That's the solution?

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Unbelievably, Corporate America finds this the answer to public criticism over what appears to be a lavish lifestyle for executives.

Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., criticized by U.S. lawmakers for its use of corporate jets, asked aviation regulators to block the public’s ability to track a plane it uses.

“We availed ourselves of the option as others do to have the aircraft removed” from a Federal Aviation Administration tracking service, a GM spokesman, Greg Martin, said yesterday in an interview. He declined to discuss why GM made the request.

Flight data show that the leased Gulfstream Aerospace G-IV jet flew Nov. 18 from Detroit to Washington, where Chief Executive Officer Richard Wagoner Jr. spoke to a Senate committee that day and a House panel the next day on behalf of a $25 billion auto-industry rescue plan.

Now, as I see it, these are worldwide public corporations whose executives need to have convenient mobility so the use of a leased jet makes sense for business needs alone. Having spent my working career in a Dow30 industrial corporation, I can only say that there are a lot of middle managers who sit in airports waiting for their flights who could also benefit from the instantaneous mobility of use of the corporate jet fleet.

Even so, the ringing question is why do these corporate executives have such a tin ear when it comes to how this sort of personal service resonates with the average American worker? They are asking that worker to lend them money, or guarantee their loans, yet they see no reason to make things appear less extravagant. Why is keeping the information from the very public whose pockets they wish to tap the best answer to their corporate working styles?

We should demand a breakup of the big three auto companies into smaller, more manageable business entities - and put this kind of high flying (pun intended) style and cost behind us.