Once upon a time, prudent behavior by investors would have demanded that a total and clear investigation on sinking tens of billions into a company would result in saving a company worth saving. Over the decades through the late 1900's, GM proved itself to be as incompetently managed a company as you could ever conceive.   The company was so inefficiently managed and run that it introduced brands that were half-baked or ill-conceived on a long term strategic basis (Saturn and Hummer respectively).   Saturn had the promise of delivering a great dealer service experience but offered some of the worst products ever sold in the United States.   Hummer, a brand that would restore testicles to men without them (or to give lesbians that which they craved), offered a chilling shelf life of two years before global warming made it a scapegoat for half of the warming we were or weren't experiencing.    But GM decided to expand this brand and took GMC trucks and rebodied them and even was going to expand the lineup before gas prices made such a brand a laughing stock of the thinking world. Throughout the 1990's and 2000's GM offered not one hint that it had a friggin' clue how to build even an average product.   It continued to design and build some of the most mediocre products and then produced so many that they had to offer rebates to clear out the dealer lots that were jam-packed. With the collapse of the U.S. economy from bundled bad loans, giving mortgages to satisfy social experimentation without the loan recipients ever having any hope of paying back the loans, and a financial system so overleveraged that it bordered on extreme criminal conduct, the entire U.S. auto industry was stressed beyond all hope.   With the UAW being a cancer of all cancers sucking the companies dry through extortion befit with Organized Crime and with companies capitulating to the criminal conduct of extortion, Detroit was prime for a collapse. On the eve of 2007, Ford was a laughing stock - having been such a basket case that it was only surviving as long as its trucks could give it profits.   The rest of the lineup was rancid.    Ford had international operations that were like step children begging for Daddy's attention and as cooperative as the Hatfields and McCoys.    Chrysler had been ransacked by German self-righteousness with Daimler and had been sold off to Cerebus which made Mitt Romney's private equity firm look like it was compassionate.   Over at  GM, business as usual was happening - branding was done by marketing and there was not one piss of a difference between a Chevrolet or a Pontiac save for plastic cladding and pig nostrils. Ford rolled the dice, hired competence from Boeing in Alan Mulally, and succumbed to reason and bet the farm on a $23 billion line of credit that mortgaged the logo and all of the future Ford male childrens' testicles in perpetuity.   Ford might have lucked into a way to save itself, but it was laughed and mocked for being so foolish.    GM was whistling in the darkness toward insolvency and was off trying to show it could build an electric vehicle with fossil fuel assist that would later be used to save it from creditors in a significant and dishonest bait and switch of technology and engineering. Not often reported but totally factual, Ford, Honda, and Toyota actually had a plan in 2008 that would have saved the suppliers - a plan that had funds from all three automakers going into propping up suppliers during the financial meltdown.    GM was offered to participate and they said "fuck you" and it was clear that GM was doing what GM always does - piss into the wind and act like they'd be saved regardless of whether they actually acted like they wanted to live or whether they didn't bother to get out of bed in the morning. All the while that there was in fact a private way to finance GM's bankruptcy as Mitt Romney factually and accurately suggested should happen, the new Obama Administration was not concerned at all about saving GM - it was all about paying back unions - and this was precisely what was done - take bond and share holders and screw them, supplant them with fake and fraudulent claims of unions standing, and then when the dust settled, the UAW was the only party to make money on the bailout and the funds went right back to the Democrats through campaign contributions.   This is a crime.   But who the fock cares? Little did the fools at Obama headquarters know that the company they were saving so that union dues could continue flowing into the DNC wallet, that GM was not only incompetently run, but it was criminally run.   There were choices made to decline to invest into safety of lives of owners over $2 part costs.   And this was not an isolated instance.   With hindsight being 20/20, there were upwards of 10 million units of products that were not recalled that would be recalled when the criminality of GM had been exposed.    