The bureaucrats and politicians at GM and the bureaucrats and politicians in DC are carefully and politely carving up the cadaver that was once GM. The autopsy is being performed in Washington behind closed doors, perhaps in the Rayburn building. The scenario could play out like this: While GM executives sit out in the hallway, UAW bosses sit in secret sessions with Congressional Democrats, pounding the table and demanding that they and their union members be compensated for delivering the vote. Democrat party leaders scratch their collective heads, trying to figure out a way to put money in the hands of unions without rewarding automotive execs for sub-par performance. This is no easy task, even for experienced enablers of parasitic behavior like those on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, the remaining GM execs are in a huddle trying to figure out how to save their jobs or cobble together a nice golden parachute that doesn’t draw too much attention from the media, the unions or the clowns in Congress. Rick Wagoner’s exit package will be closely scrutinized. They’ve already thrown white collar retirees to the wolves - the government will likely take over the non-union retiree pension programs and slash pension payments and benefits. The media won’t report on it.

President Obama has, in his infinite wisdom as Supreme Leader, appointed a leftist social scientist as the auto czar. Not a car guy. Not an engineer or a corporate finance guy, but a socialist academic who’s never held a real job in his life. Edward Montgomery has never had to deliver a product on time, on budget, with repeatable quality and show a profit – not even an ice cream cone. There is no evidence that Edward Montgomery has ever changed the oil in his car, much less displayed any knowledge of automobiles or the industry. Instead, Edward Montgomery will become the most powerful automotive executive in US history so that he can preside over the ‘equitable’ distribution of money to the UAW and skilled trade unions. He’s certainly not interested in having GM or Chrysler throw off a profit, because he probably doesn’t even understand how that happens. Therefore, GM’s new board of directors, hand-picked by Mr. Montgomery, will probably be composed of radical environmentalists, labor union representatives, academics, ‘victims’ of corporate excesses and ‘community’ leaders. GM will become very much like the old Soviet Union’s state-run enterprises - cranking out sub-par goods at outrageous prices. In fact, the Democrats can probably still find some old, disgruntled Soviet apparatchiks that can show them how best to milk the system for all it’s worth.

GM and possibly Chrysler will be forced to build cars designed by bureaucrats and social activists. These vehicles will make the infamous Soviet-era Trabant look stylish by comparison. Of course, most Americans won’t buy them, prefering to pay a carbon-credit tax on a real car made elsewhere — like Japan, Korea, India or China. The Obama administration will then give these unwanted GM cars away to undeserving wards of the state, who’ll leave them lying by the roadside once they have a flat tire. And the American taxpayer will be on the hook for this entire mess.

But, it’s too easy to blame Obama and the Democrats for the mess. After all, they’re just taking advantage of a situation they didn’t create. No, that happened on Rick Wagoner’s watch, along with an entire gang of GM exec’s that just plain didn’t do their job. The UAW’s attitude is understandable to a degree - they can’t save GM even if their members worked for free. It’s not the union’s fault that GM management wasn’t looking ahead, that it wasn’t nimble enough to create a car company that could roll with the punches like a Honda or Toyota. Yes, the car business has been cruel to everyone, but Toyota lost $2 billion in 2008, while GM lost something north of $40 billion. Both firms sell about the same number of vehicles.

GM points to ‘legacy’ costs such as retiree benefits. Toyota has similar costs. Its labor force is actually older than GM’s and Japan also mandates similar retirement benefits for unionized auto workers. The money is distributed differently, but the numbers are similar. The same is true for German autoworkers who receive 80% of their working salary during retirement. And yet, both the Japanese and German automakers are in better shape than GM.

The blame is to be shared equally by GM management and UAW/skilled trades union bosses. On the part of GM management, a chronic shortage of vision and leadership allowed the company’s bureaucracy to bungle forward, oblivious to the realities of the marketplace.  On the union side, the UAW and the skilled trades unions did their level best to create work rules that hampered productivity and ballooned the cost of tooling up for a new vehicle. They were adamant about preserving jobs in order to protect that flow of dues into union coffers. Too bad it backfired on them. GM’s senior management was too timid to confront the unions and demand more cooperation. Much like the state and federal government, union bosses could not grasp the fact that more productive union workers would make the car companies more profitable and they would in turn build more manufacturing plants. Those plants would need more workers. Instead, union bosses dug in their heels and insisted on increasingly unproductive work rules and procedures that hamstrung automakers and gobbled up available cash.

