"The top executives of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler appeared in front of Congress for the second day in a row Tuesday, to make their case for an emergency government loan," CNN.com reports:
"The three CEOs have said they don’t have the cash to operate next year without help and warned that the failure of the industry would have dire consequences for the U.S. economy.
"And yet GM CEO Rick Wagoner, Ford CEO Alan Mulally and Chrysler chief Bob Nardelli arrived for these historic hearings on private jets! That’s right: The men at the helm of an industry so crippled that it has to ask for taxpayer money to survive flew on private jets. And they wonder why the American public is so angry about these bailouts.
"Their choice of transportation dominated Wednesday’s hearing. Representative Gary Ackerman, a Democrat from New York said: '… there is a message here — couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled to get here? It would have at least sent a message that you do get it.'
"'If you’re gonna streamline your companies, where does it start? And it would seem to me as the chief executive officer of those companies you can’t set the standard of what that future is going to look like, that you are really going to be competitive, that you are going to trim the fat, that you don’t need all the luxuries and bells and whistles … it causes us to wonder.'"
