He's Gonna Pay My Mortgage! He's Gonna Fix My Car!

I don’t know where to begin to comment watching events unfold between General Motors and Barack Obama. Where does the Federal government get the authority to fire a CEO of a major corporation? I know. I know. “Thems that pays the piper picks the tunes.” And I know that General Motors approached the Feds for money. And I know that for all intents and purposes, but for the Feds, GM would be bankrupt. Nonetheless, there is something unseemly and inherently un-American about what is happening.

Let’s start with GM itself. It has had long standing quality problems and union contracts which would sink a battleship. Its cars were…let’s just say…bad. They rusted within two years. They rattled. They were in constant need of repair. And GM, as well as Ford and Chrysler, were blown away by the engineering and galvanized steel of the Japanese imports. GM is currently carrying legacy costs which, in effect, change the nature of what it is. GM no longer makes cars to make money. It makes cars to pay its legacy costs.

On the other hand, GM’s quality and fleet offerings have greatly improved over the years, until this past year when its Cadillac and Malibu entries received car of the year awards, and Buick was rated number 1 in customer quality satisfaction. I drive a Buick Lucerne, and it is probably the best car I have ever owned. I liked it so much, my wife got one last October. GM was surviving, albeit barely, up until the summer of 2008. What happened?

Gasoline went to $4.00/gallon straining the economy to the point of breaking, and by September, the credit markets were freezing as the energy costs shoved the market over the abyss. Add to that the creative financing that got the stuffing kicked out of it as people began to default on their mortgages while energy costs caused the economy to cool…and you have a recipe for disaster.

Was it GM’s fault that the energy prices skyrocketed? Was it GM’s fault that the credit markets collapsed and froze? NO!!!! It was the fault of government ineptness in developing a sane energy policy based on increasing supply rather than decreasing demand, and its failure to regulate the financial industry as it implement government mandated policies to provide home ownership to everyone regardless of the borrower’s ability to repay the loan. The ultimate causation for GM’s collapse was bad government. And now, these same folks are going to run General Motors?

The goal of the Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Geithner cabal is not to rescue General Motors. These folks by definition are anti-business. The goal of these folks is power, pure and simple. They want to tell you what to drive. They don’t care about General Motors as a business enterprise. They view it as a means to enact their vision of a new America. General Motors, the largest automobile company in the world up until this year, will provide them the means to promote their carbon free emission fantasies in the political wealth redistribution world of global warming. They are just chomping at the bit to tell GM the kind of cars it can make.

A secondary goal is nationalized health care. I will guarantee you that sometime this year; the Federal government will take over the health care benefits for current and former employees of General Motors. It will be the base on which they can expand their single payer, rationed, nationalized health insurance policy dreams onto the rest of America.

All the while, they tell us that they really aren’t interested in running a car company. Then again, maybe that’s the truth. The true interest is global warming garbage and rationed, nationalized health care. Who cares if GM is destroyed in the process? After all, at least they tried.

Obama and his pals will keep shoving money into GM as long as GM gives them what they want. It would have been better for America if General Motors filed for bankruptcy last October. At least our capitalist system could have maintained some semblance of its dignity. Now, we are ideological puppets.

In the meantime, isn't it great that the Feds are going to pay our health care, modify our mortgages, pay for our college, pay our credit cards, pay for free lunches and breakfasts, pay for daycare, and now fix our cars? Wow. Do I have to get Uncle Sam something for Christmas?