Why would the unions do such a thing? It would seem short-sighted and self-destructive. Because, union workers and union bosses were firsthand witnesses to the bad decision-making emanating from GM’s executive suites. Those decisions cost them jobs and opportunities. When a new product fails, like GM’s infamous Pontiac Aztec, management doesn’t get laid off or fired. Assembly line workers do. When GM’s board of directors approves investment in a new vehicle line, executives aren’t called on the carpet when it doesn’t sell. Instead, white collar and blue collar workers are asked to make sacrifices and the auto suppliers are told to cut their prices. The automotive industry as a whole has been making sacrifices for the better part of two decades. GM’s senior management has not.

So, when GM is on the ropes, executives shouldn’t expect too much help or sympathy from the UAW or the supplier base, even though the fate of both are closely tied to the failing giant. On the political front, GM has bellyached for years about the unfair trade advantages held by imported brands. Those arguments began to fall apart when imports set up manufacturing facilities in the US while GM continued to move jobs overseas.

It’s likely that GM will go the way of Hudson, Kaiser, Studebaker, Rambler and the venerable Hupmobile. There’s nothing griven in stone that says a corporation must live forever. Big corporations are like miniature civilizations. They possess their own culture, social pecking order, rules of etiquette, ways of doing things. And like any civilization, they have a birth, a period of vibrant growth, maturity and finally, a decline followed by death or dismemberment. Younger, more aggressive corporations feed on the remains. In the end, GM’s demise may give rise to smaller, nimbler carmakers that can remain competitive in the world markets. Propped up by government, GM will simply remain a huge and costly socialist experiment, draining the country of resources that could be put to better use. Steamships and the Pony Express are gone, along with buggy whips and hoop skirts. As unpleasant as it may be in the short term, maybe it’s time for GM to ride off into the sunset. In this case, the pieces will be of greater value than the sum of the parts.

The fact that Congress has even bothered to bring to a vote the matter of AIG bonuses should signal loudly that the Golden Age of Parasites has arrived. Senator Chris Dodd denies inserting language into the mystery-shrouded economic stimulus package that was so quickly passed by both houses of Congress. The White House denies prior knowledge of the bonuses, even though staffers admit to it. Treasury Secretary Geithner himself crafted some of the foundational language of the bailout arrangement while George W. Bush was still in office. And now, every congressional aide’s best friend, Barney Frank,  is screeching that a 90% tax on those bonuses is justifiable. The parasites can now take away anything from anyone. Screw contract law. Screw constitutional guarantees. Screw the Bill of Rights. They can take what they want when they want it with the full backing of an ocean of parasites that now comprises the voting public. Mobocracy has arrived, cheered on by the media.

It’s revealing that only 44 protesters showed up to take a bus tour of AIG executives’ homes, even though every one of them was paid by A.C.O.R.N. with our tax dollars to do so. A crushing mob of reporters and cameramen from around the world showed up to document the circus. At the same time, hundreds of tea parties were being staged around the country to protest the Democrats’ uncontrolled spending and yet nothing has been reported on this groundswell of conservative activism.

It’s difficult to fully explain the motives of TV network programming executives, editorial directors, news writers and reporters. Some of it can be characterized as pure envy and malice — the mainstream media have assumed a rather pompous and sanctimonius position on social justice and economic opportunity without really delving into the causal relationships driving the disparity in income and social advancement. But then, that’s too difficult. It would require getting an education beyond ‘journalism’ or ‘communications’ which is as useful and intellectually challenging as ballroom dancing or basket weaving. No insult intended to the latter. It might require reporters, editors, columnists, newsreaders, producers and all of the other unionized (that’s right, they’re unionized) media ‘professionals’ to actually work hard and think before they open their yaps. It’s much easier to descend into pure envy and malice - the stock in trade of unions in this country. Hey, it worked for the unions.

