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FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

GM is Alive and the Volt is Dead.

One of the talking points that Obama’s reelection campaign has been pushing is that “Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive!”  It’s fair to say that the success of GM is a pretty important linchpin to his reelection case.

Something that Obama has not been running on is his failed attempts to force his green dreams on an unwilling public. You won’t see him selling bumper stickers about Solyndra or Fisker.

For Obama, his supposed successes and his actual failures merge into one story. Such is the case with the Chevy Volt, Obama’s green initiative and GM’s “moonshot.”

But these days even the Obama-friendly press is having trouble keeping up the act after the Volt halted production following their dismal sales of 21,000 vehicles since manufacturing first began. Honing in on the outlandish claims the administration & GM had made in the beginning that in hindsight are clearly unrealistic, the Washington Post Editorial Board ripped apart the administration on their failure to make their investment in the Volt worth the taxpayer’s while.

There is no market, or not much of one, for vehicles that are less convenient and cost thousands of dollars more than similar-sized gas-powered alternatives — but do not save enough fuel to compensate. The basic theory of the Obama push for electric vehicles — if you build them, customers will come — was a myth. And an expensive one, at that.

I’d write more about how dismal the green initiatives of the administration have been but it might cause you to not read the WaPo article yourself which is simply too delicious a dish to deny anyone.

Instead, here are some commercials that I made in support of the Obama’s efforts to use our tax money as venture capital funding.



COMMENTS

  • http://www4.webng.com/rickbull/lostlucky/ rickbull

    OMG, Ben, get me a respirator!!! I am laughing so hard I can’t breathe. The first commercial was fabulous. The second one is WWWAAAAAYYYYY over the top. If we send you enough in donations, will you put them on television?

  • http://hehasfailed.wordpress.com/ HopeHeFails

    Joe Biden is alive, too, but his brain is dead.

  • tnfriendofcoal101368

    tnfriend has a question for Obama green mobile army…since 75% of all power in America is generated from coal and natural gas…doesn’t that mean an electric vehicle for the most part runs on fossil fuels? Just askin’?

  • gflyer3364qt

    Everyone knows whether they want to believe it or not, that the only reason the banks and the auto makers got bailed out is because they’re in bed with the politicians. Back in the late 1940s there was an American entrepeneur named Preston Tucker. He worked for Ford as an engineer and an assembly line worker for a few years. Eventually he decided to design his own automobile because the Big 3 were building overpriced death traps in his opinion. Not many safety regulations at that time. He built somewhere around 50 prototypes of his 1948 Tucker Sedan. These vehicles were years ahead of their time not so much in looks but in safetly, design, gadgets, and features. Would have forced the others to compete. Anyway, you guessed it, when the Big 3 got word of this, the big shots flew into Washington DC and started crying to the Feds to do everything they could to keep this guy from hitting it big…and of course, they did. This guy never even got off the ground. They had the MSM attack and propagandize the guy right out of business. And here we are 65 years later. Obama is running around touting that he used corporate welfare to save the auto industry. Romney should ask everyone if THEIR employer got a corporate welfare check worth billions of dollars.

  • ss396

    According to the article “GM never came close to that and recently suspended Volt production at its Hamtramck, Mich., plant, scene of a presidential photo-op.”

    The Obama Effect, that companies fail when the President uses them in a photo-op, is alive and well. Oh yes it is.

  • tlhoward

    I’m unknowledgeble about the bottom line of GM, but if I were R&R I’d harped endlessly about how things are about to get WORSE. I’d explain how the Fed’s recent maneuver will move the market, for a time, then will do nothing to create jobs. I’d make sure GM and other auto workers heard this message: “You think this auto company is going to flourish in a country in which people have no money to buy new cars? You think your union agreement means anything if that happens? Take a look at city employees in our bankrupt cities. Their retirement agreements now mean nothing. What we have to do is make the economy flourish not just today, but tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow for you to keep your jobs.”
    I am a great example of how Bernanke’s latest is a bust. I am part of the biggest generation of all, Boomers. I’m retired. SAved all my life for my retirement and now, my dollars get zero interest, interest I counted on to buy a new car, buy a vacation now and then. Luckily (or maybe not, who knows?) I have liquidity in those savings, but inflation at the super market is eating up what I am not matching in interest. Bernanke’s latest means my stock portfolio will go up (for how long, though?) while money in a 403b which I pulled OUT of the market is sitting getting nothing because I am afraid to put all my eggs in the market.
    So, what do I do? I don’t buy big ticket items. And I resent that I, a middle class saver, am financing the sluggards of the country. (God, I wish some pol had the guts to call out about 1/3rd of the people not working for what they are–sofa slugs, welfare cheats. )
    Anyway, as I have begun to rant, I’ll stop. My point is that R&R have to let those self-satisfied auto workers understand that even if “Obama is with you” it won’t mean a thing when his policies eventually plung the industry into the abyss. He’ll be long gone, and they’ll be laid off, for good this time. I realize I am speaking in anger now, but it’ll serve them right.

  • jddrouin

    At best, AT BEST, GM is on life support. AND, it’ll only cost the taxpayers ~$30 BILLION.

    Until they do finally realise their imitation of a headless chicken isn’t “life” and they go down they way they should have. Then, it’ll be ANOTHER ~$30 BILLION.

  • jddrouin

    And a fire extinguisher.

  • commonsenseobserver

    Really, the Telegraph is getting a bit crazy spinning these comments from Mitt’s interview with ABC news.

    “No, middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less,” Obama’s standard, of course.

    “My tax plan is to encourage investment in growth in America, more jobs, that means more people paying taxes,” By which he obviously means that having more people back in work will increase revenue. Growth=More Revenue, something everyone knows.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/9544261/Mitt-Romney-People-earning-250000-are-middle-income.html

    You can see their interpretation…

  • gulfcoastcommentary

    Ah the folly of central planners and socialist Presidents! There’s not much carbon dioxide emissions saved either since the vast majority of electric power comes from hydrocarbon energy. There is nearly nothing coherent with the nincompoops in Washington.

    As if that’s not enough, Obama is starting a trade war with China, accusing them of subsidizing some of their automobile industry between 2009 and 2011—just when he brags that we gave a massive bailout/bankruptcy intervention to GM—-supporting OUR auto industry. http://gulfcoastcommentary.blogspot.com/2012/09/obama-accuses-china-of-backing-its-auto.html

    And if that’s not enough, it is reported that the taxpayers will lose $25 billion on the GM bailout.

    And if that’s not enough, it is NOT reported that the taxpayers will lose a lot more than $25 billion because of sweetheart tax breaks for GM. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/05/18/what-gm-bailout-really-cost-american-taxpayers/

    And if that’s not enough, the architects that created this mess are leading in the polls.

    I’m living in Thailand and I might just stay here, at least Thai people know that they are nincompoops–which is refreshing bit of honesty.