Bob Lutz is a good man.  A Swiss-born immigrant American success story.

He’s held big gigs at BMW and Ford.  He also worked way up the food chain at (now $85 billion bailed-out) Chrysler and General Motors (GM) – retiring as GM’s Vice Chairman in 2010.

And he has recently written a piece:

Chevy Volt And The Wrong-Headed Right

…in vociferous defense of the Chevy Volt.

You know, the more-than-$200,000 in government-subsidies-per-unit-sold Volt.

The overproduced, unprofitable, unpopular, combustible Volt.  (And January 2011’s sales were no less disappointing.)

That Chevy Volt.

Are we on the Right wrong-headed?  Let’s take Mr. Lutz’s piece piecemeal and see.

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I attended Wednesday’s 8:00am (8am?!?) House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing entitled:

Volt Vehicle Fire: What Did NHTSA Know And When Did They Know It?

The witnesses were killer:

National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), Barack Obama-appointee Administrator David Strickland.

And General Motors (GM), Barack Obama-appointee CEO Dan Akerson.

The scope of the hearing was a bit too narrow – leaving out some fairly important attending facts.  Like, say, the (at least) five other Chevy Volt fires that have occurred besides the one being discussed.

This hearing was all about a single June Volt blaze.  The battery burst into flames about three weeks after a test crash at and by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA).

A fire about which Obama’s NHTSA did tell the Obama White House.

But a fire about which neither Obama’s NHTSA, the Obama Administration nor Obama’s GM told the American people for nearly six months – and then did so only when forced by a looming Bloomberg news story.

But:

The White House had no role in the decision to delay disclosure of a fire that broke out in a crash-tested Chevrolet Volt, the Obama administration told Congress on Friday.

Of COURSE not.

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President Barack Obama is in full 2012 reelection mode.  Part of that process is preparing to possibly take on Mitt Romney – whom (it appears) he thinks has the strongest chance to be his Republican opponent.  Which he and many Democrats think is very good news.

Romney fits right into the Left’s absurd anti-capitalism, “robber baron,” Occupy Wall Street anti-1%-er, scorched earth storyline.

Romney is very wealthy, which for Obama and his Democrats is the height of eee-vill (except – these Donkeys are mostly rich…).  Never mind that Romney’s wealth is right in line with many past Presidents and candidates – including 2004 Democrat nominee John Kerry.  (The difference?  Romney earned it, Kerry married it.)

And as Romney recently told us, he these days pays the 15% capital gains tax rate – rather than the (absurdly) higher income tax rates those of us receiving salaries do.  Never mind that this is perfectly legal (and good fiscal policy, and “fair”) – it is culled right from the Leftist, Warren Buffett “I pay less in taxes than my secretary” fraudulent script.

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How did Romney make his coin?  Via the epitome of eeeee-villll free market entities – the venture capital firm.  His was, of course, Bain Capital.

Yes, Bain sometimes invests in failing companies.  Some of which they determine to be not worth saving, so down they go.  Welcome to Reality, Boys and Girls.

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What’s an absurd Leftist policy without an agitprop song to accompany the inanity?

The attempted spoonful-of-sugar to help force down the bad Progressive medicine they are pushing.

Which brings us to General Motors (GM) and one of the Leftist ideological windmills at which they tilt – the Chevy Volt.

We the Taxpayers have spent billions subsidizing the Volt.  And continue subsidizing it still.

We bailed out GM ($50 billion) and Chrysler to the tune of $83 billion.  On which the Obama Administration now admits we’ll lose (at least) $23.6 billion.  (President Obama once upon a time promised us we’d actually make money on the deal.)

We the Taxpayers are still stuck holding 500 million shares of GM stock – on which we are poised to lose tens of billions of dollars more.

But you know what makes all of this terrible-ness so much less worse?  GM spent some of our money on – the Chevy Volt official song and music video:

Don’t you feel better?

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What’s a Barack Obama Administration multi-billion dollar boondoggle without a Czar to oversee it?

For the automobile industry bailout, the Lord Overseer was Car Czar Steven Rattner.

