The Obama administration and their lapdogs are promoting the Chevy Volt as the electrifying savior of the auto-industry and maybe even the planet.
The public, however, has mixed feelings about General Motors and the Volt seeing as how the bailout of “Government Motors” still reeks of crony capitalism two years later.
I’m not sure what it’s like in the rest of the United States, but here in Michigan the sea of programmable drones known as Michiganders tends to look down on people who don’t blindly support the whole blue collar community. We’ve been programmed to have a rosy outlook, even if it goes against your natural instincts to want government controlled mega-corporations to win.
So you can probably guess that the local media isn’t interested in ruffling any feathers over the Volt. No need to create any negative press, nothing but “Government Motors” cheerleading here.
And of course the national media is not going to be critical of something the president and his central economic planners want to succeed so badly. How can you question the plan that is supposed to save us from the recession and usher in a new green economy?
Questioning the plan is apparently a mean thing to do.
However, not everyone is part of the Volt’s love fest. No, there are a few minority voices that aren’t huge fans of the cult of Volt.
Like an Investor’s Business Daily editorial that accuses GM of Volt fraud. They even call the Volt an “electric Edsel”.
Remember, we were told three years ago that the Volt would be an all-electric car. And then a little later a small gasoline engine was added, just to use the gasoline engine to help maintain the batteries’ charge as it begins to drain.
When that made the news you might have wondered, “Doesn’t that alter the claim about it being an all-electric car?”
The official reply was: Shhhhh be good! Don’t question us; it’s still an electric car, not a hybrid.
Well you know what? The car we were told would be all-electric isn’t even all electric after all. It also doesn’t even get the “hundreds” of miles per gallon that consumers were promised while the Volt was still in development.
It seems the gasoline battery does more than just help the battery last, it freaking drives the car too! Yep, at or above 70 mph the Volt’s gasoline engine drives the front wheels along with the electric motors.
So it sounds like a hybrid to me, unless I’m too simple to understand what the combined government/big three entity GM tells me.
An issue like this, because of the obvious circumstances is definitely going to create a political situation.
The fawning corporate media like always stands on either the left, or the right to control the division of public opinion and put it into two main camps. So one majority group blindly supports it, one group blindly hates it. And none of them talk about how because of the current administration’s energy policy, and cap and trade, electricity rates, along with everything, will increase in price in the near future.
It takes a lot of Internet digging to find other writers who share the opinion of Investor’s Business Daily, but it can be done. Fellow Michigander Karen De Coster takes the government to task in their role in all of this Volt mania on her blog.
Her blog post bashing the Obama administration’s role in the central economic planning of the Volt is one of the only Michigan based pieces I’ve seen that doesn’t stand up and cheer loudly for the Volt to sell like hotcakes.
I love her no-nonsense response to a bit of text from a story on KansasCity.com, where it mentions that “General Motors can compete effectively in the green car arena.”
Her response: Someday, when words have meanings, government policy (coercion), taxes (theft from citizens), redistribution (to favored government programs), and subsides (to players in the governmental-corporate complex) will not be confused with “competing effectively.”
Funny thing, the Volt is coming out this November, but of course, there will be a limited production for now. Only the really needy will be able to get their hands on a Volt soon. The rest of us will probably be able to spend $41,000 a Volt once they start mass producing the components in Bay City, Michigan.
That won’t be until 2011, so it’s going to be hard to get one for Christmas.
If you are lucky enough to get your hands on this high priced quasi hybrid you can look forward to the $7,500 government tax credit for being awesome enough to jump onboard. You also might have to minus the $490 for a better, faster charger, and the estimated $1,500 to install in in your garage.
This reminds me of the episode of the Simpsons where Homer designs a car for the everyman working for his brother’s car company. It was a project where a bunch of dopes, listened to a bigger dope. The car bombed, hilarity ensued.
I wanted General Motors, and the rest of the big three to fail. Not because I’m mean, not because I don’t care about people losing their jobs, not because I’m anti-corporate, but because too big to fail sucks.
Big companies running themselves into the ground is the natural order of things. Some other car company would have been there to pick up the pieces.
But no we can’t let the mighty fall and release their share of the wealth and power, we bailed them out.
We bailed them out and the magic car that we were promised that was going to change the game is turning out to be rather ordinary. You can’t expect to get the same results you used to with GM anymore.
Not when GM and the government are the same thing.
