Media reports indicate that General Motors (GM) will be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy at 8am tomorrow (Monday) and, as part of the filing, the government will take control of 60 percent of the company with another ‘investment’ of 30 billion dollars. Chapter 11 is the best course for GM, though most of us had the sense to say this six months ago before the government ‘invested’ billions upon billions of dollars to prolong and delay the inevitable for GM and Chrysler (which went into Chapter 11 a month ago). We will never see these billions upon billions of our dollars again.
Of course the Barack Obama (D) administration has somehow managed to top the unconstitutional ‘investments’ in GM (which started under the George W. Bush (R) administration) with an unconstitutional purchase of 60 percent of the company. Indeed, the government of the United States will soon be the owner of a mediocre, failing car company. I have asked President Obama through an email to explain to me exactly which clause in the U.S. Constitution authorizes the federal government to be in the auto manufacture business, but I sincerely doubt I’ll get an answer from our ‘Constitutional scholar’ president. He knows as well as I do that no such authorization exists, and these investments and purchases of private businesses run completely against the founding principles of our republic.
One of the best lines from the six-movie Star Wars series is spoken in ‘Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith’ by Senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman): “So this is how liberty dies . . . with thunderous applause.” Ms. Amidala was wrong though. Even in the film, the thunderous applause simply marked the occasion. Liberty died in Star Wars just as it is dying in America; out of ‘necessity’ in response to an ’emergency’.
General Motors’ failure is due to its own mismanagement and the un-checked abuses of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. It is not our job to bail them out from their own mistakes. The economic hiccup GM’s failure will cause, as serious as it may be, will pass. The prospect of short term difficulty is being used by the President (and, indeed, by the preceding President) as a weak excuse to accumulate unprecedented amounts of power in federal hands, and we continue to stand by and let them do it. This effort has undermined the free market economy that has driven our success as a nation for well over 200 years. With each passing week our government looks less like the Constitutional republic established by its founders, and more like one of the socialist states we opposed for the greater part of the last century. This must end now.
I weep for the republic.