Taxpayers who sank $49.5 billion in interest and tax free contributions to an evil corporation would never be made whole - ever - and would pay interest on the $20 billion plus that they'd never see again - and all the time the company they saved were killing their children!     And not once - not even once - did the Obama administration do due diligence investigating what GM was really all about - so blind was the rush to save the UAW over the excuse of saving jobs for a company too big to fail that Obama became complicit in murder - vehicular homicide - because not once did that jackass ever give a damn about anyone other than his party and his own re-election funding.    In short, the company he saved was a company killing your kids and then because of the bankruptcy, Obama gave GM an out - the deaths were caused by the bankrupt GM, not by Obama Motors. Update:  Explosion of recalls of pre-bankruptcy GM products Why is there a sudden recall in the number of pre-bankruptcy GM products - totaling nearly 10 million vehicles?    Are we to honestly believe that suddenly Government Motors found out that these cars catch fire or have wheels that fall off or ignition that turns off while you are driving? I would contend that ALL OF THESE recalls were known by GM prior to bankruptcy and were not announced fearing that this would ruin the bailout.   And knowing that they could con incompetent leadership like Obama into saving them (or propping them up to save the UAW), GM dishonestly and criminally withheld recalls from the public and from bailout attorneys long enough to get the bailout funds.    And then maybe sometime in the future, or maybe never (!), these vehicles would be recalled when forced to and then use the taxpayers' funds to cover the costs of all of the recalls!   We know GM was dishonest.  We know that nothing has changed at Government Motors.   So there is sufficient evidence to ponder that the taxpayers were exploited to prop up a union to give the Democrats campaign contributions and that recalls were postponed or totally forgotten so that the costs could be shifted to public funds. The only solution now is to never buy a Government Motors product and to allow it and the UAW to go under - pay back the Karma that these fools have earned by shunning them and buying from more responsible companies!

The Company You Bailed Out is KILLING YOU

Government Motors denied this accident was due to a defect.   The dead son's parents have now
received two recall notices on the car that claimed their son's life.    The audacity of hope.

An investigation into ignition-switch defects in several General Motors vehicles revealed Friday the company's current CEO knew of trouble with the models as early as 2011. One of the two Congressional subcommittees probing GM released an email that showed Mary Barra received a letter warning of steering problems associated with certain models of the Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion, two of the cars recalled in February because they contained a deadly flaw. Earlier this month, Barra testified before Congress that she did not know of the ignition-switch problem until January of this year, when she became CEO. In 2011, she served as GM's executive vice president of global product development. Two Congressional committees, the Department of Justice and NHTSA have all launched investigations of GM's response to the ignition-switch problem in recent weeks, searching for answers on why the company, which knew about the fatal flaw in 2001, took no action to recall more than 2.5 million affected vehicles until this February. "Mary Barra has approached the situation with a desire to uncover the truth and be very forthright," said Karl Brauer, a senior industry analyst with Kelley Blue Book. "We don't know how close she was to any of these problems in her prior roles. We'll have to wait until all the documents are reviewed before making any final judgments." Five US senators said General Motors has conducted itself in a "fraudulent and reprehensible" manner. Earlier Friday, five US senators said General Motors has conducted itself in a "fraudulent and reprehensible" manner, and urged the US Justice Department to act on behalf of those injured and killed by the defective ignition switches. The five Democrats sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, asking that the Department of Justice intervene in pending civil actions against the automaker on behalf of victims and require the company to establish a fund that would compensate victims. The number of lawsuits related to the ignition-switch defect is not immediately known, although NHTSA asked the company to provide that information as part of its response to a query that was supposed to be answered by April 3. A central concern expressed by the senators is the possibility GM's 2009 bankruptcy would shield the company from