What's Bad for GM is Bad for America

What's Bad for GM is Bad for America

by Mark Luedtke

At the end of May, President Obama ordered the military to seize control of General Motors. OK, he didn't order the military to seize it. He seized GM by executive fiat with no legal authority. It's too bad we don't have images of tanks surrounding GM headquarters to help the American people realize how outrageous this is. Americans are so numb from months of government nationalization of banks, they haven't raised much of a stink. This is how socialists take over America - with neither a bang nor hardly a whimper.

To be fair, America has suffered creeping socialism, or more accurately, collectivism for nearly a century, but because we still have a a little economic freedom and pride, we refuse to admit it. The transformation of America from a free country started in earnest with the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

Maybe I should define some terms. Fascism is when private companies own the means of production, but government plans the production. Socialism is when the government owns the means of production. Communism is when government has a monopoly on the means of production. Along with progressivism, these are different flavors of the same, collectivist ideology that led to the murder of hundreds of millions of people in the 20^th century. Governments based on collectivism inevitably degenerate into governments of thugs, by thugs, for thugs - the ultimate in organized crime. To understand how collectivism inevitably leads to a thugocracy and the rise of the strong man, please read F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

Back to the Federal Reserve. The Fed has a monopoly on our money supply, making it a communist institution. The head of the Fed is similar to the Soviet premier and the board of governors is his politburo. The Fed was created by bankers for bankers and blessed by government because it continually transfers wealth from the people to the bankers and the government. Wielding inflationary monetary policy like a weapon of mass destruction, the Fed has wreaked havoc on the US economy for a century, creating recession after recession including the recessions that sparked the Great Depression, the stagflation of the 1970s and the current economic crisis.

FDR's New Deal was a collection of fascist programs admired by Mussolini, and we still suffer under many of them today. LBJ's Great Society was another great leap forward for collectivism in America. Now, thanks to President Bush setting the stage, we're suffering the greatest leap forward in collectivism in American history. The seizure of GM is the latest domino to fall during 100 years of collectivist power grabs in America. Unfortunately, we don't have too many dominoes left until we lose our country.

And we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We knew that Obama was a disciple of the Bill Ayers/Rev. Wright bomb-throwing wing of the Democrat party. We knew Obama was the quintessential product of Chicago/ACORN thug politics. We knew he'd choose political knee-breaker Rahm Emanuel as his right hand thug. Any voter who didn't know these things should never vote again. We're marching down The Road to Serfdom by our own choice.

Decades of government interference with GM and our economy finally forced GM into bankruptcy. If you don't think that government played a role, who do you think controls our money supply, designs our tax code, sets the CAFE standards, pressured GM about every facility and every job, handed the unions the power of coercion and looked over the shoulder of GM executives at every contract negotiation? The lawlessness of the GM bankruptcy is typical of collectivist thugocracies. Obama ran roughshod over bankruptcy law and pressured bondholders, legally the highest priority creditors, into taking an abysmal return on their investment compared to government and the UAW. Neither TARP nor any other law gives Obama authority to seize GM. The Constitution doesn't allow government to seize businesses.

But GM made a deal with the devil, and now the devil owns it. Barack Obama doesn't want to run GM like a fish doesn't want to swim in water. I can picture Obama giddy as a schoolgirl every time he fires GM's figurehead CEO, orders GM to close dealerships, isolates GM from its profitable overseas business units, replicating the protectionism that helped create the Great Depression, and demands GM make tiny, deadly cars.

Obama may be the effective CEO of GM (and AIG, Citigroup and dozens of other banks), but he has to compete with the 535 micro-managers in Congress. They're already influencing what dealerships and facilities get closed. Political management for political gain will doom GM to making shoddy, expensive cars nobody will want to buy at any price.

But government won't let GM fail. Government will never admit it made the wrong decision. Aristocrats will continue to funnel our tax dollars into GM, buy GM cars, and subsidize purchases of crappy GM cars to keep the company afloat. But Obama is right about a growing market for tiny, fuel efficient cars because he plans to make energy so expensive nobody will be able to afford to drive anything else. After the stock market crashes again, buy stock in bicycle companies.

