President Obama praised himself for saving the auto industry with his wide-sweeping bailout of GM as the quintessential example of how he cares about the little guy. But when bad news today broke for what’s been teasingly termed “Government Motors” and their eco-friendly Chevy Volt, several major news outlets, including Reuters, The New York Times, USA Today have curiously buried or altogether ignored any mention of the president’s use of tax payer money to fund production of this financial failure.
The news broke today that GM is losing an estimated $49,000 on the production of every Chevy Volt (a hybrid vehicle that averages 37 mpg and uses expensive lithium-polymer batteries to run). President Obama used $50 billion in taxpayer funds to bailout the failing auto industry, including $30 billion to GM, and patted himself on the back for this accomplishment as recently as last week during his 2012 DNC nomination speech.
But it turns out that as financial adviser-in-chief, President Obama made a terrible investment with hard-earned taxpayer money in the name of helping his fellow man. Curiously, in the wake of this news, our trusty mainstream media couldn’t be bothered to mention what an egregious mistake this bailout has proved to be.
After a long and winding article all about GM and the Chevy Volt, Reuters finally mentioned the administration’s poor investment of taxpayer dollars in GM in paragraph 31. Yes, you read that right. Reuters news service failed to mention the fact that tax payers are on the hook for this Volt fiasco at the behest of President Obama until 31 paragraphs into the story.
“The Obama administration, which engineered a $50-billion taxpayer rescue of GM from bankruptcy in 2009 and has provided more than $5 billion in subsidies for green-car development, praised the Volt as an example of the country’s commitment to building more fuel-efficient cars,” Reuters rightly pointed out, to their credit.
But other media outlets entirely ignored the administration’s connection and predictably covered up for their beloved auto savior.
As of this publishing, The New York Times seems to have ignored the story altogether as any news about the Chevy Volt’s $49,000 problem was nowhere on the front page, nor did it yield any results in the NYT search engine bar on the homepage. A simple Google search of “New York Times, GM Chevy Volt” for today’s date yielded similarly bare results.
USA Today mirrored the NYT with no trace of the story anywhere on their website.
The Washington Post also ignored the story, but did find room near the top of their homepage for a story with the headline, “Obama outraises Romney by $2.4 Million.” We’re all shocked the Post ran a good news story for Obama and skipped one that might tell the truth about one of his failures.
But this Volt crisis showcases the problem with big government and highlights one of the major differences between conservatives and liberals: government is almost never the solution. In the case of GM, throwing other people’s money at the problem has proven not to work, but the rhetoric of “saving” an industry and helping workers is all that matters to Obama and his liberal cronies. Conservatives look at profit margins and the bottom line, and recognize that this was a poor investment and would never work in the private sector.
Bottom line: Obama is a terrible financial adviser and would be roundly fired by any clients for whom he lost nearly $50,000.