legal responsibility for its defective products. "Like many Americans, we were appalled and astonished by GM's recent admission that it knew of these disabling defects and their disastrous effects well before the 2009 reorganization," read the letter, signed by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sen. Ed Markey, (D-MA), Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA). "Their deliberate concealment caused continuing death and damage, and it constituted a fraud on the bankruptcy court that approved its reorganization. It also criminally deceived the United States government and the public." Autoblog - It remains unclear how – or if – the steering problem mentioned in the email relates to the ignition-switch defect, which has caused at least 13 deaths and 31 crashes. Rep. Fred Upton, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, cautioned "there's much left to examine." General Motors did not return a request for comment Friday afternoon. The email in question, sent on Oct. 3, 2011 by GM engineer Terry Wojchowski, warned Barra the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had upgraded an investigation of Saturn Ions over a "heightened concern that a sudden loss of electric power steering could cause crashes." At the time, the federal safety agency had 846 related complaints on file, and the email says GM had almost 3,500 of its own regarding that problem. While the link is not definitive, a sudden loss of electric power steering would be one symptom of the ignition-switch problem, in which the switch inadvertently moves from the "run" to "accessory" positions, and turns off the engine, electrical systems such as steering, and safety systems like airbags. Barra testified before Congress that she did not know of the ignition-switch problem until January of this year. "This situation has been evolving," Wojchowski wrote to Barra. "We will meet and understand the latest data." It is unclear if or when that meeting took place, and Barra's response is not part of the documents released by the House subcommittee Friday. NHTSA regulators argued the Ion should have been included in an earlier recall to fix steering failures in more than one million Chevy Cobalts and Pontiac G5s in 2010. But the email says, "GM had resisted the Cobalt and G5 recall, saying that even if the power assist suddenly failed, the driver would be able to control the car, although it would take more effort to turn the wheel."

Meet the "NEW" GM.

The Real Cost of the GM Bailout (2012) (Investors Business Daily) The administration claims to have saved the U.S. auto industry. What it really saved was the industry's dominant union - and it weakened capitalism in the process. Michigan is one of those light-blue states where Mitt Romney just may have a chance on Nov. 6. Don't be surprised, then, if Barack Obama's re-election campaign carpet-bombs it with ads noting that Romney once said the auto industry should go bankrupt, and that the Obama administration found a better way. In fact, two of the Big Three automakers did go into bankruptcy under Obama. But it was a bankruptcy like no other before and, we hope, no other to come. Washington not only used taxpayer money to buy control of General Motors and Chrysler, but it also rewrote the rules on the treatment of creditors. Superficially at least, the intervention worked, but it hasn't been cheap. GM is back to making a profit, though it is struggling in Europe and once again has lost its No. 1 market share to Toyota. And the perennial problem child Chrysler is now in Fiat's lap. The administration sold its interest in Chrysler in July 2011, racking up a loss of $1.3 billion. It still holds 26% of GM and is riding the stock price down. With GM shares trading at just over $20, the taxpayer's paper losses are at least $16 billion. Those are just the obvious costs. The government's tweaking of bankruptcy and tax rules freed GM from the usual limits on carrying pre-bankruptcy losses forward. Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative legal group Committee for Justice, estimates that this special tax break adds $18 billion to the cost of the GM deal. Also, the bailouts would have cost much less if not for the favored treatment given to the United Auto Workers. According to analysis by the Heritage Foundation's James Sherk and George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicky, the UAW giveaways were worth about $26 billion. Most of this sum came in payouts - stock and notes - to settle debts owed by GM and Chrysler to a union's Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association, an entity set up to cover retiree health care costs. VEBA fared much better than other unsecured creditors and even those (at Chrysler) with asset-backed debt. The administration also added to taxpayers' costs by refusing to push for significant changes in compensation to current UAW