The Term "Government Motors" Takes On More Meaning.
The article I’m about to write may give you one of two reactions:
1. You may shrug your shoulders and see nothing wrong with it.
Or 2. You may burst a blood a vessel.
Ready…?
The Wall Street Journal reports that General Motors has lifted their self imposed ban on political contributions since their bankruptcy. Well, it is a little improper to spend taxpayer money to influence tax payers’ representatives. During the current election cycle, Federal Election Commission records show that GM has spent $90,500 on candidates running. The beneficiaries named so far were Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Sen. John Dingell and Sen. Sherrod Brown. What do all these people have in common? That’s right. They are all Democrats. They are all members of the party who helped organize the government sponsored bankruptcy of GM. There was one Republican who benefited, Eric Cantor, but as the WSJ said “…the House Republican Whip, who would likely assume a top leadership post if Republicans win control of the House in November.” It is good practice to hedge one’s bets. GM spokesperson, Greg Martin, defended the actions by saying “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.”
Now I don’t claim to be a Michael Moore or a Jesse Ventura activist, but something doesn’t sit right with me. A government owned company using taxpayers’ money to “contribute” to politicians to help them get re-elected and the main beneficiaries are the people who saved your company with more taxpayer money.
Thoughts, everyone…?
More by Cammy Corrigan
Comments
Join the conversation
The recipe for stopping this is simple: make all elections publicly financed and make illegal any funding outside of government (if private money is caught being spent, mandatory jail time should help dissuade that behavior for both parties). This will do a few things simultaneously: 1) Allow the non-incumbent, non-rich and the non-famous to run for office and have a legitimate shot at winning. 2) Since public funding will be much less than what is spent now privately, interested citizens will need to do more to be informed. 3) Eliminating soft money will help free up those that win from undue influence - those caught giving would also be subject to prison terms. 4) More of the people's business would be done, as fundraising would no longer be a necessary endeavor. There, problem solved!
I'm confused as to why this is just a democrat issue when the bailout was initiated by Bush and then Obama supported it. The bail out was a bi partisan effort and somehow the conservatives conveniently forget about Bush. WSJ is own by Murdoch, the dude that own Fox News which have edited tapes of Obama many times to implied somehow Obama is going to raise taxes for everyone, not just the top 2%. This is the same people that cut off Obama's bi partisan healthcare summit debate cause he was owning them. If you disagree that Obama was owning them, you should ask McCain if his ego was hurting after that meeting. Bailout was a bipartisan effort that is widely seen as a democrat effort for some reason. Heck, I remembered the democrats delay the auto bailout until the Big 3 present some sort of business plan. They, the big 3, worked their butt off to get that bailout compare to the big banks. The only reason why GM and other corporations can do this is because of Bush newly appointed supreme court judge, John Robert. So if the conservatives are crying about this I pity them as short sighted and fools. You reap what you sowed and all of us get caught with the crap that hit the fan. So it should be the democrats that should be complaining.
Thats it! I blame Bush and Fox News? Hell yea!