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Thursday, September 23, 2010

GM Political Donations - I Have a Bad Feeling About This

Something about this story makes me feel nauseous.

"General Motors Co. has begun to once again contribute to political campaigns, lifting a self-imposed ban on political spending put in place during the auto maker's U.S.-financed bankruptcy restructuring last year.

The Detroit company gave $90,500 to candidates running in the current election cycle, Federal Election Commission records show."

Ugggh.  GM, government owned, is making political contributions to those running for political office.  How do they justify it?

""As we've emerged as a new company, we're not going to sit on the sidelines as our competitors and other industries who have PACs are participating in the political process," Mr. Martin said. He called GM's political action committee is "an effective means for our employees to pool their resources and have their collective voice heard."

Ahhh.. I see. .and by "effective means for our employees to pool their resources and have their collective voice heard," he of course means "a way for us to continue to support positions of power for those who will continue to give us handouts to cover our asses when we screw up."  This is pretty sick. And what's even sicker is that someone will probably write in the comments about how we don't want GM to be disadvantaged, since we own them, so we should be in favor of their political meddlings.


-KD

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Come on Kid!! Don't hate the player, hate the game!!

Oh wait, that argument is only valid for for all of the East coast post-finance bailout tomfoolery. I forgot that it doesn't apply to the fly-over states. Sorry about that.

Kid Dynamite said...

Anon -
if you show me where I ever defended a government owned financial firm doing shit like this, your nonsense post could have a point.


Of course, I never did. The simplest bank analogy is dividends. It is flat out preposterous for gov't owned banks to be allowed to pay any dividends at all. Of course, that's exactly what I've written multiple times.

Kid Dynamite said...

to avoid further nonsense, since this issue should be clear - when GM pays back the Gov't, they can do, in the words of Teddy KGB, "whatever the fuck they please."

until then no PAC meddling.

Anonymous said...

http://fridayinvegas.blogspot.com/2009/07/goldman-sachs.html

"I think that sums it up nicely. The average person hates Goldman Sachs. When GS gets paid billions and billions of taxpayer dollars directly funneled through AIG, it makes people mad - RIGHTFULLY so. But the point is that we should be mad at the GOVERNMENT for making this happen - for allowing it to happen - not at GS. Don't hate the playa - hate the game."

So doing a little search and replace: "I think that sums it up nicely. The average person hates General Motors. When GM gets paid billions and billions of taxpayer dollars directly, it makes people mad - RIGHTFULLY so. But the point is that we should be mad at the GOVERNMENT for making this happen - for allowing it to happen - not at GM. Don't hate the playa - hate the game."

So if you're calling out the government (which is pretty much who GM is), then we're on the same page. No foul.

Kid Dynamite said...

right - see, GM is still The Government. Hence, they shouldn't be allowed to do this. call it "GM's" fault, call it "Gov't" fault. doesn't matter - they are one and the same.

but GM's spokesman saying that they've "emerged as a new company" is horseshit. they still owe us tens of billions of dollars. THEN they'll be a new company

EconomicDisconnect said...

All we need is the new GM stock to go parabolic and they will pay us back, no problem!

The "New Normal":
government owned compnay to spend millions in campaign contributions. Fits indeed.

My verification word was "morpered" which may be the past tense of mopary, as in:
"What's mopary?"
"Exposing yourself to a blind person"

Kid Dynamite said...

i'm disappointed that no one has called me an idiot for making a big deal out of NINETY THOUSAND dollars, which is what we're talking about...

but hey - i'm a man of principles. or maybe principals. I'm not sure.

EconomicDisconnect said...

Well I did leave out the last post how the Pledge to America was a copy of the Contract with America! I am more conservative in many ways, but a wicked social liberal (in regards to freedom of whatever).

EconomicDisconnect said...

ITS ONLY 90K! THAT IS GS LUNCH TAB FOR TWO YOU MANIAC!

Better?

Mark said...

This is just too bizarre to comment on but, what the hell.

If the government is the principal owner of GM and wants to redeem its position (having GM payback the millions it owes)why in Gods name would it allow this? I mean, carried to its logical conclusion,it is like the government is lobbying itself. How does that make any sense?

(leaving aside the fact that it is poking a sharp stick in the eye of every taxpayer)