Obama Did Not 'Save the Auto Industry': My Reply to the Myth-Peddlers

Via RightWingNews I read this piece by Michelle Malkin called The Autoworkers Obama Left Behind that I think is important for you to remember in the face of the propaganda that the Obama administration is going to churn out:

The White House fairy tale about the Happily Ever After Auto Bailout is missing a crucial, bloody page. While President Obama bragged about “standing by American workers” at a rowdy United Auto Workers meeting Tuesday, he failed to acknowledge how the Chicago-style deal threw tens of thousands of nonunion autoworkers under the bus.

In a campaign pep rally/sermon billed as a “policy speech,” Obama nearly broke his arm patting himself on the back for placing his “bets” (read: our money) on the $85 billion federal auto industry rescue. “Three years later,” he crowed, “that bet is paying off for America.”...

...The bailout pain was not distributed equally. It was redistributed politically.

Bondholders standing up for their property and contractual rights got shortchanged and demonized personally by the president. Dealers and suppliers faced closures based on political connections and lobbying clout, rather than neutral efficiency evaluations. And as I first reported in September 2010, in the rush to nationalize the auto industry and avoid contested court termination proceedings, the White House auto team schemed with Big Labor bosses to preserve UAW members’ costly pension funds by shafting their nonunion counterparts.

These forgotten nonunion pensioners (who worked for the Delphi/GM auto parts company) lost all of their health and life insurance benefits. Hailing from the economically devastated Rust Belt — northeast Ohio, Michigan and neighboring states — the Delphi workers had devoted decades of their lives as secretaries, technicians, engineers and sales employees. Some have watched up to 70 percent of their pensions vanish. They’ve banded together to seek justice in court and on Capitol Hill under the banner of the Delphi Salaried Retiree Association.

Through two costly years of litigation and investigation, the Delphi workers have exposed how the stacked White House Auto Task Force schemed with union bosses to “cherry pick” (one Obama official’s own words) which financial obligations the new Government Motors company would assume and which they would abandon based on their political expedience. Obama’s own former auto czar Steve Rattner admitted in his recent memoir that “attacking the union’s sacred cow” could “jeopardize” the auto bailout deal....

...As ebullient UAW officials hooted and hollered on Tuesday, Obama smugly attacked Republicans for “anti-worker policies” and their “same old you’re-on-your-own philosophy.” The Delphi workers know better: One union’s government-subsidized, government-manipulated “success story” is the rest of the workforce’s nightmare.

In Michigan, I daily hear the meme that "Obama saved the auto industry," and it bothers me, because in spite of so many factually wrong aspects of that statement people still believe it and are going to vote on it in November. The truth matters.

It matters that the TARP program was sold to the public and passed by Congress to save our banking industry, and then was turned into a slush fund to bail out politically favored industries and businesses. George W. Bush proposed saving GM and Chrysler, and I didn't agree with it then- there were two many questions as to why those companies were picked to be saved by taxpayer cash, why smaller companies didn't receive bailouts of their own, and the effect that bailing out a few companies would have on the rest of the larger un-bailed out economy. Still, Bush's program was small and would follow established laws and standards for bankruptcy, so it was bad, but not corrupt.

It matters that President Obama then took Bush's program and expanded it and turned it from a 'bailout to save the auto industries' into a 'government takes over GM and gives half of it to the union and gives Chrysler a lot of cash to get bought by an Italian company.' And rather than simply giving the money out as a loan with conditions, like Bush was going to do, Obama and his officials instead made far more daily decisions and played political games with the closing of dealerships and who got pensions- they played political games at a time when our nation was facing a deep crisis. That was gangster capitalism at its finest.

It matters that General Motors Corporation then went bankrupt, taking down thousands of properties and ruining whole communities, while dealerships were shuttered and thousands lost their jobs. This was 'you're-on-your-own' philosophy at work, only now instead of it being free people making free decisions on their own, it was Obama and his officials who decided who would be 'on-their-own' and who would get government help and support. Even today, the company that the government had the most contact with and control over- General Motors- lags its competitors who had less of the stink of government on them and less Obama influence. That matters.

In this coming election, it is going to be hard work to correct those who spin the lie that "Obama saved the auto industry", but we need to, because the truth is out there.