Private jets

While I'm riffing off "things I read at Ezra Klein's blog", allow me to register my serious disagreement with this:

Meanwhile, after being stung by public criticism for taking their corporate jets to the last congressional hearing, the various auto CEOs will be driving in tomorrow. Which is stupid. The industry has lots of problems, but overuse of the corporate jet by busy CEOs is not one of them. This'll waste 18 hours or so at a time when the executives presumably have work they could, and should, be doing.

From the moment the Detroit problem stumbled drunkenly into the headlines, I've been waiting for evidence--any evidence--that the CEOs of these firms do anything of any use at all. When they're not running their businesses into the ground, they're flying in the lap of luxury to Washington to ineffectually beg for money.

Whether or not they've learned enough from that episode to create a good-faith, serious plan to salvage their businesses, presumably they've learned that nobody will smile upon the idea of giving money to a bunch of unreformed, overpaid, rotten corporate executives. On that score, ditching the jets and driving in to town shows that, at the very least, they've learned the easy stuff (particularly if they're driving fuel efficient cars and staying at places not called "Fairmont" or "Ritz Carlton" or whathaveyou).

Ideally, they'd ditch both their private jets and their cars and figure out a way to do this dance over Skype. But baby steps.