Ford may be the biggest loser in this whole deal. Most taxpayers will survive. Ford probably won't. Between the cash infusions and subsidies, it'll be hard for Ford to compete with GM. Worse, you can bet government will waive Obama's ridiculous CAFE restrictions and other regulations for profitable GM vehicle classes like light trucks and SUVs, but not for Ford. Obama is following the model British socialists used to destroy their entire auto industry.

Some willingly blind Obama apologists claim that he is practical, not ideological. Obama's fascist control of Chrysler and his seizure of GM may have practical differences, but everything Obama does shows that he's an extreme leftist who will use whatever collectivist technique he can to harm America. Obama undoubtedly knows that letting the auto companies fail so that new, profitable businesses can replace them is best for America, but he won't let that happen. I hope Obama isn't the strong man, but even if he isn't, given the road we're marching down, the next president probably will be.

--

Similarities in policy of FDR, Mussolini and Hitler. Mussolini praises New Deal. The coming Obama thugocracy. Socialism by executive fiat. Obama runs roughshod over GM bondholders. Politicians run GM.

Now congressmen like Barney Frank are pressuring GM into keeping facilities in their districts open. The whole time the aristocrats are talking about not wanting to run GM, they're running GM. This is not the country I grew up in.

GM's success hinges on a political strategy. In other words, if GM can manage to wrangle subsidies and waivers on regulations forever, GM will "succeed". Otherwise, it will fail. But politics has been eating away at GM for decades.

"The company never has been able to launch a model or close a factory without weighing the political consequences. It can't control its dealer network because dealers are a powerful interest group in every state capital. GM cannot market a car without first knowing how regulators will treat it for fuel-economy purposes, so GM can know how many it can afford to sell (if it's a big car) or how many it must sell (if it's a small one).

Most of all, GM cannot sit down with the UAW without knowing that Democratic politicians, on whom GM relies for help in Washington, will only be satisfied if the UAW (with its power over the re-election hopes of officeholders all over the upper Midwest) is satisfied."

The threat of a strike is bad enough, but political pressure comes to bear even before a potential strike, and it's a 1000 times worse if there is a strike. But however badly government damaged GM in the past, it will do worse now.

In part 3 of Cato's three part commentary on the GM deal, Cato explains that Obama can't let GM fail but GM can't succeed, and explains one way government harmed GM for decades:

"But the government has never been good at inducing carmakers to produce vehicles that people want to buy. If anything, government policy has encouraged auto producers to make vehicles that people don't want to buy. Fuel efficiency standards have induced producers to make costly, high-mileage vehicles over the years and sell them at no profit or at a loss because of limited demand. Accordingly, government policy is one of the reasons for GM's collapse."

Congress is micro-managing GM and Chrysler. Shocker.

Reason explains why GM and Chrysler are cutting dealerships and laments government interference. Unfortunately we still don't know if the dealers were selected on the basis of success in the market or for political reasons. Democrats are concerned and ask Obama to stop them from cutting profitable dealerships.

I just read a copy of a surreal letter from Steny Hoyer and Democrat representatives to President Obama regarding Chrysler and GM dealership closings. Instead of businesses making their decisions and living with the consequences, people now look to Pharaoh Obama to make those decisions. You can just imagine these representatives walking up great stone stairs with their heads bowed to where Pharaoh Obama sits on his throne in his jewelry with a big staff in one hand and eating dates with his other preparing to entertain their request to select different car dealerships to close and those poor representatives hoping Obama doesn't decide to destroy them for their insolence for asking. To think that this is what America has come to is putridly mind-boggling. In the case of Chrysler, this is pure, unadulterated fascism. In the case of GM, this is pure, unadulterated socialism. But mostly it reeks of pseudo-divine rule.

Democrat congressmen upset about Chrysler and GM dealerships closing in their districts. How very partisan of them. They ask Obama to fix it for them. The same Obama who doesn't want to run GM.

George Will says GM is moving some manufacturing from China to the US. That will make their cars more expensive. It also stifles trade just as Smoot Hawley helped created the Great Depression. I'm often pointed out that Obama plans to create a market for his cars by driving up the price of gasoline. I don't think I've gone on record yet predicting he will subsidize the purchase of GM cars. He will.

