General Motors, The Final Rant

Auto czar and Commander-in-Thief Barack Obama has raced General Motors through a complex series of last-minute deals to speed the automaker way into the fast-track, presidentially engineered, bankruptcy they filed this morning. The company will emerge in 60 to 90 days as the nationalized U.S. Government Motors.

Oh, yeah?

What else would you call a car business that is

  • Beaten down by political maneuvering
  • Stolen from its owners
  • Handed not just in majority but almost in entirety to “your” government.

History has textbooks full of taking industries or assets into public ownership under a national government or a state. Wikipedia reports that “The motives for nationalization are political as well as economic. It is a central theme of certain brands of ‘state socialist’ policy that the means of production, distribution and exchange, should be owned by the state on behalf of the people.”

Charged with operating “in the public interest,” nationalized industries are under strong political pressure to make social goals instead of decent products (or profits).

Here are some examples of historic nationalizations:

  • The Castro government “expropriated” all private companies after the Cuban Revolution of 1959.
  • The Yeltsin government seized Gazprom assets in 1998, claiming the company “owed back taxes.”
  • In the past two years alone, Hugo Chavez stripped control of the Orinoco oil belt, nationalized the cement industry, steel mill Sidor, and much more.
  • The Obama government will nationalize General Motors today by seizing its assets. They will claim the company might default on its loans.

“We won’t keep it any longer than necessary,” President Obama said.

Have you noticed? Every thief has an excuse.

Thomas Jefferson wrote, The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

Was King George III really any worse? That poor monarch just wanted the profits on our tea.


Posted early to match the 8 a.m. filing deadline.

9 thoughts on “General Motors, The Final Rant

  1. GM has indeed now filed the third-largest U.S. bankruptcy in history. Reuters reports that the U.S. government will own 60 percent of the “new GM.” I don’t know where they got their figures. Reuters did not report that the the U.S. government’s 60 percent includes many thousands of my dollars.

  2. The fate of Detroit isn’t a matter of economics. It’s a tragic romance, whose magic was killed by bureaucrats, bad taste and busybodies. P.J. O’Rourke told WSJ readers why Americans fell out of love with the automobile.

    Ahhh, the good old days. A stock 2009 Corvette will run 200 mph on the salt, then can stop at any (remaining) Chevy dealer for routine warranty service. A stock 2010 Gummint Motors Corvette will run 55 mph on the salt, then need to stop at any (remaining) Chevy dealer for warranty service.

    The days of breaking my land speed record to Bridgehampton are gone, my friends.

    Barack Obama wanted to be the Man on the Horse when he grew up. Instead, he put us all on the Donkey.

  3. Chrysler stopped making cars years ago, and of course the jury is still out on Ford. And now…and now GM has been nationalized.

    My wife and I are seriously thinking of buy a new car within the next six months (we’ve been considering that for the last two years); but the negative hype I’ve seen and heard does not sketch a pretty profile of the GM cars for the future.

    I don’t mind driving 55 mph if I only have a few blocks to go and all day to get there; but I can’t imagine an American freeway with tiny, tin boxes on it that proposed regulatory restraints will surely demand.

    Lately we hear through the grapevine that a VAT is in the cards. We citizens–and especially we liberal watchers–don’t know whether to take that as a possibility or as merely an Administrative ploy–a threat of something bad–to entice people to go out and buy a car sooner rather than later to help jump start GM’s cardio flatline.

    As I told one fellow citizen, it is bad enough that citizens cannot trust this Adminstration to do a good thing; but it is even worse that we can’t trust it even to do the bad thing.

    I suspect we will buy something this calendar year, and I also suspect it will be a car whose Operators Manual will be written in pigeon English.

    The last time I bought something from the government it was a postage stamp–and there was picture of a Liberty Bell on it. I wonder whatever happened to that thing.

    –George

  4. Actor Sean Connery once said that he would never make another 007 James Bond Movie. No more than a decade later he was uttering the scripted words, “Never say Never” through the lips of Ian Fleming’s master spy in a movie by that same name.

    Years ago when I was young and in love with a short, full-figured, freckled face girl of Irish bloodline, I said I would never marry any girl who was not short, full-figured and freckled. Of course, years later I married a tall, willowy redhead who grandparents had immigrated here from Poland. Never say never.

    In the preceding comment to this posted thread I said I would probably buy a car this year and that it would probably be of foreign manufacture. I strongly implied that I would never buy a GM car. Never say never.

    This weekend I purchased a GM car.

    Why would I do such a thing, you ask? Because Mrs Poleczech wanted it.

  5. Not to worry, George. Your overseas-built “GM” car was built by actual Germans working in a General Motors factory, so you got a well designed car, built to modern standards and backed by the best mechanics in the business.

    Soon, your overseas-built “GM” car will soon be manufactured by the Italians, Russians, or, [shudder], French.

  6. I am okay with German built because the Germans gave us some great things: The Hindenberg was a lot of fun to watch when it landed and took off, and Hogan’s Heroes was one of my favorites.

    However, their measels gave me fits in First Grade.

    — George

  7. In the 31 days of May before the United States stole G.M., the new Camaro muscle car outsold Honda’s new hybrid, the Insight, by about two to one, according to Autodata Corp. and the WSJ. No surprise that the Administration will now shift G.M.’s product mix to cars that do not sell.

  8. Harry J. Wilson, a member of the Obama administration’s auto task force, testified in United States Bankruptcy Court yesterday that the government was G.M.’s lender of last resort and, as such, the government dictated a turnaround plan that included selling G.M.’s best assets to a new government-financed company by July 10.

    I say again, I will join any class action lawsuit against the United States government for taking our private property without compensation.

Comments are closed.