikipedia -
In 1953, Charles Erwin Wilson, then GM president, was named by Eisenhower as Secretary of Defense. When he was asked during the hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee if as secretary of defense he could make a decision adverse to the interests of General Motors, Wilson answered affirmatively but added that he could not conceive of such a situation "because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa". Later this statement was often misquoted, suggesting that Wilson had said simply, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." At the time, GM was one of the largest employers in the world – only Soviet state industries employed more people. In 1955, General Motors became the first American corporation to pay taxes of over $1,000 million.[1]