This is the same Steven Rattner who late last year reportedly paid a $6.2 million Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fine and accepted a two-year ban from associating with broker-dealers or investment advisers.  For an alleged “pay-to-play” New York state pension fund kickbacks scheme he orchestrated after leaving Washington and his Czar-ship.

DC-Wall Street nexis, anyone?  Crony Socialism, anyone?

His current gig – besides being a (shocker) MSNBC Morning Joe “Economic Analyst”?  Managing New York Mayor – and 1%-er billionaire – Michael Bloomberg’s personal and philanthropic assets.

DC-Wall Street nexis, anyone?  Crony Socialism, anyone?

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We have oft spoken of how ridiculous Government General Motors (GM) has continued to become since receiving $50 billion of our bailout money.

And of the Barack Obama Administration’s puffing up for political and campaign purposes GM’s alleged “recovery” from its bankruptcy.

(A bankruptcy, by the way, that could have just as easily transpired without our $50 billion.  But I digress….)

It’s not really much of a recovery when one considers the fact that GM’s thus far $7.4 billion in 2011 profits is greatly fostered and augmented by the Obama Administration’s years-on-end GM federal tax exemption.

A Crony Socialist boon to the tune of as much as $45.4 billion.

(How’s that for federal deficit reduction?  Is absolutely nothing at all GM’s “fair share?”)

GM’s is an even less impressive “recovery” when we remember that We the People still own just over 500 million shares of GM stock.  On which to break even we need to sell at $53 per – and it is currently trading at around $23.

Which sets up We the Taxpayers for a more than $15 billion loss.

Not quite the GM “success” President Obama is repeatedly touting on the Trail to 2012.

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The Barack Obama Administration has been absolutely atrocious in signing off on terrible legislation and policy prescriptions.

ObamaCare.  The $878 billion alleged “stimulus.” The $30 billion bump (to $50 billion) of the General Motors bailout.  Cash for Clunkers.  Cash for Caulkers.  Dodd-Frank.  Lilly Ledbetter.  And on, and on, and on…

Then there’s the stuff the Obama Administration tried–and failed–to rush through the Donkey Congress (2009-2011).  But because these things were also so heinous and because the Administration and Congressional Democrats had already reached their Heinous Maximus quotient, they were unable to pile them on We the People. There was Cap and Trade.  And Card Check.  And Net Neutrality.  And…

Being stopped in Congress didn’t stop the Administration.  It didn’t even slow them down.  As President Obama said, there’s more than one way to skin these cats. These ways aren’t Constitutional.  They are, in fact, dictatorial.  But this from all appearances doesn’t bother Obama a whit. He is using his every Department, Commission, Agency and Board to jam through these terrible ideas–and more–via executive branch regulatory fiat. All of this goes a very long way towards explaining why we remain mired in plus-9% unemployment and less-than-1% economic growth.

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There has been news aplenty about the Solyndra solar power company.

The chock-full-of-Barack-Obama-Administration-cronies-and-donors corporation that received more than half a billion dollars in government-guaranteed loans to build the alleged future of energy.

Which President Obama hailed as such after the government-backed checks had cleared.

Which turned out to be totally untrue, and Solyndra’s solar folly an abject failure.  In fact, a bankrupt one.

Which anyone who knows anything at all about “green” energy knew would be the result long before it was even a glint in Obama’s Crony Socialist eye.

(This is Crony Socialism.  It has very little to do with – and is even less successful than – Crony Capitalism.)

And as it turns out, the those-in-the-know included the Obama Administration.  Who were repeatedly warned that the company was in hay-yuge trouble before the first check was cut, but pushed through the loan guarantees anyway.

And now the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has raided the joint, walking out with boxes and boxes of documents.  (We don’t yet know if this is the beginnings of a real inquiry, or a Clinton-esque move where the paperwork vanishes, only to turn up years from now in the White House residence wing.)

Was the Administration so hurriedly adamant – despite all the evidence screaming “Stop” – because of the company’s Obama cronies and their campaign cash?

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You’ve heard the expression “building on success.”

Where you identify something that’s working – and work to maximize and further broaden its fruition.  In large part by determining what’s working – and seeking to replicate it.

