General Motors caught a leeetle bit of flack this week for flying its executives to Washington on a private jet in order to beg for a taxpayer bailout. "Hey," said politicians, the media, and the general public, "you have less than zero money. Should you really have spent thousands on a private jet?" We would also add, "Shouldn't you have driven a car?" Later GM and its fellow broke automakers left Washington with no money, making this one of the colossal PR fuckups of 2008, and possibly of the preceding decade as well. But everything is different now, because GM is going to have somewhat fewer private jets. So please give them some multiple of billions of dollars okay? They did have five company planes. Now they're cutting down to just three. Tightening the belt!

General Motors, the embattled US carmaker, buffeted by criticism for sending its chief executive on a private jet to plead for government aid, vowed today to stop leasing two of its five company planes. GM is "very sensitive" to "the symbolic issue of people showing up in Washington in corporate jets", spokesman Tom Wilkinson said, promising more cuts to come at the company.

Now you know that spokesman was probably desperately searching Craigslist job ads at the time of this quote and didn't give it much thought, so cut him some slack. Because let's face it, GM is going broke broke. [Guardian via Clusterstock]