I love that General Motors has retired two of five corporate jets.

I do not love that Congress spent their time bashing Ford CEO Alan Mulally, Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli, and General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner for flying privately to the hearings. What should the CEOs have done? Driven to Washington?

Has anybody in Congress ever looked at the Presidential fleet?

Has anybody looked at how Congress Critters prefer to travel? Can you spell c-o-r-p-o-r-a-t-e jet? Or the Air Force C-20? The C-20 aircraft provide “distinguished visitor airlift” for military and government officials. What’s a C-20? That would be a Gulfstream IV. As an aside, General Motors leases the G-IV aircraft Mr. Wagoner used. We taxpayers own the C-20 G-IVs.

Gee, ya think the Congress critters could maybe perhaps be bashing the wrong target?

It is far, far easier to tear down what you cannot possibly create on your own than it is to create something tangible.

I promised a solution somewhere in this series. Here it is.

Warren Buffett says the only possibilities left for the automakers are a bailout or bankruptcy.

Sorry, Mr. Buffett. You’re wrong. Bankruptcy is not an option.

Bankruptcy is attractive because it allows the companies to void their union contracts and turn over their horrendously expensive pension obligations to the taxpayers. The serious downside is that no manufacturing company recovers from bankruptcy. Would you buy a $30 grand widget if you knew there would be no warranty service or even parts available next year? Nobody would. The serious downside is that half of American manufacturing workers will find themselves out of work within 12 months. The serious downside is that some huge number of individual American shareholders (including me) will lose even more from their retirement funds because bankrupt company stocks evaporate.

But a bailout isn’t the answer, either.

I have a three-part plan. 1: Americans need an attitude adjustment. 2: Carmakers need an attitude adjustment. 3: Congress needs an attitude adjustment.

First, remember what your mother taught you: If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say it at all. Bashing a business leader for doing something you know nothing about does absolutely nothing productive. If you do that, stop. The corollary to mom’s adage is simple. If you hear someone else bashing American business, stop them.

Second, American automakers need to get ahead of the curve on market prediction, manufacturing planning, and management.

GM is now working overtime in Texas to make trucks because they shut their truck plants down too early. Not enough of the American auto production lines are flexible. And ongoing layoffs have stripped American companies of their best and brightest workers (that’s not just an automaker problem. At Motorola, for example, product developers with excellent rankings are next up for layoff because all of the “average” and “good” engineers are already gone.)

Finally, the automakers do need some Congressional help. Congress can pass a law. Change labor laws to let the automakers void their union contracts. Then give those horrendously expensive pension obligations to the Fed. That’s going to happen whether we taxpayers like it or not.

Give us that kind of bailout and Messrs. Mulally, Nardelli, and Wagoner can take UAW President Ron Gettelfinger out to the woodshed and beat him until they have appropriate contracts for all the employees as well as for Messrs. Mulally, Nardelli, and Wagoner. After all, if the union folk must give up half their pay, the CEOs can give up most (90%?) of theirs.

We need to do something. Chrysler is probably worth about a billion dollars on the market. Ford’s market cap is $4.04 billion today. GM’s market cap is below Ford at just $1.91 billion. Bill Gates, Mr. Buffet, or the U.S. Congress could simply buy all three on the open market and even though it would be a better investment than the bank bailout has proven to be, that latter is a bleak thought.

Politics bashing bidness, otherwise known as the famed and apparently widely sought-after Rectal-Cranial Inversion.

Have you noticed the direct correlation between Nancy Pelosi’s statements and the stock market tumbles? Consider this. Every 400 point drop in the Dow has come immediately after Ms. Pelosi mounted her podium.

Is it something in the water? Is it genetic? What is the matter with politicians in general, with Democrats in particular, and with Ms. Pelosi specifically? Are they just plain stupid or is it their God-given mission to ruin America?

We’ve been riding a couple of horses in this series: bad science and bad management.

Global Warming is a good example of Not-So-Real science. The popular press and the Congress would have us believe that all scientists agree on the causes and outcomes of Global Warming. And yet. And yet the National Climatic Data Center reports that global temperatures in 2006 were the third coldest on record.

Meanwhile, Weather Channel founder John Coleman wrote, “There is no significant man made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future. The climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.” Mr. Coleman may be a whackjob but he is a whackjob with better scientific credentials than any national elected official.

That must be why Ms. Pelosi (with the help of Mr. Gore) will once again proclaim that Congress has more scientific knowledge than the actual scientists. The Democratic Global Climate Control machine just keeps on trucking. So to speak.

And then there is business.

Here’s a typical recent comment: “Automakers don’t need a bailout. Look at the airlines.”

And another: “General Motors doesn’t make cars that people want to buy.”

Hello?

It may be true that American automakers can survive without an infusion of loan funds but that airline analogy is just plain wrong. The airlines are a service business. Automakers make actual products.

Which company sells more cars in the world, General Motors or, say, Citroen? How about General Motors or, say, Volkswagen? Oooh, I know. How about General Motors versus, say, Toyota? Yeah, yeah, there is a real battle between the General and Toyota over which is the largest automaker in the world but the fact remains that millions literally millions of people have bought, are buying, and will buy brand new General Motors vehicles this year. That doesn’t add up to “not making cars that people want” even inside the Beltway.

Econ 101: You can fix labor problems by cutting wages, particularly in a service business. You cannot make fixed assets cost less by cutting income.

Ms. Pelosi is playing pur sang politics with a single objective. I believe Ms. Pelosi understands that she cannot ever look good. Therefore she must make everyone else look bad. If the Global Warming political argument destroys American industry and if she can force the automakers into bankruptcy, she believes she can rescue the teeny-tiny-and-oh-so-grateful remainder.

Assuming that any American employers last long enough to be “saved.”

Is it something in the water? Something in the air? Is it genetic? Maybe we need a government-funded study.

Or not.