It just never ceases to amaze me just how gullible, or is it stupid, we Americans are, especially when it comes time to select our leaders. For example, we currently have as our president an individual who is perhaps the most ill-equipped, as well as the most anti-American, individual to ever hold his office. And for no other reason than because he can read a pretty speech and seems to have what some folks consider to be a winning smile, he's the guy so many want to lead us for another four years. Now never mind the fact that he has already inflicted more devastation on this country, and in a shorter time, than anyone could have imagined. And yet, apparently, he's leading in many polls, with many treating him as if he's already won. Because, after all, he's black and that, I guess, erases all of the damage that he has thus far brought about. I think most of us realize that if Barry had the misfortune of being white he'd be about 20 points behind in the polls right now, but because he's black, it affords him the opportunity to be better able to take advantage of those who use race as being their single most important criteria when deciding whom to vote for.
So anyway, after watching as much of the Democrat convention that I could stomach, I found myself more than a bit confused after coming to the conclusion that the Democrats have apparently decided to run in 2012 as being the party of the government bailout. Which struck me as being more than just a little odd really, especially, if memory serves me correctly, the big bailout of 2008–09 were, for the most part, pretty unpopular with a significant portion of the general public. And I also seem to remember that even some of their more prominent backers of the whole scheme were notably conflicted about the precedent that was being set and the ensuing moral hazard. But hey, that was then and this is now, and we're 60 some odd days away from a pretty important election. So Democrats have nonetheless made one of the most abusive episodes in the entire bailout era, the government takeover of General Motors, to be the economic cornerstone of their campaign to convince voters that Barry is, in fact, truly deserving of another four years in office.
Those dedicated admirers of the GM 'bailout' should bear in mind that it was, and much to my chagrin, the Bush administration that first decided to intervene at the firm, offering what then referred to as being a bridge loan. And it was done on the condition that GM draw up a deeply revised business plan. Then enter Barry "Almighty", whose rather unique contribution to the process was to effectively nationalize the company, while seeing to it that the federal government violated what up to that point was the normal bankruptcy processes and legal precedent all in order to protect the defective element that lay at the heart of GM’s troubles: the financial interests of the UAW. Barry did this by screwing over GM’s bondholders in order to sweeten the pot for the UAW. Barry's administration also creatively construed tax law to relieve GM of tens of billions of dollars in obligations, at the same time that Barry & Co. were caterwauling about the supposed lack of patriotism of firms that used legal means rather than political favoritism to reduce their tax bills.
Democrats continue to doggedly cling to their idiotic talking point that the bailout of GM and its now-Italian competitor, Chrysler, somehow actually saved 1.5 million U.S. jobs. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble here, but that, my friends, just ain't so. This totally ridiculous figure is based solely on the assumption that if GM and Chrysler had been allowed to go into normal bankruptcy proceedings, the entire enterprise of automobile manufacturing in the United States would have collapsed. Not only that, or so the Democrat would have you believe, but practically every parts maker, supplier, warehousing agency, and services firm dedicated to the car industry would have also collapsed. Look, it's highly unlikely that GM or Chrysler would have stopped production during bankruptcy: The assembly lines would have continued rolling, interest and debt payments would have been cut but, and it's a big but, union contracts would have been renegotiated. And it's far from certain that the GM bailout actually saved any jobs, but what is certain is that it preserved the UAW’s unsustainable arrangement. And make no mistake here, it is unsustainable!
And then we have 'Slick Wille' Clinton, who bizarrely tried to claim that the bailout has somehow been responsible for the addition of 250,000 jobs to the automobile industry since what was the lowest point of our continuing financial crisis. While auto manufacturers and dealerships have added some 236,000 jobs since then, almost none are at GM, which has added only about 4,500 workers, a number not even close to the 63,000 workers that its dealerships had to let go when Barry pretty much unilaterally shut them all down. Ugly as the bank bailouts were, the federal government appears set to make al least some its money back. But tens of billions of dollars will be forever lost on GM. The federal government put up more for a 60 percent interest in the firm than GM is actually worth today. At their convention, Democrats swore that GM is “thriving,” but the market doesn’t seem to think so: GM shares have lost half their value since January 2011. GM is lagging behind its competitors: Its sales are up 10 percent, a fraction of the increases at Kia, Toyota and even Porsche.
So with its rather anemic sales, its share price crashing, and its business model still a mess, some analysts already are predicting that GM will return to bankruptcy, but, as luck would have it, not until after the election. But that hasn't stopped Barry from talking up all of the “jobs” that 'HE' saved at GM, but jobs doing what, exactly? Manufacturing automobiles that are not competitive without a massive government subsidy? Or propping up an economically unviable enterprise just long enough to get Barry "Almighty" reelected? As much as it will pain the hardworking men and women of GM to hear it, it simply is not worthwhile to save jobs at enterprises that have made themselves economically unfeasible and therefore unable compete on their own merits. So long as the federal government is massively subsidizing the operation, a job at GM is a welfare program with a fairly robust work requirement. And we all know how Barry feels about work requirements. We have bankruptcy laws and bankruptcy courts in this country for a reason and they should be allow to function without interference.
I think most of us fully recognized the penchant that Democrats have for rewriting history, especially when it reflects rather unfavorably on them. So I go back to my original question. Just how gullible are we? Those of us not hung up on the race of the candidate really have no excuse, because there's no reason for us to use these bogus jobs claims as a way to justify our vote for such an obvious fraud as Barry. The GM bailout was a bad deal for everybody, GM’s creditors, for U.S. taxpayers, and, in the long run, for the U.S. automobile industry itself and our overall national competitiveness. No wonder the Democrats are campaigning on what is nothing more than a highly fictionalized account of it and that so many seem to be buying into the nonsense hook, line and sinker. We Americans must be a pretty naïve bunch, that's the polite way to say that far too many of us are just plain stupid enough to believe anything that Democrats tell us. The safest thing for us all to do is to automatically assume anything and everything we hear from Democrats, is a lie. Because more often than not, it is!
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