President Barack Obama on Thursday uttered the following utterly absurd thing:
“I want to (bailout) manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.”
Even before President Obama dramatically bumped up the auto bailout to $82 billion, we were saying that this government-funded Crony Socialism model is what he has in mind for the entire once-private sector economy. He’s just now openly asserting it.
So let’s take a look at the auto bailout nightmare mess – and marvel at what President Obama wishes to multiplicatively replicate.
(If some of the following sounds recently familiar, you must listen to gracious radio host-exemplar Mark Levin.)
- We’re going to lose over $42 billion on the $82 billion auto bailout. Obama in late 2009 said we would make money on it.
- $26.5 billion of the loss was a straight payoff to the Democrat-apparatchik United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
- During the bankruptcy process, President Obama illegally paid off the UAW first and in full – before secured bondholders who should have been made whole before anyone else got a dime. Which was incredibly disruptive and destructive of the entire bond market. Economic uncertainty, anyone?
- Meanwhile, President Obama cut the pensions of non-union GM-subsidiary Delphi’s employees by up to 70%.
- President Obama illegally carried forward through the bankruptcy the ridiculously exorbitant UAW contracts. Which were a hay-yuge contributing factor to GM going under in the first place – and are again, predictably, helping to wreck the bottom line.
- President Obama illegally allowed GM to carry forward through the bankruptcy $45.4 billion in losses – which serve as post-bankruptcy write-offs, costing We the Taxpayers $18 billion in lost tax revenue. GM paid absolutely no income tax in 2011. See, Senator Reid, this is what a non-anonymous source looks like.
- We are still stuck with 500+ million shares of GM stock. For us to break even, they must be sold at $54 per. They debuted post-bankruptcy at $33 per. They are now at around $20 per. Setting us up for a nearly $17 billion loss – just on the stock.
- Why has the stock tanked so precipitously? Because GM is no longer a for-profit car company – it is a Leftist ideological entity. To wit:
- 90+% of GMs auto loans are now of the Freddie Mac-Fannie Mae-esque subprime variety – made to people the vast majority of whom GM and everyone else knows can’t pay them back.
- Chevrolet Volts cost $41,000 to make, and sell for $41,000. It is a non-profit vehicle. Yet GM has spent millions advertising it – trying desperately to sell a Leftist fantasy car that makes them no money.
- Even more inane, GM just spent $10.4 million to build a Chevy Volt-ville – an Obama Candy Land Potemkin village.
- And lest we forget – there was the Chevy Volt song…and dance.
- And yet Volt sales remain, as always, pathetic. Perhaps because it only gets 35 miles to a 12-hour charge, and costs twice as much as a similar-sized regular gasoline mobile.
- And despite these terrible sales, GM is bulling forward with a Buick Crossover hybrid. And two Buick hybrid sedans. And a Yukon. And a Chevy Malibu Eco. And a Chevy Tahoe. And two Chevy pick-up trucks. And a Cadillac Escalade. Misery, of course, loving bankrupt company.
- GM in 2010 launched a $100 million venture capital division (it’s ObamaMotors – not Mitt Romney’s Bain – so I guess it’s ok). Which is investing in fabulously successful things like…solar panel companies.
- In fact, no company on Planet Earth – pardon me, Mother Gaia – registered in 2010 more (non-)green (non-)energy patents than GM.
- We the Taxpayers pay $7,500 per Volt sold in bribe money – I mean incentive. And in President Obama’s latest unanimously rejected budget he wanted to up that to $10,000 per.
- As of November of last year, the total Volt subsidy Taxpayer cost was $250,000 per Volt sold.
- Another contributing factor to the Volt’s non-sales: Obama and GM admit to only one Volt fire – dangerously rabbit-holing at least five fires and a whole host of attending Volt charging problems that have not yet been adequately explained.
- The auto bailout was supposed to “create or save” American jobs. But it killed 100,000 gigs right out of the gate – via President Obama’s forced closings of Republican-owned GM and Chrysler dealerships.
- GM is in fact currently creating gigs – in China. Where they in 2011 sponsored a movie celebrating the Communist Revolution’s 90th anniversary.
And so on, and so on, and….
All of this slow-motion train wreck-litany – is President Obama’s vision for how we should from now on do all things economy.
Because for this President, “success” doesn’t mean greater free market achievement – it means greater government control.