Don't you love it when one sentence tells an entire story?

There's a beautiful simplicity to the notion that a single sentence can tell you everything you need to know about a place, a person, a problem.

Poets are masters of this, like Lord Byron:

She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to the tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

But you don't have to be a poet to appreciate just how perfectly this sentence encapsulates the problem with not just the auto industry, but with every industry now seeking a federal bailout:

The CEOs of the big three automakers flew to the nation's capital yesterday in private luxurious jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy.

These are the people who would have rank-and-file auto workers slash their pay and benefits in order to keep their jobs. These are the people who ran their companies into the ground by refusing for thirty years to learn from Toyota and Honda how to make reliable, fuel-efficient cars. These are the people who never realized that Americans don't want to buy cars that are essentially junkers after three years; that some of us like to see how far into the six figures of mileage we can get. Instead they cranked out trucks and SUVs, turning the practice of guzzling huge quantities of Middle East oil into a patriotic gesture and gesture of testicular fortitude: "Built Ford Tough." Chevy trucks were "Like a rock" and part of "an American revolution." And now they want us to pay for their idiocy.

Where I now work, we have a performance measurement program. We set our own goals, and our supervisors sign off on them. Along with these goals go measurable ways of determining that the goal has been met -- things like bringing in deliverables on time. This is how increases in compensation are determined. Tomorrow I bring in the first milestone of my project on time, which is a step towards one of my goals.

Do these guys even HAVE goals? Is there ANYTHING expected of them? They've been running failing companies for years. Has an American nameplate represented quality at all in the last thirty years? The last quality American car (not an SUV) that I can recall was the Ford Taurus, and what did they do? They stopped making it. Just like Chrysler and the Dart/Valiant twins in the 1970's. Planned obsolesence is alive and well -- except for nonperforming auto executives. Their jobs are always safe.