Tag Archives: general motors

Capitalism: Ave Atque Vale

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It was announced Tuesday that Chrysler is out of bankruptcy. The deal, as dictated by the Obama administration, calls for the Italian carmaker Fiat to own 35% of Chrysler, the United Auto Workers union 55%, and the US and Canadian governments 10%. Is the forced deal constitutional? No. Does it matter? No. I have never seen, nor did I ever expect to see, a president of the United States so openly and brazenly throw aside the law in order to reward his UAW friends, both with Chrysler and General Motors. Bankruptcy law is settled law, the law of the land, but that did not deter the Obama administration from telling the first creditors, the Chrysler bond holders, that contrary to law the UAW union would get first dibs and the bond holders would take what the president said they would take, which was 29 cents on the dollar. When the bond holders complained they were threatened, so they took it, figuring if they didn’t they would get nothing. Can you imagine the screams of outrage and calls for impeachment had George W. Bush done that? Yet the media is silent, complicit in the unlawful actions of the one they adore.

 

The UAW put up no money but got 55% of the new Chrysler/Fiat corporation by agreeing to pick up the legacy benefits and health care costs of the workers. Fiat got 45% of the new Chrysler/Fiat corporation by agreeing to give Chrysler its technology in small cars and small engines, a combination the American buying public has consistently said it does not want and will not buy. Fiat has an even lower score in customer satisfaction than Chrysler. Has anyone on this side of the Atlantic ever bought a Fiat? So after the forced Obama Chrysler bankruptcy, the two principal owners of the new Chrysler put up not one red cent for 90% of the company, and the American taxpayer, who put up billions in loans and outright gifts, gets to share the remaining 10% with Canada. Now we know why President Obama is always smiling; it’s two down and Ford to go. All of which raises the question: Is what Obama has done to General Motors and Chrysler, and what he has done to the economy by putting the country in debt to the tune of trillions of dollars a year into the foreseeable future, incompetence or design?  

 

 

Walter Chrysler built his cars

With care and keen attention

To see that style and detail mars

Got hardly any mention

Until that is the union halls

Took over car production

With worker rights and work rule calls

And quality reduction

But times were fat so no one cared

That wages were a-soaring

And no one in his right mind dared

To think of underscoring

The risks of competition from

The Japanese and Germans

Get beat? they smiled, they’re just too dumb

Those Takeos and Hermans

Now Walter Chrysler is no more

No more is General Motors

The president chalked up the score

And charged it to the voters

Then put in charge one of his czars

A man who said he doesn’t

Know a thing ‘bout building cars

But criticize we mustn’t

We have to ask, what does this mean

Why all this rearranging

The socialists are on the scene

Our country they are changing

It’s ave atque vale tears

It’s hello and goodbye

To all we knew, now still your fears

We have in charge a guy

Who takes us down that frightful path

To ruin and decay

Just look at it, just do the math

We’re soon at judgment day

Hail and farewell to all we knew

They work while we all dally

Ring out the old, ring in the new

It’s ave atque vale

 

 

GMC

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Where to start. So much is happening. Yesterday Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was pressured by President Obama to commit national suicide by giving Hamas the Wes Bank, the UN announced former President Clinton would be named UN ambassador to Haiti, and today General Motors announced that as part of its bankruptcy plan it would sell the profitable parts of the company to the Federal Government. The taxpayers of the United States will now be expected to kick in to keep the UAW on the job.

 

General Motors got big by acquiring other automobile companies, companies founded by guys like David Buick, Walter Olds, Louis Chevrolet and Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa nation. General Motors once built cars, lots of cars, but today General Motors is not an automobile company at all, but the largest private distributor of health care in the world. General Motors has 90,000 employees and 800,000 retirees, whose pensions and health care costs are paid by GM. Every penny of the taxpayer bailout money paid to General Motors by the Obama administration has gone not to GM, but to the UAW. The Obama administration will very soon own General Motors. The UAW already owns the Obama administration.

 

 

Now that GM means Government Made

We all feel so much better

To know best plans are being made

To add another letter

You see the guv’mint can’t exist

With acronyms a twosey

Three letters please, they do insist

And they’re not even choosy

GMA or GMZ

It really doesn’t matter

What counts is that it counts to three

That’s how they climb the ladder

You think a man with pride would take

A job with just two letters?

A laughingstock would him do make

With his G-15 betters

We need good men for jobs as large

As building cars like lemons

‘Less Barney Frank put him in charge

And then he’s building wemons

So GMC it is, your dough

Has bought it, it’s a wrap

And GMC now stands, you know

For just more Government Made Crap

 

With apologies to Thomas W. Crapper, inventor, who dreamed of immortality in the sanitary business, but the gods of immortality are sometimes cruelly playful.