Posted on 08/02/2010 9:07:10 AM PDT by Nachum
Who could have imagined that the bailout of the auto industry, one of the single most unpopular moves by the Obama administration, would become one of its best talking points?
But don't for an instant imagine that the comeback of the nation's rescued car companies, particularly General Motors, will change the way we debate government's role in the economy. When it comes to almost anything the government does, ideology trumps facts, slogans trump reality, and loaded words ("socialism") trump data.
Let there be no mistake: Rescuing GM and Chrysler took political courage, and I want to put in a good word not only for President Obama but also for George W. Bush.
True, Bush's electoral career was over in December 2008 when he extended $17.4 billion of Troubled Assets Relief Program money to keep the companies alive long enough to give Obama a chance to act. Still, it took guts for Bush to decide not to "leave the next president to confront the demise of a major American industry in his first days of office." Yet it was Obama who put in the bulk of the cash -- in all, Bush's input had grown to $25 billion before he left office, while Obama put up an additional $60 billion -- and created the tough restructuring plan.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I hope you keep posting this stuff - we all get to learn a lot about how to argue and to combat left-wing lies.
Though yeah, maybe an alert would be useful :0)
A lot of people are saying “this was a payoff to the UAW.” That certainly is true. However, it was also a fascist-style payoff to political cronies and those who contributed to Obama and a fascist-style attack on his political opponents. What am I talking about? The dealer closers, as explained by the article Noob1999 posted here http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2563226/posts?page=45#45
People, this is pure Mussolini-style fascism. Not like it, not approaching it, but the real text-book thing. Period!
My eyes! What has been seen cannot be unseen! That is the first photo I ever saw of the guy. It was one too many!
Yes, it “worked” in the same way that a patient is kept alive by an artificial machine doing the breathing and blood circulation until the organ harvesters arrive.................
I can hardly wait for Bammy and Ed Whitacre (Bammy's hand-picked GM CEO) to try to take GM public again. After screwing the previous stockholders out of their shares of stock, I have a hard time envisioning investors sucking up GM stock again. Easpecially, with the looming Volt flop on the horizon!!
This could be worth a whole new pot of popcorn.
By Dionne’s logic, the Holocaust wasn’t so bad for Jews because, hey, SOME Jews LIVED.
Idiot.
It's all peachy and fixed! Pay no attention to that 10,000 pound Gorilla in the room while you dance and sing praises for Socialism.
Make sure you also ignore the fact that GM now owns (Was given by the MaObama admin.) one of the largest troubled credit companies on Earth, giving car loans to “Sub-Prime” borrowers. (A nice term for scum sucking, deadbeat, loser, government subsidized, thieves of taxpayer money .)
OF COURSE, this will NEVER wind up like the housing market when the government subsidized Fannie May and Freddie Mack! Who else gets to drive away from a GM/Chrysler dealer with a brand new 40 thousand dollar Chevy Volt or Dodge equivalent, with out a dime down because they count the tax bribe of $7500 as an adequate amount of security. Now, there is a sure fired way to make the “buyer” accountable!
Just more brilliant accounting and economic genius brought to the “poor” from all us taxpayers, by the Democrats, spreading the wealth around to those who don't deserve it!
Some people will go to any lengths to prop up their idol, isn’t that right, E.J.?
Your article is an embarrassment.
Ford didn’t take a bailout, and GM would have been better off if they’d been allowed to declare bankruptcy without government “assisstance”.
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves."Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
Best,
Chris
Here’s the special treatment article I remembered:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=af4lR7a4FXsM
buying GM is a tax
Thanks.
It appears that I was thinking of the Chrysler LLC deal. My own state of Indiana sued because their pensions were heavily vested in Chrylser and got screwed big time.
Any way the pie is sliced, both arrangements were disgusting and political and the greasy fingers of government are well-evidenced.
Yah, that article I posted basically said the GM deal favored the union pension fund beneficiaries over the retiree GM bond holders. Retiree v. Retiree and the union affiliated won. Sad, since they were the ones that helped drive GM into the ground.
Margaret Thatcher, House of Commons Speech(the poor poorer, provided that the rich were less rich)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2562456/posts
Thatcher”...I was speaking of the Labour party wanting to re-nationalise privatised industry. Four of the industries that we have privatised are in the top 10 British businesses, but at the very bottom of the list of 1,000 British businesses lie four nationalised industries. Labour’s industries consume the wealth that others create and give nothing back.”
“The “rescue”/bailout of GM and Chrysler only DELAYED the bankruptcy filings of both”
Unless something has been done about the union contracts that made GM and Chrysler unprofitable, he only postponed the inevitable. In reality, Obama just bailed out the group he is most loyal to, the unions, who caused the problem in the first place.
Ford, is likely to be a foreign corporation building and selling the vast majority of its cars in Asia.
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