Government Motors

My dislike of General Motors runs deep.

It wasn't always that way.  Growing up on the East Coast, we dreamed of one day owning a Corvette with a 454 engine.  We longed for Camaros, Firebirds and had a strange love affair with the "screaming chicken" on the hood of the Pontiac Trans Am. 

In those days, Chevy represented power, speed and style.  Cars were designed by "car guys" always ready and willing to bolt on more horsepower when the time was right.

Today, Chevy represents everything wrong with the American car industry.  The company is nothing more than a propaganda arm of the government trying to shove Americans into "fuel efficient" boxes and lecturing us about why we should drive a Volt or get a carbon credit.  The company that still owes taxpayers nearly $50 billion dollars spent $40 million on carbon offsets and $559 million on a soccer team.  The government even intervened to stop Ford Motor Company from reminding taxpayers that they never took a bailout.

GM is relying on government for its survival.  The National Legal and Policy Center reports, "General Motors announced an increase in government purchases of 115% in July. This follows June's jump in government fleet sales of 79%."  The crony capitalists at General Electric have jumped into the act by propping up Chevy Volt sales.  The Blaze reported that,"

In GM’s 2012 sales projections for the Volt, the company was initially claiming they would deliver 60,000 cars. That number has been dropped down to 45,000. Those downsized, but still aggressive, projections will be helped by General Electric’s decision to order 12,000 Volts and some other hybrid for its company fleet.

GE, a company headed by Obama Jobs Czar Jeffry Immelt, is also well known for its questionable federal income tax rate in 2010. And now GE is reportedly “nudging” a substantial number of employees to drive the Chevy Volt by replacing the company cars in its fleet with the “green” cars. The company is also paying for the installation of charging stations at the homes of those employees who will be driving the car and is even paying for the electricity used to charge them.

Government Motors deserves to fail.  The President, however, sees this as his crowning achievement after three years in office.   “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry," he said.

John Ranson from Townhall has crunched the numbers and suggests that we will see another bankruptcy from GM in the near future.  Perhaps then the company will cut its umbilical cord to government, rewrite inefficient and wasteful union contracts and jettison government bureaucrats who seem intent on shoving us all into "Smart Cars."  Until then, I will be looking elsewhere for my next car.