Tag: Wagoner

The President's unilateral decision to all-but nationalize one of the state's largest companies, brooming its CEO while giving a free pass to other far worse players (who happened to be special interest supporters) doesn't sit particularly well the good people who value things like, oh, freedom, free markets, Capitalism, equality, the absence of double standards and hypocrisy... I could go on.  

You don't like Rick Wagoner?  Fine.  Sell your stock.  Or buy up a bunch of it (its awfully cheap these days) and exert a little shareholder control.  Its up to you because this is still America (though what it will look like three years from now at this rate...).  That's the way our market system works, or did, until late this weekend.

Our own RightMacomb was discussing the President's unprecedented intrusion into Michigan's business Sunday afternoon and by this morning Daniel Howes at the Detroit News has put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) as well with another MUST READ:

Not since World War II, with the arguable exception of President Harry S. Truman's brief control of the steel industry, has a president exercised such forceful unilateral control over firms in the private sector. And the double-standards? Towering, as if that makes any difference.

What does it say that on the same day President Obama made nice at the White House with the nation's leading bank CEOs -- none of whom have lost their jobs despite sitting on vastly larger sums of taxpayer dough -- the head of the president's auto task force was urging Wagoner to "step aside?"

"There is no standard," Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Livonia, told me. "You cannot look at what happened to Rick Wagoner and draw any policy certitude about what happened to the Wall Street CEOs. How do you reconcile the two images on Friday?"

That's a good question, but if the Congressman is looking for any sort of affirmative response I'm afraid all we'll be able to offer is the sound of crickets chirping.  Crickets and Michigan's freshman Democratic Congressman Mark Schauer who broke with even his own party boss, Jennifer Granholm (a woman whose half-hearted water-carrying for the administration on the issue wound up doing little more than make everyone her look all wet) by sounding his approval of the President's shocking behavior.

The Jackson Citizen Patriot reports:

U.S. Rep. Mark Schauer said today he respects President Obama's decision to oust General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner as a condition to receive more federal aid.

"My top priority is that the president and federal government don't give up on the domestic auto industry," the Battle Creek Democrat said.

Really?  So, if the President moved to void all union contracts and force the UAW to sign a new offer sheet at 40% of the pay and benefits that'd be cool with you too, Congressman?  20%?  Hey, he wouldn't be "giving up" on the industry, right?

And if the President were to come into the 7th District and started firing small business owners who'd been forced to layoff employees because he didn't like the job they'd been doing?

Appreciate you selling your constituents out to satisfy your partisan political interest, though, Congressman.  Swell of you.