More Manipulation of the Economy

It is choking off the real economy, but it will look great as part of the economic stats (and keep the unions in green), Obama manipulation everywhere. Karen DeCoster reports on the latest, purchases nobody wants from Zombie auto manufacturers that should have been killed off years ago:

...the Obama regime already announced that it is buying 17,600 green vehicles (hybrid sedans) from Detroit's Big Three by June 1, using $285 million from the $787 billion stimulus bill. Representative Sander Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, stated, "The federal government's purchase of thousands of hybrids and other fuel-efficient vehicles from the Big Three shows that our domestic auto industry will weather this current crisis and build the cars of the future." But certainly, it shows nothing. If the car companies were capable of building the cars of the future that consumers want to buy, no bailout would be needed, and the government would not have to place its own enormous order for automobiles in order to keep the assembly lines moving and inventory lots turning over. The only thing the mega-purchase "shows" is Detroit's inability to sell its automobiles competitively in the free market, thereby leaving the government to spend taxpayers' money on goods they have refused to buy on their own.

Another abomination is the use of taxpayer dollars, on the part of the political establishment, to grant preferential treatment to one group of constituents - the labor unions - at the expense of each company's creditors, the bondholders. Not only is this an illicit use of the executive office for political pandering, it's a deliberate redistribution of wealth. It's also a handsome payoff to the loyal unions, who have long supported the Democratic Party.

As the Chrysler resuscitation continues and GM morphs into Government Motors, we can expect that the government will prepare to churn out its environmentally correct greenmobiles that the market has rejected over and over again. Freedom, choice, and capitalism will pay a dear price because a group of government bureaucrats, on the receiving end of political favors, will centrally plan a major sector of the U.S. economy and foist a prescribed lifestyle upon American consumers.

This is almost phony Soviet style production. Can a Grugo (a green yugo) be far behind?

Union members could knock these out in no time, and have plenty of extra time to campaign for Obama health care.