Taken For A Ride

If you learn and retain no other fact about socialism, learn and retain this: to the marxist/socialist/communist, government is the source of all good, virtue, and provision.  The godlike State is all to this ideology.  Everything de peepul have comes from government.  "Without government," to dutifully twist the old Dow Chemical slogan, "life itself would be impossible."

This is why lefties condemn the private sector (the "bourgeoisie" in Marxist nomenclature, aka the middle class, aka Us, The People) as evil.  Since the State is god in their worldview, anybody that pursues his own economic interests apart from it is by definition a heretic, an ingrate, and a thief stealing from the government cornucopia and corrupting the proletariat like a wicket pied piper.  And since the private sector is villainous by definition, the notion of it ruthlessly exploting and plundering the "poor" it's lured away from "righteousness" is inevitable.

I lay out all of the above as the proper context for this Dirty Harry Reid proclamation:

The Senate’s top Democrat argued Ford Motor Company probably would have collapsed if the government hadn’t bailed out its top two competitors.

Senator Harry Reid, D-NV, chided Republicans for opposing Democratic efforts on a number of fronts and defended the Obama administration’s auto bailout.

“Isn’t it a good thing today in America that we have an automobile manufacturing sector? If it had been up to them, General Motors would be gone. If it were up to them, Ford Motor Company would probably be gone. Chrysler definitely would be gone,” Reid said on the Senate floor today. “We decided that they need help, just like New York City needed help twenty-five years ago.”

"Help" being defined as, of course, nationalization.  Because to the marxist/socialist/communist, help can ONLY come from the Almighty State.

How did Red Barry's conquest of GM and Chrysler "save" Ford?  Not surprisingly, Pencilneck doesn't bother trying to explain that little logic nuance.  But if you'll recall, Donk "help" was "offered" to Ford as well.  They just refused to be assimilated into the Obamunist Collective, and "heretically" clung to their private sector independence - and survived.  Well, THAT narrative certainly can't be allowed to take root and germinate, so here comes Dirty Harry to totalitarianly re-write recent history to symbolically sweep Ford into the Collective ex post facto.  The next step is "re-educating" us to believe that if the Dems hadn't "helped" GM and Chrysler, nobody would even HAVE a car anymore, and we'd all be languishing on public transit, bicycles, and hippety-hops....which actually is the endgame of the Obama energy nationalization agenda, come to think of it.  No wonder their Narrative has become so muddled.

Meanwhile, in the real world, it's worthless animals like Dirty Harry that deserve "chiding":

Without the bailouts, GM and Chrysler could have gone through bankruptcy restructuring without the 800-lb government gorilla on their backs. As it is, the bankruptcy restructuring occurred in a way to help Obama’s primary constituency – unions – rather than the long-term health of the companies. We are yet to see whether the restructuring will work, but if it does, it will be despite the government takeover, not because of it.

But, of course, it won't work, because the same Big Labor-driven dynamic that drove the two former auto "giants" into government servitude is the self-same one that will keep them from ever escaping it.  In point of fact, the fates of GM and Chrysler are not theirs to determine.  As long as Red Barry is calling the shots, they're State vassals and will remain that way.  Only replacing The One will provide the impetus for the only real resolution to this hostage situation: divestiture.

This is, I'm surmising, why the feds are using their new car toys to spread the Ponzi gospel just as fast as they can:

[Obama] Motors Company says it will acquire auto financing company AmeriCredit Corporation [to be renamed ObamaCredit Corporation] so it can increase leasing and make more loans to buyers with low credit scores.  The Detroit automaker says it will pay $3.5 billion [of our taxes] to buy all of AmeriCredit’s stock at $24.50 per share — a 24% percent premium over Wednesday’s close.  It expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter.

A hostile takeover to make car ownership an entitlement.  Just what the automobile sector needs.  But only if you buy Pumas, I'm suspecting.

Right, Harry?