employees. Bankruptcy law gives firms the right to renegotiate union contracts. Sherk and Zywicky argue that the failure to trim GM's labor costs to something like market levels has depressed profit and taken (by their estimate) $4 billion off the company's stock value. These are just the costs that can be identified today. In the longer run, the Obama administration has sent a chilling message about the rule of law and the sanctity of contracts - both basic to a free market. It's telling anyone who invests in or lends to a business that, should politics dictate, it would deny it equal treatment. Crony capitalism is getting well-deserved criticism this election year, and there was a strong element of it in the bailout of auto companies and unions. The deliberate tilting of the scales toward the dominant auto union took cronyism to an even more destructive level, because it undermined capitalism itself. The Obama team may claim to have saved iconic American businesses. But taking over any company to give labor a leg up on capital - call it crony socialism if you will - sets a precedent that threatens businesses of all kinds. GM CEO Admits 70% of GM Production is Outside of US (2012) (Trade Reform) Dan Akerson, CEO of GM, says that seven out of 10 GM automobiles are built outside the U.S. They have 11 joint ventures with Chinese government controlled auto manufacturers. They are moving R&D to China. When the federal government bails out an industry or provides tax incentives or subsidies, or when state economic development agencies do the same, there need to be terms that benefit the U.S. in terms of production and job growth. We can’t subsidize offshoring. Producing here and selling to our wealth consumer market need to go together. GM got bailout, now ships jobs to China (2013) (Washington Examiner) Saving General Motors from bankruptcy was among President Obama’s most frequently cited achievements when he ran for re-election last year. Democrats everywhere touted the company’s revival as proof of the 2009 bailout’s wisdom.  That was then.  Now, Obama has quietly released the auto manufacturer from a bailout requirement that it increase its production in the U.S. Instead, GM is spending billions of dollars building up its production capacity in ... China. This is happening despite the fact that the Treasury Department has to date recovered just $36 billion of its original $51 billion loan to GM. By most analysts’ predictions, American taxpayers will be out approximately $10 billion when the remaining stock is sold off. Which is a long way of saying that it now appears that taxpayers paid $10 billion to make it easier for GM to accelerate its foreign outsourcing and send more manufacturing jobs to China. Here’s what happened: In exchange for the bailout in 2009, GM promised to meet certain domestic car production targets over the next four years. The obvious point of this stipulation was to ensure that GM jobs remained here at home and weren't shipped overseas. The production targets started at 1.8 million in 2010 and were supposed to rise to 2.26 million by 2014. GM repeatedly missed the targets, beginning with an 81,000-unit shortfall the first year. Production increased thereafter, but never quite enough to meet the targets. Last year, GM fell about 13,000 cars short of its 2 million target. How did it do this year? GM refuses to say. But in February, GM announced in its annual report to shareholders that Treasury had agreed to “irrevocably waive certain of its rights” regarding the federal loan. These included “certain manufacturing volume requirements.” Guess what happened next? GM announced in June that it would stop releasing its North American production figures altogether. Its spokesman tried to justify this move with Orwellian doublespeak about how providing more information would result in “an incomplete data set to look at.” The same month, GM announced it would boost its output from its China plants by 70 percent. It is not just selling Chinese-made cars to the Chinese, either. GM is nearly doubling its export production capacity there from 77,000 units to 130,000. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in economics to see what is really going on. GM cannot make the domestic production targets and still turn a profit. It wants to be spared the embarrassment of having everyone know that. Obama, who is in this as deep as anyone can be, doesn’t want the embarrassment, either. So both buried the news. It is yet more proof that Mitt Romney was right in the 2012 presidential campaign: GM should have gone through a traditional bankruptcy instead of the politicized farce of a taxpayer-funded bailout and government managed “bankruptcy.” The TARP funds involved could have instead been used to provide liquidity for a managed sale to a private buyer that minimized the opportunities for political interference in the new GM’s operations.