The Left has always remained blissfully unfamiliar with this concept.

Probably at least in part because they are perpetually too busy building instead on failure.

Take the Barack Obama Administration and their D.C. Leftist cohorts.

They in 2009 spent nearly $1 trillion on an alleged economic stimulus.  Which would, we were told, keep unemployment below 8%.

Oops.

That having failed miserably, the D.C. Leftists built upon their failure by spending more “stimulus” coin on Cash for Clunkers, Cash for Caulkers and a whole host of other pitifully failed attempts at publicly invigorating the private sector.

Oops.

Building on failure.

We all now anxiously await September’s latest-in-a-long-line of famous President Obama problem-solving speeches.  In which, we are told, he will focus like a laser on creating the jobs they have thus far failed miserably at creating with their top-down, centrally-planned borrowing and spending.

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The transformation of General Motors (GM) to Government Motors (GM) has cost a lot of Americans a lot of money.

Many, many of them under questionable and in fact illegal circumstances.

Let us begin with the $50 billion ‘We the People’ were forced to “invest” in General Motors – including a $30 billion Barack Obama bump so as to give his Administration greater sway in how things would subsequently go down.

We were originally told – by Obama himself – that we would make money on the bailout.  Now we’re told we’ll lose somewhere between $11 and $14 billion (and given the stock price’s long, slow slide, maybe even more).

And about which we were lied to by the Administration.  Which said this titanic loss of coin is less than they were expecting – just seven months after Obama his own self said we’d turn a profit.

Then there was the 2009 GM bankruptcy filing (which we were told our $50 billion would forestall – oops).

Through which the Obama Administration’s new toy car company eviscerated existing law to benefit their union, campaign-funding cronies at the illegal expense of GM bond holders – who should have by law received preferred treatment.

The ripped off didn’t take too kindly to being the Administration’s latest dupes:

We believe the offer to be a blatant disregard of fairness for the bondholders who have funded this company and amounts to using taxpayer money to show political favoritism of one creditor over another….

No kidding.

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If you are the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a company that has received $50 billion in federal bailout coin, there are certain things that you realistically shouldn’t say or do.

Both from a substantive policy and an optics perspective, you should walk a pretty straight line until We the People are made whole.

Behold General Motors (GM) CEO Dan Akerson – a man who obviously doesn’t adhere to this philosophy.

As we said back in March, Akerson is a foundational part of the Washington, D.C.-Wall Street crony capitalism nexus.

Akerson is not – and never has been – a car guy.  He himself said so.  What is he?  He is a DC-connected, Wall Street hedge fund big coin guy.

Akerson’s immediately preceding gig was Managing Director and head of Global Buyout for the incredibly inside-the-Beltway-connected Carlyle Group.

This hip-joined relationship with the federal Leviathan means Akerson’s a cardboard cutout for the real CEO of Government Motors – U.S. Treasury Secretary (and yet another fellow DC-Wall Streeter) Tim Geithner.

And from all we have since seen, Akerson is one giant toe on the Huge Government, Obama Administration line.

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In this, the third Age of Bailout, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)’s $50 billion General Motors (GM) bailout (upped from $20 billion by President Barack Obama) is yet another unmitigated disaster.

But a few of the many failures:

• GM had to file for bankruptcy anyway.

• President Obama originally claimed we’d make money on our $50 billion.  Seven months later, the Administration admitted we’d lose more than $16 billion – and dishonestly claimed the loss they had said would be a profit was “less than the(y) originally expected.”

• GM last year claimed in a television ad campaign to have “repaid (their) government loan in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule.”  Which was another total lie.  They had in fact paid back only a tiny fraction thereof – and had done so so with other government TARP money.

• So fraudulent was GM’s media-buy proclamation that there has been a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint filed against them.

• As of November 16, 2010 – more than half a year after the “paid in full with interest” ad – GM had only paid back $361 million.

• GM and Chrysler has been dominating the Forbes Worst Cars of the Year list.