Socialism by executive fiat.

Obama goes after foreign profits and tax havens. Even though Obama appears dumber than Dan Quayle, there's no doubt his advisers told him this would force companies to flee America to lower tax countries at a record pace. The only rational conclusion is Obama does not have America's best interests at heart. He knows his policies are destructive to America. He's punishing Americans for some perceived slight.

Those changes are part of a package that would raise taxes on business by $353.5 billion over the next 10 years, which could help fund other tax cuts or spending, or reduce the deficit.

What these tax increases will do is harm domestic energy production and our economy and send jobs fleeing overseas. This almost has to be Obama trying to implement black liberation theology, punishing white people for subjugating blacks, and implementing Marxism, doesn't it?

Stanley Kurtz of the National Review claims that "A scarcely concealed, Marxist-inspired indictment of American capitalism pervades contemporary 'black-liberation theology'...The black intellectual's goal, says Cone, is to "aid in the destruction of America as he knows it." Such destruction requires both black anger and white guilt. The black-power theologian's goal is to tell the story of American oppression so powerfully and precisely that white men will "tremble, curse, and go mad, because they will be drenched with the filth of their evil."

And doesn't that relate to AG Holder calling America a country of cowards?

Instead of seeking the unity he claims to be endorsing, Obama is following in the footsteps of communist community organizer, Saul Alinsky—to whose memory Obama contributed a chapter in a collection titled “After Alinsky.”

Trying to inflame white guilt and black anger? It sure was divisive.

Stanley Kurtz points out that Obama was a member of and was endorsed by the radical left New Party, the electoral arm of ACORN, when he ran for state Senate in 1995, a fact conveniently ignored by the mainstream media.

Stanley Kurtz continues to pull the viel back on Barack Obama, revealing a very ugly man. In this essay he links, through documentation, Obama, Wright, and Ayers with extremist black supremists and segregationists. This is the equivalent of John McCain partnering with David Duke to fund the KKK. And liberals embrace this and have the temerity to call mainstream Americans extremists. It's nuts. No mainstream American or conservative would stand for such a thing being done on the right, but liberals embrace this lunacy. Obama's campaign, and the liberal embrace of him and through him of Ayers and Wright and Alinsky and ACORN has really exposed American liberalism. It stands for racism. It stands for segregation. It stands for domestic terrorism. It stands for violence and intimidation. It stands for Marxism.

Stanley Kurtz explodes Obama's latest lie that he never worked for ACORN. Bill Clinton was a shameless liar. Clinton has anti-personality disorder and doesn't care what happens to anybody as long as he gets his way. Obama is a dangerous liar. He has a radical anti-American agenda he's covering up.

Stanley Kurtz explains how Obama's ACORN used the CRA and intimidation tactics against local banks on the one hand and lobbied congress and the Clinton administration for lowering credit standards at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the other during the 90s, precipitating today's financial meltdown. Obama's and ACORN's Marxist radicalism are right at the heart of this financial crisis. It's a great explanation of how the 1977 law was used to create today's crisis.

Stanley Kurtz provides an update on how Obama's buddies from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge attempted to cover up and deny access to their records to keep the public from discovering the extent of the relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers. Kurtz published private email between the parties.

Stanley Kurtz, the reporter who finally opened up records from the Chicago Annenburg Challenge, reports on the details of the professional relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers. Ayers founded the organization, was in the group of 5 that recruited Obama as CEO, and had numerous meetings with Obama, contrary to Obama's claims about his relationshipt with Ayers. Ayers identifies himself as a communist, and the goal of the Challenge was to promote Marxist radicalism in schools, not to improve education. Obama is a dangerous Marxist. He has spent his entire career promoting Marxist ideals, and that's what we can expect from an Obama presidency. His claims to be a moderate and uniter are a fraud.

Domestic terrorist, bomber and Obama partner Bill Ayers. Describing the current financial crisis, Peter Schiff also explains that the Fed caused the recessions that started the Great Depression, stagflation and the current economic crisis.