Original UV Investigative Report I am sometimes atypical as a gay man - I love watching the NFL (American Football) and NASCAR (American Oval Racing).    And being the rather anal person that I am, I notice things that have patterns.   For instance, I noticed that former NFL Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, Donovan McNabb, telegraphed whether the play that he was going to execute as he went to the line was going to be a pass or a run.    When it was a pass, he moved his head side to side.   He did not do that at any time when a run was called.   I would yell at the tv calling out the play and I was dead on accurate. So when my next favorite sport deployed a new race car this 2013 Season, I took notice.   Something smelled and smelled badly.    Let's revisit why I should suspect something was up. In NASCAR you have some huge teams that field multiple cars and names like Hendrick Motor Sports, Roush Racing, Penske Racing come to mind.   Hendrick Motor Sports is a team that gives off all the aura of a mafia or less than honest collection of players.   I'm basing my observations on what I see and sometimes read and I offer the following observations as to why I don't trust them. First, Rick Hendrick, the owner of the team, has had some shady business dealings in his past.   He is a huge dealer conglomerate selling many new cars in many brands.    But back 20 or so years ago when Honda was just gaining traction in the US, Hendrick was caught by the feds in illegal business actions that negatively impacted consumers - price fixing and other details.    Hendrick was convicted and punished and was a felon.    Evidently Hendrick was also a big Democrat donor (!) and managed to get a pardon during Bill Clinton's furious last days of pardons being issued.    Hendrick now appears clean as the new driven snow and also suffered cancer which he beat.   One of Hendrick's teams is a multiple championship winner - Jimmy Johnson - who drives the 48 Lowes sponsored race car.   To say that Jimmy Johnson is one of my least favorite drivers is an understatement.    During his five plus championships, he and his team have been caught AND penalized by NASCAR for cheating no less than 14 times.    Let's just say the apple of the Hendrick Driver tree don't fall far from the felon Hendrick's own shady dealings.  It should be noted that there are few years that Jimmy Johnson won a championship where his team wasn't caught and penalized cheating.    In the modern era of NASCAR no single team and driver have been penalized and caught cheating more than Jimmy Johnson, Chad Knaus (his crew chief) and Hendrick Motorsports. With the backstory of why I noticed this race team, I also caught wind that NASCAR would be changing its race car that it fields - the car that was raced last year was the so-called GEN FIVE car named because it was the Fifth Iteration of the type of NASCAR approved racecar.   This vehicle had been created to maximize safety for the driver and gained momentum in development after the death of Dale Earnhardt at Daytona in 2001. With the deployment of the GEN 5 car, it became evident that the Hendrick Motorsports team had found the secret to making it fast and Jimmy Johnson won many of his Championships driving the vehicle.    He was more than competitive and it became evident, until last  year, that no one was as good at racing this generation of NASCAR approved model.   Quite simply, Hendrick Motorsports ruled the tracks. The Generation 5 car really isn't a Ford, Chevrolet, or Toyota.  It is a common vehicle that only had different engines for each company and some graphics added to make a car look like a different brand, but ultimately this was a common car with minimal changes. Until 2012, Hendrick Motorsports ruled with this Generation Five vehicle but something happened - the competition started winning and ultimately for the second consecutive year, a Hendrick car did not win the championship and last year it wasn't even a Chevrolet (Impala). From reports that I have read, Hendrick Motorsports was a major proponent of the GEN Six vehicle (pictured above top) and there is some evidence that Hendrick was insistent that NASCAR push forward the debut of the GEN SIX car and that the rationale wasn't to improve competition or overall safety of the drivers, but to give Hendrick an advantage - you see - Hendrick had been one of the principal developers of the vehicle and had an inside edge on its design features. It should be noted that there were "cosmetic" reasons for the deployment of the GEN SIX cars - the GEN FIVE cars did not look like the production vehicles and the GEN SIX car was to address this by allowing some additional differentiation in the front and rear and the greenhouse of the vehicle.   Additional decals that gave fake headlight and tail light treatments were also approved.   