• With the exception of the 2011 Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the 2011 Smart For Two and the 2011 Nissan Titan, the cars on the list are all American-made. Worse than that, they all come from two manufacturers: General Motors and Chrysler. Ford managed to avoid the list completely…. (GM) offerings from Chevrolet and Cadillac crowded the picture…

• GM has some work to do before it can regain a good reputation fleet-wide. Four GM-made vehicles–the Cadillac Escalade, Chevy Tahoe Hybrid, Chevrolet Colorado, and Chevrolet Aveo/Aveo 5–are ranked as among the worst on the market today. All but the Tahoe Hybrid qualified for the Worst Cars list last year as well.

• Probably also due at least in part to these distractions, GM has had to recall their cars – again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and….

As horrendous as all of this is, it can at least perhaps be written-off as the utterly predictable, yet unintentional, ruinous outcome of government involvement in the private sector.

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Regardless of where you stand on the budget debate the most fascinating result has been the undeniable realization that President Obama has been marginalized and is now fighting for a seat at the table. I believe it is a first in my lifetime that a sitting President has been removed from any political debate not to mention one as serious as our budget. It was made clear when Boehner left the White House over the weekend and said he would work with the Congress to fashion a solution. There can be no question that Boehner’s political skills and Obama’s lack of them created this vacuum. The son of a bar tender has outperformed the Professor; it renews my confidence in our system of Government.

Cowboys know a lot about life. For instance they know that as soon as you think you know everything about horses and you can control them, you get hurt. The same is true of power and President Obama has been intoxicated with ego and power from the time he entered the White House, dictating his demands to a Democratic Party that was stunned into subservience by a victory that could not be explained. Most important is that the President believed in his own invulnerability. Only recently have the facts emerged. David Border writing for the Post in an August 9, 2010 article entitled “Senate as Civil as Ever, We’re Told” that Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mc Connell was first invited for a one on one with the President one year and seven months after Obama took office.

In recent weeks Time Magazine stated that the White House didn’t have Boehner’s phone number which was later confirmed by Stephanopoulos on ABC News that a top aid to the President didn’t know Boehner the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. These are truly amazing revelations when you think back on the relationships that Presidents have had with members of their opposing parties. Reagan with Tip O’ Neil and Rostenkowski. Clinton with Newt Gingrich. While these Presidents fought with leaders of the opposite party, sometimes publically, they respected and knew one another well.

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Walking into Miss B’s Café in Louisburg, KS you join farmers, cattlemen and cowboys. It is a throwback to a time when the local community would gather around a table and talk to one another about local, state and national issues over a hot cup of coffee and a sumptuous breakfast. On the Saturday after the budget compromise I ventured back to that institution to listen to the heart of America expecting to hear appreciation for the Congress and Administration avoiding a government shut down. Instead I learned of the depth of discontent with a political system that seems to be out of touch with its people.

I, for one was impressed with the compromise for several reasons. First, spending was cut by the largest amount in the history of this Country. Granted, it is only a cut of the increase in spending of this Administration and the previous Congress but it is significant that it came when the Administration and remnants of that Congress pledged that there would not only be no cuts, but another increase in spending. Moreover this was punctuated when the President and Majority Leader of the Senate then tried to take credit for the compromise. Not only did that effort fail with the majority of Americans but it angered the stalwarts of their party who have accused them of being spineless.

Secondly, it is apparent that Congressman Boehner was the engineer of the compromise and it was his leadership that made the result possible. For most of us, our introduction to the Congressman was his tearful statements when the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives. I was hopeful that he was as sincere as his delivery, but admittedly too jaded to believe it. His success is not only a testament that those deep feels he gushed were sincere but that he is now a proven leader.

Finally, I was impressed with Boehner’s generosity toward the Tea Party, giving them credit for being a big part of the solution. It is unusual for any politician to give others credit, especially those outside of their loyal party. And regardless of what the press says, the Tea Party is outside the Republican and Democratic Party. Instead as was the case with the President and Senate Majority Leader, they wanted to hijack the success of others.

So why all the dissatisfaction?

