Posted by
flagwaver on Monday, June 01, 2009 3:23:49 PM
I am not usually the most sentimental of creatures, but today's bankruptcy filing by General Motors put a lump in my throat. I come from a family that was a GM family from my grandad on down. He owned Chevy's, never drove anything but the big bowtie and my dad owned Pontiacs, Olds, and now drives a Chevy. He also owns a Ford pickup and a Jeep Cherokee, but his primary ride is a Chevy Cavalier. My first car was a 1983 Honda Accord that I paid $1500 for, but my first new car was a Chevy Cavalier, then I had a Pontiac Grand Am GT, and now I drive a Cutlass Supreme. And I have loved every one of those cars; they were great cars and the GM brand runs in my veins.
That's why it's so sad to see GM brought to it's knees today and facing an uncertain future, and a future that will be dominated by government meddling...Obama's statements notwithstanding. This should have been done so much better and cleaner, and it would have been if the company had been allowed to reorganize in Chapter 11 from the start. Instead we have a situation where the government propped GM up with taxpayer money, and despite Obama's protestations to the contrary, is poised to become at best a ward of the state...and at worst a subsidiary of the US Treasury Department. We are looking at a company that is going to answer to the very union that helped run it into the ground with it's outrageous salary and benefit demands, and an administration that is diving headlong into the auto business when even the socialist governments of Europe are keeping their distance from the same sort of things.
So while the once mighty General Motors goes into the bankruptcy that should have come earlier, let me say that I take no pleasure in it. The fall of GM is not just about a single company, but is sadly emblematic of the path I fear Obama wants to put the entire country on; create a super welfare state with governments hand-outs, and then close the book on any signs of the freedoms we have always known. I fear that Pravda was correct when they wrote recently that America is rushing down a path towards Marxism and the sheeple are marching quietly to their doom.
RIP General Motors, I'm gonna miss you.