But the primary reason that media outlets are effectively propaganda machines for the Left is that they’ve been intentionally been purposed to do so. Much like the contagion of leftist thinking that has demolished independent thought on college campuses, the Left has worked hard to spread its infection into the field of journalism. It’s an aggressive form of journalism, where the ‘reporter’ or ‘anchor’ insert themselves into the story, insult or attack their subject, then apply ‘context’ and ‘analysis’ that follows the party line. The strategy has worked extraordinarily well. Ask Sarah Palin. Where there are gaps in the all-out assault on American principles and ideals and those who uphold them, George Soros fills in with hundreds of bloggers funded through his many front organizations. 

Democratic politicians, media boobs and their wealthy patrons are playing with fire. They don’t understand that if the mob gets loose, at some point they too, will become targets. Even Karl Marx understood this. Obama and the Democrats think they can control mob impulses and turn them to their political advantage, much like Mussolini or Hitler did early on in their despicable regimes. History has proven them wrong. Either the actions of the mob descend into utter madness, or the politicians attempting to control the mob become dictators. This should not be America’s fate.

Barack Obama has dedicated himself to destroying this country. He’s attacking the very ideals and institutions that have made this country the greatest in the history of mankind. He’s taken upon himself the grim task of gutting the Constitution, the system of checks and balances, and a free-market economy that’s the envy of the world. Why would he do this? Because he’s not familiar with the America most Americans live in. His father was Kenyan - an alcoholic womanizer who visited this country once or twice. His American mother was an ultra-liberal that flitted about the globe, dragging her young son with her as she attempted to ‘find’ herself. He spent his formative years in Indonesia attending a Muslim school. Barack Obama had no grounding in what being an American truly is, what it means, and what’s important to Americans.

Barack Obama is an exemplary orator. Too bad that what he’s spewing is pure Marxist dogma. And yet, the stupid and the gullible sop it up, quivering in joy when they hear him speak, misunderstanding his true intentions and the ‘plans’ he has for America. Even black Americans who voted for Obama had better pay attention now. If they thought their lot in life was somehow diminished during the Bush administration, just wait until Obama is done with them. The Messiah will alter their America, too. And they won’t recognize it when he’s finished.

Well-educated, well-spoken and well-dressed, Obama the demagogue told everyone what they wanted to hear. But, he was very plain and straightforward about his vision for a Marxist utopia - except nobody really listened. Now, he’s making good on his promise to ‘re-make’ America, uproot its traditions and reason for being. No, he’s not going to create some sort of Euro-style socialist state. He’s going for the throat - a full-on Marxist takeover, complete with his promised ‘internal security force’ the size of our military. Why would the Anointed One, the Great Visionary, need an internal security force composed mostly of our poorly educated and gullible students, except to create another Hitler Youth or Red Guard to impose the will of Obama and the Democratic Party on us all? It’s a frightening prospect.

The media & entertainment clowns continue to cheer him on. The conservatives continue to question his motives and methods, but they’re largely outshouted. And so, Obama goes about his business - stampeding the stupid into giving him the imprimatur to take away all of our economic freedoms. And without economic freedom, the ability to keep what you earn guaranteed by our Constitution, the freedom to vote or voice your opinion is nearly useless. No one will hear you complaining when you’re standing in a breadline.

Obama is using the banking crisis to ram through a Marxist agenda - government control of energy, healthcare and capital formation. He’s lying about his true intent, cloaking this outrageous power grab as a means to moderate the economic downturn. Creating a ‘green’ economy with unproven technology and government subsidies is not a free-standing, self-sufficient economy. Bankrupting coal producers, coal-fired energy generation, oil companies and auto companies is not going to create a rebound. Confiscating healthcare and turning it into a political weapon will not cause prosperity to materialize. And certainly, adding a huge new tax burden on economic activity will not create jobs.

But then, Obama doesn’t really care if the economy recovers at all. The worse it gets, the more power he’ll accumulate and the further our great country will slide into the clutches of a failed ideology. To the Democrats that won’t matter in the least. They’ll always have the ‘rich’ and the Republicans to blame for anything and everything that goes wrong. And when it gets really tough, fellow Democrats can meet up with their President at the White House for a cocktail on Wednesday nights and dine on $100 per pound steak. Hey, it’s free, isn’t it? Go on, a second helping couldn’t hurt…