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Inside the Beltway, Democrats are touting the achievements of the outgoing Congress.  Historian Alan Brinkley asserted that this is the most productive Congress since the Great Society.  These congratulatory assessments stand in stark contrast to the fact that Democrats, for all their labors, suffered a defeat of such historic proportions that it gave rise to a new word: “refudiation.”  What explains this paradox?

First, much of the legislation passed in the 111^th Congress is not really legislation at all.  For all of its verbosity, and for all the outrage surrounding provisions like the individual mandate, the health care legislation enacted in 2010 makes precious few decisions.  Instead, vast discretionary authority is vested in dozens of different agencies and officials, in particular the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

When confronted with tough decisions, Congress prefers to let someone else make laws.  Congressmen can then claim credit for providing Americans with health care, while evading blame for increased costs and premiums, poorer quality of care, rationing, massive uncertainty, and higher wait times.  The rules that led to those unfortunate consequences were made by regulators, who will give shape to legislation, and who would bear the brunt of public ire.

Second, Washington insiders tend to subscribe to the belief that what Americans expect of Congress is that it produce a certain quantity of legislation.  Outgoing House Rules Committee chairman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) captured this belief when she lamented that “what we did was work, and our reward was, ‘Get out of here.’”  The volume of legislation produced by the Democratic 111^th Congress should have been reason enough for voters to sustain Democrats in office.

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The Hill has a month-by-month recap of 2010:

The grassroots conservative political movement made its clout felt the entire year, from the healthcare reform debate to GOP primaries and the general election last month.

Senior Democrats, ranging from Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine to Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.), aggressively attacked the Tea Party in the lead-up to the midterms, hoping that doing so would soften losses to the GOP. House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and other Republicans embraced the movement, believing its energy would benefit their party at the polls.

In the end, the Tea Party was in many ways a net asset for the GOP as Republicans grabbed control of the House and cut into the Democratic majority in the Senate.

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From Michael Barone’s in the Washington Examiner:

It is a source of continuing fascination for me to watch the interaction between public opinion, as measured in polls and election results, and the actions of members of Congress, elected in one political environment and looking in most cases to be re-elected in one that may be quite different.

Eleven months ago, after the Massachusetts Senate election, I was convinced that Democrats could not jam their health care bill through because voters had so clearly demanded they not do so. But Pelosi proved more determined and resourceful than I had imagined, and found enough House Democrats who were willing to risk electoral defeat to achieve what Democrats proclaimed was an historic accomplishment.

Pelosi and Obama predicted that Obamacare would become more popular as voters learned more about it. Those predictions were based on the theory that in times of economic distress Americans would be more supportive of or amenable to big government policies.

That theory has been disproved about as conclusively as any theory can be in the real world, and most of the Democrats who provided the key votes for Obamacare were defeated on Election Day.

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Next month the Republican National Committee will elect a chairman to lead their party into the 2012 presidential election.

Current chairman Michael Steele, who has been a source of controversy throughout his two year tenure, is being challenged by a number of candidates.

Many Republicans are unhappy with Steele’s leadership style and management. But despite the relevance of these concerns, they should not be the central issue.

Of central concern should be crystallizing the Republican Party’s vision for our nation and electing a chairman in tune with this vision, committed to it, and capable of rallying the party and the nation around it.

Despite the sweeping Republican victory in the 2010 congressional elections, there’s little evidence that the election reflected a new love affair between voters and the Republican Party. Much work remains to be done to restore party credibility.

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From Stuart Rothenburg in Roll Call:

On one level, it’s entirely reasonable for liberal Democrats to oppose the [tax cut extension] compromise. Those Democrats have different priorities and values than Republicans, and many of them represent very liberal constituents who also oppose the compromise.

Nobody — nobody — is saying that those House liberals should change their views. If they want to vote against the package that the president negotiated with Congressional Republicans, that’s their right.

But the outrage by House liberals, many of whom were responsible for the party’s legislative agenda and for Congress’ earlier inaction on the tax cuts, is more than a little hard to take.

Congressional Democrats had two years to address the Bush tax cuts. They certainly could have dealt with them one way or the other between late April 2009 and mid-January 2010, when the party had a 60-seat majority in the Senate and a huge majority in the House.

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