Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

Well, first link has nothing to do with government funding of anything. I'll assume you just see a financial services firm and lump it all in with TARP, which is what the second link was about.

I posted on here over and over again during TARP that the Federal government had no business picking winners and loses within the financial services industry and that what was going on was crony capitalism. Were you posting similarly?

Take it even more current. The Federal Reserve, when they announced QE3 last week, announced a plan to buy mortgage-backed securities to the tune of $40 billion a month (staggering compared to what we have thrown away on auto-related companies), was a gross case of crony capitalism, as outlined pretty well in this link from Randy Holcombe: http://blog.independent.org/2012/09/14/gm-qe3-and-crony-capitalism/. This benefits financial service firms, by our Central Bank sopping up their products. It is a freebie, a la our government. Will you denounce the Federal Reserve the way I do?

The spending bill the president put through soon after he was elected was about a trillion dollars worth of crony capitalism -- of the pork barrel type. I denounced it then. Did you?

I have said so on just about every thread these things come up on.

Earlier on this thread, you seemed to pretty vehemently defend not just the wastefulness that has become the Chevy Volt, but what we did with GM in general. Now you are creating equivalencies, by pointing to other instances of government handing out favors to various industries -- the financial services industry, the defense industry (although it is not analogous, because defense does not operate in a private, consumer marketplace, but I'll play along anyhow).

Since you are so keen on the Chevy Volt, and so keen on the screw job that was the GM bailout, which was first a buyoff of the UAW -- a political favor -- at the expense of bondholders who didn't receive what they would have in a normal bankruptcy, and then the U.S. taxpayer which is going to take a bath on the mess the government created. ... With the examples you just brought up, I have to assume you are 100 percent in favor of handouts to financial service firms and wasteful government-driven spending by defense contractor, as well. You can't have it both ways. And they are the same thing

The thing is. ... whenever we have those threads, if I can characterize you, you seem VERY against those forms of crony capitalism. But this one is just peachy keen.

In my estimation, you shouldn't be able to have it both ways.

They are the same thing to me. Corruption. Look back at my posting history on here (and if you knew who I was, things I have written). I decry it all. Are you willing to do the same thing, and just admit that our government should never have given GM a deal that lots of other struggling companies don't get from the Federal government, which is now costing all of us a lot of money due to the incompetence of a bureaucracy being run with every political and corrupt (buying off constituents, such as the UAW) motive other than the profit motive that I need to operate with to be successful? Jump on board. Now is your chance.

 

You seemed to be posting with an agenda. For example, when you compared Volt sales to the Prius in its first year (a month of sales only in Japan), when in fact, the Prius had a backlog because they couldn't produce enough to meet the early demand. If I am wrong about you having an agenda, apologies.

I assume you have an agenda, when after you try to defend it against "misinformation" and I keep coming back with facts about 1) how much of a loss GM has taken on the vehicle so far, and 2) How they have dishonestly tried to make it seem like sales increased (for example in August) with giveaway leases that end up costing taxpayers more (because taxpayers are on the hook for this), and rather than respond, you create false equivalencies to other forms of government waste, rather than sticking to the topic at hand.

Just to set the record straight, then, do you 1) Agree with me that the Chevy Volt has been a financial boondoggle, not just in how much of a beating GM is taking on it, but in all the Federal money that was slung around to other companies that have burned through their "loans" and realistically will never pay them back? 2) Agree with me, that what we did with GM was a disgusting case of crony capitalism that a) hurts our broader economy by saddling our country with debt and funneling capital from potentially productive demand-driven areas of the economy to handpicked areas that benefit the corrupt needs of politicians. ... and has cost our country billions of dollars that we are currently paying interest on, as part of our massive national debt?

If you agree with both, we are certainly on the same page. You can add TARP, wasteful defense contracts, the sweetheart no-bid contractors that made a mint on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, all of the subsidies (and tariffs) that are designed to buy political support from various industries, the legislation that gives labor unions government-muscle backed leverage, etc. to what I just typed. Link away to those examples, and I am with you. They all hurt Americans, and people largely don't understand how they eat away at our economy.

But I'd just love an admission from some of the people (not necessarily you) who decry those things that what we did with GM was JUST AS disgusting, just as unfair and corrupt, and JUST AS detrimental to our country's economic health.