Obama forces out CEO of General Motors

Politico is reporting that GM CEO Rick Wagoner is resigning, effective immediately, “at the government’s behest.”

While my gut reaction was anger at Obama, after a few minutes I’m less angry.

After all, it’s just the next obvious step in our march toward economic fascism and it’s what companies should expect when they become “partners” with the government. Just as Congressman Jared Polis warned “Businesses beware: You do not want the federal government or the American people owning your business”, this move is a great message to CEOs that being bailed out is likely to be extremely bad for their careers.

Of course, that’s how it should be. Anyone who gets bailed out has presumably failed to such a degree that he should have lost his job long ago. And as long as GM is getting my tax money, I do want to make sure it has the best possible chance of recovering and paying that money back.

I am extremely skeptical, regardless of who becomes CEO, that we’re not pouring our money down a rat hole. The only chance the Big Three have of becoming competitive is to be let out of union contracts, but since this administration wants to force union wages on anyone who receives “stimulus” money and wants to eliminate the requirement of a secret ballot to unionize a company (through “card check” legislation), it is exceptionally unlikely that they’ll be nearly as aggressive cutting down union power as they should be. Sure, they’ll make a show of it for public consumption, but at the end of the day, we know who the bosses are, and their names are not Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel and Tim Geithner but instead are Ron Gettelfinger (president of the UAW), James Hoffa (president of the Teamsters), and Andy Stern (president of the SEIU).

So, I’ll not shed a tear for Rick Wagoner, though I remain deeply saddened that America has elected as president a man who almost certainly doesn’t know the difference between fascism and socialism, and who is leading us toward both.