The front end clip of the car with the bumper assembly was also slightly different for each brand. It became obvious once the GEN SIX car was released and on the track that Hendrick's role in developing the product did in fact translate into performance on the track - this is insider information that would be unlawful in the stock market, but in NASCAR, apparently this is not only legal, but encouraged. Across the board, the Chevrolet SS, a car that was not available for sale when the GEN SIX version started racing this season ended up recording serious success - Johnson won five times with it, other SS teams had a total of approximately 8 more wins - a total of 13 wins out of 31 races - and the other major player in this GEN SIX development, Joe Gibbs racing, had a total of at least 11 races. It is clear that having your paws on the car during development gave you an advantage on the track! What separates the Toyota effort from the Chevrolet teams is that the Toyota Camry which the GEN SIX version is based is readily available for sale to consumers - the Ford Fusion version of the GEN SIX car also was readily available all season. HOWEVER.......the Chevrolet version that Hendrick developed is still not available for sale to consumers despite 31 races of the 36 week "season" already having been performed.   This means that NASCAR has approved a car that not only was never available for sale for the first 26 races which allowed drivers to qualify for the "playoffs" but already with half of the 10 "playoff races" having been run, the vehicle is still not available for consumer sale.    I know this because of monthly sales charts released by each automaker and the September sales results showed NO CHEVROLET SS sales! So why is this a big deal? NASCAR has long stipulated the availability of a consumer version to be available for that respective racing season.  Sometimes this has allowed a month or two to go by before the consumer version became available for sale, but NEVER has NASCAR allowed an entire qualifying for playoffs race period go by before a car was available for sale to consumers - this means the car you saw on the track never existed!   Furthermore, since half of the playoffs has already transpired, the teams that ran an unlawful car to get into the playoffs are now winning in the playoffs and within at least 3 points of the title lead! Considering the lack of significant penalities to the Hendrick Motorsports team of Jimmy Johnson when they have been caught cheating 14 times over the past few years and the specious past of Hendrick and the non-existant nature of the consumer version of the car and Hendrick's involvement in pushing the car into use this year, one can conclude without much blushing that Hendrick and NASCAR are colluding in a major league cheating scandal that violates several NASCAR rules and intent on even playing field.   If a car's availability to consumers is REQUIRED to qualify the race version, then the entire 2013 NASCAR season is about to become FRAUDULENT!

Ford F-Series September 2013 Sales 60,456, up 9.8% over September 2012 Sales Chevrolet Silverado September 2013 Sales 32,506, down 10.8% over September 2012 Sales Source:   Truck Trend General Motors has boosted prices of its redesigned 2014 full-size pickups $1,500... enough to pay for a $1,500 rebate currently offered on most models. (USA TODAY) "It's the oldest game in the book – raise the price and raise the rebate. It's a marketing message," says Karl Brauer, senior analyst at Kelley Blue Book. Shoppers have come to expect a rebate, and are less attentive to whether the price of the vehicle has gone up commensurately, he says. The new prices make the least-expensive 2014 GM pickup – a Silverado with two-wheel drive and regular cab -- $26,670 including $1,095 shipping.   The peculiarities of car buying mean that it's easier to get financing for a $36,500 truck that comes with a cash rebate of $1,500 than it is for a $35,000 truck – even though the net price is the same. The $1,500 rebate becomes all or part of the down payment that lenders want to see. "Dealers like that. They can use it to help get customers qualified for a loan," says GM spokesman Jim Cain. Average transaction prices for full-size pickups are $40,000 to $42,000, Brauer says, "so $1,500 is nothing." The higher prices were announced to dealers Oct. 7 and are effective from then. The $1,500 rebates run though Oct. 31. GM, Ford Motor and Chrysler Group's Ram are battling fiercely for sales so rebates, cheap leases, low-interest loans all are likely to continue. "This price adjustment was planned and is a normal part of business," Cain says. The 2014 trucks were launched in the summer at the same prices as similar 2013 models, and "a new truck with more capability, more power, better mileage, more equipment – that's kind of a rebate itself," he says. Might seem odd coming just after a month when Chevrolet Silverado sales were down 10.8% and GMC Sierra sales were off 1.5%, according to sales tracker Autodata. But in GM's view, that's because it ran short of leftover 2013 pickups before it had fully ramped up production of the 2014s – not because the new pickups are unpopular. Even though Cain says GM has just 20,000 of the 2013s left in stick, discounts on those are huge: as much as $6,000 on a 2013 Silverado regular cab, $5,500 on an extended cab.